Music for Friends

At the end of August, I wrote:

In the dark days, I did not think that I would play another recital, but I have scheduled one for Sunday, October 13 at 6 pm. Most of it will be improvisation, for when I realized that I could improvise instead of playing ninety minutes or so of repertoire, it became clear that it was possible, where I probably cannot now play a genuine full recital. I may not be able to do even this much adequately – especially a second half that will be a long-form piano improvisation on hymn tunes, a prospect that seemed liberating when I conceived it, but increasingly fills me with terror – but I am viewing the evening as a last opportunity to play a little music for my friends and I hope that they will overlook a few wrong notes. Maybe a lot of wrong notes, and perhaps they might find some Music in it somewhere.

I resisted (and still resist) calling it a Recital. I am done with such things. Eventually, I called it “Music for Friends.” It helped me to think of it that way – I have nothing to prove and I no longer care what anyone thinks of my playing. It consisted of three parts, which are now on YouTube:

a Free Improvisation at the clavichord
the Six Pieces for Organ by Herbert Howells
and an Improvisation on submitted hymn tunes

For this, I invited my friend Jean to select two or three hymn tunes. I think that her daughter Claire and perhaps her son Ben helped with this. There was one Big Tune - “I bind unto myself today” or St. Patrick’s Breastplate, with its companion Dierdre (“Christ be with me...”) embedded in it. And there was one Little Tune: the canon “Go now in peace” by Natalie Sleeth, We sing this every Sunday in our parish as the children leave for Children’s Chapel (with, on many weeks, me wishing I could go with them). When Jean handed me the envelope with the tunes and I opened it, I must have had an interesting expression on my face, because people giggled.

Well, some questions were settled: the tunes, obviously. The key: I had already decided to play in whatever key the main tune was printed. It seemed good to save “Go now in peace” for near the end, as a prayer for these my friends who were listening. With that, it was time to play. As I said above, St. Patrick’s Breastplate is a Big Tune, and it became immediately clear that it was going to as loud and grand as I could make it. As the piece developed, it bordered on “out of control” more often than I would have liked, with plenty of wrong notes, but it would have been dreadfully wrong to play it safe with such a tune.

I finished. As ever, I had no idea if the work was any good. In listening to it since, I do think that there was some Real Music here and there, for which I am grateful. The part I like best is when it finally turns the corner into “Go now in peace,” about the twelve minute mark. It came to me that this Little Tune was related to Deirdre in some interesting ways, so I was able to play around with that for a while, especially in the coda.

All this was Gift: Soli Deo Gloria.

As for the rest, I was glad that Jean encouraged me to go ahead with the little clavichord improvisation. One Friday afternoon we carried it upstairs from my office to the church and took turns playing it. The sound could hardly be heard at all. But, as Jean said, after a minute or so, one’s listening was transformed, and it could after all be heard in its quiet grace.

And the Howells… It went much better than I could have possibly hoped. No breakdowns from the yips. Wrong notes, yes; but upon several listenings since, it came out the way that I think these pieces should go, within the limitations of our beloved little Pilcher. I am proud to put it on YouTube in hopes that it may help others who want to hear these pieces as a set and perhaps play them.

I had always liked the fifth piece, the “Saraband (in Modo Elegiaco),” less than the others when I have played it by itself. But in the final days of my preparations, I came to understand that it works much better in the context of the other pieces, especially with something close to an immediate attaca from the end of the fourth piece. That makes the Saraband feel like a continuation and ultimately consummation, leaving the air cleared for the final Paean.

I was granted another Gift a few weeks later: the prelude for Evensong was the great Passacaglia of J. S. Bach, and that, like the Howells, went much better than anything I could have hoped. It was not quite my farewell to the great organ works of Bach – the next Sunday I played (badly) the B minor prelude and (somewhat less badly) fugue, and there are a few quiet chorale preludes ahead in Advent – but I am happy that at least I could do the Passacaglia well this one time.

That is enough for today. I have not often written in the Music Box this fall, seeking to focus on Finishing the Course – six Sundays left. I do not know what role the Music Box might play in my retirement, if any. But I thank you my readers for your kind thoughts.

RSCM Report: Part Two

For we are laborers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building… But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any many build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. (I Corinthians 3:9-13)

I have often called upon this passage as a plumb line for my work, properly so. But much of our work is together, including choral work. There is enough music of the wood, hay, and stubble variety in the world; how can we as a group build with gold, silver, and precious stones? We who ourselves are dust and ashes, individually and together?

We can rehearse. We can build our skill level in various ways: lessons, scales and exercises, study. We can indeed become extremely good, like that semiprofessional choir on the eve of the Course. And we may find that for all our perfection we are “as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” (I Cor. 13:1) For “if I have not charity, I am nothing” (v. 2).

It has something to do with what I call Connection, following my teacher Dr. Flummerfelt. Some others, including one of the composers we sang this week, call it Attitude:

When singing, are you connected to the text and musical line with all of your being? Or are you going through the motions? It might be possible for instrumentalists to sometimes get away with the latter, but the voice is so thoroughly a window into the soul that it is immediately obvious if the singers are not Connected -- and, if the other basics are in place and the group has done its homework, Connection makes it possible for the song to touch the hearts of the listeners. This will never happen if the hearts of the singers are not likewise touched by the Song and absolutely committed to it. [from RSCM Report 2015]

But it also has to do with brokenness.

We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. (II Corinthians 4:7-10)

A perfect singer, confident in her ability, not a trouble in the world, will not have this treasure. There are not enough cracks for the light to shine through. Those who are carrying health issues, personal or family burdens, a broken heart, those who are derided and ostracized by their peers, or hungry and tired, without money for food and shelter – their song has the potential to become gold, silver, precious stones.

But not in their own strength. Not at all; if you ask such a singer if they are doing well, they will probably sigh and say “I wish! I am not any good at all. Everything I do is wrong, my best efforts are incomplete.”

The Swedish poet Karin Boye gives part of the answer, in an evening prayer we sang during the Course, set to music by Egil Hovland:

… for I know that you can finish what I found of joy or sorrow. All my harmful thoughts and actions, heal and make them new and wholesome. Take my days and make them over. Come, transform their dust to diamond. (translation by Gracia Grindal)

Perhaps the only way we can build the song with precious stones is to begin with dust - the burnt remains of the days in which we feel that we did nothing worthwhile, the hours of work where we have made no visible progress or gone backwards, the hurtful or foolish things we have thought, said, and done. “Come, transform their dust to diamond.”

Perhaps the reason such a song, and such singers, will have Connection and be able to sing truth that touches the hearts of those who hear it, is that the listeners likewise are earthen vessels, broken open so that they might receive the grace of God.

