When an organist who doesn’t normally practices on mechanical organs goes to perform in public on an instrument which has mechanical stop action, a lot of unexpected things might happen. Changing stops on such instrument is not the same as pushing the combination piston on the organ equipped with combination action. If you are not used to mechanical organs, you may even get thrown off balance and the overall quality of your performance might suffer.
Here are some things to consider if you want to change stops by yourself during a performance in public: 1. Change stops by hand only in places where at least one of your hands are free. 2. If you need a quick change, plan it so that you pull or push only a few of the stops at a time. 3. Consider which hand is free for this change and choose the stops on that side of the console. 4. Don‘t grab more than two stops at a time as some instruments have a heavy stop action. 5. Don’t take the registration changes for granted. Practice them ahead of time repeatedly. 6. Some pieces with large amount of stop changes will work better on organs with combination action so choose the repertoire wisely. If you don't have access to an actual instrument on which you will be performing, contact the local organist and get several detailed pictures of the console and pedalboard. This way you can plan your stop changes away from the instrument and you will not waste any precious time when you have the rehearsal.
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Just like an Introduction, a Coda is not required in a composition or improvisation. However, if you are playing a longer piece, then a simple Coda might be desirable.
It can take many shapes at the end of organ improvisation and its function is simply either to remind the listeners of the themes heard in the improvisation or to provide a sense of completion. I found that one of the simplest (and quite satisfactory) solutions for structuring a Coda is this: 1. Short excursion to the key of subdominant (tonic pedal point in the pedals): D7 of IV and IV (iv in minor). 2. Repetition of Step 1 one octave lower or higher. 3. Return to the tonic by diminished VII7 and I or i in minor (still with the tonic pedal point). 4. Repetition of Step 3 from different pitch level of diminished VII7 (VII, II, IV, VI- in the top voice or VII+, II, IV, VI in minor). 5. Several repeated tonic chords. It might include different scale degrees (I, III or V) in the top voice. Try this approach in your improvisation or composition. It's not very difficult to do but I'm sure you will enjoy it. Here is my example. Performance anxiety can be very annoying while waiting for and during a public performance. Some people experience it as fear, some - as trembling and shaking of the hands and disruption of breathing; for others it takes the shape of heavy sweating.
Whatever the case might be, there is one common trait which can be felt and seen in every case of performance anxiety and in every person who is affected by it. This is inability to focus the mind on the task at hand. The thoughts are constantly wandering from one (fearful) outcome to another. Sometimes you don't feel any anxiety on the day of performance but just before the recital you might see a person in the audience whom you fear and feel intimidated by and this feeling can affect your overall quality of performance. You might think something behind these lines: "I'm not well prepared, I'm going to fail or the audience will not understand my music, or this authoritative person who came to listen to me today will think badly about me and my performance". The thing is that when we think this way, we are experiencing not fear of the performance itself but the fear of fear. This is different. We connect the events of our past in our memories and project them to our future which hasn't happened yet. Because a person whom you fear the most intimidated you in the past, you feel this will happen again. Because you made mistakes in your past recitals, you predict they will happen again tonight. Because you have the general feeling that the general audience is not capable of appreciating polyphonic and complex music (not true), you are afraid that they will feel bored when you will perform those early organ masters today. This is not real. This is something we imagine in our heads and certainly this is something we can change and take control of. First of all we have to understand that any failure is not fatal. If you make a few mistakes, you won't die and your reputation will not be ruined. In fact, these mistakes may go unnoticed completely by your listeners because many things that are very important to us, may not be as important to them. If the people in attendance will indeed feel bored when you play brilliantly Bach or Sweelinck, then it simply may mean that this music is not for them. You need a different group of people and that's OK. There is no thing for everyone anymore. But the most important thing which helps control and combat performance anxiety is focusing your mind to the task at hand. During the performance itself this means staying in the current measure. Before it when you might feel anxious - focus on the breathing and current moment. Because our minds are like a muscle, they too can be trained to focus. And it comes easier with practice. The more recitals you will have under your belt - the calmer you will be before and during them. It's not a big deal - it's only the perfect opportunity to share your love for your instrument and it's music and tell stories (with words or with musical means or both) that resonate with people who are eager to hear them. At the end of November of last year, I spent three days with extremetly motivated church organists from various parts of Lithuania and led a course on Harmony and Organ Improvisation. On day 1 of this course, I was asked to do an organ demonstration at Vilnius University St. John's church where I work.
