After some consideration I’ve decided to just post any thoughts about the Franck Choral #3 strictly for my own edification.  My attempt to provoke some thought on how to approach the piece has… well, let’s say… not worked.  I shouldn’t expect anyone to seriously consider my ideas (no matter how well thought), since I’m not “famous” or “established.”  So be it.  If anyone IS interested in my thoughts you know to come here.

Not much other than to say it’s become more involved than I thought.  If I was giving a masterclass on this I could demonstrate what I’m trying say.  As it stands, since I don’t have an organ at my disposal at the moment I force to use excessively detailed verbal language with piksters.  Therefore, Part II will only go up to the cadence to the “chorale.”

Schönberg’s orchestration of Brahms’ “Piano Quartet in g” is so convincing, for me it equals the original version.  I love the whole piece; but, for the the first two movement are preludes to the “march” in the Andante con Moto; only to be followed by that rip-roarin’ Rondo.  It a testament to Schönberg’s insight that he should pick this one chamber work of Brahms and see how it almost cries out to be orchestrated.  And such a brilliant orchestration it is.  It’s virtually Brahms’ 5th symphony.

Just a quick note here.  I don’t know if he was deliberate referencing or just ripping off Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, but from what I’ve heard Richard Danielpour has almost literally lifted entire passages from it and tossed them into his Symphony #3 “Journey without Distance.”   In the quieter passages he sounds like he’s trying too hard to copy Bernstein’s song style, without much success, I might add.

So, as you can see, the organ has some serious image problems.  And, as something that has developed over an extended period of time, it will take some time to reverse this decline in esteem within the musical community.  Although every situation has its mitigating circumstances, for the most part organists and organ builders have been largely responsible for their plight through their self induced isolation and intransigence.  Now, it’s granted that in past the organ’s principal function has been liturgical; and it should continue to furnish this vital commission for the church in the future.  Nevertheless, as the world becomes more secular, and with the church relying more and more on pandering through lowest common denominator pop music in its desperate quest for increased numbers, the organ has become progressively marginalised. A definite imperative is required here in order to make the organ and organ music vital to the church again. Needless to say, that won’t happen if we continue to produce organists who are themselves marginalised by means of this continued refusal to apply an imaginative, extroverted approach to liturgical music.  Like it or not, people nowadays want to be entertained. With that in mind organists, if they are capable, have the opportunity to accomplish what no guitar player, drummer, electronic keyboardist, miked singer, any cheesy combination thereof, or even a classically trained pianist can do:  and that is, both viscerally excite (entertain) and legitimately move the spirit through the power, dynamic and colouristic versatility of the instrument at their disposal, even if it’s only a seven rank Estey.  But organists have to — they must — come out of that shell if the organ is to return to its rightful place as the primary non-vocal musical instrument of worship.

Notwithstanding, the organ world needs to come to terms with reality and look beyond the church.  For the larger classical music audience greater focus on the organ as a concert instrument needs to be done.  However, that can only be achieved with the kind of training that instils in the organist that  fearless passion and desire to communicate to an audience with which other secular concert musicians are imbued .  Nowadays modern technology has made the ability to focus on being primarily, even exclusively, a concert organist much more feasible.  A serious organist can now purchase a good two to three manual authentic sounding electronic organ for roughly the equivalent of a quality upright or baby grand piano.  Even the speakers are less problematic since technology has greatly reduced the size needed to effectively produce the low notes for the pedal.  More and more an aspiring concert organist will become less and less dependent upon the kindness of clergy and ignorant, petty church committees or administrators and territorial organists to be able to practise regularly.  As serious music in the church dies, the organ does not have to die with it.

As much fun as I’ve had chiding Academia, they really aren’t to blame — at least not fully.  Musicology, like any history based discipline, has profoundly influenced us, expanding our knowledge of the world from which we have evolved, and has given us considerable insight into how things were done in the past.  This knowledge however, is only useful if it is applied in a manner to which modern society can relate. The danger is when this historical knowledge changes from perspective to dogma.  In recent years musicologists have learned, in their hit-or-miss fashion, that a lot of the dogma to which they had subscribed wasn’t quite so black and white.  For example, string players have learned that vibrato was actually a part of 18th possibly 17th Century performance; maybe not as broadly or consistently used as the late 19th Century and later, but, there nonetheless. So, playing Bach and Co. with little extra colour does not have to be eschewed as had been thought.  Again historical insight makes for a good jumping off point; but alas, we live in the 21st, not the 18th Century.