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Thursday, July 18

As torrents in summer,
Half-dried in their channels,
Suddenly rise, tho’ the sky is still cloudless,
For rain has been falling
Far off at their fountains;

So hearts that are fainting
Grow full to o’erflowing,
And they that behold it
Marvel, and know not
That God at their fountains
Far off has been raining!
(H. W. Longfellow, set to music by Edward Elgar)

I am “half-dried in my channel.” Year after year I have sought to do the work that is set before me, to make the liturgy and music better than they would be without me, to teach the Story and the Song to young and old. I am worn out. The Eucharistic liturgy for which I provide music every Sunday brings me little joy, little sustenance. It is “always winter, never Christmas,” as Lewis wrote of Narnia.

It was thus that I came to this day, discouraged by my bad singing and wrong notes, as well as my years and decades of work. Not even last night’s RSCM Evensong could touch me.

I came to Thursday Matins, organized by my friend Judith. And I was healed. The officiant was HMB, chorister from our parish, my godchild and student. She gets it, as was clear from her careful leadership of the Office. As do many others here this week, old and young. And I have been a small part of that for some of them.

This was also the day for the Course’s celebration of the Holy Eucharist. I have almost stopped taking communion at home. But here, there was dignity in the unaltered Rite Two liturgical text, a proper metal chalice (not pottery, such as we use at home). Music: a psalm and anthem.

Most of all, there was joy.

I joined the line of tenors going up to the front. The Body of Christ. The Cup of Salvation, administered by a friend. The prayers. The sending forth. Then midday meal with my friends the adults of the Course.

I had thought this Course might be my last. But on this day I know that I still belong here.

Rehearsals were more relaxed today, the music beginning to fall into place. The young folk had “water activities” as it said on the information sheet, a part of the week that is awaited with high anticipation.

And there was Evensong, the last of the midweek services, this time a full run-through of Saturday night’s music. I was no longer indifferent to it.

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Of the rest of the week, I need say little. It was very good. Some of the singing at Saturday’s evensong was among the best we have done at a Course, with strong Connection. On Sunday we sang at the Basilica as we have done for some years, this time from the rear gallery. I am told by a trustworthy listener that we sounded “guarded,” and I am inclined to agree. We sang well, but it was hard to connect with a congregation that we could not see. Should we remain in this setting next year, we must find a way to overcome this. But the acoustic placement in the gallery is better, we are not so cramped in, and we have chairs – in the front, we were always crammed onto risers, standing for most of the service. Not in the back; there is enough space for a choir three times our size.

And we are done. I congratulate Michael Velting, our music director for the week, especially noting the manner in which he put the hardest work at the beginning, emphasizing the Preces and Responses and especially the Lord’s Prayer setting in every rehearsal so that by Friday and Saturday, we were comfortable with them. In the same manner, the French diction for the Fauré benefited from an early start and many repetitions. More than that, I admire the manner in which he respected the choristers, expecting the best from them but always treating them with kindness.

The organist for the week, Nick Quardokus, is at this writing in the process of moving to New York City, where he begins work in August as assistant organist of St. Thomas, Fifth Avenue. I encourage you to check him out on YouTube, where I have joined his nine subscribers.

Here is his playing of the Bach chorale Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend (BWV 655), a trio that I dearly love and have played several times for church, never as well as he does here.

After the evensong, I told him that I don’t like most of the organ playing I hear. “Most of it has no Connection,” I said. “But you do.”

May it ever be so. And I hope that he posts more of his work on YouTube.

Soli Deo gloria.

P.S. - I poked around a bit more on YouTube and found this:
Duruflé Requiem, with Nicholas at the organ - and it is my RSCM friend Kristin Lensch and her choir, from Calvary Church, Memphis. What an unexpected delight!

How I practice: an addendum

I last described my practice methods here, in 2017, complete with a YouTube demonstration.

As described here, I began experiencing what golfers would call the “yips.”

I continue to experiment, and I continue to have problems from time to time; today’s playing was clean, but some of last Sunday’s was not.

I have had a degree of success from what I consider an important modification to my practice methods, and have updated the 2017 posting. In short, I start more gently. On the first day’s work with a new piece (or an old one, returned to after months or years), I begin with three slow play-throughs of a short segment, typically two to four measures.

And for that phrase, I call it a day and move on.

The rhythmic work which is at the heart of my practicing waits for the second day. I suspect that pressing on with it on the first day, before the mind has had time to process the slow play-throughs, created a level of tension that ultimately led to difficulties.
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After a long hiatus, I have posted a recording to YouTube; it is the choir's rendition of the Preces and Responses by Richard Sanderson, as sung for the Feast of the Epiphany 2019. It can be found here.

Isometric Rhythmic Practice

My organ and piano practicing is based on modified rhythms, which I described here and here, and demonstrated on YouTube here.

Today I learned a name for it: Isometric Rhythmic Practicing. The magazine International Piano’s regular column “Key Notes” by Murray McClachlan is an excellent focus on one or another aspect of piano technique, which of course applies to organ as well. In the current issue’s column, “Clarity,” McClachlan writes:

One of the most common methods for developing clear, strong articulation which many tutors have traditionally recommended over generations of pedagogy is ‘isometric rhythmic’ practicing… (International Piano, Nov.-Dec. 2018, p. 49)

McClachlan then describes the method, with an example from a Bach WTC prelude.

Armed with a name, I eagerly launched a DuckDuckGo search for “isometric rhythmic practicing” and found… almost nothing. References to isometric rhythm as a medieval compositional principle. Medical references of various sorts. Lots of references to Harold Blomberg’s “Rhythmic Movement Training.” Further down the list, materials about Rhythmic Gymnastics. Keyboard practicing references? Nope, though I found one reference to guitar finger exercises.

The name was not as useful as I had hoped. And if this method is so common as to be traditional “over many generations of pedagogy,” why is it that I have never overheard anyone else practicing this way, other than one of my students?

But in some further looking around, I turned up this: www.pianopractice.org

It is a web page maintained by Chuan C. Chang, which includes a link to a free download of his 300-plus page PDF book, “Fundamentals of Piano Practice.” His approach, based on the teaching of Yvonne Combe and behind that, her training at the Paris Conservatory in the early twentieth century, is not the same as isometric rhythms, but he does discuss “segmental practice” as an aid to overcoming what he calls “speed walls,” which are “conditions in which you can’t go above a certain speed, no matter how hard you practice. SW [speed walls] form when you practice incorrectly and create bad habits or build up stress” (p. 29). Segmental practice is helpful “because the shorter a segment, the faster you can play it without problems.” The shortest segment is two notes, and that is the basis of isorhythmic practice. If you can play a two-note group quickly and with ease, you can extend that to four-note groups and beyond.

