Knowing how to choose the most efficient fingering is crucial to any organist. This skill is important because it makes a big difference both in practicing and performing. If you know how to play with good fingering, you will feel much more confident and your performance might sound effortless and efficient. In addition, the right fingering helps you to avoid mistakes and allows playing with precision and clarity. Today, I would like to discuss some ways how to choose the fingering for organ music composed after 1800 which will help you achieve such results.

Since the normal touch for Romantic and modern music is legato, every fingering technique is geared towards achieving the perfect legato. Differently from the piano where the legato can be achieved also by the means of the right pedal, the legato techniques that are used in organ playing are based on the fingering only. There are three most important ways to play legato on the organ - finger crossing, finger substitution, and finger glissando.

Finger Crossing. This technique is primarily used for single voice passages. It helps to achieve legato where you play just a single voice in one hand. The most common manifestation of finger crossings is thumb-under technique. Here you put the thumb under other fingers in order to change positions and move upwards or downwards. You can also use finger crossing by putting the longer finger over the shorter one or the shorter finger under the longer one.

Scale Fingerings. Probably the easiest way to play the single voice episodes in organ music is by choosing fingerings which are based on scales. This also involves chromatic scales. Here the most important rule is to avoid using the thumb on the sharp keys because it gives unnecessary strain to the hand. For example, in a passage in B flat major for the right hand, such as B flat C D E flat F D C D E flat F G A B flat it is best to use the B flat major scale fingering: 2 1 2 3 4 2 1 2 3 1 2 3 4. Notice that we start not with 1 but with 2 on the B flat. For the left hand the best fingering here would be 3 2 1 3 2 4 5 4 3 2 1 3 2.

However, in real music we often have to play with the thumb on the sharp keys (especially in music with many accidentals). A very useful exercise not only for finger dexterity and independence but also for fingering patterns is practicing scales in all major and minor keys. This can be done either on the piano or the organ. If you practice scales regularly, with time these fingerings will become second nature to you and many places in your organ compositions which earlier appeared problematic because of the fingering will be straightforward enough.

Position Fingerings. When you write in fingerings, think about the position. How to play the most number of notes without leaving your current position? Put a thumb under only when is necessary to change position. For example, consider the earlier passage in B flat major. Placing a thumb on C allows us to play 8 notes in one position using fingers 1-4 and only when we have to ascend higher we put a thumb again on F and start playing like in ascending F major scale.

For more fingering suggestions, read Part 2 of this article.

By the way, do you want to learn to play the King of Instruments - the pipe organ? If so, download my FREE video guide: "How to Master Any Organ Composition" in which I will show you my EXACT steps, techniques, and methods that I use to practice, learn and master any piece of organ music.
 


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