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MAB

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  1. I know there was one organist in America / Canada (can't remember who) who was assaulted whilst playing by a disturbed character who stabbed him in the back with a knife. I have certainly had music and a tape recorder stolen from my church before I was wise enough to lock everything up. On a related subject, we all spend hours locked in churches by ourselves late at night and I wonder if anyone has ever had any chilling or spooky experiences ? I spent hours on my own in my old church, but found this very enriching spiritually - it was a beautiful church with a most serene atmosphere. If ever I am lucky enough to play in a cathedral, I often find the practice time in the cathedral by myself by far the most rewarding aspect. However, I remember practicing in a North London church one evening for a concert - the atmosphere was so unpleasant that I had to switch off and leave after about 40 minutes, arranging an extra practice session in daylight. It was a most unusual experience, but entirely real, and most unpleasant. Any similar experiences ?
  2. This type of learning is also related to practicing on a silent keyboard, which can be very beneficial. I was told that Madame Durufle, when practicing for a recital, would spend at least half of her time practicing at the console silently. This can provide great refinement of manual control without getting sucked into the sound of the instrument. It is one step along the road of learning music simply by internal process. If you make a mistake, you are not assaulted by the offending 'wrong note' - it becomes a more analytical process of registering the mis - placement in your finger and aligning it silently. Again, this is a technique I find very helpful when preparing a performance on a new organ - practice silently, but making sure that every finger is exactly in the middle of every key. At the learning stage, it can be very helpful to learn a piece with one hand playing notes, and the other hand playing silently on another keyboard. M
  3. Yes, I agree with this as well. I will often learn the notes of a piece until I can basically play it, then put it aside. Perhaps a year later, the piece suddenly fires in my imagination and I come back to it to find that my subconcious has turned it into music during the intervening period. Sometimes a piece I did not actually like when I 'learned' it has matured inside my head and I come to love it on later acquaintance ; I have had powerful experiences of this recently with the Bridge Adagio in E and Bach Sei Gegrusset. I think this process is particularly important for music where there is not a clear structure to support the piece, and much depends on your developing an internal structure to shape your performance - I found this particularly so with the Franck Fantaisie in A a few years ago. The Russians have a saying for this, that 'you learn swimming in the winter, and skating in the summer', that is, that the real learning takes place in your subconscious whilst the physical procedures are resting. On the other point of internal learning, I have heard that Germani learned the Sowerby Pageant on an Atlantic crossing simply by sitting in a chair and feeling the notes with internal / muscular memory. I was also told that when he was a music scholar at Eton, Francis Grier would play a Mozart piano concerto simply by looking at it in a chair for an hour beforehand. Having been at Oxford at the same time as him, and having watched him play the piano, I can well believe this. M
  4. I find that as I grow older as a musician, I have spent much more time thinking about how I practice. This may be due to slower thought processes or pressure of time with work and family which I did not have before, but I also think it reflects a wish to perform better, and interpret the music more deeply, than before. A lot of people talk about doing as much learning as possible away from the keyboard, even marking fingerings in whilst sitting at a table. I can see the point of this but it does not work for me. I will study the music and write in cautionary accidentals at the table, but I can only write in fingerings (which is essential) at the keyboard. Sometimes what works in the abstract just does not work as a matter of mechanics on the keyboard. Sometimes an unusual fingering is required in the particular circumstances of the piece. I remember Roger Fisher's excellent advice ; if a fingering is secure and gives musical results, then it is acceptable. The hoary old chestnut about learning music backwards from the end is good sense which I now adopt. It means that when the piece is at performance level, you feel you are moving into the music you know best, which gives a feeling of security. Joanna Macgregor said that when she learned the Art of Fugue she practiced it at one quarter speed. If the music is good enough, then it can stand this approach. I have also found this very helpful, and now practice everything at one quarter speed, with a metronome. It means that every single note can be consciously locked into your muscles and your neural pathways. I find that this approach makes it easier for me to break through the notes into the music when the time comes to prepare the performance. You hear stories about fabulous virtuosi learning music very fast. I have heard one