The glory of it all is that the organ by the shear magnificence of its presence can’t help but impress.  Visually as compelling as the architectural wonders, both secular and sacred, in which the organ is often housed, tonally and sonically as great as or even greater than a symphony orchestra, it really should be a no brainer to make a performance of the music emanating from those pipes one of the most moving experiences in a person’s life. And occasionally that happens — just not enough.  The various attempts to attract new people, such as Pipe Organ Encounters simply attract kids who are already predisposed to the organ.  Events like Pedals, Pipes and Pizza may have had a certain novelty when initially conceived; but not unlike nuns with guitars singing “Folk Mass” they were never terribly successful largely because they always seemed a little insincere, and now just seem hokey and contrived.  Again, people (especially nowadays with our celebrity conscious society) want to be entertained. That in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing.  Most of us who were initially attracted to that which we love (a person, work of art, movie, piece of music, etc.) were almost always drawn in by something visceral about the source of that attraction.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be visual; but, again in our highly visually oriented society, it “can’t hoit” to appeal to the ear through the eye.  Virgil Fox understood, and his audiences (made up of mostly of non-organists, whether he was doing his “Heavy Organ” programme or a “straight” recital) obviously appreciated that fact; And that’s the point. As successful as Mr. Fox was one can only imagine how much more effective he might have been if the organ “establishment” had embraced his dynamism instead vilified it.  But, the organ world remains obdurate. Hence the case of Cameron Carpenter.  The acting and dressing like a rock musician and essentially biting the hand that has fed him with his berating the organ world, pipe organs and most organ music, smacks of more than a little disingenuousness; but, it makes for great press.  A little controversy goes a long way to keeping some one or some thing in the public’s consciousness; and for the organ, that can only help.  As his one time manager, the late Richard Torrence (who was Virgil Fox’s manager) reminded me once, Mr. Carpenter is the first organist since Fox died — that is, in 30 years! — to generate so much exictment about the organ in the concert hall.

Because, ultimately as I stated at the beginning of this series, it’s not the instrument that the problem — quite the contrary, in fact — as it is the performer.  If or when the organ world eventually crawls out from behind its  agoraphobic, self-effacing, virtually moribund state and recognises that there is bright shining dynamic concert world out there:  that their wondrous instrument in the hands of serious yet dynamic, extroverted personalities such as Fox was and currently Paul Jacobs, Isabelle Demers, Cameron Carpenter, and a handful of others can, shall, will reclaim its rightful place on the throne of the musical kingdom.

So, what are these “strange” behaviours that seem to be manifest among organists?  Let’s take a look:

1.  Organists eat their own.  When an organist bucks the trend and decides he wants to actually inspire an audience by using the multitude of tonal colours at his disposal, even (actually hopefully) going above and beyond a literal reading of the registrations called out in the score, such a performer is at best ridiculed, or worse, vilified.  Such playing requires something of an anomaly in the organ world — an extroverted personality.  Harkening back to my earlier sections we learned that such a personality is generally unwelcome in the church, and so it goes in the rest of the “organ monastery.”  The immediate example of such an anomaly, of course, is the late Virgil Fox who, although he thrilled thousands of people to his dynamic and highly extroverted manner of playing, was almost universally condemned as a “showman” and as “undignified,” often referred to as the “Liberace of the organ” (as if that was a bad thing).  He received the greatest amount of vitriol from Academia for his decidedly romantic manner with the music of J. S. Bach.  No matter that his approach to the big Bach pieces was dynamic, exciting and musically astute; he was in violation of Baroque performance practise — or so we are told.  The fact that he played Bach expressively, passionately, electrifyingly, was… well, that’s just not done!  Since Virgil Fox similar fates have been endured by Carlo Curly, Cameron Carpenter, and I’m sure a few others, although not as vehemently.  Carpenter is the latest target of invective because he breaks the rules. He may at times push the envelope to good taste with his “rock star” apparel and some of his histrionics; but, he has generated a good deal of excitement; and, with the organ world in such a near comatose state the need for extremes is not completely unwarranted.  The point being, is that the organ world constantly bewails its woeful state; yet, virulently castigates anyone who actually demonstrates to the world how glorious and thrilling the instrument can be.  I don’t get it.

2.  Organists are visually impaired. What I mean is that they don’t understand the importance of the visual aspect of performance.  Allow me to illustrate my point.  Now, when a person goes to hear a famous pianist in recital, upon entering the recital hall and seeing a beautiful concert grand piano on the stage there’s a sense of eager anticipation; and that’s fine and quite true.  However, when that same person goes to an organ recital at a concert hall (as opposed to a church), where the organ console is traditionally placed centre stage, often turned stage left at slightly less than a 45º angle, and sees this “monster” with there its three, four, even five rows of “teeth” and what appear to be hundreds of “eyes,” (stops) and manifold levers and buttons large and small for the hands and feet, along with the pedals, poised there looking ready to devour its next victim, anticipation gives way to awe. The idea that just one person is not only supposed to tame this beast, but make music doing it, can be very compelling. The potential to electrify an audience is virtually illimitable.  Yet, organists just don’t seem to get it; all that eager anticipation, all those keen expectations end up like so much dust on a wood shop floor, and the listener invariably is left wanting.  Great musicians over the ages have understood the the visual aspect to performance.  Stokowski, Bernstein, Jacquline Dupre, Kissin, Argerich, ANY singer, have realised the value of visually connecting with the audience.  Mahler even calls for the French Horns to stand during the finale to the last movement of his Symphony #1. Yet for some reason organists will have none it.  Instead of dazzling an audience with her command of the myriad aspects of the console, and with Cyd Charise-like fleet pedal technique, the organist sits at the console with her eyes glued to the page avoiding as much as possible any rapid stop changes either electro-mechanically (pistons) or manually.  But, you see, that requires the organist to express an interest in the instrument beyond the basics needed “to get the job done,” so to speak.  And, well… why bother?

