Ignition

Christianity is caught, not taught. (old RSCM saying)

In “The Talent Code” [see the previous essay], Daniel Coyle writes that what he calls “ignition” is “the set of signals and unconscious forces that create our identity; the moments that lead us to say ‘this is what I want to be’” (p. 108, author’s emphasis). It is the realization that “I’d better get busy” (p. 111), and it is often a sense of wanting to belong to a group: “Those people over there are doing something terrifically worthwhile” (p. 108). It is what Steven Pressfield calls “Turning Pro.”

Coyle is speaking of music, athletics, and other endeavors of the sort that demand the effort of “deep practice” and years of commitment. This is all very true; it is one reason that I take choristers to the RSCM summer course in St. Louis. I hope that for some of them, it will be a defining event. It is one reason that when we are doing something big for our parish at home, such as the Beethoven chorus from “Mount of Olives” a year ago, or “Worthy is the Lamb” from Messiah, I seek to include the youth choir. For some of them, singing such music might be the key that unlocks their vocation.

But music and athletics are not the only things that demand effort and long-term commitment, nor are they the most important:

And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. (St. Matthew 4:19)

St. Clare of Assisi is a good example. She heard and saw Francis, and as Coyle would say, she thought “this is what I want to be.” The fire burned strongly enough in her to overcome every obstacle.

How can we live in such a way as to ignite such a flame in those around us? How can our parishes become places that will cause people to think that “Those people over there are doing something terrifically worthwhile?” This is the center point of evangelism. No amount of talk will do it.

One of our teenage choristers showed up at this morning's warmup rehearsal with a friend. I could have told her to sit out in the congregation while her friend sang in the choir, and come to our next rehearsal if she wanted to sing. That would have been sensible, and would have respected the rehearsal time that the other choristers had put into their work. But I knew that this girl was a singer, and the moment would have passed by the next rehearsal. So I invited her to put on a vestment and sing with us. Perhaps nothing will come of it. Or perhaps it might be a beginning.

We need a lot more of this.

See also this, from my online friend Tim Chesterton:
“What does discipleship look like?”

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For those who are nearby, I am playing a noontime recital at the Congregational Church on Wednesday, March 8, starting at noon. Here is my program, with notes (I have spent much of the evening writing them). There is a lot of work ahead: I have struggled with the Vaughan Williams fugue, applying my “deep practice” methods to it and finally completing a First and Second Workout. It took so long that I have neglected its prelude (which I played in December, but which needs to be practiced). One of the Messiaen movements is new to me, and starting to frighten me. It is fingered, but must be learned by next Sunday, when it is to be the postlude. To say nothing of March 8, about ten days from now. Jesu juva.

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Prelude and Fugue in C minor (Ralph Vaughan Williams)

Four movements from Livre du Saint Sacrement (Olivier Messiaen)
1. Adoro te (I adore thee)
2. la source de Vie (the source of Life)
3. le Dieu caché (the hidden God)
6. la manne et le Pain de Vie (the manna and the Bread of Life)

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Notes:

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was a towering influence in British musical life through the first half of the twentieth century. Although he was a prolific composer, he wrote little for the organ; today’s work, the Prelude and Fugue in C minor, is the most substantial of his organ works. He wrote it in 1921, revised it in 1923 and again in 1930, when he also arranged it for orchestra.

The prelude is in rondo form, with the principal theme and its massive chords separated by two quieter, flowing sections. The fugue is characterized by constant two-against-three motion, established immediately by its subject and countersubject, building to a grand conclusion. Both movements are colored by modal and pentatonic harmonies, as is characteristic of much of his music.


Olivier Messiaen (1908-92) was equally significant in the musical life of France in the twentieth century. His music strikes many as strange. I believe that this is accurate; it is strange because it is holy. Two key elements appear constantly: birdsong and color. None of his music, aside from one unaccompanied motet, is “liturgical.” He considered that the only acceptable liturgical music is plainsong. While Messiaen occasionally quoted plainsong, he preferred to quote birds, considering them to be the greatest of musicians. An avid amateur ornithologist, he transcribed their songs into notation in the field wherever he traveled, and incorporated them into virtually all of his music from the 1960’s onward.