story of a very famous organist sight reading 'The Wedge' after Choral Evensong (although a pupil of his later told me that his actual advice was to write in every single finger. This is interesting ; I know one cathedral organist who is a fabulous sight reader, and he told me that he deliberately wrote in every finger to slow himself down). Another famous name, we are told, learned the Variations on a Noel in an afternoon. Very impressive - but why exactly is this is good thing ? Kevin Bowyer's advice in OR about eliminating errors by working through them silently, visualising the correct notes and feeling them in your muscular memory has also been very helpful. Indeed, I am starting to think that mental preparation, particularly, detailed visualisation of your performance, is perhaps more important than mechanical preparation (once, that is, the basics have been overcome). Finally, after many years I have finally realised that the only way to play a piece really well is to practice it very hard and live with it over years. My first teacher told me that a piece was either impossible or it was easy, and the difference was practice. This is a good dictum. In the same way I used to feel embarrassed about repeating repertoire too often (pace Paul's remarks about staying fresh). Now, I think that it is only by renewed performances over years (as opposed to mere repeats) that you can really get to the heart of a piece. Andreas Schiff said that he reckoned he started to play a Mozart sonata properly only once he had played it 20 times in concert. Quite often I will learn the notes of a piece, then put it to one side, before concentrating on it a year later for performance. I will play it, say, 5 times in a year, then rest it for a few years before, in effect, re - learning it for a second cycle of performances. So far as practicalities are concerned, I am lucky in that I have access to an excellent tracker organ in my office lunch hours. I aim to practice there for two slots of one hour a week. I have a toaster at home although circumstances (ie a young child) mean that I can never sit down for concentrated, uninterrupted practice for any time. Even so, the odd five minutes here and there can be really valuable. I am sure that little and often, with good assimilation time and a conscious preparation of targets is better than an exhausting 90 minute thrash. I find this whole question of how you practice and performance psychology a fascinating and important area ; it is most interesting to read other people's experiences. M
  5. I understand that Gerard Brooks may have plans to record the complete Saint Saens shortly which would almost certainly be on a leading French organ.
  6. I am reluctant to enter this debate which has stirred such hot feelings as I am a bear of such very little brain when it comes to these things. However, I would just say this. I recently played a very famous new historic rebuild with short bottom octave, short echo manual and pedals where the bottom four notes played something about an augmented fourth away from what you were expecting. It occurred to me that when the 'original' version of this organ was built, it was built in this way not because this was musically advantageous, but because the builder was restricted by the technical and economic limitations of that time. Over the centuries, many people have spent a great deal of time, money and ingenuity in solving these problems in order to liberate the musical potential of the instrument. What is the point, therefore, of spending just as much time, money and ingenuity building the limitations back in ? It just made it harder to give a musical performance of the original repertoire I wanted to perform. I set out to play a Stanley voluntary with an echo section, only to find that I ran out of notes on the bottom of the echo manual. By all means build instruments that show us what the historically accurate sound and touch would have been, but what is the point of deliberately hampering yourself when it comes to realising the music which, surely, is what this is all about ? There is rather a good post on the Radio 3 forum which suggests that if we are going to recreate authentic performance, why not go the whole hog and talk throughout the concert and only take a bath once every 8 weeks as well. Obviously, a joking remark, but not without a grain of truth for me.
  7. Thank you very much, I would be grateful for the specification. I actually played at Winchester two years ago and, given my remarks above, was delighted to be invited back on the spot. My memory of full organ, in fact, is that it is above all musical and embracing, rather than being unpleasant to listen to, although perhaps that is only the effect upstairs at the console. My only slight gripe is that practice time is very limited, and I have been specifically asked not to play anything that will frighten the horses. It is a shame, when you get the chance to play a fine organ like this, that circumstances confine you to simple repertoire that can be set up quickly ; in reality, all you get is 50 minutes of time to register a programme of the same length - hence the need to see the specification and work out most of the registrations on paper beforehand. Having said that, and further to my comments on the Darwinian Organist, you may not be surprised to learn that my programme is not exactly one lollipop after the other ...