You see, organists feel they don’t have to play by the same rules as other recitalists. They figure since, in most cases, they get to: 1) hide from their audiences, and therefore, don’t have to 2) memorise their programmes, or 3) even manifest any feelings, much less interest, for the music to an audience outside of getting the notes right.  It’s bad enough for an audience to experience this sort condescension in a church setting where the organist is often hidden; but, to endure this kind of truculence in a concert hall with the console on stage for the audience to witness this all too common cavalier attitude that organists have toward their listeners, is not only tedious but, more than a little disdainful.  An unfortunate paradox has presented itself in recent years with the proliferation of performing organisations spending millions of dollars on new, or newly restored large pipe organs for their concert halls and finding virtually nobody of significance to play them.  Again, so much of this is personality based.  If you have some one who lacks the necessary drive characteristic of a serious concert performer all the beautiful new pipe organs and awesome looking consoles in the world are not going to save the organ from being a shepherd without flock.

3. Organists are dependent on the musical, or worse — organ — fashion du jour.  Yesterday it was severity, historical accuracy, authenticity; now it’s neo-Romanticism.  As hopeful as this may seem, a few problems arise.  First, with the mass destruction or mutilation of many 19th and early 20th Century organs there are few instruments today that are suited to the Romantic repertoire. So, we’re stuck with listening to Mendelssohn and Liszt, and even Wagner transcriptions on Baroque styled scream machines with thin, small scaled foundations, “chiff,” and an overabundance of mixtures:  hardware products of the anti-romantic, new music and early music “authenticity” movements.

Second, most of these people, having been schooled in those philosophies, either don’t have the training or the personality to comprehend what the word “Romanticism” means (although the term gets bantered about constantly), much less interpret the music; the fact being (with a tiny number of ostracised exceptions) the legacy was lost several generations ago.  For instance, there is a prominent organist who performs regularly on a very large, high profile romantic, orchestral style organ. This organist happens to think of himself as a “Romantic;” in so far as he has even written a number of transcriptions of famous orchestral pieces specifically with this organ in amind.  The problem arises in that his performances of this repertoire are usually stiff, uninspired, and, considering the organ on which he’s playing, ironically monochromatic. One gets the sensation that, in the specific case of the orchestral works, he never bothered to listen to the original, although he very well may have.  By contrasting example, we have Paul Jacobs, who has also made a speciality of concert performance, including transcriptions of orchestral pieces. He plays as if he were conducting an orchestra.  In other words, it’s almost as if he thinks orchestrally first and organistically second.  The result are performances that completely captivate the listener. The images of Edwin H. Lemare, or Will C. MacFarlane or Samuel P. Warren and, yes, Virgil Fox, and the other giant virtuosi of that philosophy of performance come to mind. Just playing a big romantic organ isn’t enough; in order to excite an audience you need to have the personality to make it work — “fire in the belly” as the saying goes.

Then third, there’s the bickering.  Which is better, tracker or electric/electro-pneumatic?  Proponents of fully mechanical action (tracker) organs and their counterparts who espouse either fully electric or electro-pneumatic action are so vociferous as to their causes that nowadays if a concert hall owner wants to build a new organ they’re compelled to spend the extra thousands of dollars to build two consoles; i.e., one of each (Verizon Hall in the Kimmel Centre in Philadelphia, PA for example) so as not to alienate either of the two factions of this already diminutive group of so-called music lovers.

4.  Organists have problematic taste.  This is a broad agenda which includes aspects from the above category.  Notwithstanding, organists have this uncanny predisposition toward ugly sounds.  Let’s choose a few examples.   1) The Tierce as a chorus stop:  As a facet of their association with the Baroque revival organists have mindlessly accepted the near constant use of the tierce (for non-organists the tierce sounds two octaves and third above the fundamental pitch) as a chorus stop.  Now don’t get me wrong, the tierce can be very handy and colourful; however, it’s use requires great discretion — an “acquired taste” as they say.  It’s one of those sounds which is unique to the organ, and is primarily (though not exclusively) French. It’s been imitated by composers in other media:  Saint-Saëns (an organist himself) in his Piano Concerto #5, and Ravel in “Bolero” are classic examples of this effect used in the orchestra.  In conjunction with other stops the tierce makes for an interesting and colourful solo voice.  But, in chorus, it’s just bloody ugly.  As an artificially amplified harmonic which, when added to any chord, even a basic triad, it will sound dissonant, or at best alien.  Now, I realise that the French, and in particular the French Baroque, were supposed to have used the tierce in full chorus sound; and let’s say that’s a given: that doesn’t preclude its hideousness.  Just because Louis Marchand had bad taste do you have to?  2) The Krumhorn:  I have yet to understand why organ builders continue to insist on making this gratuitously unappealing sound a regular reed stop.  Whether it was suppose to have been an early imitative stop redolent of the renaissance wind instrument (of which it’s not even close) or not is irrelevant.  It just sounds like a very poorly voiced Clarinet stop.  Adding to the sin of this obnoxious sounding thing is the fact that since it is an ancient organ stop dating back to the early Renaissance, it is often UNENCLOSED, making it almost totally useless as an expressive solo stop. As a chorus reed it’s extraneous at best since there are so many other solo/chorus reeds which are less displeasing and more versatile.  Moreover, if you want a clarinet sound then install a Clarinet stop!  As an imitative stop the Clarinet is actually more “authentic” (sorry, I couldn’t resist).  3) Then there’s this proclivity for organists to hold final chords ad æternum.  A very long final chord ending a very soft piece on an highly expressive instrument with the kind of soft stops, in a swell box in which, as the box is closed, the chord seems to almost disappear can be an enchanting experience: again, something only the organ can achieve.  But, on the full organ, it just becomes another example of an organist’s tasteless self indulgence, if not gratification.  This usually occurs (though not exclusively) with a modern piece in which the organist is essentially covering for the incompetent composer’s inability to effectively write a final cadence.  If the organist sits on the last chord long enough the audience will get the message.  Unfortunately, all to often it’s not the intended message.