In my opinion, Messiaen can be compared only with J. S. Bach in his ability to depict matters of faith by means of music. Yet, Messiaen would be the first to say, as he wrote in the preface to his “Quartet for the End of Time,” that “All this is simply striving and childish stammering if one compares it to the overwhelming grandeur of the subject.”

Livre du Saint Sacrement (Book of the Blessed Sacrament) was his final composition for the organ, commissioned by the American Guild of Organists for their national convention in Detroit, 1986. In eighteen movements with a duration of about an hour and a half, it is an extended meditation on the central mystery of the Christian faith.

The cycle begins with Adoro te. Messiaen writes: “[the first three movements are] acts of adoration to the Christ who is invisible, but genuinely present in the Blessed Sacrament.” Adoro te is quiet, warm,and sensuous. Messiaen draws the title from the first words of a hymn by Thomas Aquinas: "Humbly I adore thee, Verity unseen…" See also Colossians 1:15: “He is the image of the invisible God…”

la Source de Vie is gentle, a quiet depiction of the Water of Life. Messiaen quotes St. Bonaventure: “My heart is ever thirsting for you, O fountain of life, source of the eternal light!”

le Dieu caché juxtaposes a plainsong Alleluia; a unison melody as a reply to it; the song of the bird Onycognathus tristrami (Tristram’s grackle, notated by Messiaen at Engedi, between Masada and the Dead Sea); and a slow descending chordal figure, like a meditation. These are presented in block form, each element extended as it reappears. Near the end, we hear the song of Hippolais pallida (Olivaceous Warbler, notated at Lod, near modern-day Tel Aviv.) Messiaen quotes:

My eyes could not bear to behold the splendor of your glory. It is with regard for my weakness that you veil yourself in the Sacrament. (from "The Imitation of Christ," Book IV, chapter 11)

On the Cross only the divinity was hidden. But here [in the Sacrament] is hidden also the Humanity. In confessing and believing both, I ask that which the repentant thief asked. (St. Thomas Aquinas, from the hymn Adoro te)

In la manne et le Pain de Vie, the sounds are those of a desert, with silences and waiting, and frightening things scurrying about, and the calls of two birds, both native to the deserts of Judea: Oenanthe lugens (Mourning Chat) and Ammomanes deserti (Desert Lark). Again he uses block form, extending each musical element as it reappears. The movement ends in repose, with a final two measures that could be from Debussy. Messiaen quotes:

You gave your people food of angels, and without their toil you supplied them from heaven with bread ready to eat, providing every pleasure and suited to every taste. For your sustenance manifested your sweetness toward your children; and the bread, ministering to the desire of the one who took it, was changed to suit everyone's liking. (Wisdom 16:20-21)

The life that Christ gives us by communion is all of his life, with the special graces he has deserved, living for us each of his mysteries. (Dom Columba Marmion, “Christ in His Mysteries,” chapter 18)

I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. (John 6:51)

The Talent Code

The Talent Code (Daniel Coyle, Bantam Books 2009)
The Little Book of Talent (ibid., 2012)

Upon a recommendation in an online forum, I read “The Talent Code” and followed that up with “The Little Book of Talent.” For the purposes of the Music Box, the part that is of greatest interest is Coyle’s description of what he calls “Deep Practice,” chapter 4 of “Talent Code.” In most respects, it is the way that I practice, described in a previous essay.

Coyle describes how the method works. What we normally call “talent” is the growth of myelin sheathing around neurons, which strengthens the circuitry of any action or thought that is repeated a lot.