  8. I am playing in the Winchester lunchtime series in a couple of weeks and wondered if anyone could point me towards the up to date specification on the internet. So far as I can see, the NPOR specification is rather out of date as it does not include the Nave organ. Staying on this subject, I wonder if there is a thread worth developing here on the questin of cathedral lunchtime recitals. I have played in a number of series over the years and have had a whole range of experiences. Nowadays I am a more or less seasoned performer with, if I may say so, all the right names on my CV. Even so, getting a date at many cathedrals can be exceptionally difficult. It would be probably not be sensible to name individual buildings on this public forum, but suffice to say that at a number of cathedrals, I am given the warmest welcome and made to feel a real guest. A reasonable amount of practice time is offered (and honoured), a token payment towards expenses is made and one is not regarded simply as an unwanted nuisance for a couple of hours. Winchester, incidentally, falls firmly into this category ! Other places are very different. At one cathedral, where I have actually played twice before, once at the invitation of the very eminent director of music, my 6 recent e mails to the assistant organist went unreplied. When I pointed out that this was, perhaps, less than courteous, I received a brusque dismissal being told that it was simply not possible to give me a date. I politely requested an explanation to prevent me bothering them unnecessarily in the future. I am still waiting for a reply. In that case, I am pretty sure that the lunchtime recitals were offered simply to the mates of the person concerned who could offer a prestigious date in exchange. I cannot make such an offer, but is that the point ? If that is the case, is it not more courteous simply to say so ? A very well known establishment promised me a date to be agreed in the forthcoming season. I know that a very highly regarded organist had been approached following my enquiry and he gave me a glowing reference. When I kindly reminded them of this 3 months later and suggested we might get our diaries out, I was told vaguely that all dates had gone and if I wanted to be considered in the future, and was very lucky, they might be so good as to consider me. Another cathedral assured me that they had a 3 year waiting list. When I happened to bump into the assistant at a party a few weeks later, on the spot he offered me a date 3 weeks later. At another cathedral, I was booked to give the lunchtime recital. I was telephoned that morning to be told, unfortunately, that the organ (which was in a parlous state) had finally given up the ghost. Many apologies but they would be delighted to offer me a fresh date. Still waiting. Finally, at another cathedral, I turned up at my appointed practice time only to be looked at in amazement by the (non - musical) staff, conducting some other function in the building, that I should be so deranged as to hope / want / expect to practice on the instrument before the concert. If there is one unifying theme I hear it is that cathedral musicians are 'desperately busy'. I am sure they are, but I am tempted to reply that holding down, as I do, a demanding job from Monday to Friday yet still managing to maintain (I hope) a professional standard of playing, I am really quite busy too. Yet when clients write to me in the office I regard myself as having let them down if they do not get a reply the same day, even if that reply is only to say 'thank you for your enquiry - I have not forgotten you and will get back to you as soon as I can'. I am also tempted to go further and point out that if, as I have always thought, music is a supreme gift of God, and if, as I have always thought, christians implicitly owe a ministry of hospitality to their neighbour, what sort of message does this send out to those who volunteer their musical gifts, at no charge, to promote the organ and its music in the cathedral concerned ? Does this ring any bells out there ?
  9. I would put in a very strong bid for Rawsthorne's Aria published by Kevin Mayhew - worth its weight in gold. I have played it in concerts, before services, after services, as a quiet encore and it never lets me down. I seem to recall it was set for AB Grade 5 or 6. Run, don't walk, to buy this piece. I have recently been introduced to Stephen Burtonwood's music which is well worth exploring ; Herbert Howells meets Rachmaninoff and they walk across the downs to Choral Evensong together whilst the clock stands still at ten to three ; you get the picture. His Cantilena is not difficult but hits the spot every time. As for Howells himself, I am coming to the view that the E flat prelude in the middle of the first set (But the meek shall inherit the Earth) is, perhaps, the best of the lot. All that English regret. Thalben Ball's Elegy in B flat is a classic of the type; it has the reputation (undeserved in my view) as corny, but played straight it shows itself to be a fine piece which is ideal before a service. Finally, William Harris' Prelude in E flat is a perfect miniature - the first of the Four Pieces. Lots to enjoy there !
  10. MAB

    Flash

    In case it helps, my pennyworth on playing the ending of Litanies. I have found that it helps to aim for the top chord (ie the third chord in the sequence) of each phrase. If you can get that one right, then the rest shake themselves into position. Keep the hand very soft at all times - as soon as you get the slightest tension, you are lost. Also, although one should aim to get the notes right, don't get hung up on them. I find it more helpful to feel the shape of my hand in my mind a split second before the chord, and then play into the shape, rather than trying to hit each individual note with each individual finger. I have found this technique of playing to the shape of the hand, and visualising the shape of the hand a split second before playing, very helpful in similar awkward pieces such as Transport de joie or the Durufle Veni Creator. Having said that, this is one of those pieces I have never had the courage to play in concert. Good luck !