Today I would like to share with you an excerpt of demonstration of the strings. Please forgive my Lithuanian language but I think the sounds and the names of the stops will be easy to understand to everyone. I hope you will watch this video until the very end because there I also demonstrate some of the nicest sounds high-pitched stops can produce. If you have an organ recital to play, here is how your practice on the day of it might look like:
(Optional) On another instrument: in slow motion, and with soft registration, play the most challenging parts of each piece. You might be tempted to do a run-through at concert speed just to make sure you can play the program well, but I don't recommend it. Without the instrument on the table or sitting in a chair: do a run-through at half speed while imagining how it might sound in your head. On the instrument of the recital: check registrations and stop changes and practice a little in a slow tempo the difficult pieces of the recital. If you have enough time on this instrument, you can play the entire program at one third of the speed. Whatever you do on the day of the recital, avoid overburning yourself with loud registrations, dramatic performance and concert tempo as this might affect your general state of mind later when you need the top level of focus. On the day of the recital I like to practice with a feeling that I'm watching someone else play and focus for the real thing which is to come soon. I'm not talking here about the situation when you barely know your program and there are lots and lots of places which still need to be mastered. Then you have to do whatever it takes to get at least a decent feeling of the program in general (obviously multiple repetitions of short fragments in a slow tempo are unavoidable here). My above advice is for people who did all the homework on time. However, the decisive moment is the recital itself. You may feel great and refreshed but your performance can go quite poorly. Likewise, you can be very tired, exhausted and even sick, but if you have the right mental attitude, it can be the best recital you played in your whole life (so far). I've been in all of these situations. My guess is that we need all of them just to prepare for real life. Sometimes you don't have any time to practice before the recital at all (that's a scary thought). But if you survive these difficult performances, every one of them will make you stronger. As some of my readers might remember, I have recently played a recital with improvisations on some of the most popular Christmas carols and shared the exerpts of it. I received a question from one of my students, of how did I prepare the transpositions to many different keys.
Did I write the scale degrees above the notes of the tunes and transfer them to the new keys or did I simply imagined the scale degrees in my head? On the sheet with the tunes in single voice notation that I had in front of me, I only had written the tonal plan (the names of the keys that I planned to use in the specific order) and the scale degrees of the starting pitches of each tune. I didn't need all the scale degrees to see in front of me. How could you achieve something like that yourself? Well, it certainly takes a lot of practice and experience in harmonization and transposition. How much? I think the number will be different for every person. It will depend on the level of the organ playing techinique, sight-reading experience, skills in music theory etc. If you would like to play similar improvisations around Christmas next year, I think you can begin your training right now. The practicing method is really simple - take your favorite hymnal and start transposing your hymns to different keys. You can choose both horizontal and vertical approach. With the horizontal approach you would play many hymns but only one version of transposition (say, a major second up at first) and only after transposing many hymns this way go back to the beginning and transpose to a different key. How many? As many as it takes to transpose them fluently. With the vertical method, choose one hymn and transpose to every key and then go on to the next hymn. Try either one of the above approaches and I'm sure your listeners will enjoy your improvisations with transpositions for the next Christmas season. One of my students from Organ Sight-Reading Master Course wrote to me that he has trouble playing exercises in the keys with 6 sharps and 6 flats (and probably with 5 or 7 accidentals as well). He plays everything very slowly (just as I recommend) but his frustration is very great.
He rightly pointed out that the reason why he has trouble with playing in advanced keys is that other than playing scales, he had very little experience with these keys. So the only practical advise that I could give to students like him is very simple - play as many pieces with lots of accidentals as you can find. Of course, simply picking the prelude and fugue with 6 sharps or flats from the Well-Tempered Clavier by Bach doesn't help very much. The music is too complex too begin with and you need a nice system in order to play in all the keys. It's best, if you could find a piece or an exercise already transposed to every key that exists in a logical order with ascending number of accidentals (0 accidentals, 1 sharp, 1 flat, 2 sharps, 2 flats, 3 sharps, 3 flats etc. until you reach the keys with 7 accidentals). In order to help him and other people who haven't had the experience with playing pieces with lots of keys signatures, today I have transposed a chorale harmonization of Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern to every single key of the major mode. I hope you will enjoy playing these transpositions not only because they will definitely help you in getting to know the keys with lots of accidentals better but also because this chorale is traditionally known as the chorale sung (and played) for Epiphany which is today. As always, in order to see the best results of your practice, I recommend playing each version of the transposition at least 3 times in a row correctly and fluently before advancing to the next one. A final thought: if you think that a special course with hymn settings like this one transposed in every key would be helpful to you, please let me know. I bet you have been in a situation where you had to play an organ piece in public and you lost control of your pedal part. As a result of this you obviously made a few nasty pedal mistakes. That might have happened because you lost position on the pedalboard. In other words, you would play a passage with your feet and suddenly you wouldn‘t know where exactly is there right pedal to press.
