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By Colin Pykett · Posted
Personally, I don't see this as too much of a problem. My circle of friends and extended family are not, by and large, anything like as attracted to the organ as I am but I've never had any problem in making them just sit down and listen to the damn thing from time to time, on the basis of "how can you say you don't like something if you've never even tried it"! Poulenc's concerto seldom fails to work its magic, on one occasion leaving a 20-something youngster open-mouthed in astonishment bordering on rapture - admittedly, he was a bass guitar player in a pop band as well as running his own recording studio, so he had an educated and innate feeling for music beyond the organ. It helped that I belted it out at realistic volume on big speakers though - one has to be immersed in a realistic acoustic for pipe organ music to work properly in my view. Some time afterwards he received a commission to make a CD for a quite well known pop client, and persuaded him to include some riffs and other background snippets made on a big Compton theatre pipe organ. Beforehand I had no idea he was doing this until he invited me along to the recording session so that I could have a go afterwards! So his previous introduction to the organ via Poulenc had obviously made an impression and resulted in positive consequences. The Poulenc is a case in point in other ways as well. Written to a commission from an aristocrat, I believe this was his first composition for the organ and that he himself was not an organist. Perhaps these are reasons why the work seems to speak so powerfully to other non-organ music buffs? On a similar occasion I did the same thing with the final movement of the Saint-Saens organ symphony, and learnt something myself - the guinea pig on this occasion told me that one of the themes has been used by a pop singer, which I did not previously know. In so many words, she also said how much she enjoyed the sheer simplicity of nothing but scales in C being used in a masterly manner to weave such powerfully-emotive music, together with the integration of piano and organ sounds with the orchestra. The Saint-Saens also came into its own when I was conversing with a psychologist (another non-organist), and we veered towards the interesting psycho-acoustic phenomenon that our perception of musical pitch seems to go flat as volume is reduced fairly rapidly. Interestingly, I had already noticed exactly this effect on the same Saint-Saens recording after the final tutti chord is released. As the reverberation dies away on this particular disc, the effect can be heard distinctly. I played it to him and he made a note of the piece and the CD so that he could use it as a future object lesson. So perhaps the moral here is that the organ can speak at many levels to many people if the circumstances are propitious enough. Maybe one lesson which can be taken away is that arranging various types of interactive events, or informal lecture-demonstrations of the sort hinted at above, might be more effective than merely expecting people to file meekly into church and sit silently through a "recital" (what an awful and out-of-date image that word conjures up!) where the player says nothing and might not even be seen from start to finish. There's nothing new in this idea of course, but such events don't seem to be staged often enough in my view. Sorry for yet another over-long diatribe. -
By Barry Oakley · Posted
I tend to agree with what has already been expressed, although it’s marginally better than it once was. Georgia Mann, for example, does her best. But how do you educate the listening public to know there’s more than the Widor Toccata which has been hackneyed to death. I now turn the sound off whenever it’s broadcast. -
Echo your opinions on this subject completely. I think that trying to educate classic FM listeners into the exciting world of organ music would only result in even more overkilling of 565, Widor V, et.al. " Radio 3 Breakfast Music " doesn`t fare much better either ( IMHO only of course ) Who in their right mind at Aunty Beeb would ever select say, the Canonic Variations as an easy start to the day? The organ per se and the music that goes with it will always be ( IMHO only again ) viewed in Marmite terms. Try sexing it up and you will still have problems. -
Yes, No. 3 in A. An excellent musical intro to an excellent series despite its shortcomings and omissions which Clarke himself was prepared to admit to in the preface to his book of the same title.
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