  11. MAB

    Flash

    The Egil Hovland Toccata on Nun Danket is worth searching out. Not too hard once you have grasped the sequences and it makes an effect out of all proportion to its difficulty. A good sense of dramatic timing, though, is needed to get the best out of the last page. I would say the same for the Garth Edmundson toccata on Vom himmel hoch, although liturgically that rather restricts you to Christmas. Simon Preston's Alleluyas might also fit the bill. The notes are not terribly difficult, but it is not the easiest piece to pull off ; real judgement and conviction is needed to prevent it sounding incoherent. I played the Dubois toccata a lot last year ; it always wins over the audience but, personally, I find it a far greater test of stamina than the Widor. On a mechanical action organ last year I really had to dig into my reserves to get through the last two pages.
  12. Me again. On this question of presenting serious material in an entertaining way, two good examples of this struck me on the way to work this morning, both being books I have read recently. Howard Goodall has, rightly in my view, cornered the market in the popular presentation of classical music on the television. Whilst I enjoyed his Organ Works programme, I felt his Big Bangs was even better, and I cannot recommend the book of the same title highly enough. The chapter on temperament is a model of lucid explanation of a complicated subject but - and here's the rub - it is presented in an entertaining way, such that the reader is gripped and wants to find out more. Compare this to my music teacher at school who had learned everything there was to know about music, apart from the one rather important fact that it is meant to be enjoyable. Whilst Goodall makes you want to rush away and learn harmony as being the secret of this marvellous gift called music, my school teacher's approach was such as to make a reading of the telephone directory seem erotic by comparison. (Anthony Hopkins book 'Understanding Music' is equally good at showing how dry harmony is actually the life blood of emotion in music). The other book that takes a same approach is Bill Bryson's 'Short history of nearly everything' which grips you from page one, and makes you even laugh out loud, at the most abstruse examples of evolutionary theory, plate tectonics and particle physics. You want to find out more, you realise what a gripping subject it is and - perhaps most important for the present discussion - the integrity of the material is not compromised in the slightest. I am not entirely sure where this leaves us in relation to recital audiences save, perhaps, to repeat a point I made earlier. An engaging presentation of the music with a well thought out introduction, touched with a hint of lightness, can get the audience on your side and will draw them into music that otherwise might seem daunting.
  13. Sorry - still getting the hang of how this works. Thank you very much for your leads on this piece - most grateful.
  14. Apologies if this should be in a different thread where this piece was mentioned (can't remember which one - I think it was the Darwinian Organist) - but I am trying to trace Koehne's 'To his servant Bach, God grants a final glimpse' without much success. Blanks drawn on Google and all the usual lines of enquiry. Can anyone help me with a publisher or supplier ? Many thanks.
  15. Sorry to backtrack a bit - I have not read the site over the weekend. Can I add a few thoughts, from experience, regarding the question of talking to the audience / video screens ? So far as talking to the audience is concerned, some people are very good at it, some are not. I think it is important to know which camp you fall into and tailor your act accordingly. If I talk to the audience, I have a number of rules - First, I will not talk before the first item. Let the music establish itself, then address the audience. I will talk once after the first piece, cover the first half of the programme, then once before the second half or group of pieces, otherwise they have forgotten what you said 40 minutes ago and you are bobbing up and down like an idiot. Second, I do not mention any technical musical term. I have been to recent recitals where a very famous organist explained how the flute was voiced on the choir. Another organist, whose whole demeanour radiated embarrassment, described a Bach prelude as 'like a great upbeat to the fugue'. A third organist, who gave a stunning recital, delivered a thesis about the 'missing' bottom B in the Bach Fantasia. In each case, you could feel them lose the audience immediately. I know it is corny, but the audience wants human colour and to learn a bit about the composer. That way, the realise that a living person with real emotions just like them wrote what on the programme looks like some tedious piece of pre - Bach. An audience will yawn if you programme Buxtehude, but tell the story about his daughter endlessly being turned down and they will laugh and listen. If there is a musical feature to listen out for, I talk about it in everyday terms. This may well be naff stylistically, but from my experience it works. You have got the audience on your side, and once you have got that, then you can play almost anything to them. Third, I admit that I do have stock anecdotes and stories I attach to particular pieces. I also have a script which I memorise in advance. This simply reduces the worry factor. If I am playing a recital, I want to concentrate on the music, not have part of my mind in the last minute of the previous piece wondering what the hell I am going to say about the next piece. Finally, on the subject of video screens, I have only done it once and am an absolute convert. When playing I was totally unaware of the camera on me, but the audience were clearly captivated. None of them were organ recital buffs, but all of them said that they would go to another recital. Res ipsa loquitur, as I might say in my professional life. I accept that careful judgement is needed to get the balance right but, as I say, if you get the audience on your side, you can go on to play a programme of high seriousness ; both aspects, for me, are what it is all about.