Chang’s book looks to be fascinating. Besides the material on piano practice, he devotes space to choosing a piano [he shares my views concerning the digital pianos and their superiority over acoustic uprights, but not over the best of the acoustic grand pianos: pp. 184-195], and tuning your own piano, including discussion of historic temperaments. He recommends Kirnberger II for the beginning tuner because it is easier than equal temperament, and he notes that “once you get used to K-II, ET [equal temperament] will sound a little lacking or ‘muddy.’” (p. 227). He gives the “recipe” for Kirnberger II on page 228. Chang concludes with a long and well-annotated bibliography for further study.

I am going to enjoy reading this book.

[Edited 12/5/18 to add: Chang briefly dismisses my practice method as follows: "The literature lists numerous methods for improving technique such as the rhythm method (change the rhythm or accented note), tapping, etc. The biggest drawback with such methods is that they waste time because there are too many rhythms, etc., that you need to practice." (p. 58)

As expected, I am thoroughly enjoying the book. I disagree with quite a bit of what he writes, but have taken a few ideas from it, notably a reminder of how helpful it can be to practice short segments hands separately. Some of my disagreements stem from differences between playing the organ and the piano, and the literature for the respective instruments. Practice techniques that would be helpful for Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff might be less useful for Bach and Buxtehude, and the coordination issues that one dodges by hands-separate practice are increased when one adds feet as well as hands, so (in my opinion) an organist needs much more work with hands/feet together than would a pianist.

I thoroughly agree with what he states is the thesis of the book: "If you don't make any progress [on a new piece being learned, or a specifically difficult passage] after a few days... it is time to stop and think of new things to do... if you don't make progress, you are doing something wrong -- that is the basic principle of this book." (p. 51-52)]

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Unrelated Afterword: Fear of Red Ink

I have been listening to some of my older organ and piano improvisations recently. Some are horrible; some are not so bad. But one thought that these improvisations provoked is worth mentioning, because I think it is a major obstacle to the musician who wants to improvise. I call it the “Fear of Red Ink.”

Back in undergraduate theory class, my harmony exercises were returned with lots of red ink, marking my mistakes. Lots of them. Dozens on every page. All circled in red ink, often with caustic remarks from the teacher (likewise in red ink). Most of them were parallel octaves and fifths which had entirely escaped my scrutiny in writing the exercises. Parallel octaves and fifths are Against the Rules, and rightly so in pre-twentieth century styles. The rule goes back at least to Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum, which I revere, though we were not told that in beginning theory.

So, the pianist launches into an improvisation. Before the first phrase is done, a parallel fifth appears. The improviser stops, horrified that he has committed such a sin. He is more careful the next time, but this time a parallel octave shows up. Fear of Red Ink ensues, with painful memories of those first-year harmony exercises. The would-be improviser is likely to say “I can’t do this,” and gives up.

But with the broadening of horizons brought by harmonic and post-harmonic developments in the twentieth century comes greater freedom in the use of parallels. Vaughan Williams is filled with parallel fifths; it is a hallmark of his style.

So, my rule of thumb:

Ignore the Red Ink.

You can notice parallelisms when they happen, and if you wish, seek to do less of them, for in many styles they do genuinely weaken the contrapuntal structure. But you must not let them stop you or derail your improvised composition. You must press on.

One little trick that I use: when I accidentally play a parallel octave, I might turn it into the beginning of a passage in parallel octaves, doubling the melody an octave below, and similarly with fifths. Even though the initial parallelism was accidental, it sounds more or less like I planned it that way.

Cheating? Probably. But you must press on.

Sweet Hour of Prayer

It has been a long time since I have posted any music online.
Here is a piano improvisation on the Gospel song “Sweet hour of prayer,” from September 30. I played it twice that morning, at our 9:00 and 11:00 services: this is the earlier (and better) version. I considered posting both of them so that the listener could see how two improvisations on the same theme, played only a couple of hours apart, differ. But one is enough, and my (free) SoundCloud space is limited.

Singing the hymn elicited a lot of feedback, about equally divided between positive and negative. For some, it was profoundly moving, healing. For others, it was “like being in the Baptist church” (not usually a compliment from Episcopalians). One woman, who generally supports my musical choices, simply said (with disgust in her voice) “Please! No more of this!” She was no happier when I followed up by selecting “Jesus loves me” for the next week. For that one, she said afterwards “I almost walked out.” But the positive responses from others to both songs were equally strong.

I do not know if singing these two songs was the Right Thing To Do, given the divisions they awakened. In their defense, they did fit the lessons for the day, which was my primary reason for choosing them. Both of them appear in Official Episcopal Songbooks (though not our main book, the Hymnal 1982). And they represent a musical style almost never heard in this parish, a voice that in my opinion is worthy of our attention.

I can offer only one thought: with songs like these, both of them with simple three-chord harmonies, it is essential to respect them. The musician can easily trivialize them, which is fatal. With the piano prelude on “Sweet hour” (and the next week’s prelude, which included “Jesus loves me” alongside two other hymns), I wanted to establish the idea of taking these songs seriously.

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Yesterday I spent close to an hour at the music store, improvising on their Casio GP-500 hybrid piano, with headphones as I will mostly be playing in retirement. I enjoyed it every bit as much as playing the Steinway at the church (the one heard in this and all of my piano recordings). The session with the Casio brought clearness to me: given all the considerations involved, this is my piano of choice. I am ready to write a check and buy it. Except there is no place in our current living arrangement to put it, and I would have little time to play it.

Before his retirement, one of my dearest friends longed for a yacht. I think he wanted to live on one. As it came to pass, he was denied that wish by health conditions, but I think the dream helped him make it to the finish line of his career.

And so it is for me: the piano has become a symbol of retirement and freedom. Some days it seems so far away. But I recall the Word that came to me through a friend over a year ago: “You still have work to do here.” I believe that is still true.

Good services on Sunday: good choral singing, good hymn singing (yes, even “Jesus loves me”), Choral Evensong with Wm. Smith (which all by itself is enough to make my day). I played the organ well enough, including two pieces by Bach, one of them being a piece where I had fallen apart with the “yips” a year ago. I could feel them coming on in one passage, but by God’s grace it did not fall apart.

It was especially good to practice the big C minor prelude and fugue (BWV 546) over the past fortnight and play it for the evensong. I am glad that it is granted me to keep doing this sort of thing.

I will sing to the LORD as long as I live:
I will praise my God while I have my being.
(Psalm 104:34)

Guard my first springs of thought and will

Lord, I my vows to thee renew;
disperse my sins as morning dew;
guard my first springs of thought and will,
and with thyself my spirit fill.
(Thomas Ken, “Awake my soul, and with the sun” [Hymnal 1982 number 11])

Beginnings are important. I continue to work at making my mornings habitual and automatic, for I know how weak I am. There are many days where the thing I want is to go back to bed for a couple more hours. Or stop at one of the three purveyors of donuts along my drive to the church. If I pass that gauntlet, there is the restaurant/coffee shop/grocery less than a block from the church with the most scrumptious pastries. I dare not set foot in that place before noon, except when accompanied by the Brotherhood for our Saturday breakfast once a month. There is strength in numbers.

