Here's a good way to keep your practice laser-focused and avoid accidental mistakes:
Take some deep breaths, relax your body part by part but at the same time imagine that your organ is positioned on the platform between the two skyscrapers each around 500 meters tall. The key here is your eyes. If you can penetrate with your gaze the score or the keyboard (when playing without the score), then you'll become immovable as a mountain. No inattentive audience, no sharps or flats, no pedal passages, or left hand trills can touch you.
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Welcome to episode 24 of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast!
Listen to the conversation A resident of Fall River, Massachusetts, Paul Cienniwa leads an active musical life in southeastern Massachusetts and the Boston/Providence regions as an organist, harpsichordist, and conductor. He is director of music at First Church in Boston, where he plays the three-manual Casavant organ (Op. 3140), the single-manual Casavant (Op. 3129), and leads the professional First Church Choir for weekly broadcasts on WERS (88.9 FM) Boston. In recent years, he has been featured organ soloist at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, Busch Hall at Harvard, and MIT Chapel. Cited by the Huffington Post for his “inner sense of creative flow, fueled by an abundance of musical imagination and desire,”Paul has a florishing career as a soloist, recording artist, and ensemble player. He was awarded the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in harpsichord from Yale University in 2003. Paul strives to bring the harpsichord to new audiences by creating a spiritual communion through focused interpretations intensified by memorized repertoire. In this conversation, Paul shares his insights from his newest book "By Heart: The Art of Memorizing Music". Enjoy and share your comments below. If you like these conversations with the experts from the organ world, please help spread the word about the SOP Podcast by sharing it with your organist friends. Relevant links: Paul Cienniwa's website "By Heart: The Art of Memorizing Music". Art is about being unsure of what happens next. Factory is about predetermined routine, a conveyor which works as precisely as possible.
When we forget the difference between art and factory in organ playing, here is what happens: Change is frightening because we associate it with risk. "I won't play this piece a major third downward because I'm not good at transposition." We tend to avoid risk because it might involve failure. "Putting a hymn tune in the bass played by the pedals in service playing might make me vulnerable to incorrect harmonization." We don't want to experience failure because it would force us to feel bad about ourselves. "If I mess up this improvisation, people will think I'm an idiot." Feeling bad about ourselves may indicate our low self-esteem and nobody wants that to happen. "My registrations suck. I will never learn how to use organ stops properly." So we tend to seek out comfort. "I will not play the tune of this hymn with the left hand in the tenor range because this will make me uncomfortable." The feeling of comfort gives us a sense of security. "My prelude sounds well this morning. Maybe I should play it the next Sunday too." Security forces us to seek permission. "Maybe I should ask my pastor, if it's OK to play solo organ music during Communion." Having permission helps us to seek deniability. "If I mess up this Toccata, it's not my fault because you said it will be OK." Deniability forces us to be average. "I just want to be a good organist for my church because this is what my congregation wants". But we can't be artists and be average. We're either seeking to be exceptional organists who are willing to put ourselves on the line and be criticized for our work or mediocre factory workers who are "good enough" to play what everybody else is supposed to be playing. I would rather play one organ recital after which somebody came up to me and said, "this is ridiculous, how dare you to play on our organ like that", than 10 recitals which would guarantee me standing ovation. It all starts with doubt. Never ask for advice seeking to avoid doubt. Instead, ask for advice seeking to embrace it. How much time do you spend taking action as opposed to reaction in organ playing? This question can also be put this way: How often do you work towards your own goals as opposed to the goals of others?
How often do you give yourself the freedom of making a choice to play what you want as opposed to letting others decide it for you? Here's the thing - we sure need to think a little about others when we play organ. We need to take into consideration our employer, our congregation, our listeners. But we also need to find some time in our practice when we are free to experiment, to ponder, to do research, to sight-read, to improvise something seemingly entirely useless, or similarly waste time. Because you know what? If you only play what's required of you, you will miss an opportunity to be unique and remarkable, you will miss an opportunity to find your edge. You will miss an opportunity to matter. This will make you into an average organist. An average organist who is easily replaceable with the one who's just a little cheaper and faster than you. And in today's economy it turns out not a very productive strategy. Instead, you should search for things that you hold dear, the things that are exciting to you alone, the things that only you can provide, the things which you would be missed for if you were gone. The weirder the better. Can we learn to play the organ from reading books, watching videos, or hanging out in online forums?
I think you understand that to some extent we need some of that. When we get stuck, it's OK to seek help. But we often seek help too soon. Doing is the best help there is because it involves taking action, making mistakes, owning them, and owning the results. And yet, people often write to me things like, "I tried to do this but it didn't work." Of course, it won't work the first time, the second or the fifth time for that matter. The only time it works right away is when we get lucky. But most often it's work. Long grinding work. Such work when our mind screams to stop playing and go watch a video. Such work when the texture of the piece is so complex that you wish you hadn't started practicing it. Such work when you improvise you don't know what you're doing and think you're wasting time. But in the end it matters how many times you conquered your inner dragons keeping yourself glued on the organ bench when it didn't work and not how many times you got lucky. I drew this as a reminder at how important it is for us to not accept inaction and try.