  16. For me, the answer is to present 'challenging' music, but be very thoughtful how it is offered up to the audience. Just as a 'lollipop' can be judiciously inserted in an otherwise serious recital (I see that John Scott is including 'Handel in the Strand' in his RAH programme later in the year), so can an unsuspecting audience be led to enjoy music more contemporary than they might otherwise expect. Recently I gave a recital to mark the centenary of my old church. The atmosphere of the evening was friendly and nostalgic. The programme, by and large, was of popular items (my assistant played Pomp and Circumstance 4 and the Suite Gothique). My part of the programme was fairly light, apart from slipping in the Communion from the Messe de la Pentecote. Because I could relate this to a well loved character in the church and told the audience about the birdsong, they accepted it without batting an eyelid. Clearly it was enjoyed and drew a positive response because it was not offered up with a health warning 'danger - this is contemporary music - you will not enjoy it'. Indeed, the most enthusiastic response came from one person whose previous musical tastes strayed no further than Friday Night is Music Night. In another fairly conservative programme I played Macmillan's spellbinding 'Gaudeamus in loci pace'. Again, I was careful not to wave the 'contemporary music' flag. The audience accepted the piece, and all the remarks I received after the concert were of how much people were struck by the atmosphere of the piece. (Apart, that is, from my wife who said it sounded like a computer trying to sing. I tried to take that as a compliment to my exceptional rhythmic precision). So, if the performer does not make a big 'contemporary' deal about the music, and offers it as a small part of a more well known programme, it may be easier for the audience to accept and people can see that there is more beyond Bach, Mendelssohn and Widor, or rather, that there is a continuum leading from ancient to modern. Before coming onto the site today I stumbled across a website for the 'new organ music forum' - four recitals of aggressively modern music. Much as I enjoy finding about new music, that would be too much for me and, I suspect, most other listeners and practitioners. Incidentally, I did hear one performance of 'Die Augen' by a very well known recitalist a few years ago, and recall it as the only recital I have ever managed to fall asleep in ; no small achievement, exceeded, perhaps, only by a friend of mine who managed to sleep through the opening of the Dies Irae of the Verdi Requiem.
  17. Mark Brafield. I grew up in Woodford, East London, and from an early age sang in the choir at St Mary's Woodford, now rebuilt following a fire, with its superb Grant Degens and Bradbeer organ. Roger Fisher was connected to the church through his family, and hearing him play in Woodford was my 'road to Damascus'. The organ and the church attracted, in succession, Robert Munns, Graham Barber and Roger Sayer. Robert was my first teacher, although the other two have also had a huge influence on my playing. Roger Fisher has continued to be a great support and guide, offering me my first cathedral recital at Chester when I was still at school. I read English Literature at Trinity College Oxford and held an organ scholarship there. I then qualified as a solicitor and I now practice mainly as a divorce lawyer in a Guildford firm. I held church positions for about 20 years, the last 13 years being at All Saints, Tooting - one of the most magnificent organs I have ever played (Arthur Harrison, 1906, 3 manuals, 39 stops) in a beautiful acoustic. With marriage and a young child the time had come to 'spend more time with my family' and I gave up this position 5 years ago on moving out of London to Dorking. I continue my concert playing with a schedule that aims to include 2 cathedrals a year and about 8 - 10 other lunchtime concerts at venues in the City or here in Surrey. Touching on another recent topic raised in the forum, I have just, at the ripe old age of 44, got my FRCO (I never had time to study for it when I had a church position !), thanks to the inspiring teaching of Stephen Farr + Daniel Moult.
  18. Next Saturday, 9th September, as part of Dorking Heritage Weekend I am playing for a 'Top 10 Hymns' service at Dorking United Reformed Church. The church now sports a Copeman Hart electronic, but I seem to remember reading that before this, the church housed an organ originally built for the Royal Pavillion in Brighton. I mentioned this to someone at the church who thought this was also correct. Naively I asked what had happened to the old organ now that they had the electronic and I was told that it had simply been dismantled and taken to the scrap heap. Can anyone confirm the provenance of the old instrument and whether it was of any particular historic value ? Incidentally, in case you are interested, the top 10 hymns are very much the traditional favourites. Voting closes at midnight tomorrow (Friday), but at the moment in joint first place are Guide me O thou great redeemer, Shine Jesus Shine and Jerusalem.
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