5.  Organists are too literal.  I can’t tell you the number of performances, live or recorded, in which I’ve either walked out or decided to listen to something else because some organist in his misguided fidelity to the score has tried to follow the registrations that are printed on the page to the letter. The result is often something completely contrary to the spirit of the music.  This invariably occurs during the most lyrical passages in a piece, because the organist sees that a certain solo stop (usually a reed) is called out in the score, and instead of listening to the context, simply pulls out said named stop whether it sounds appropriate or not.  Hey, “it’s what the composer wanted.”  Yes, for the organ which the composer had in mind or was playing at the time the piece was written, but not necessarily the instrument upon which the piece is being performed.  It just takes a little thought, and, yes, a certain amount of good taste. It’s ridiculous to follow printed registrations literally. Since every organist from day one is taught that virtually every organ is different, blindly following the registration strictly as indicated in the score goes against this fundamental tenet.  Context is everything. The determining factors should be:  1) voicing of the instrument, in particular the stops relative to those called out in the score.  For example: when Franck calls for a Swell “Trompette” stop in the Third Choral, in both soft chorus or solo line, context (forget the history or any knowledge of St. Clothilde for now) tells us that most trompette or trumpet stops would simply be the wrong choice.  They’re usually too loud or coarse, or both.  The context within the score calls for a much smaller scaled stop; an organist with even an ounce of reasoning or musical acumen would/should understand that fundamental precept.  If a small to medium sized reed is desired then find something — anything — more suitable, even a Gamba stop:   if it fits the context.  2) the room.  Most American sanctuaries and concert halls are typically dry and non resonant and often a stop or combination that sounds perfectly wonderful in the softening context of a highly resonant European nave or concert hall will sound brittle and harsh — in your face, as they say.  This pertains to my earlier reference concerning the building of “Baroque style” organs in most American churches or concert halls.

6.  Organists aren’t literal enough. Or, in other words, they don’t breathe.  Actually this is a major failing among keyboard musicians in general.  In music of the 19th Century and later many composers went to great lengths to indicate how they wanted their music phrased only to have their intentions completely ignored.  As a composer this is something that I find not only exasperating, but mystifying.  All I ask is… Why?  Why is it with all of this blather about being faithful to the composer’s intentions do pianists and organists so flagrantly disregard what the composer considers crucial to the life of his music?  Phrasing, i. e., the points at which the performer is supposed to breathe, is as critical to the “composer’s intentions” as dynamics, tempo and rhythmic precision. In the case of organists, they are usually so wrapped up following either the registrations too strictly, or conforming to what is “proper” performance practise, or are so enamoured with their interminable legato line, they forget to read the score.  But, what about Bach and other 17th and 18th Century composers who didn’t always indicate or rarely indicated how they would phrase their music?  Well, you’re on you own.  But then, that’s my point; an intelligent performer, with the help of scholarship and a little musical insight, will determine what is the logical shape of the phrase, and then actually articulate the phrase.  Sometimes it’s helpful to have a good singer or wind player actually sing or play the lines for you.  It’s amazing what one can learn from others.  The phrase is God — and most keyboard musicians, especially organists, are apostate.

So, is there any hope?  We’ll see in my final part.

Because of the church’s profound influence on the organist’s approach to playing the instrument; and, since the organ is still primarily situated in the church one can safely assume that the musical thinking of most organists will continue to be, for the foreseeable future, governed by the vagaries of the church.  However, the church’s perfidy extends far beyond the walls of the sanctuary and into the music schools. It is Academia that does the most damage to the ostensible concert organist.  More frequently than not, even before the budding organist gets to engage that first post-graduation church or recital his performance skills, and, dare I say passion, for playing the instrument, have been seriously compromised as Stephen Best so articulately describes in his essay on the subject.  It is during this critically formative period in life that the pall of death hangs over creative drive of the potentially interesting concert organist. Notwithstanding what happens during the student’s tenure at school, often (dare I say usually?) by the time he or she arrives at school the young organ student is already damaged goods by virtue of the church environment upon which I previously elaborated.  In this case, the training received at college merely contributes to what is already a pretty bland approach to playing the organ.  Organists, not unlike their colleagues in other classical music disciplines, are products of the training they receive at the college or university level.  In fact, experience has shown me that the higher the degree the more boring the performer: and in the case of organists it’s even worse.  They are not like their pianist, string or wind playing colleagues who are taught by concert performers. Some of them may be members of an orchestra, but are also chamber music and solo performers; i.e., people who perform regularly and are used to being before audiences, on stage, in concert halls (as opposed to being hidden from congregations).  They are trained in the skills of being a concert performer by bona fide concert performers.