Or, safely arrived at my office, I want to sit down at the computer and watch YouTube videos and spend all morning eating and drinking tea. Or reading blogs. Or writing for this blog. I hope that the Music Box has been helpful to some people, but many of the best essays in here were written at times when I should have been doing other things, most especially practicing. There is a reason why few people have successfully combined the vocations of Writer and Musician. [Footnote: There have been some: Robert Schumann and Camille Saint-Saens come to mind, also Virgil Thomson. But not many.]

Much of the above is Resistance, for these things are not what I really want, once I get underneath what St. Paul calls the “flesh,” the appetites that are common to us all, both man and beast. My true desire is to be a good and faithful servant, applying himself to “all such good works as [He hath] prepared for us to walk in” (BCP p. 339, the traditional Post-Communion Prayer) in hopes that I might in some small way be of encouragement to others and a witness to the Resurrection. And that involves getting my lazy old carcass onto the organ bench, the piano bench too.

But it also involves e-mail. And office work. And “Getting Things Done” (see Afterword). And none of it is going to amount to anything without the Officium, the Daily Office and the sanctification of the day with prayer and psalmody and Holy Scripture.

There have been long stretches of time when I have heeded what seems to be the majority advice to do the important thing first, and to do your creative work first while you are fresh. For a while I was improvising at the Steinway up in the church before Matins, back when it was a supposedly public service of worship at a fixed hour. Those were some of the happiest times of my life, upstairs in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament with the first light of dawn shining through the church windows, and I made a lot of progress in my playing in those sessions.

But I found that when I did that, I ended up spending most of the day practicing. That is fine for a short while, but soon enough the office work piled into such a backlog that I would then spend many days doing only that, and no practicing at all.

It is not simply majority advice to practice every day; it is universally acknowledged fact. The reason I added the pianist Nathan Carterette’s picture to my “door,” right beside JSB whom he so loves (and plays so well) is a comment he made to my young student HMB about practicing every day. I think his minimum is three hours. And I have a baseball commemorating Cal Ripken, Jr. for the same reason. Show up every day, do the work at a professional level. As recently as the first quarter of this year I was not doing that. I was mired in office work, some weeks hardly practicing at all, and thoroughly discouraged with my playing. [Footnote: Yes, practice every day – except one. “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” Even from the sheerly practical level of best results, I find it necessary to have that full day, twenty-four hours of it, with not a note of music. In the long run, I play better when I do this. I find the truth of it most of all at times such as Holy Week – or this week, with the chamber music festival and the ordination of a friend – when I violate this Commandment and work every day. And in fact I normally have two days off, one which I seek to observe as a Sabbath and the other as a day of reminder that I am not just an Organist, but also a Husband, with duties at home and many errands and tasks therewith.]

Somehow there must be a balance. For now, it seems to work this way for me on a typical weekday:

- The morning at home (feed the cats and myself, do other things necessary to get out the door).
- Drive to church
- Physical practice
- Matins, with the Great Litany on Wednesdays and Fridays
- Improvise at the Clavichord.
As I recently wrote, the clavichord was my life preserver through the bad times this winter, on many days the only playing that I did.

- Set an Alarm for practicing so I don’t get stuck in the following
- Turn on the computers.
- Tea Ceremony (some of my friends, or anyone who visits my office at certain hours, know what I mean)
- During this, clear the decks. Process any handwritten notes from overnight about things to do, get the physical and e-mail IN boxes to zero. (see footnote, shortly)
- Go upstairs and practice the organ for at least one hour, again setting an alarm to make me stop at that point.

The addition of the Alarm before booting the computers has proven to be the key. That way, I commit to practicing, even if I have not succeeded in clearing the decks when it rings. And I can convince myself to leave the office with the thought “Just one hour. I can come back to this stuff then,” and many days I do precisely that.

[Footnote: Clearing the IN boxes does not at all mean doing everything that is there. I had to learn this from the “Getting Things Done” method. But you take every item, every e-mail, and process it. If it can be properly dealt with in less than two or three minutes, do it immediately. If it prompts a longer TBD, get it on the TBD list or into the “Action” folder of the e-mail. If appropriate, put it in the “Wait for” folder. If it is the “camel’s nose under the edge of the tent” and is going to become a full-fledged Project, start a folder for it. Eventually you deal with the Action items and TBDs, and if the Tea Ceremony has enough time before the practice alarm, I can make some progress on these things. But not until the main IN boxes are completely clear.]

From then on, the day is more fluid. On good days, there is more practicing, possibly a lot more. On other days, the rest of it is consumed with other work.

But the above plan of action is not perfect. Today I arrived several hours late, having been at the church well into the previous two evenings with the festival rehearsals. I chose to get a full seven hours of sleep instead of pressing on as I have in past years during the chamber music week. At the church, I managed only Matins and Litany, then it was nearly time for the television people to arrive to set up their equipment for the concerts, so I skipped the clavichord and office work, and went straight upstairs. While I waited for them, I improvised on the Steinway, mostly on the chant Veni Creator Spiritus, with thoughts of the impending ordination service and improvising a prelude on an organ I have never played. They were late, so I got about 45 minutes of work on the tune, and it was a delight, from the initial work with the unison tune in several keys to the places where that led. I so wish that I could start every day in this manner. But I cannot; I have tried that and it does not work, not for me.

I hope that the bit of improvisatory work was productive as well, for I do indeed have the improvisation ahead. Veni Creator Spiritus scares me, especially having played part of the Duruflé setting on Whitsunday. There is no way I can approach what he did with the tune, or what JSB did with its variant Komm, heiliger Geist. There is nothing else to say after what these (and other) composers did with it.

And yet… I find the Great Tunes, of which Veni Creator is one, to be the easiest on which to improvise. Nettleton. Ein feste Burg. Wondrous Love. New Britain. Old Hundredth. Hyfrydol. The Third Tune (Tallis). Once you get started, the ideas flow more easily than they do with some of the lesser tunes. In working with such tunes over what is now several years of regular improvisation, I have come to greater understanding of why the jazzmen and women keep playing the Old Standards. You can return to such tunes and still find something new to say; they are inexhaustible.

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Afterword: I several times above mentioned “Getting Things Done” (“GTD” for short) thinking that I had written of it in the Music Box. I find that I haven’t, except for this which was written before I encountered the book of that name by David Allen. Since reading the book about a year and a half ago, it has considerably improved my workflow. I keep two of Mr. Allen’s charts on my Door, one Xeroxed from his book and the other considerably adapted to reflect my vocation and purposes. Here is his website. There are also many YouTube videos about aspects of GTD, some better than others.

