Advent, hymn-playing, and the AGO exams

Tonight was our Service of Advent Lessons and Carols. I could say much about this, not least that the choir sang with strong connection and beautiful phrase-shaping, but upon review of my reference recording, one comment:

I am playing the hymns better than I used to.

And I did not put a large amount of preparation time into them, not directly; two hours perhaps. But indirectly – yes. I could not have played tonight as I did without my work on improvisation, intensively in recent years, but in other ways for twenty years and more, often with little or no audible progress for years at a time. Improvement in hymn-playing was not my intent with this work; I did not even consider it as a possibility. But that is what happened.

From time to time, the AGO talks about revising their professional examinations to make them more relevant. I gather that such revision may currently be in progress. I do not think this is a good idea.

Many of the musical skills one must develop for the exams seem thoroughly irrelevant on the surface. Why does a modern organist need to sight-read in open score with C clefs? Or transpose? Or write a fugal exposition for string quartet? Or read the “square” plainsong notation and engage in modal analysis of chant, and write a short unaccompanied motet?

It took me a long time after I had completed my exams (AAGO, ChM, FAGO) to understand better how the various skills interweave and bear fruit in unexpected ways. Tonight’s hymn playing – and the singing of the choir, for that matter – are an example. All that time wrestling with plainsong and the modes laid the groundwork for being comfortable with playing in the modes, such as my improvised accompaniments for the three plainsong hymns in the service. Reading C clefs is a gateway to transposition (which I found exceedingly difficult and still do), which in turn is groundwork for improvisation.

In short, any work you do as a musician helps all of the other aspects of your playing, singing, and conducting. Any skill that you take the time to develop will pay dividends, most often when you least expect it. And there is hardly anything in music that comes on a straight, direct path; it all happens indirectly, a little at a time.

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I came into this day, the First of Advent, hating the season, wishing it would go away. A look at my December calendar fills me with dread. And it is not unreasonable; I have lived through many Advents and know well what is involved. I do not want to do it for yet another year.

But tonight’s music, and the choir’s singing of the spiritual “Steal away to Jesus” in this morning’s service, saved me. I hope that the music may have had similar effect on others, for I am not alone in dreading this season, this month of darkness and cold and despair.

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming
As seers of old have sung.
It came, a blossom bright,
Amid the cold of winter,
When half-spent was the night.
(German hymn, 15th c.. tr. Theodore Baker)