Organists, on the other hand, are taught concert repertoire at the conservatory level by people who are primarily church musicians or just teachers who merely dabble in the concert field.  These people aren’t serious concert musicians they’re dilettantes.  And all that they are doing is merely regurgitating what they’ve been taught by other dilettantes.  Very rare is it that the conservatory/college experience produces a dynamic, exciting concert organist.  The rare ones that do graduate, manage to mainly as survivors; i.e., in spite of what they’ve learned instead of because of it.

So what is this schooling that seems to drain the very life out of the burgeoning concert organist?  Now contrary to what the reader may deduce from what I am about to write, I’m not trying to be mean spirited.  I know that most organ students love their teachers; and the teachers are sincerely devoted to their students, but something is really wrong here, and a lot of it has to do with what is being taught in music schools across the nation.  It’s a strange irony that students at the college level spend so much of their time learning concert repertoire and then end up playing most of it as service music.  And, of course, the flip side of this ironic coin is that they learn what is essentially service music by Baroque French, German and Italian composers and end up playing it in recital.

There seems to be a general trend in music schools where young concert musicians are being taught technique and repertoire and not much else.  In many cases with technically advanced students it’s simply repertoire.  Not unlike ‘No Child Left Behind,’ it’s basically just “practising for the competition.” Students are drilled with repertoire learning just the “right amount” of expressiveness and the technical skill necessary to impress the judges.  Yes, organists too have their competitions, though nobody but organists pay any attention to them.  Rarely, virtually never, are they taught how to get beyond the mechanics of the instrument, viz. the console.  It’s pathetically evident that organists are not taught anything more than the most rudimentary use of the electro/mechanical tools at their disposal, or of the organ’s colouristic possibilities —  the art of registration.  Students who follow the dictates of their teachers without investigating the possible alternatives do so at their artistic peril.  And their teachers over the past three or more generations have slavishly conformed to the precepts as dictated by their teachers, and, more recently (and worse I might add) musicologists.  To do otherwise is to ostracise oneself from one’s peers, and if you think peer pressure is tough on students try it as a faculty member.

Unfortunately, organists don’t comprehend the dismal state of their playing largely because of the cloistered, even narcissistic behaviour they manifest as a group.   Over the past three or more generations as the listening public for the organ has disproportionately shrunk (relative to the shrinkage for classical music in general), organists have withdrawn further and further into their own world (POE’s* notwithstanding), manifesting an almost passive aggressive behaviour, if not outright disdain for other musical disciplines and the public in general.  This self-indulgent thinking has had very destructive consequences for organ music, serious organists and for the existence of the organ itself.  The pressure to conform to what is considered acceptable performance practise (as taught in the music schools) within the confines of this closed society has developed some pretty strange behaviours.  We’ll be looking at those next.

*POE, for non-organist’s, stands for Pipe Organ Encounters; a programme by the American Guild of Organists (AGO) designed to help attract young people (pre-teens and teens) to the organ.  It’s success is at best questionable.

Once upon a time, many years ago, God convened a council of the angels to discuss the Job situation, and a number of other items.  Toward the end of the meeting, before he went on his mission to earth, Satan, always the joker, proposed the following:  “Lord, what if you gave humanity the ability to create with a single musical instrument the sonic equivalent of a painter’s palette; they would have at their fingertips virtually illimitable colouristic possibilities, like one of those symphony orchestras you plan to have them invent, and then — and here’s the good part — and then hand this instrument over to the least imaginative of musicians?”  After the laughter subsided the Lord thought for a minute, and then gave a wry smile: “Sure, why not?”  

Sometimes I am absolutely convinced something not unlike that occurred ages ago.  How else can one explain why a recital on such a glorious instrument invariably ends up being such a numbing evening or afternoon?  So, what is it about organists that causes this extraordinary alienation from the public and the rest of the musical world?

Up to this point I’ve touched upon the issues of Lizzie Leftfoot the conscripted non-organist, the elitist condescension of Academia, and the desperation of organ builders to keep up with the latest fad; all of which should not be underestimated as to their profound influence on the organ’s failure to excite. Notwithstanding, it still all comes down to the organist.  It is the organist who is the connecting link between the instrument — no matter what the design — and the listener.  It is the organist who decides whether or not to follow fashion and allow himself to be, or not to be, swayed or coerced by the dictates of his peers, namely the AGO (American Guild of Organists), organ builders and philologists.  In short, organists have no one to blame but themselves for their plight.

There are almost as many reasons as there are stop names as to why organists are such a peculiarly dull lot as concert musicians.  I’ve already briefly discussed some; perhaps they’ll need further elucidation.  Let’s start with my favourite work place:  the church.  Churches, in spite of their supposed message, can be pretty politically, socially and professionally stultifying, even hostile, environments.  It doesn’t take very long for the young organist engaged in his first position, and getting caught up in the vortex of church politics, to become jaded. This broaches the issue as to what kind of person becomes an organist in the first place. To be a church organist you have to have a certain… er, uh… flexibility shall we say?… to be able to work with clergy and music committees, most of whom are at best philistines.  Most church elders. and clergy in particular, prefer musicians to be complaisant.  People, especially those who are independent thinkers—even worse, independent thinking musicians—are not appreciated in most parishes; and are, in fact often considered a threat.  Therefore, largely since organists work in the church they are as a rule retiring personalities so as to be able to get along with the clergy and the lay leadership.  Whether it’s because they work in the church or because they are already predisposed toward that personality is a matter for the psychologists to determine; but the modern church environment certainly enables self-effacement and the prosaic.  

