For twenty minutes I was to play. Or twenty-five. Or more. However long it took. I was terrified. I could easily play random soft chords in a new-ageish manner and fill the time. But could I do better than that?
I came to view it as an examination. I have improvised preludes and postludes all summer and devoted all of my practice, such as it was, to this skill; have I made any progress? Sometimes it has gone well this summer; sometimes not so much. Could I now attempt a long-form improvisation in the manner of Mr. Jarrett? Obviously I will never have his virtuosity, but could I do something that would be worthy of the occasion, perhaps a channel of healing and prayer?
Well, I gave it a try. I played variations on Hyfrydol, which was to be the closing hymn a bit later in the service. With that much time, I could go pretty far afield. I consciously tried to avoid any clear statement of the tune, and kept it in minor for much of the piece. I sought to extract motives and work with them.
Always, there was the liturgical constraint: “Quiet background music.” That removed dynamics as a possibility for contrast and development and I had to rein in the ideas several times when they wanted to grow larger than would have been appropriate. The constraint mostly ruled out “fast” as well as “loud.”
I made a recording, but I am not going to post all of it; there is too much noise. That was a clue that I got it right; for most of the first fifteen minutes, the priest speaking quietly with people at the other end of the room from the microphone is louder than my playing. This is a good sign.
There was some good playing in it, and some that was not so good; if it were indeed an examination, I would give myself a C-plus and be content that it was not an F. [Edited 9/13 to add: I listened to the recording two more times; it was not so bad as I thought as I played, nor on first listening. Maybe a B instead of C plus.] (I am grateful to one of the jazzmen who used to work in our choir room, a saxophonist. He told a student: “Any improvisation where you don’t feel like you need to put a bag over your head and sneak out the back door is a success.” He is right about that.) The best part was not me: one of my tasks was to set up the key for the Skipperlings to sing “Long time traveler” after me. That is worth hearing, so I am posting the last eight minutes or so of the improvisation followed by their song. The selection starts softly, just before my return to the improvisation’s tonic of C after a long excursion to G flat and B, but it builds up (finally!) after the bishop returns, my cue that it is time to wrap things up.
And here is the closing hymn, on which the improvisation was based. My intent was for the violinist to play on the final stanza, doubling the descant; instead, he played for all three stanzas. That made the middle stanza, unaccompanied except for the violin, much better than what I had anticipated.
Lessons:
- The summer’s work was not entirely wasted, but there is much still to do. I am unable to convincingly organize twenty-five minutes of improvisation so that it sounds like a unified musical composition. Not for the first time, I am filled with admiration for how Mr. Jarrett can do this so well. The way to get there would be to do many more “practice runs,” with close attention to form. This is not directly useful for my proper duties, so it is unlikely to happen. I am still listening to his four-CD recording “A multitude of angels” and seeking to internalize it.
- There were a few weeks this summer where my organ improvisation was better than my work at the piano; I have posted a couple of these on SoundCloud. This was a goal, and I am happy to have reached it, even if the way I did so was with lame piano playing on said Sundays.
- I survived despair. There was a week when I became convinced that my improvisations were driving people away, keeping them from entering the church from the narthex until my noise-making was done. By “what some would call chance,” that very week I happened on one of Pressfield’s books: “Do the Work,” the sequel to his important book “The War of Art.” I must say that “Do the Work” is not as good of a book, and something of a waste of money – it is short, and mostly repeats material from “War of Art.” But some of the material unique to this book was exactly what I needed to drag me out of the Slough of Despond.
- Possibly the chief benefit of the summer’s work was to my accompaniment of congregational song. Devoting more of my practice time to what I call the “Thelonious Monk method” (play the tune at the organ continuously for an extended period, forty-five minutes or an hour) made me more adventuresome when it came time to sing the hymn on Sunday, and in some cases perhaps more effective.
Now it is back to repertoire and anthem accompaniments. There is much to be done there, too. In fact, this very day I received what I view as a word from the Lord: a trustworthy friend told me that during the service I have been describing, she heard it as a voice: “(my name) has more work to do here.”
I wrote that down and attached it to my door, alongside the pictures of Bach, Bruckner, and Keith Jarrett.
Finish then thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be;
Let us see thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in thee;
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.
(Charles Wesley)
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