There are (at least) two types of keyboard accompaniments for choral music:
1) Accompaniment written for organ or piano. Some of these may require quite a lot of practice, but normally one plays the notes that are written, within the limitations of the instrument at hand.
2) Accompaniment originally for orchestra, with a keyboard reduction in the choral score. Most often, one does not play all of the notes.
The overriding principle for keyboard reductions:
“When in doubt, leave it out.”
Our goal is to produce a reasonable approximation of the orchestral score, sufficient to support the choir in its singing and to present the musical work to the listeners. Most keyboard reductions have far more material than is needed for this. To play everything that is printed would require massive technical skill and practice time.
So, leave things out. Lots of things. Reduce the “reduction” until it matches your capabilities and the time available to learn it. Get it down to something that you will be able to play fluently.
An example, from “Qui sedes” by Michael Haydn, in the fine edition by David Stein (Th. Presser 312-41692)
The choir is floating along with “Alleluias,” hardly a care in the world. The orchestra is bouncing along with an active bass line and lots of string figuration. In particular, lots of repeated sixteenth notes – easy on violin, not so much on organ. Add to that considerable leaping around – again, easy on violin, not so much on organ.
As you can see, I have scribbled over my copy until it is barely legible. I have left the bass line fairly intact (in the pedals), though there would be places to simplify it further, such as measure 65, where I was tempted to cross out the final three eighth notes. It is the upper staff where the chopping happens – I have crossed out at least one of the four sixteenth notes in every group of repeated notes, sometimes two of the four (leaving eighth notes in effect). I have chopped out lots of the inner parts, so that I can divide the remaining upper line (probably first violin originally) between the hands. And that got it to where I could play it, with sufficient practice. As printed, no way. Not even close.
[Unrelated tip: in measure 64, pedal line, after the third beat, I wrote in “PN”. That stands for “Pivot Note,” and tells me to shift my feet and legs to a different part of the pedalboard. I learned this decades ago from Carl Weinrich, formerly organist at Princeton University, who described this in The Diapason. I commend it to you. You might also notice that I have written in all of the fingering and pedalings. I commend this to you as well.]
Another example: a notorious passage from Handel’s Messiah (“For unto us a child is born”), in the Watkins Shaw edition:
At rehearsal letter G, the first and second violins are playing merrily along in parallel thirds. Fine for them; not impossible at the keyboard, but well beyond what I can do. I have not crossed out so many notes here as in the Haydn because it would have been illegible, but you can see what I have done from the fingering – for each group of four sixteenth notes, play the two-note sonority for the first and third notes, and a single note for the second and fourth. Just like that, it becomes playable. The other changes on this page are hopefully more subtle – chop out repeated notes (e.g., right hand, in the measure before G), cross out some notes from the middle parts and assign others to the left hand (top system second bar), strategically assign some of the bass line to the left hand instead of the pedal (two before G).
I have even added some notes, finding it necessary to fill in some of the chords in the left hand (top system last measure, and at G).
There was a time when such shameless hacking away at the careful work of editors (and there are none better than Watkins Shaw! Compare this with the old T. Tertius Noble edition for a lesson in making a fine keyboard reduction) burdened me with guilt. “You worthless lazy incompetent slug! You can’t even play a simple accompaniment. Surely everyone else zips through this stuff with ease. They probably sight-read it.”
Well, many days I do consider myself to be worthless, lazy, and incompetent. But somehow I have to get through this thing with the choir if we are going to sing it. And I have to chop away at it to get it to where that is possible. Either that or hire an orchestra.
That thought is why I am writing this essay, with examples. Trust me: “everyone else” does not zip through this stuff. The best I can tell, the sort of work I have described is normal. So I no longer permit myself to wallow in guilt. Neither should you. Do what you have to do to make the accompaniments playable. By you. In the practice time that you have. If you are one of the rare people who can rip off eight bars of sixteenth notes in parallel thirds in your right hand, go for it, and I tip my hat to you. If a page like either of the examples I have given causes you to shudder with dread, sharpen your pencil, sit down at the keyboard, and see what you can do.
When in doubt, leave it out.
[Afterword: There is a third kind of accompaniment – reading from open score, making it all fit at the piano or organ on the fly as you go. It is said that Franz Liszt could take a brand-new score by the likes of Wagner or Bruckner – in manuscript, not nicely printed like what we normally face – sit down at the piano, and sight-read it at tempo.
I can only bow my head in wonder, praising the God who put musicians like that on this earth.
Soli Deo Gloria.]
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