One of the peculiar side effects of the church environment, and another contributing factor to this phlegmatic approach to music making is that organists become a rather insular lot, even though they deal with people as choir directors. It’s a very different situation than dealing with the public as a concert performer. In the church the organist is dealing with a small (relative to the general public) group of people whom he or she sees at least once or twice every week. This group of people has bonded through the very powerful medium and common purpose of sacred music. It is the nature of this rapport which completely affects the whole dynamic of the relationship, often far beyond that of just a professional one; moreover, it has allowed the organist, in many ways, to become a bit too comfortable. The cocoon-like effect of the church environment with its daily, weekly, and seasonal routines, plus its almost familial milieu, has a way of sapping the individual creativity and imagination necessary for the serious musician. The end result is not only jejune, vapid and eminently predictable music making, but consequently a steady, usually unperceived, decline of standards.  Technically the organist may be in tip-top shape, or at least no worse since graduation. Even so, the artistic challenges are rare.  As we all know technical facility is no substitute for creativity; and although some of the bigger church music positions often demand of the of the organist a level of technical prowess other musicians couldn’t even dare to achieve (especially for the money), they in fact, rarely embrace an accompanying level of musical insight or imagination.  As the quality of church music has declined, the church musician has had to adapt. When compared to the low grade pop music of praise bands and the sludge being spewed forth as propagated by the five Jesuit hacks via junk publishers such as Oregon Catholic Press, suddenly Nathalie Sleeth, John Rutter, and Hal Hopson sound like real composers. As Wyndham Lewis said:

 

“Name anything where taste is at stake — it will provide an example of the systematic forcing down of civilised standards.”

 

With music in the church having been so co-opted, is it any wonder that the musical standards of most organists are left wanting? And of those that do manage to develop certain a level of sophistication in their musical palette; they rarely know how to communicate it in a viable, interesting way.  More on that later.

But, what about the great church musicians of the past such as Bach, Franck, Messiaen, Bruckner, et al?  Didn’t they spent most of their lives in the church and yet manage to be “creative?”  First off, the four composers I mentioned are the only major composers who were also known primarily as organists.  Fauré, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns, and a handful of others were known, and spent most of their creative lives, as musicians outside the church, even though they were fine organists in their own right.  For all of the famed religiosity of Franck, Bruckner and Messiaen, it is mainly through the venues of the concert stage that these composers have found their greatest and most recognised musical expression; notwithstanding Franck and Messiaen’s substantial contributions to organ repertoire, their reputations rest primarily in their non-organ music.  Moreover, Bruckner’s contribution to the organ repertoire is negligible, he preferring to improvise (for which he had become famous throughout Europe, rivalling Franck) rather than compose for the organ.  

I don’t think it’s merely coincidence that along with the decline of the Church’s influence, starting with the late 18th Century, the creative, innovative musician who had been the backbone of Western music had now become just another cog on one of the many gears that kept the machinery of church mediocrity grinding away.  Up until that time the organist had been considered the most brilliant of musical minds.  To have been an organist from the 12th Century through most of the 18th was to have been the best and the brightest and the most innovative of musicians, the church fathers’ usual resistance notwithstanding.  However, during the 19th Century it was  the concert organist who was the star, not the church organist.  Never mind that they were frequently one and the same; it was the secular incarnation in the likes of Edwin H. Lemare, Lynwood Farnam, Louis Vierne, and Enrico Bossi to whom people would flock to see and hear play the King of Instruments.  These were organists who electrified audiences; who dazzled them with their pedal technique and their ability to master all of its unwieldy mechanics and make the contraption sing.  During this this time, culminating in the early 20th Century with the addition of the theatre organ, an organist could make a substantial living playing the organ outside the church. 

Then we enter the ecclesiastically shallow and artistically muddy waters of the late 20th Century; and… well, you know the rest.  Starting with “Folk Mass” in the early 60’s with the nuns and their guitars (Catholic portatives) and the church’s gross misreading of Vatican II and the ignoring of GIRM 2000, what had been a gradual decline in the influence of church music became a precipitous fall (along with an associated decline in liturgy), ultimately dragging down the Protestants with them.  This decline has brought with it in recent years a steady increase in the marginalisation of the organ and its players.  It is a bitter irony of the current state of things, that when a church has become financially wealthy through its pop culture approach to worship, and can therefore afford to, it will spend, huge sums to buy a large pipe organ for its sanctuary, only to have it sit, rarely to be heard.  But hey, it sure is mighty impressive to walk into one of these big modern buildings and see this glorious array of largely silent organ pipes.  What better way (besides the Cross) to tell a potential congregant that this a real church?  It is with the exception of a small number of high profile churches who have managed to fend off (for the most part) the ravages of pop culture, that there is only the remotest indication of the possibility of hearing an exciting organist at the console.

