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Do you struggle when playing organ music which has many sixteenth notes, especially in the left hand part? Or perhaps your trills and other ornaments sound uneven when you execute them? Or maybe it seems impossible for you to play organ pieces with precision, clarity, and ease?
If so, I have an idea for you - 100 day scale and arpeggio challenge. Here is how it works: At the beginning of each day organ practice, you simply play one major and one minor scale and arpeggio with the same number of accidentals for one week. Then on Week 2, you practice G major and E minor. On Week 3, play F major and D minor. Then D major and B minor, B flat major and G minor and so on. In other words, you always play a pair of major and minor scales and gradually increase the number of accidentals until you reach 7 sharp and flats. Play these scales and arpeggios 3 times every day. Here is how can test the results of this challenge: Pick an organ piece that you have never practiced before and play it once on Day 1 and on Day 100. Do not play it anytime between these days. The results on Day 100 might surprise you. By the way, do you want to learn my special powerful techniques which help me to master any piece of organ music up to 10 times faster? If so, download my video Organ Practice Guide. Playing mindlessly through the organ piece from the beginning until the end with a hope that it somehow get better is really frustrating for many people.
If this is the situation you are currently in, I feel your pain. If you are hoping that these difficult pedal passages will get better on their own, you are hoping in vain. Or if you think that this complex imitative texture in the fugue will get any easier with time, think again. Maybe that works for people who only enjoy playing the pieces that they love. For a serious organist, this is not good enough. But even if you only want to be able to play the composition, wouldn‘t it be more enjoyable to be able to play it well? How would it feel for you to achieve the level of competence when you can play the piece you love with precision, clarity, and ease? Here is a thought: Always have a goal for your practice. It might be very small one (in fact, it‘s usually best to have a definite, precise, and measurable goal). Then think if each repetition of the piece gets you closer to the goal or away from it? Now that would improve results of your practice, wouldn‘t it? By the way, do you want to learn my special powerful techniques which help me to master any piece of organ music up to 10 times faster? If so, download my video Organ Practice Guide. If you have ever tried to play chorale prelude "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme", BWV 645 from the Schubler's collection by Bach, you surely have noticed that the spots that give you most trouble are cadences. Why is it so?
Before I answer this question, if you are not sure what cadence is, let me briefly explain it to you. A cadence is a harmonic or melodic idea which helps to bring a musical section to a close. So if you imagine this chorale prelude, a good place for cadence is the end of the opening episode, called Ritornello. It repeats in various ways throughout the piece and serves as a nice connection between the appearances of the chorale tune. In order to answer the question of cadences and why they are difficult to master in this composition, let's look at the harmonic rhythm of this piece. For people who are not sure what "harmonic rhythm" is, let's just say that it refers to the frequency of how often the chords or the harmony change throughout the piece. If you look at the pedal part, which is the basis of harmony, you will notice that the chords and the harmony in this chorale prelude usually change twice per measure, that is every two quarter notes. Here I don't mean the simple inversions of the same chord or non-chordal tones which might change more frequently. If the harmony usually changes every two beats, the places when it changes a lot more frequently are the cadences. In a typical cadence of this piece, the chords usually change every beat or even every eighth note. It is precisely because of this frequent changes of chords and a denser texture that the cadences are more difficult to master in this piece. You see, quicker rhythms require a better hand and feet coordination from an organist. Therefore the process of learning the piece is slower here. I recommend learning the cadences in a slow tempo: hands and feet separately, then combinations of two voices, and only then the entire three-part texture. By the way, if you like chorale prelude "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme", BWV 645 by Bach , check out my brand new BWV 645 Home Study Course in which I will teach you how to master this piece in 17 days or less while practicing only about 30 minutes a day! To your success in Bach organ playing, Vidas Pinkevicius Because Advent starts this Sunday and Christmas season is fast approaching, today I would like to give you a list of 10 possible Bach organ pieces to play at this festive time of the year.