There are only two reasons for losing position of the pedalboard. 1. Lack of pedal preparation. 2. Lack of focus. As you might know pedal preparation is the secret technique that not too many organists use but it would help you to make your pedal playing very powerful and automatic. When you master your piece and apply pedal preparation, you never have to look to your feet in order to find the right pedals to play. Pedal preparation is best practiced repeatedly with the short fragments of the pedal part in a very slow tempo. For example, repeat the passage of two measures 10 or more times while playing very slowly. More importantly, as you release the note with your foot, with one swift motion slide it into position for the next one and let it rest there. Don‘t play the next pedal yet but let it wait for its turn. This of course applies for any of your feet, left or right. Using pedal preparation doesn‘t guarantee the success, though. What you also need is to focus your mind. Focus is your mental attitude where you put you conscious mind into the current measure that you play. No matter what kind of thoughts enter into your mind, don‘t fight them, don‘t think about them and don‘t worry about them. Simply be in the current measure. This is easier said than done of course but one thing which really helps to focus is your eyes. Fix your eyes on the measure that you‘re playing. If you do this often enough, little by little your mind will learn to focus and you will have no trouble in finding the right notes and maintaining position on the pedalboard. Have you been in a situation where you had to play an unfamiliar organ which had a very sensitive pedalboard? On such instrument your feet are in a position to hit the wrong keys all the time. Even if you avoid the forceful movement, your feet are always in danger of playing with constant mistakes.
I think a sensitive pedalboard has something in common with driving an unfamiliar car. In order not to confuse the accelerator pedal with the break you have to always be conscious and think before pressing the pedal of which pedal is the accelerator and which one is the break. Also sensitive pedalboard might be compared to walking on an ice. When it‘s slippery you have lots of possibilities to fall. Therefore you have to think before each step where you put your feet and of course walk very slowly. Finally, the problem with playing on the sensitive pedalboard could be similar to one when you eat the fish with lots of bones and in order to do it without swallowing the bones you have to always be conscious of each and every bite and think about what it's in your mouth. So my final advice for people who have trouble playing unfamiliar and sensitive pedalboard is this: pay constant attention to your feet and be conscious of every movement of your feet. If you have a chance to practice on such organ in advance, play very slowly in order to adjust to situation better. Imagine you've decided to play an organ recital with some hymn singing involved. This is not a true Hymn Festival but just an organ recital where you ask people to sing some hymns.
Perhaps they could sing before the choral preludes that you want to play or around Christmas, you could perform some carols (with singing). It seems like the singing of the hymns and chorals would be a good introduction to the organ preludes (and fantasias and variations). So you did all the preparations (including the booklet with the specific indications of when and what the people should sing). You planned a heavy registration because the church might be full and the singing should be quite loud. At the night of the recital you notice that the church is really full (not only your friends and family members showed up but also the members of the congregation, too). This is good news. You play a few organ pieces and everything goes according to plan. But when the time comes for the people to join the singing, you find out a few things: 1. People are reluctant to sing. 2. The organ is too loud. 3. You have to make stop changes which you didn't prepare for. 4. You mess up the unexpected registration changes. 5. People sing not in tune. 6. All of the above make you very nervous. 7. Therefore, you start making silly mistakes. 8. Somehow you manage to recover. 9. After the recital the feeling of failure is quite pronounced. 10. You feel embarrassed. 11. You swear not to play with hymn singing ever again. 12. You meet the people after the recital and they seemed to enjoy the singing and your performance. 13. Most importantly, they ask you when your next concert is going to be. 3 questions: 1. How did it happen that people didn't sing very well? 2. How could it be that even because of the poor result (in your opinion) they seemed to enjoy and want for more? 3. What can you do differently next time so that the singing (and the playing) would go better? You see, when people go to organ recitals, they don't expect they are going to sing. Their mindset is different. They want to be entertained or simply listen to the music while sitting alone with their thoughts. Unless you announce ahead of time the new rules of the game, people may be quite surprised, at least at first. But in the end, if the tunes are familiar to them and if they come from the culture where singing in public is a natural phenomenon (in many countries this is no longer the case), I think that the singing towards the end of the event can actually become more and more pronounced and in tune because the audience will adjust their expectations. What can you do differently next time? On the poster, press releases and other promotional material you could write really clearly that there will be some singing involved. Indicate clearly the same information on the program that you hand out to them. Practice registration changes (even the unexpected ones) ahead of time. If the organ is unfamiliar to you, investigate it's specification, placement of stops by contacting the local organist. Once you know what to expect, imagine its sound and imitate the stop changes on your own instrument. This practice will calm you down and you will feel a lot less anxiety and make fewer mistakes when the time comes for your next recital. |
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Drs. Vidas Pinkevicius and Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene Organists of Vilnius University , creators of Secrets of Organ Playing. Our Hauptwerk Setup:
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