Then there’s the effect of the organist being out of sight.  This phenomenon has two deleterious effects.  First, the organist feels he can get away with things in recital that most other performers can’t, such as not memorising the programme.  Since the audience can’t see, the organist figures he can have sheet must all over the music stand and can get away with virtually sightreading a recital.  Being hidden away either in the corner of the chancel or in the gallery choir loft in back of the nave can give the organist a false sense of security.  Second, not being fully visible to the audience the organist avoids or doesn’t experience the sense of urgency or immediacy that other performers undergo.  This situation is unique to organists and is something of which they may not be fully aware. This “hidden organist” syndrome as part of the overall inhibiting church environment contributes substantially to the lacklustre nature of most organ recitals.  It’s a dilemma that organists more than other performers have with which to come to terms.  Since most organs are in churches most recitals are in churches.  And for many people there still is, always will be, this repressive air that “you’re in church” so behave yourself. The strange dichotomy is that in many churches today, as part of the new, more “hip” church, congregations are being asked to behave more like and audience; and are actually being encouraged to applaud the slightest thing.  In the end, the organist being trained primarily as a church musician and spending most of his professional life musically dealing with all of the stifling effects of the church usually ends up ill-suited for the extroverted behaviour of a secular concert performer; and therefore, should generally avoid playing recitals if he doesn’t want to cause further alienation from the instrument by the general public.  

Unless, of course, he or she is serious about being a concert performer then the training focus needs to be adjusted.  That’s next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When was the last time you:  1) paid to hear an organ recital, or 2) even went to an organ recital?  Yeah, I thought so.  Why is it that organ recitals are so confoundedly somnolent?  I realise this may startle that marginal and cloistered group of people who are devoted organ music fans; but, trust me folks, to the majority of classical music lovers (who are already an infinitesimal microcosm of American culture) the organ is a loud,  often shrill, usually monotonal monstrosity; and is at best, to be avoided, primarily because of the people who are associated with the thing.

Over the past four or five generations the organ accumulated a lot of baggage; going from one of the most popular instruments in America and Europe to virtual pariah status.  And, notwithstanding a number of efforts by the American Guild of Organists (AGO) to generate interest in the organ, it still remains the purview of a pretty self-indulgent, insular group; and is, therefore, largely dismissed as a legitimate concert instrument.  Most major music competitions which involve more than one instrumental category don’t include the organ because it’s generally assumed that no one can make a living as a concert organist: at least here in the USA.

I’ve already touched on some of the more obvious, and lighter baggage such as Lizzie Leftfoot and horror movies; however, in this second part I plan to focus on a lesser considered, yet more serious aspect of this “monotony” onus, and that has to do with classical musical trends and their influence on both organ builders and organists.  

When the “Early Music”/”Period Instruments”/”Authentic Performance”/”What-Have-You” movement was taking hold of the classical music world, the New Music and Anti-Romantic movements paralleled as part of a backlash against what was considered to be the overtly sumptuous, oversized, decadent remnants of Le Belle Epoch and the English Victorian periods preceding World War I.  The immense destruction and gratuitous murder of millions through the wanton perfunctoriness of modern war machinery left a dystopic society disillusioned about the past and pessimistic about the future.  The arts hypostatised the quest for a newer society based on the here-and-now and a more empirical world view than the speculative metaphysics of the 19th Century.  Representation in the arts acceded to abstraction, the emotional to the cerebral.  The opulent and ornate were out, austerity and clarity were in. The clean, spare lines of the “new” exhorted the efficiencies of the The Machine Age.  Architects like Wright, van der Rohe, and Gropius; artist/sculptors like Cezanne, Brancusi, Mondrian,  Picasso, Gaudier-Breska,; writers like Pound, Eliot, Michaux, Hemingway, Lewis; dancer/choreographers like Graham, Balanchine, Nijinska; and composers like Debussy, Stravinsky, Schönberg, Ives, Varese not only eschewed the what they thought to be the excessiveness of the 19th Century, but openly rebuked it.  Rather, they looked back to the moderation of Classical Greece and (more so with music) the Age of Enlightenment for their wellspring of inspiration.  The term Neo-Classical entered the vernacular of the arts.

Music being the most abstract of the art forms there was a natural affinity for many musicians to this more classical, abstract approach to the arts.  No longer was there the impetus for composers to try and paint pictures with notes as had been attempted with the orchestral tone-poem or with picturesque titles (which, of course used words to describe the character or emotions to be conveyed by the piece).  Composers could return to the craft of musical composition.  The discipline of Musicology became a serious endeavour.  Although music historians couldn’t practically return to the Age of Pericles they could dig back to the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and especially the Baroque were there were written records i.e., books and pamphlets, by principals of the time which elucidated, often in painstaking detail, to colleagues and novices matters of music theory, proper performance style, technique, and instrument construction.  This quest for historically accurate — more scientific if you will — manner of performing plus resurrecting long forgotten music coincided neatly with the modern neo-classical, no frills fashion of the age.  Performers and instrument makers began to examine Palestrina, Bach and Handel with a greater concern for not only the appropriate resources, but, just as importantly, the proper æsthetic. Along with the gut strung, shorter bridged violins and valveless wind instruments, and the resurrection of instruments such as the lute, recorder and harpsichord came the eschewing of all vibrato and what had come to be considered excessive, even unctuous legato. 