The way to build this sheathing is repetition – but not mindlessly, playing a scale or exercise hundreds of times in a row, as one of my teachers had me do for a semester. Coyle writes: “With conventional practice, more is always better…. Deep practice, however, doesn’t obey the same math. Spending more time is effective – but only if you’re still in the sweet spot at the edge of your capabilities, attentively building and honing circuits” (p. 88). Coyle describes this earlier in the book; he finds that the “sweet spot” is at the edge of one’s ability, making a few mistakes and immediately attending to them (chapter 1).

I would emphasize that it is a FEW mistakes in the initial slow playing of the phrase. For me, that is the guide as to whether my practice is sufficiently slow. If there are absolutely no mistakes, I am not pushing hard enough; it seems important that there be some struggle to get it right, so it cannot be so slow as to be playable without focus, and Coyle would agree with this; in “The Little Book” he says to “Embrace Struggle.” In this playthrough, I stop immediately at every mistake, think about it for a moment, and play it again, perhaps just the one or two notes leading to the mistake and this time getting it right. If I cannot, I slow it down further, even take it entirely out of rhythm to move carefully from one note to the next (I often have to do this when learning Messiaen).

I should be taking a tempo where, with the work described above, the second playthrough is perfect. And the third. If not, I need to slow down, or possibly take a smaller chunk of music – a half-phrase, one measure, even down to a couple of beats or less, whatever feels like a single manageable “chunk”. The goal (with which I think Coyle would agree) is a perfect playing of the phrase, measure, or other short passage, which is then repeated perfectly. I never leave a phrase until it is as perfect as I can make it, even on the first day’s practice of it.

More than that, the passage is repeated perfectly the next day, and the day after. Coyle writes that the growth of myelin is a slow process, taking days or weeks.

As Coyle writes, this is why regular practice is essential. “Causing skill to evaporate… only requires that you stop a skilled person from systematically firing his or her circuit for a mere thirty days…. Myelin… is living tissue. Like everything else in the body, it’s in a constant cycle of breakdown and repair. That’s why daily practice matters, particularly as we get older” (p. 88)

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There is lots of good material about teaching and coaching in Part Three of “Talent Code” (p. 156 and following). One insight that is especially helpful for me with my struggles with improvisation was his comparison of the training of young Brazilian soccer players with the Suzuki method. Coyle thinks that “skills like soccer, writing, and comedy are flexible-circuit skills…. Playing violin, golf, gymnastics, and figure skating, on the other hand, are consistent-circuit skills, depending utterly on a solid foundation of technique that enables us to reliably re-create the fundamentals of an ideal performance” (p. 194).

I have spent most of my life learning and playing organ and piano repertoire. In Coyle’s terms, that is “consistent-circuit” work. That is why every mistake must be immediately eliminated by slow practice.

But piano (and organ) improvisation is the opposite – it is more of a “flexible-circuit” skill. In describing the Brazilian coach who (on the surface) is simply letting the kids play scrimmages with very little instruction, Coyle writes “To stop the game in order to highlight some technical detail or give praise would be to interrupt the flow of attentive firing, failing, and learning that is the heart of flexible-circuit deep practice” (p. 194 – in another place, he likens it to a baby learning to walk).

“The ideal soccer circuitry is varied and fast, changing fluidly in response to each obstacle, capable of producing a myriad of possible options that can fire in liquid succession: now this, this, this, and that. Speed and flexibility are everything…” (p. 193)

That is Thelonious Monk playing the tune for two hours without losing the groove. That is why, in an improvisation – even in practice – you use the mistakes to take you to a different place than you intended and you most certainly do not stop, go back, and fix them.

Yes, you make mistakes. And yes, you must fix them – just as the soccer players must learn to move the ball, to make passes, to hit their shots, and they will work on drills to isolate specific moves and skills often breaking each move into its components, very much like Mike Garson’s little fifteen or thirty second “etudes.” But the fixing of mistakes in a soccer scrimmage is of quite a different sort from the work that one does with slow practice, a phrase at a time, of Bach or Messiaen, and the practice method must likewise differ. You don’t bother with that particular mistake in that moment at all; instead, you think about how you might avoid going in that direction the next time, or (in practice) take another swing at it in the next variation through the tune, and see if you can get a better sound.