Try to become good in organ playing. Try to master sight-reading. Try to learn to play hymns in 4 parts with pedals. Try to develop a real independence between left hand and feet. Try to use organ stops in a colorful way. Try to improvise with interest for 60 minutes non-stop. Try to reach your dream. Try to be generous. But first, you have to be prepared to suck at this. You have to want it so badly that you are ready to get slapped in your face or fall down on your knees. Because nobody has been born a master at something. Not even the great Michael Jordan or Johann Sebastian Bach. And the only thing that separates them from the pack of armchair-quarterbacks is this: They tried and failed again and again. Until they succeeded. So can you. Whatever you do, do not accept to settle. Here are some of the things that will happen to you in 2016:
You will discover at least one remarkable dream in organ playing. You will become very enthusiastic of this dream. You will not receive support you seek for your dream among your family, colleagues, or friends (if you do, this is not the right kind of dream). You will become scared out of your mind of this dream. You will refuse to take action of this dream. Something will happen that will help you make up your mind to take action on this dream. You will start to take action on this dream. You will come to understanding that you can't go back into a state before you took action. You will choose to become changed by this dream. On your way to reaching this dream your commitment will be tested at least several times. While following with your plan to take action on this dream you will experience an all encompassing state of bliss at least for a brief moment of time. You will experience wonderful distractions which may lead you to abandon the pursuit of your dream. You will come to a state when you will have to confront your innermost fear at the pursuit of your dream. You will experience a powerful and permanent change the way you see the world because of your dream. You will reach your dream. After reaching your dream, you will not want to go back to the regular world and share your dream with others. Something will happen that will help you to make up your mind to share your dream with the world. Based on the wisdom you gained from the pursuit of your dream, you will figure out a way to share your dream with the world. You will achieve a balance of creating and sharing your dream. You will master this dream which will liberate you from fear and set you free. Exciting, isn't it? I wish you to find the strength you need to follow through with this dream of yours. If you do, your world will never be the same. [HT to Joseph Campbell] When you see a painting, can you imagine the sounds that would illustrate it?
This question follows me everywhere for quite a while now because as an improviser to create music on the themes of artwork is very beautiful. I started thinking about it because my dad was a painter and I wanted to figure out the way to improvise on his artwork. So I think it's possible, especially if it's a non-abstract painting where you can understand what is going on in the painting in term of action, or a feeling, a mood, what kind of subject is depicted in the painting. But what if the painting is abstract, what if there would be a way to assign a specific note with a specific color? My friend Ron also is also concerned with this idea. Here's what he wrote to me: "I thought I would send you this “color mixing method” I put together. Your nice drawings prompted me, seeing the creativity spill over. Colors aren’t the same as sounds, but they have some things in common. Here is an idea for the student: From these twelve colors, and the way they mix, see if one can create a melody from color that makes sense (is explainable) and sounds interesting on the organ. A second part of this is: How can one approach such an assignment and make it worthwhile, say, as a crossover between two disciplines? Anyway, it’s not an assignment! It’s something I can share. I hope you find it interesting." Anyway, some composers, like Skriabin or Messiaen really felt that a specific chord would go with a specific color. But what Ron proposes is to take 12 chromatic notes of the scale and assign 12 different colors to them. Here's a challenge, though. The music is an art form which unfolds in time while the painting - not really (or am I wrong?). Therefore, anyone interested should figure out how to "read" the painting - from left to right, from right to left, from top to bottom, from center to the edges. I don't know the answer yet. I'm not even sure there should be one definite answer to these complex questions as we try to connect the two great art forms and make into something new. But the question is worth asking. What do you think? So, can you hear the color? [HT to Ron] Welcome to episode 23 of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast!
Listen to the conversation Today's guest is Beth Zucchino, who is the founder and director of Concert Artist Cooperative, an international association of soloists and ensembles which has been advertising together for going on 27 years. She is also the designer and caretaker of Creative Arts Series, a diverse and embracing northern California based outreach for all ages and abilities with a primary focus on the organ and its literature. In the summer of 2014 Beth became the dean of the Redwood Empire AGO chapter – Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Lake Counties, to save the chapter from acquisition or dissolution. Residing with her immediate family, along with their llama, three alpacas, three rabbits, two cats and two dogs on Jacob’s Jamboree mini farm in Sebastopol, she extends their peaceful country environment to visitors from near through far and around the world. In this conversation, Beth will share her insights about what it takes to lead Concert Artist Cooperative, what it takes to manage a diverse group of soloists and ensembles from around the world, and what it takes to organize organ events in this ever changing organ landscape as it is today. I apologize for some high-pitched static sound you are hearing in this recording (we've had a mysterious time with technology that day). It's not loud, and I hope the words of Beth and mine will be clearly audible. Enjoy and share your comments below. If you like these conversations with the experts from the organ world, please help spread the word about the SOP Podcast by sharing it with your organist friends. Relevant link: concertartistcooperative.com Church service. You're preparing to play a hymn on the organ but you're sick of the usual SATB arrangement. You want some variety and color for at least some of the stanzas.
Sure, you could re-harmonize, change texture, put a hymn tune in another voice. But of all possible options, playing a tenor line one octave higher on a solo registration is one of the most colorful arrangements. Why the tenor and not the alto, or the bass? Because the tenor range happens to be similar to that of the soprano, if you move it up an octave. Of course, the alto played higher would be a possibility too, but this part usually lacks melodic interest and is here simply to fill in the harmony. Touching the bass is out of the question because the harmony would change. So if you want to make your hymn playing more colorful, try this disposition: The pedals take the bass, the left hand plays 3 upper parts in a closed position, and the right hand - the tenor line up an octave with a Trompette or a Cornette stop on a separate manual. This way you create a 5th voice - a nice descant. The impression will be like playing with another melodic instrument. |
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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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