The organ world eventually caught on to this trend.  This trend not unlike other trends or fashions began to have a life of its own.  Whereas in the orchestral, vocal, instrumental world the Romantic, though considered outré by “the movement” was still able to coexist with it.  Architecture and organ building had disastrous consequences.  The the lust for the “new” led to the destruction or mutilation of grand buildings from all periods; however, the 19th Century received the brunt of the massacre.  Gloriously ornate Second Empire, Greek and Gothic Revival buildings were replaced with vapid, colourless, soulless, metal, cement and glass boxes posing as the new, the modern, the efficient.  Perhaps the quintessential example of this perverted thinking was the destruction of New York City’s Penn Station, a truly magnificent example of Greek Revival architecture on a grand scale; only to be levelled and then, to add insult to injury, replaced by Madison Square Garden, easily one of the ugliest buildings conceived by the mind of man.  Such was also the fate of pipe organs around the country.  Organists, not wanting to be left behind jumped onto the band wagon with gusto. Following the dictates of this new scholarship, one of these newly minted organist/scholars would be hired at a church, find a late 19th or early 20th Century instrument and immediately start a campaign to convince the members of the church that their organ was all wrong and needed either rebuilding or replacement. Organs by master organ builders of the 19th and early 20th Centuries were either completely gutted or were “updated” to make them “historically correct.”  The end usually resulted in instruments so restricted that they could only play music from the 17th and 18th Centuries and the new bare bones music of the 20th Century, or so badly mutilated as to render them useless for any repertoire.   

  At the same time music schools became more and more isolated from the general music public.  The Ivy Leagues with their focus on the purely academic led the way with their emphases on Musicology, Theory and Composition.  Treatise after treatise permeated the music world and professor after professor exhorted young musicians what as to what was considered the “correct” way of playing Bach and his contemporaries; that anything that smacked of the Romantic or the emotional in music was frowned upon if not openly ridiculed.  The only possible exception allowed was the “affect” in Baroque music, a form of ornamentation that was suppose give a piece some sort of contrived emotional content.  Peer pressure, especially among an already cloistered group can be a destructive thing to the individual creative artist.  Such destructiveness has become very evident with the plethora of virtual zombie organists graduating from prestigious music schools, whose photos show up in the adds of inept concert managers which fill the pages of The American Organist magazine. Organists who, as Stephen Best so succinctly describes in On Passionate Music Making had lost or forgotten why they became musicians at all:

 

“I’ve started listening more closely to former students who have moved on to college organ study at some of America’s most distingished schools, keeping in mind the question my colleague posed [“Why is it that when students come home after studying with all kinds of well-known teachers, they don’t play as well as they did in high school when they studied with you?”]. And you know, at times I think he may be right! I hear highly polished technique and great attention to historic performance practice, but I hear dry and unmoving performances. The passionate music-making that characterized high school days has disappeared! Isn’t anyone teaching it any more? Where are the other voices in the wilderness who cry with me: “No, technique by itself is NOT enough!”

 

Unfortunately, those voices were squelched by the disinterested, historically correct elite of musical philology who are more interested in determining if that speck is a dotted note or just a piece of fly dung.

Needless to say, organ builders saw gold “in them thar sanctuaries.”  The lust for authentic, Schnitger style “Werkprinzip” organs became all the rage.   Everybody had to jump on the band wagon; from early, earnestly sincere, yet (as was discovered after much damage had been done) misdirected devotees like Holtkamp, Flentrop and Schlicker with their free-standing pipes, to rabid later converts like Lawrence Phelps at Casavant (who later prostituted himself to become Allen Organ’s bitch) and Robert Sipe at Æolian-Skinner, to the Johnny-come-lately’s at Möller and Austin who really didn’t give a damn about “the cause,” they saw a whole new market for pipe organs in an effort to fend off the spreading virus of electronic organs.  Not unlike what happened in the recording industry when CD’s appeared on the market and everyone wanted to replace their LP’s with the latest thing that was supposed to be so much better. Suddenly churches were replacing instruments originally designed to accompany choirs and congregations in buildings with distinctly American non-reverberant acoustics with organs full of spitting (“chiffing”) tissue paper foundation stops and an overabundance of upper work. 

Now, don’t get me wrong; a well designed German or French Baroque style instrument (of which most of these new American instruments were poor imitations), with all of its  associated upper work is designed for an highly reverberant European church; and, in its proper setting can be a scintillating and crystalline sounding organ.  That’s because of the architecture of most European churches and basilicas which have anywhere from two to ten seconds of reverberation. From a practical standpoint, with money being a very scarce commodity in the 16th and 17th Centuries, a relatively small instrument had to be designed that could fill a very large, very crowded nave (back then you HAD to go to church) so that Günter in the back of the church could hear the chorale melody in order to sing along.  Moreover, they were designed for a specific cultural æsthetic for the time: an æsthetic alien to most people today. So, if you take this same scintillating, crystalline European organ, or one designed like it, and place it into an American church with its “dead” acoustics, the bloody thing screams at you.  This is essentially what was done during the decades from the late 40’s through most of the 90’s.  Then there is the further associated complication of purely mechanical (“tracker”) keyboard action as opposed to electrical (including electro-pneumatic) action, which I’ll get into in Part III of this polemic.

There are still companies and “consultants” who still insist that German or French Baroque design is the only “true” organ design and continue to shove their dogma down the throats of unsuspecting churches.  And of course, the result is tens of thousands more will learn to despise the organ as a loud, shrieky instrument played by an unimaginative, pedantic organ “scholar” or Lizzie.  Is it any wonder why the organ has become so unpopular?