That is one reason improvisation is so scary for traditionally-trained classical musicians. It goes against everything we have learned about how to make music, if we have been careful in our approach to the repertoire. I have a lot to learn about this, and am grateful for Coyle’s insight into it.

I wrote of this mode of practicing recently, as well.

What about choral singing? There are many directors who work in the “precise” way, what I call the Robert Shaw approach – he would carefully mark a copy of the choral score, place it on reserve in the library, and expect every singer to have every marking before the first rehearsal, and adhere to them precisely. Every cutoff was defined as a precise rhythm, every possible detail was specified.

There are times when this is needed, but I am more of the other school: I want the singers to use their individual musical judgement as much as possible. I would be happiest if they were singing with perfect ensemble by listening attentively to one another, without me. We sometimes come close to this with psalmody.

In the next essay, I hope to discuss another of Coyle’s concepts: Ignition. But a closing thought for today – “Deep practice tends to leave people exhausted.” (footnote, p. 89). This explains my physical and mental collapses after every major undertaking, such as the Fourth Week of Advent described a few pages back. I should be kinder to myself and accept that this is simply how it is, not a personal failure of discipline.

And what about this, from St. Paul: “Bodily exercise profiteth little, but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.” (I Timothy 4:8)

Ought we not to put as much effort into “spiritual exercise” as the bodily form, and engage in spiritual practice as well as musical? How do we do this? The details surely differ, but some of the same disciplines apply. William Law’s suggestion is apt:

It would be easy to show… how little and small matters are the first steps and natural beginnings of great perfection. But the two things which, of all others, most want to be under a strict rule, and which are the greatest blessings both to ourselves and others, when they are rightly used, are our time and our money. These talents are continual means and opportunities of doing good. He that is piously strict, and exact in the wise management of either of these, cannot be long ignorant of the right use of the other. (from “A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life”)

“Little and small matters…” This sounds like the musician taking a single phrase, bringing it to perfection by attending to every detail of it in slow, careful practice.

Habits result from the myelination process, every bit as much as Skills. “We are what we repeatedly do,” wrote Will Durant. At more length:

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; “These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions” [from Aristotle]; we are what we repeatedly do. [from “The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Great Philosophers,” quoted here.]

This is one reason that I pray the Daily Office. It is but a first step, but it is at least that. And, like the learning of Music, it is not going to happen without daily repetition. And perhaps, spiritual exercise means working at what Coyle calls the “sweet spot” referred to above: “at the edge of one’s ability, making a few mistakes and immediately attending to them.”

When dealing with such matters as love for one’s neighbor or telling the truth under all circumstances, the “mistakes” are certain. It is the immediate attention to them that is the challenge.

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I have posted two more YouTube clips. This one is a followup to the previous essay; it is today’s improvisation for which I began preparation on Tuesday.
Improvisation for the Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany

This one is from our choir: a psalm setting by David Hurd. The organ part is a passacaglia, an eight-bar ground-bass.
Teach me, O Lord (David Hurd)

As I wrote above, my next essay continues with material from Daniel Coyle’s book, on what he calls “Ignition.” I will say here that I owe David Hurd for some of my own “ignition” as an organist.

On my first Sunday morning as a freshman at Duke, I was with the Chapel Choir (which was open to all comers for the first week or so, while auditions took place). Mind you, my little Baptist church back home was not quite so fine as the Duke Chapel – indeed, nothing had prepared me for processing down that aisle with the Choir – while David Hurd, chapel organist (only for a brief time, perhaps just that one year if I remember rightly) played what I learned was the Bach Prelude in B minor.

I had no idea that such music existed. Obviously, I knew of Bach; I had played many things from the Well Tempered Clavier by this time. But I had never heard any of his organ music, nor had I ever heard or seen a pipe organ.