The book is readily available in most libraries – the one near the church had I think seven copies when I checked one out to read it. He has followed up with sequels, including most recently an adaptation of GTD for teenagers. I have not read it [for one thing, it is still pre-release, not yet published], but I commend it to my readers who are in that stage of life. I wish I had known of these principles in high school and college.

Yet another Afterword (June 23) I would be a hypocrite were I to omit mention of this day's work, or rather the undisciplined lack thereof. Being weary from too many days in a row, it was too easy to sit in my office in front of the computer, not setting an alarm to go upstairs and practice, and after I had done plenty of that, more-or-less working (online reading of the journal "The American Organist" as I ate a leisurely second breakfast with tea) I found a link to this:
Anthony Bourdain's "Parts Unknown" - a visit to West Virginia

And not just West Virginia: McDowell County in the southern part of the state, a place that I love. My recent vacation did not take me to McDowell County, but I did spend time in some of the neighboring counties of Southwest Virginia, places like Coeburn, Norton, and Big Stone Gap. We still own land in another part of southern West Virginia, but I do not see how we could ever go back there to live. I have been away too long; I have become entirely foreign to that culture and my wife has never been part of it.

I should have been working; I should have watched it later. But I am glad that I took the hour to see this sympathetic portrait of the people and culture of the coalfields. I commend it to you.

I had never heard of Mr. Bourdain until he died a few weeks ago. My ignorance of him is my loss; his untimely death by suicide is a loss for all of us. May he rest in peace.

Simplifying Anthem Accompaniments

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.]

What wondrous love is this

When I was sinking down, O my soul;
When I was sinking down beneath God’s righteous frown,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul.

It has been a long while since I have posted a recording online; I think that it was before Advent, and here it is near the end of Lent.

It has been a long while since I have practiced sufficiently, and I am not there yet; just four hours this week, two of them on Saturday. Much of that has been the result of non-musical events, but some (especially of late) has been plain old Resistance.

Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill. Its target is the epicenter of our being: our genius, our soul, the unique and priceless gift we were put on earth to give and that no one else has but us. Resistance means business. When we fight it, we are in a war to the death. (Steven Pressfield, “The War of Art,” p. 15)

Maybe it is the three-month lapse in my work, just barely scraping by musically from Sunday to Sunday.
Maybe it is my sense that I am no longer reliable in my playing.
Maybe it is my efforts to work in a different manner, efforts still in their infancy and hindered by lack of practice.

Maybe it is the clavichord, which has been my lifeline. More days than not, my ten or fifteen minutes of improvisation after Matins on the quiet little instrument in my office has been my only time at a keyboard.


Maybe it is a turning point.


I played well today, on those four hours of practice. I played well last week, on five hours, four of them on Saturday. Good solid hymnody, good improvisations, decent playing of repertoire pieces for postludes. No falling apart from the “yips.” My practicing, such as it was, has been careful and good, interspersed with Alexander laydowns.

I am too close to the improvisations to discern accurately whether they are any good. They have recently been quite a ways outside of my past manner of playing, at first not so good but much better the past few weeks. It is scaring me to play them; it is frightening to play anything at all, repertoire pieces or improvisations or even hymn tunes. Not stage fright, and mostly not fear of falling apart in midstream; rather, it is fear of the unexpected directions my music seems to be leading.

And it is not just my work at the organ and piano. A few weeks ago, the youth choir sang the Byrd motet “Ave verum corpus” for the church service. It was amazing. Every one of their rehearsals this spring has been amazing, the adult rehearsals too. Again, this is not my doing.

This process of self-revision and self-correction is so common we don’t even notice. But it’s a miracle. And its implications are staggering. Who’s doing this revising anyway? What force is yanking at our sleeves? (Pressfield, p. 125)

Here is today’s piano improvisation, on the shape-note tune Wondrous Love, posted on SoundCloud.

To God and to the Lamb I will sing,
To God and to the Lamb who is the great I Am,
While millions join the theme, I will sing.

About those wrong notes, Part Two

Mostly, it is the Startle Reflex.
That is why I have the “yips,” and the mangled playing that results.

After some introspection, I realized about a month ago that the Startle Reflex, alongside Impatient Haste, was at the root of my difficulties.

In terms of the Alexander Technique (which is where I learned of it), whenever one is startled, several physical things happen. Blood pressure rises, pulse quickens, adrenaline happens. The neck tightens in a spasm, throwing the head forward – the exact opposite of the Technique’s basics of “Neck free, Head forward and up.”

Whenever one plays a wrong note, the Startle Reflex results. It may be subtle, momentary, but it is there.
One must quickly return to balance. Think “neck free. Head forward and up.” Breathe.

The essence of my practice method outlined in these pages – of any worthwhile practice method – is to avoid wrong notes from the very first reading. Slow practice. Practice with the rhythms. Small bite-sized bits of music, a few measures or a phrase at most.

But wrong notes happen, and with them the Startle Reflex.

I learned that I did not allow myself to recover into a relaxed state of poise before repeating the bit that went wrong. I was not rushing back into it – a temptation to which I was subject for decades, to my detriment, playing the passage again and again with no pause as if by immediate re-play, I could erase the fact that the mistake ever happened.

But I was not fully relaxing. I entered the playthrough with a tiny bit of excess tension, a tiny bit of heightened blood pressure and pulse. And by repetitions (even with the correct notes in the second playthrough, and the third), I built this tiny bit of tension into my playing of the passage. Every time I played it from then on – even years later upon returning to the piece - the underlying tension was part of it.

In similar manner, when I worked on “the rhythms” and I was in a hurry (which is most of the time, for there is never enough practice time), I was not allowing enough time on the notes of repose (the long notes that begin and finish the rhythmic groupings). It was subtle; I would estimate just one or two milliseconds, but again, it was there, constantly in the pieces where I was working especially hard. Practicing in this manner for an hour, a second hour, a third, day after day, I was building in a subtle underlay of tension. The tension, the slight unease and hurry, would be a part of my manner of playing the passage from then on.

And in the added energy of live performance before God and everyone, all of this would come to the surface, causing my brain to “short-circuit” for a moment, just long enough to throw me off track and demolish a couple of measures of passagework.

I am working on this. I think I am making progress, but it is slow. Between every repetition, breathe. Get fully settled, poised. If there is a wrong note, stop immediately. Breathe. Get fully settled. Then play the bit again, calmly. The calm is almost more important than getting the right notes the second time. Leave enough time on each rhythmic group to fully settle before going on to the next. My evensong prelude for February went pretty well; that was encouraging.