1. Nun komm’ den Heiden Heiland, BWV 659. This chorale prelude was especially valued by Felix Mendelssohn. It has a highly ornamented melody in soprano of unprecedented beauty. The texture is in four parts. Medium. 2. Gott, durch deine Güte, BWV 600 from Orgelbüchlein. This is a canonic chorale – the canon happens in soprano and tenor (played by the pedals). The alto voice moves in eighth notes while the bass plays quarter notes. Medium. 3. Herr Christ, der einge Gottes-Sohn, BWV 601 from Orgelbüchlein. The texture is in four parts. Here the tune is given to the soprano voice. The piece is build around the suspirans motive which is imitated in the three lower parts. Medium. 4. Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her, BWV 606 from Orgelbüchlein. In this chorale prelude the tune is given to the soprano. The two middle voices feature sixteenths and the bass has eighths. Medium. 5. Nun komm’ den Heiden Heiland, BWV 599 from Orgelbüchlein. This is the opening piece from this collection. The arpeggiated texture reminds of the harpsichord pieces by Couperin. Medium. 6. Puer natus in Bethlehem, BWV 603 from Orgelbüchlein. It has a flowing 3/2 meter, four part texture with the tune in soprano voice. Medium. 7. Der Tag, der ist so freudenreich, BWV 605 from Orgelbüchlein. This piece is written for two manuals and a pedal. The accompanying alto and tenor voices create a joyful rhythmical figure involving two thirtyseconds and sixteenths. Medium. 8. In dulci jubilo BWV 608, from Orgelbüchlein. This piece is based on the 14th century Macaronic Latin/German Christmas carol. This composition is a great example of Bach's contrapuntal writing - it is a double canonic chorale prelude (the soprano tune is imitated by the bass and the triplet figures appear in alto and tenor. Medium. 9. In dir ist Freude BWV 615, from Orgelbüchlein. This is the only piece from this collection which features the tune in fragmentation. It has a joyful character, fast tempo, and will not be too easy to play. However, once you master it, you and your listeners will surely enjoy it. Difficult. 10. Chorale prelude "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme", BWV 645. This is the opening piece from the collection of 6 chorale preludes which became known as the Schubler chorales. The piece is written in a trio texture, with the chorale tune in the tenor voice. Medium. By the way, if you like chorale prelude "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme", BWV 645 by Bach , check out my brand new BWV 645 Home Study Course in which I will teach you how to master this piece in 17 days or less while practicing only about 30 minutes a day! To your success in Bach organ playing, Vidas Pinkevicius The chorale prelude "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme", BWV 645 is one of the most often played chorales by Bach. Originally it was a part of the Cantata No. 140 but Bach later transcribed it to the 3-part organ texture and included in the collection which later became known as 6 Schubler Chorales.
Since the Advent and Christmas season is comming up soon, this piece will be an excellent addition to your repertoire of this exciting time of the year. If you want to learn to play this wonderful composition on the organ, follow these 9 easy steps: 1. Analysis. I advice you look at the tonal plan and discover how the piece is put together. Find the closely related keys and cadences. Also make sure you analyze the form of this chorale prelude and make note of various appearances of Ritornellos. 2. Fingering. Because this piece has 3 flats, and originally was not composed for the organ, it will not be always possible to avoid the thumb on the sharp keys. However, at least avoid finger substitutions. 3. Pedaling. In order for your performance to be stylistically correct, play using alternate toe technique without heels. However, in instances when the pedal part goes to the extreme edges of the pedalboard, you can play with the same foot. 4. Ornamentation. In order to play in the genuine Baroque style, make sure you play all the ornaments - trills, appoggiaturas etc. correctly. Play them starting on the beat and not earlier. 5. Articulation. This piece has lots of original articulation indications written in which you should try to re-create. Also, many notes have to be performed using Articulate Legato touch. 6. Tempo. Remember that practice tempo should be much slower than that of the performance tempo and you should always be in control of each note. 7. Registration. The composer indicates that both hands should play on different sounds based on 8' stops. The pedal part should be based on the 16' stop. 8. Practice. Do not try to play all the parts together in this piece from the beginning until the end. For the best results, work in voice combinations in shorter fragments. 9. Memorisation. Although this is an optional step, I highy recommend it, if you intend to play this chorale prelude in public. Note that even if you choose to perform it in public from the score, knowing the piece by heart will give you this extra confidence and fluency. By the way, if you like this chorale prelude, check out my brand new BWV 645 Home Study Course in which I will teach you how to master this chorale prelude and even provide a score with complete fingering and pedaling written in for easy practicing. BWV 645 Home Study Course To your success in Bach organ playing, Vidas Pinkevicius Happy Thanksgiving! As you celebrate this wonderful evening with your families and think about the many things in life we all have to be grateful for, I have a fantastic piece for such an occasion - Nun danket alle Gott, BWV 657 by Johann Sebastian Bach. This is a chorale prelude from the famous collection of 18 Great Chorales, also known as the Leipzig Chorales. This is a four-part setting and the melody of the chorale (Cantus firmus) is presented in the soprano in longer note values. The tune is written in the Bar form (AAB). This