At the time, nothing changed. I failed to pass the Choir's audition, and failed again my sophomore year, making me determined in my career as a choral director to never have the sort of choir where people must pass an audition to get in. I laid aside choral music, pretty much quit going to church, proceeded with my major in piano performance, and did not take organ lessons. Nonetheless, in retrospect I think that it was that Sunday morning when the seed was planted.

Dr. Hurd, should you read this: thank you. Thank you for taking your work as an organist seriously, and playing real literature for a run-of-the-mill church service in late August.

We never know where our music-making might lead, or what effect it may have on its listeners.

Improvisation Practice: an Example

Here is an example of how I begin my improvisatory work for the week. My purpose is to take the tune “Fifths” (Sally Ann Morris, with a fine text by the Mennonite author and pastor Adam Tice, “If Jesus is come”) and practice it with my version of Thelonious Monk’s method as described by Mike Garson:

I continue working with the Mike Garson online masterclass, mentioned a few weeks ago. One of his ideas takes “Know the Tune” to a higher level. He quotes the jazz pianist Thelonious Monk: take one tune. Set the metronome (he suggests setting it to play on beats two and four of the measure, and if you are new to this, set a fairly slow tempo), and play the tune. For two hours. You can play whatever notes may happen; you certainly should vary it, add chords or countermelodies, move it to different keys, whatever occurs to you. But don’t lose the groove; stay with that click. For two hours.

It is often good to take the same tune again the next day: he had one of his students play “Autumn Leaves” in this manner for two weeks, two hours a day. One thinks of the disciplines of the Desert Fathers or the Zen masters.

Here, I play for barely over twenty minutes and without metronome, but it is enough to demonstrate the method. As I said in the linked essay, I cannot justify two hours of this, not with my other duties. Most days, I aim for a half-hour, more or less.

It is a tune with which I am not very familiar, so I must learn it. Thus, the example begins with me playing the tune in unison, in the written key (C minor), and singing along with solfege. Here is how it goes from there:

- 1’50” – start adding counterpoint
- 3’50” – a new key (G minor)
- 6’20” – and another (F minor). I did not intend it so at the time, but as it transpired, I stay in F minor for almost ten minutes, because I found it challenging to control the tune in this key.
- 8’35” – becoming more free
- 13’30” – quieter
- 14’50” – to F major (sort of). I like this passage.
- 15’40” – time to head back for tonic: transition
- 16’45” – Tonic. C minor.
- 17’50” – what jazzmen would call the “Head” – a simple playthrough of the tune very much in the manner in which I “started” (that is, about the two minute mark when I began adding counterpoint). Once through, then:
- 18’15” – Coda. It ends up rather big and dissonant.


It follows the pattern that Mike Garson suggested: I have to work through some of my more standard ways of playing such things, but it eventually starts to become more interesting, perhaps around the eight minute mark. By the end, I have discovered things about this tune I would not have expected, such as the F major passage (14’50”) and the rather harsh coda.

Some of this may end up in Sunday’s prelude improvisation. For now, I am not making any specific intention about it.

I have more to say on this: another day.

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The text and tune are available in Adam Tice’s fine collection “Stars like grace” (2013) They are not in Hymnary.org, which implies that they have yet to appear in any hymnals.

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.

How I practice: a demonstration

I described my practice method in a 2011 essay. Recently, I encountered the book “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle, where he describes a practice method similar to this, calling it “Deep Practice.” Here is my version:

- Work out the fingering
- Play a short passage (perhaps four measures, or one phrase), slowly.
- Play it again
- Play it a third time, still very slowly.
[See the 2019 addendum below]
- Modify the rhythms several ways, still just this one phrase. The goal is to isolate the smallest musical unit – two notes – and tie them together with the neighboring units.
- Then larger groupings – four notes, two beats, a measure.
- Play the passage at a faster tempo, performance tempo if possible.
- Move to the next phrase, learn it in the same manner.
- For review, play the two phrases together.
- Move on to the third phrase.
- Repeat…
- When the practice session is nearly finished (or when I have worked through the entire movement or large section), give it a final slow, careful, mistake-free playthrough at half tempo or less. It settles the day’s work, as if telling the mind and body “Yes, this is how it goes.”
- The next day, repeat the above.