But I am not putting in enough time on the bench. For personal reasons, I have not practiced regularly since Christmas. All too many weeks, it has ended up being just two or three days a week – a couple of times, just Saturday, and one Sunday that will remain nameless, none at all. I had hoped to at least have a Sunday warmup, but did not even manage that, my first playing of the day (and the week) being live improvisation. These matters (along with Advent before them) have likewise resulted in my absence from the Music Box for nearly three months.
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David Allen (the author of “Getting Things Done”) wrote somewhere that he is often asked “How can I prioritize my work?” He always asks back “What’s your job?” In Christian terms, “What is your Vocation?” (Allen expresses it as “Why are you on this planet?”) My vocation had a significant shift at the turn of the year. So far this year, music, and especially keyboard music, has been a much smaller part of it.

I am not at present happy with myself as an organist, or pianist for that matter – my piano improvisations these two months have been decidedly substandard, as have the ones at the organ. But I have been pleased by some of the choral music of which I have been a part, especially the Mathias anthem “Let the people praise thee, O God,” the Choral Evensongs for January and February, and our Youth Choir’s recent visit to St. James, Chicago. There was some Real Music in these services. I hope there will be more, perhaps even yet some it through me at the keyboard.

Jesu, juva.

About those wrong notes...

Item: postlude at the All Saints’ Day service (Fantasia on Sine Nomine, by Craig Phillips). I came apart during a passage about three pages from the end.

Item: postlude on November 19 (Toccata: “St. David’s Day”, by Ralph Vaughan Williams). I lost it at the top of the final page.

Item: postlude on Thanksgiving Day (Nun danket alle Gott, by J. S. Bach, from the Leipzig Chorales). I came apart at the top of the final page.

All three of these were serious mishaps, where I lost control of the playing for a measure or more. All were in fairly difficult passages, which I had thoroughly practiced and considered well-prepared. It was the Bach that scares me, for that is a piece I have performed scores of times. After the liturgy, I got back on the bench and played the piece perfectly, with complete comfort. It is always challenging and needs preparation, but I am confident that I can play it.

Until now.

If I were a golfer, I would start muttering about “the yips.” A bit of poking around finds that yes, the condition affects musicians as well as golfers and other athletes. It is described in places as a “focal task-specific dystonia.” It most often affects experienced players who have been doing the same thing for decades. It afflicts 1% to 2% of musicians at some point in their careers, men more than women. One article lists some common triggers, among them “a sudden increase in playing/practice.” That could be it, for I pushed hard through the latter part of October to prepare for the week that included All Saints and Choral Evensong.

There is no cure. Intensified practice, the musician’s (and athlete’s) first impulse when something is not right, is not helpful. There are treatments, such as Botox injections; I am not going there. There are “tricks” of various sorts, some of which I will try. It is going to take some experimentation, maybe a lot of it. And perhaps it is nothing, just a string of wrong notes. But three times in a month seems a bit much, and this feels different from the thousands of wrong notes I have played over the years.

For the present, I think that I will do the following:
- Quit playing repertoire of the sort that has triggered these collapses.
- Probably quit playing Evensong preludes. Excepting the principal feasts, this is the only occasion where I play “big” repertoire. At the least, I have crossed out the “Great” C minor prelude and fugue scheduled for January, a repeat of the Vaughan Williams Prelude and Fugue scheduled for February, and the Mendelssohn Fourth Sonata scheduled for March. I might try improvisations for evensong instead of playing repertoire.
- Avoid difficult music for the Eucharistic voluntaries on routine Sundays.
- Focus more of my practicing on improvisation, and do more of it in service playing.

That leaves some areas of concern: what am I going to do with anthem accompaniments? There are several of them which are difficult for me in the next few weeks, starting with a Michael Haydn anthem for Lessons and Carols, December 3. So far, I have had no problems of this sort with accompaniments, even the difficult ones, so I will hope that my brain considers this enough of a different task so as to be completely separate.

And what about the principal feasts? We’ll have to take them as they come, and lean toward easier music rather than more difficult. For example, I am done with the Phillips piece that I played on All Saints: never again.

I gather that the condition comes and goes unpredictably. That gives reason to occasionally dip my foot back into the deep water and see how it goes.

Steven Pressfield writes: “For the professional, the stakes are high and real.” This is my paid employment, and I am now considerably less fit for it than I was a year ago. “A musician is only as good as his last performance,” as they say. For now, I think that I can still earn my keep; I can play the hymns, train the choirs, do the other parts of my job. When you get down to it, playing organ literature is the least important part of what I do.

For a while now, a photo of Keith Jarrett has been on my “door.” It is there mostly because I seek to emulate his long-form piano improvisations, but now I have another reason: he has overcome a disorder that kept him from playing – even privately, at home – for years.

I have been blessed with good health and no serious injuries or physical problems with my playing. Most everyone who does this professionally runs into one thing or another somewhere along the line. Now it is my turn.

He who would valiant be

He who would valiant be
‘gainst all disaster,
let him in constancy
follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement
shall make him once relent
his first avowed intent
to be a pilgrim.
(John Bunyan, adapted by Percy Dearmer)

Having played Bach for all of my organ voluntaries for the four weeks ending with Trinity Sunday, I determined to improvise all voluntaries for the summer at both the 9:00 and 11:00 services: piano and organ. I hoped that sustained effort might result in some skill development, sorely lacking at the organ and still much needed at the piano.

The prospect of this work scares me about as much as anything I have attempted musically. How am I going to practice? How can I improvise this much and not drive away the 11:00 congregation? Are they going to put up with my learning curve, which will doubtless be steep? How dare I put my music ahead of the likes of JSB, or Paul Manz, or Kenton Coe, or John Stanley (whose voluntaries would be much easier to prepare for a summer Sunday than improvisations)?

Well. Nothing for it but to give it a try.

Week I, ending with June 18

On this first week, my practice time is limited by preparations for Saturday’s Gay Pride Parade, in which our parish has a float. On the float: the Palm Sunday Marching Band in its second public appearance, having expanded its repertoire well beyond “All glory, laud, and honor.”

For the uninitiated, the PSMB is a group of (mostly) middle-school bandswomen and men. Our group this time consisted of three clarinets, oboe, alto saxophone, trombone, and a band/choir mother walking alongside the float playing recorder. For safety’s sake, we play everything in unison, though that puts the alto sax in a not-so-comfortable tessiatura.

The parade was terrific fun. People cheered, many sang along with us.

But I was not as prepared for Sunday as I would have liked, especially for this first Sunday of my summer’s work. The piano prelude at 9:00 went well; it is here on SoundCloud.

The organ? Not so much. For a prelude, I improvised on the fine tune East Acklam (“For the fruit of all creation, thanks be to God”). It was thoroughly conventional. Dull. And too long for what little imagination there was in it. At least it was soft and hopefully inoffensive. The postlude was better, based on Paderborn (“Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim”). It was lively and had some good moments, though the big ending that was the direction it wanted was about four bars too long. Still, it was a start: big endings are notoriously difficult – certainly for me, but even the Real Composers sometimes have problems.

Week II, ending with June 25

Well. How does one practice?