is a traditional form of the German Lutheran chorales where the part A (Stollen) is repeated with a different text. Section B (Abgesang) is usually longer than A. The chorale prelude is written in the key of G major. At the beginning Bach uses Vorimitation technique where the first line of the tune is presented in imitation before the general Cantus firmus enters. The beginning features fugal entries of this phrase first in the soprano (tonic), the alto (dominant), and the bass (tonic). Phrases 1 and 2 of the tune are connected with an interlude where the tune is present in the tenor part. Then both phrases are repeated exactly from the beginning. Abgesang is prepared by the 3 fugal entrances of phrase 3 of the tune (tenor, bass, and alto). This time the key is D major and the fugal entries are written in the tonic, dominant, and tonic, respectively. Before phrase 4 (in D major) Bach writes another set of fugal entries using Vorimitation technique (tenor - tonic, bass - dominant, and alto - tonic). Phrase 5 is foreshadowed by the alto, tenor, and bass fugal entries in the left hand part and pedals. The piece is concluded by the phrase 6 in the alto (dominant) and soprano (tonic) and a long sustained tonic pedal point on the note G in the soprano. This is a traditional place to touch the subdominant key and and wrap up the entire composition. It is like an extended Plagal cadence involving the chords of the subdominant (C major) and the tonic (G major) which share the same common note (G). I hope you enjoy this brilliant piece performed on the organ at St. Thomas church in Leipzig: http://youtu.be/zynjWa4EbOQ If you cannot see the video, click on the title link at the beginning of this article. By the way, do you want to learn my special powerful techniques which help me to master any piece of organ music up to 10 times faster? If so, download my free video Organ Practice Guide. Or if you want to learn to improvise in the style of Bach? If so, I suggest you check out my free 9 day mini course in Keyboard Prelude Improvisation.  In celebration of St. Cecilia day, I would like to present to you one of the most unique organs I personally saw - a dual temperament organ at St. Cecilia Cathedral in Omaha, Nebraska (2003) built by Pasi Organs Builders.
Martin Pasi is a fantastic organ builder from Roy, WA (south of Seattle) who specializes in building fine mechanical action organs and doing quality organ restorations. The organ at St Cecilia Cathedral has 3 manuals and 55 stops. The facade of the instrument resembles closely historical Italian organs. Although this organ is spectacular in its own right, one of its most remarkable features is the ability to perform music on two different musical tuning systems (temperaments). This organ has both well-tempered and quarter-comma meantone temperament which is especially useful if you want to play an early and later music on the same organ. The meantone temperament is based on the system of tuning perfect major thirds and it permits to hear the perfect consonant sounds from the Renaissance and the Baroque periods. In this temperament, every key has its own character and not every halfstep is equal (like in modern equal temperament). Therefore, the dissonant chords, chromaticisms, and suspensions are especially audible in this kind of tuning. The flip side of this system is of course that you can't really use all 24 major and minor keys and that the possibilities for modulations are limited. But since the majority of music from the 16th-17th centuries requires less than 3 accidentals, this temperament is exactely what was used in the Renaissance and Early Baroque times. Note that the second temperament on this organ is still not equal but rather a well-tempered which means that it still has preserved some irregularity and characters of various keys. However, you can now use every key you want on this system. Therefore it works really well for more dissonant music of the 19th and 20th centuries. Martin Pasi conceived an idea of a dual temperament organ in Omaha, NE from other 3 instruments which have the similar idea: organs at Stanford University (C.B. Fisk, Op. 85) (USA) and the Wegscheider organs at the Allstedt Schloßkapelle (Op. 1) and Dresden-Wilschdorf (Op. 21) (Germany). While the two temperaments of the Stanford Fisk are made possible by five extra pipes per octave, and the smaller Wegscheider organs have six extra pipes per octave, 29 stops of the Pasi organ have 8 extra pipes per octave. You can listen to the podcast in iTunes of organ and choir music where organist Marie Rubis Bauer performs with choirs from St. Cecilia Organ Festival. This music was recorded live at Saint Cecilia Cathedral on October 3, 2003 on the occasion of the inauguration of this organ. These recordings capture the experience of performers and listeners, who participated in this inaugural celebration. I was there that day (I was a DMA student at University of Nebraska-Lincoln at that time) and remember this evening as one of the most memorable concerts ever. If you want to know more about this organ, check out the website of Pasi Organ Builders which has detailed specifications, technical descriptions, photos, videos, and a list of CDs recorded on this fantastic instrument. By the way, do you want to learn my special powerful techniques which help me to master any piece of organ music up to 10 times faster? If so, download my free video Organ Practice Guide. Or if you want to learn to improvise in the style of Bach? If so, I suggest you check out my free 9 day mini course in Keyboard Prelude Improvisation. Imagine you sit on the organ bench and want to play a pedal solo line with the hand part silent. This could be an excerpt from an actual organ piece, such as Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major, BWV 564 by Bach, or a composition for pedal solo, like Epilogue from Hommage a Frescobaldi by Langlais. It could even be a pedal scale or arpeggio.