I have recorded an example of how this goes; it can be found here.

It is my first beginning with the Franck Chorale in E major, which will hopefully be the prelude for the February Evensong tomorrow. Before taking it to the organ as it is in the example, I have worked out the fingering, thoroughly. I write a finger number for every note.

I begin not at the beginning of the piece, but at measure 170. This begins a passage of about sixty bars that I expect to be the most challenging, and I normally begin my work on a piece at such a spot, building around it as the work progresses.

I am pleased that there are Problems, especially at the page turn between measures 174 and 175. It happens to be a difficult spot, made harder by the page turn. This seems to happen a lot; I have wondered if music editors do it intentionally. Especially in the first slow playthrough, there are almost always a few problems, and the clip is a good illustration of how to work on them, not allowing a mistake to go uncorrected.

Basically, my little workpiece is one phrase. I extend it a measure and a half past the phrase end because of the page turn, with the intention of starting the next phrase just before the page turn, giving it a double dose of work. Unless the turn is very easy, I generally do this.

After all of the rhythmic variations and groupings and playthroughs, I move on to the next phrase and treat it in the same manner. Then I string the two phrases together, and move on to the third phrase. When it is done, I string at least the second and third phrases together, and perhaps include the first phrase again, as well. At the end of the practice session, I finish with a final slow play-through of all that I have covered. I use the metronome for this, normally at half of the performance tempo.

The method seems highly inefficient in the short run, for it took me over twenty minutes to work through ten measures of music – in a piece that is 259 measures long. But I think that the listener can tell that those twenty minutes resulted in significant progress on the little passage, and one more day’s work on it will solidify it. In the long run, I find this method of work to be an immense time-saver.

My plan is to give the two pages that I got through today their Second Workout on my next day of practice – pretty much the same as the First Workout, except that it usually goes more smoothly – then lay it aside until I have worked through the entire piece in this manner. If possible, I will try to include one slow playthrough per week of the parts I have previously covered to keep them somewhat fresh. If this works, it could be the key for how I can better prepare a lot of music for one occasion, such as a recital or the Great Vigil/Easter Day.

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I made the recording and wrote most of the above on January 6 and 7. It is now February 4, with the Evensong coming up tomorrow. The Franck has made good progress and I think it will be ready, even though I did not complete my Second Workout on one two-page section of the piece until yesterday.

For a long time, I have been on a journey toward being a Better Musician. It has troubled me for years that I continue to make so many mistakes in performance, so I continue to improve my practice methods. I think that this month’s work on the Franck is a step in the right direction.
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Addendum, June 2019

The above system worked for a time. Old age and the onset of "yips" led to a modification: on the first day with a new piece, do the three slow play-throughs of a short segment, typically two to four measures. Move on to the next segment, with three slow play-throughs. Play the first and second segment together, slowly. Move on to the third segment, reviewing segments two and three. Then the fourth segment, reviewing segments three and four. And likewise through to the end of the movement or the piece, or the practice time available for the day.

I found that going onward with the rhythmic practice on the initial day ultimately contributed to the "yips" in performance. Nowadays, I do better by working gently the first day. On the second and subsequent days, I proceed as described above, with one slow play-through of each segment followed by rhythmic practice.

I still get the "yips," but not quite as badly.

The only other significant modification I have made is that I work more with one hand at a time, especially if there is any problem at any point from the first slow playing to the final preparations for performance. Isolate the short segment and the hand which is having difficulty, play the one hand's music slowly, perhaps with the rhythms if that seems like it will help, then put it back with the other hand and the pedals.