On the face of it, no problem: I have described my improvisation practicing here, complete with YouTube example. But how does that work out when this sort of practice is all that I am doing, all week – for that matter, all summer?

His eye is on the sparrow:

I sing because I’m happy,
I sing because I’m free,
For his eye is on the sparrow,
And I know he watches me.
(Civilla D. Martin)

This is the piano prelude, for we are singing this fine old Gospel song at both services. It gives me another opportunity to Play the Changes, this time with a longer and more challenging chord structure.

Perversely, the improvisation seems to want the key of G flat major. I try playing it from the printed version (C major, a fully written out SATB hymnal version with chord symbols) and stumble along with it all week, until in exasperation I write out a lead sheet version in G flat. To make it more fun, I use alto clef, because the tune fits the staff better that way. If nothing else, the week has taught me the value of lead sheets. The written harmony parts are a distraction for this sort of work, and as much as I like the Roman numeral chord designations (I, IV, V, etc.), the letter-name chord symbols are less subject to error in this context. I even discover why the jazzmen often make enharmonic changes that seem strange to a classically-trained player, for I quickly replace the IV chord (C flat major) with B major, totally foreign to the key but something I’m more likely to play correctly on the fly.

After Matins on Saturday, I give it the T. Monk treatment – just shy of two hours. At first it remains cheesy, the sort of backgroundish Baptist communion music that I once could play well. At about the one-hour mark, it becomes more interesting. I find myself in what is almost a bop version, a four-against-three walking bass line with syncopated melody. This is fun, so I stay with it for several variations, but my chops are definitely not ready to do this in public. From there it gets slow and much more dissonant. I find that I can pretend the alto clef is treble and play the tune as C mixolydian, while still playing the G flat chord pattern (well, mostly). Thinking of how much other work lies ahead, I round it off with a final play-through of the tune, soft and meditative. It is good; I hope I can find this place on Sunday morning.

That is one of the problems for the improviser. You find the magic, the unexpected insights into the tune, but the gold is mixed with the dross. How can you get to it when the congregation is not going to patiently listen to you stumble around for an hour or more? How can you play the good stuff and not any of the bad stuff?

The best I can say is that this sort of long-form practicing puts enough material into the Cauldron of Song (with homage to JRRT’s Cauldron of Story) so that the unconscious can work with it through the week – I suspect much of this work occurs as we sleep – and on Sunday we can perhaps be sufficiently transparent so that the Holy Spirit can use us for Her divine purposes.

Another problem is that some of the more bizarre material (such as the bitonal variations) would not make sense to listeners who had not walked the long path to that point in the music. I do not yet see how to get there in the time frame of a service prelude. Perhaps the value of it for practice is that it builds confidence that no matter how strange the material you stumble into, you can do something with it, and that something might be more worthwhile than all the rest of the piece.

My almost-two-hours complete, I am exhausted. “We come to practice as warriors,” says Steven Pressfield. It is time for an Alexander lay-down exercise. A re-exposure to the Alexander Technique by means of an AGO chapter program this spring and the book I read after that taught me the importance of the exercise at this point, after practice. The authors say to practice twenty minutes, then do the lay-down for twenty minutes. I have trouble imagining any professional musician with enough time for that, but I have this spring and summer made it habitual to do a five or ten minute lay-down after each hour of work. Or in this case, longer – that is part of why I am so tired.

On this day, I make it a full twenty-minute laydown, followed by Second Breakfast, a hobbitish custom I happily embrace. It is well over an hour before I am ready for another round.

He who would valiant be:

This week’s hymnody puts the question to my premise. There is a fine setting by Leo Sowerby of St. Dunstan’s (“He who would valiant be,” the opening hymn at 11:00) which I could play for a prelude, and it would be superior to anything I could possibly improvise. Worse still, the closing hymn is Ein feste Burg (“A mighty fortress”). That one puts me in competition with the whole array of German Lutheran composers, up to unplayable (for me) masterpieces such as Max Reger’s fantasia on this tune. More practically, there is a setting by Michael Praetorius that I have played many times. It likewise is superior to anything I could improvise. Right up to the bulletin deadline, I ask myself: Am I really going to do this? Shouldn’t I give up, and play the repertoire based on these tunes? That would put me right back to where I have been all these years – scrambling from one week to the next to prepare repertoire, always wanting to improve but never having sufficient practice time for something that is clearly optional to my work.

This fortnight, I have applied the same improvisatory practice techniques to these hymn tunes at the organ, but it became quickly evident that the music must go in a different direction from what it would be at the piano. The organ seems to demand more counterpoint. It is coloristic, more perhaps than the piano but in quite a different manner. One thing that is requiring work is to think ahead about registrations. I find myself playing with one hand while setting a registration on the other manual for music that has not yet come into existence – that is, I have only a vague notion as to what I might play for the next bit. But the registration helps create it when the time comes. That too is a surprising insight.

After initial work early in the week on each tune separately, I am finding that on the final days it is well to simply work through the 11:00 service, beginning to end. This Saturday, I improvise on St. Dunstan’s for a half-hour or so, then recall that I was intending – and had practiced and intended all week – to work Wer nun den lieben Gott (“If thou but suffer God to guide thee”) into the prelude as a contrasting theme, so I do – in this case as a coda of about twenty minutes.

After all that, playing St. Dunstan’s as the opening hymn is easy; I need only stay in the printed key and keep the tempo slow, probably much slower than I am thinking of it for improvisation.

Following a brief Alexander break, I work through the other hymns and service music, experimenting with an improvised introduction to Wer nun den lieben Gott. That too becomes easy after having worked with the tune at length through the week.

I finish the “pretended-service” with the congregational version of Ein feste Burg, and launch into improvisation on it. Again, the good stuff does not arrive for about twenty minutes.

June 25 - Sunday Scorecard:

The piano improvisation on “His eye is on the sparrow” is here.

Some of it is pretty good. I particularly like the “bass” solo on one of the stanzas, and the final time fully through the tune, taking a lot more time with it. As with last Sunday, I should have stopped four bars sooner.

Perhaps the real benefit of working on this one tune so much, probably four or five hours this week, came not at the 9:00 service where I improvised on it, but at 11:00. I lost count of the stanzas (a constant danger, especially for hymns that finish with a refrain or chorus) and kept playing after the congregation was done. It became clear that I should continue, as a coda of sorts. People started humming along, and it was absolutely right, the thing that was needed for that moment in the liturgy. I would not have played it as well without the practicing.

Both of the organ improvisations went well. I kept them fairly simple, conservative and brief, and they were more interesting than the ones from last week, though a bit sloppy in places. I will take “sloppy” over “dull” (e.g., last Sunday’s prelude) any day. Here is a SoundCloud clip combining the prelude and postlude.