The question is this: where do you keep your hands in such situation? There are 3 primary ways to do this correctly which are taught in organ method books. 1. On the organ bench 2. On the sides of the lower keyboard 3. On your knees With the first method, you play the pedals while holding onto the organ bench. Here you are sort of helping with your hands to keep the balance of your body. This way makes it even easier to pivot to the new pedal position because your hands may involuntarily help to push to the right or left when needed. The problem with this method is that your hands may not always be free to help you do that when you play the organ. In fact, very often your hands will be busy playing manual parts of your organ compositions. Another way is to keep your hands on the sides of the lower keyboard. As with the previous method, the hands are a big help for keeping balance. However, the inherent danger here is to press the bottom or the top notes with your palms by accident (I've personally seen this happen) which can make a lot of noise especially if you are using a loud registration. The third way is just to rest your hands on your knees. Although this method takes perhaps a couple of weeks to get used to but then you are quite sure that you are playing with your feet WITHOUT the help of the hands at all. You should use other techniques for changing position. This is my personal preferred method of playing pedals. By the way, if you want to perfect your pedal technique, check out my Pedal Virtuoso Master Course - a 12 week training program designed to help you develop an unbeatable pedal technique while working only 15 minutes a day practicing pedal scales and arpeggios in all keys. I have received some feedback from people who were trying to play chorale prelude "Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier", BWV 731 by Bach with the correct articulation. The biggest frustration they seem to have is that no matter how hard they try, their pedal part in this piece sounds legato.
I can understand this perfectly well. You see, a lot of people who are new to the Baroque articulation of organ music (not necessarily new to the organ playing in general, but just new to this style of articulation) spend their all energy focusing on the articulating the hand parts. What often happens is that they forget about their feet. It's difficult to think about several things at once and since on the organ we are constantly multi-tasking, some tasks might be left unchecked. If you found yourself in this situation, my strongest recommendation is to practice the pedal line separately until you can make small spaces between each and every note. Mentally think "note-rest-note-rest-note-rest" and so on. Then practice soprano and bass, later - alto and bass, and finally - tenor with the bass together. The next step would be to play soprano, alto, and bass, later - soprano, tenor, and bass, and alto, tenor, bass. If you do all the previous combinations, then playing all four parts together with the right articulation in the pedals will be very easy. By doing so, your ears will become gradually accustomed to listening if the pedals have the perfect articulation - articulate legato. Note that we are not talking about learning this piece from scratch. Instead, we are trying to find a solution to fix the articulation problem in the pedal line. If you are new to this piece, there are of course other learning methods to follow. By the way, if you were planning to get my brand new BWV 731 Home Study Course, do it now before the price rises tomorrow: BWV 731 Home Study Course To your success in Bach organ playing, Vidas Pinkevicius This week has been a fun one with lots of questions from my students about playing BWV 731. Some of the people even sent me their recordings of this piece which are always very exciting to listen to.
Since this chorale prelude needs to be performed in a very slow tempo, one of the most commons mistakes I see people make is the lost feeling of the pulse. In such a slow tempo, the danger of playing without a steady pulse is great. The thing is that the highly ornamented melody in the right hand part create many rhythmical problems for some people. In order to avoid the rhythmical confusion, they try counting every eighth note. But no matter how hard are they concentrating on playing the rhythms right, they have to be aware of the entire metrical structure of each measure. In other words, they have to constantly know which part of the measure they are in. One easy way to achieve this is of course count out loud the beats (one, two, three, and four). Moreover, you have to make the beats two and four shorter which will make them sound softer. In this manner you will achieve the alternation of strong and weak beats, and consequently – the feeling of the flowing pulse. Another common mistake is in performing ornaments. Some people still play the mordents and the trills starting before the beat which is not correct. No matter how many notes the ornament has (3, 4, 6 or even more) the first note of the ornament in this style has to start with the beat. Since the left hand involves playing two parts (alto and tenor), it is difficult for many people to articulate them properly. What happens is that in the right hand they try to play using articulate touch but in the left hand very often the notes sound legato. This is partly because their left hand technique is weaker than that of the right hand and partly because their fingering might not be stylistically correct. The ideal fingering for such piece should help to achieve the correct articulation naturally almost without thinking. By the way, check out my brand new BWV 731 Home Study Course in which I teach this chorale prelude with live sound examples and even provide a practice score with complete fingering and pedaling written in for the most efficient and stylistically correct performance: BWV 731 Home Study Course To your success in Bach organ playing, Vidas Pinkevicius |
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Drs. Vidas Pinkevicius and Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene Organists of Vilnius University , creators of Secrets of Organ Playing. 
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