[a technical footnote: There is a brand-new computer in the music office, running Windows 10. But Microsoft has done away with Windows Movie Maker, which I used to make MP4 clips to post on YouTube. I do not know how to work around this, so my YouTube channel may be finished. It is for now, anyway.]


Four insights:

1. This work will make me a better organist. After a mere fortnight, there is considerable improvement. Were I to practice every hymn in this manner, every week, my hymn playing would be transformed.

2. Improvising is not a shortcut. Yes, I can sit down at the organ or piano and play something without preparation. The results are not dissimilar from what would happen if I sight-read my normal preludes and postludes without working out fingerings and practicing them.

3. It pleases me that I managed to play the two organ pieces without sounding – well, like anyone that I can think of. There is certainly influence from a great many sources in these things. But I cannot readily say “This sounds like [fill in the blank].”

4. I have little sense as to where this will lead.

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.

Antiphonies, and living up to one's models

For tonight's evensong, I played "Antiphonies" by William Mathias. Like the Vaughan Williams Prelude and Fugue that I played recently, Mathias is another composer whom I respect; it was an honor to learn a significant organ work of his composition.

I normally do not listen to YouTube performances of music that I am practicing; I want to develop my own sense of the piece. But once I have played it, then it is very useful to listen to the versions of others, especially the great masters. It shows what I have done well, and where I must continue to work.

Here is how the work should sound. It is from a recording by John Scott, for whom Mathias wrote the piece in the 1980's, played at St. Paul's, London. The performance is full of energy, sparkling and colorful. Compared to this, my rendition comes off as a shabby street-urchin, full of wrong notes. What is a musician to do? We cannot play at the level of the great ones; we can only do the best we can.

There are reasons why I stand by my performance and do not hang my head in shame:
- I cannot imagine who else would play this piece in this town; it is somewhat obscure. Even Mr. Scott's YouTube version has fewer than twenty views, and there is only one other YouTube version that I can find, a fine recording by Timothy Byram-Wigfield at Winchester Cathedral. If I don't play it, it would not be heard in live performance, not here and not by these people.
- It fit the occasion of Evensong for the Fifth Sunday in Lent better than anything else I could contemplate, with its use of the Passion Sunday plainsong "Vexilla regis."
- My version of the Mathias shows how the piece works on a small instrument in a small room, very different from St. Paul's.
- One of the major differences between my version and Mr. Scott's is the tempo of the faster sections. I think that my tempi are appropriate for our mechanical action instrument; I would play the piece faster on an electric action, but I think that my version hangs together effectively.
- It may be that I bring a different perspective to the piece. Not better, mind you, but different, perhaps throwing a different light on the work.
- I am sure that Mr. Mathias would be happy for someone in the middle of Iowa to be playing this piece in 2017, thirty-five years after its 1982 premiere.
- Working on it has made me a better organist. Working on any good music does that.

I could say the same about the Anthem: a setting of "Ah, holy Jesus" by John Ferguson, for choir with solo viola. We sang it well, but we cannot approach the silken perfection of the St. Olaf Choir recording directed by the composer. I do, however, think that we matched them for Connection and intensity, and the same arguments apply as listed above.

In due time, I may post our versions of the Mathias and the Ferguson on YouTube. I cannot do so at present because of some computer issues.
[Edited April 29: Here is the Mathias.]

Ralph Vaughan Williams

My admiration for this composer knows no bounds. No, it is more than admiration: Love. When I hear certain of his works, I melt: the Fantasia on a Theme of Tallis. The Lark Ascending. Any number of places in his many symphonic works. The anthem “Lord, thou hast been our refuge.” The setting of the Old Hundredth Psalm Tune, sung as the Princess Elizabeth entered the Abbey for her coronation: the YouTube link here is from the Fiftieth Anniversary of that day.

As the young and still mostly unknown Music Editor for the English Hymnal (1906), it fell to him to compose four tunes, needed to fit texts that were to be in the book. All remain in use; three of the four are indispensable:

- Down Ampney (Come down, O love divine)
- Randolph (God be with you till we meet again)
- Salve feste dies (Hail thee, festival day)
And most of all:
- Sine nomine (For all the saints)
[See this.
And this.]

Other tunes followed in later books, especially Kings Weston (At the Name of Jesus). But more even than these tunes, it was his philosophy of hymn singing, rooted in his love and knowledge of English folksong, that took English hymnody out of the nineteenth century propriety of Victorian chapel and music room into the fresh air. For, as I think he discovered when he began working with hymn tunes, the best of the Old Tunes are a type of folk music, rooted in the faith of common people – not the theologians or clergy – who know that God is with them come what may.

He wrote:

The task of providing congregations with familiar tunes is difficult; for, unfortunately, many of the tunes of the present day [that is, 1906]… are quite unsuitable to their purpose. More often than not they are positively harmful to those who sing and hear them…

The usual argument in favour of bad music is that the fine tunes are doubtless ‘musically correct’, but that the people want ‘something simple’. Now the expression ‘musically correct’ has no meaning: the only ‘correct’ music is that which is beautiful and noble. As for simplicity, what could be simpler than ‘St. Anne’ or ‘The Old Hundredth’, and what could be finer?

It is indeed a moral rather than a musical issue. No doubt it requires a certain effort to tune oneself to the moral atmosphere implied by a fine melody; and it is far easier to dwell in the miasma of the languishing and sentimental hymn tunes which so often disfigure our services. Such poverty of heart may not be uncommon, but at least it should not be encouraged by those who direct the services of the Church… (Preface to the English Hymnal, pp. viii-ix)

Vaughan Williams wrote little for my instrument. There are the Three Preludes on Welsh Hymn Tunes (1920) which I have played many times over all the decades of my career – Bryn Calfaria, Rhosymedre, Hyfrydol. There is the little “Wedding Tune for Ann.” There are two more Preludes on Welsh songs (1956) -- Romanza: The White Rock (which I have not played) and the Toccata: St. David’s Day (which I have, and must play again; it makes a fine energetic postlude)

And there is this:
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Prelude and Fugue in C minor

The above recording is from my noontime recital on March 8. I have owned the score for many years. I have looked at it several times. And I have laid it aside: “I don’t have time to learn this, not now. Maybe next year.” The one-and-only large-scale work for organ by this composer whom I love, and I had never played it.

For me, the number of “next years” dwindles. I felt that it had to be now, so I programmed it for an Evensong last fall – and (as I had warned myself all those years) I ran out of time. I was able to prepare only the Prelude, finding myself tangled in knots with the two-against-three of the Fugue. That determined me to make it the centerpiece of the March recital, and I managed to work it up, some of the fugue falling into place only in the final days of preparation.

I do not know that I will play this piece again. But I am grateful that I have finally grappled with it. I have learned much. And I am honored that I can in my small way keep his music – this little and somewhat obscure corner of his work, at that – in living performance. I hope that my March 8 playing of it may bear fruit in some manner, but that is up to our Lord.

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.