Do Something Different

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I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
― Pablo Picasso

My mantra throughout these pages so far has focused on treating the practice of improvisation like we treat the practice of repertoire: choose a passage, practice it over and over again until we get it right and then move on. Because improvisation is the art of instant music, far too often I suspect we finish the task at hand and never consider how we could do it better if we were to attempt that same task again. Mastery requires attention to detail, and the only path I know towards mastery is through repetition.

The Flip Side

Even so, repetition should not lead us into ruts. If we have acquired some degree of mastery creating a fugue on Alma Redemptoris Mater, we need to move on to trying a scherzo on the same theme or perhaps a fugue on Amazing Grace instead. If a passacaglia with ten variations happens to fill the time needed this week’s offertory collection, how many more variations could you could do if your time were not restricted? 10 more? 20? 50? 100? How soon would they start sounding like an earlier variation that you’ve already played?

Do you have a favorite form to improvise for the postlude? How many toccatas on the last hymn have you played? While that may be a great way to practice your toccatas with different themes, how about doing something different?

Broad bases for soaring heights

For many years, I have considered acquiring skills to be like building a pyramid. When you focus on mastering one task, it is the equivalent of building higher and higher. When you expand to a related area, you build out the base. Anyone who has ever played Jenga understands the troubles associated with building too high on a narrow base. With a larger base, it becomes easier to reach the previous highs as well as to reach new heights. When we do something different, we expand our base.

The easiest way to start is by changing one element at a time. If most of our improvisations are in 4/4, how about only improvising in 3/4 for the next week? If you are comfortable in 3/4 and 4/4, how about making this the week of 5/4? Do you have certain keys you favor when improvising? How about choosing a key like F# major or Eb minor to be the tonic for your improvisations this week? These little steps outside of our comfort zones help us build a larger base and will make the tasks within our comfort zone seem that much easier.

Large Leaps

Tackling a task too far away from our current pyramid may not help us reach new heights quickly, but it might also be just what we need to do in order to add another ten layers to our pyramid. Going skydiving might not seem related to our music practice, but if jumping out of a plane can give us more courage to begin improvising with little or no preparation, I say go do it!

How many of last week’s twenty ways to improvise on a hymn are within your comfort zone? How many would be small steps outside? Are there any large leaps required for you on that list? Did you actually try any of the suggestions that were new to you? The road to mastery requires practice and repetition, but you also need to be sure you do something different!

Hoping your improvisations are as magnificent as the pyramids of Egypt!
Glenn

PS One of the best ways to grow is through competition. This week, I wrote a post about the new rules for the 2016 AGO National Competition in Organ Improvisation. I’d love to hear thoughts from other improvisers about the competition and my comments on the new rule set. Please comment at the end of the article, or if you are so inclined, contact AGO directly.

 
Recent additions to organimprovisation.com:

Organists:

Mode:

Themes

 
Newsletter Issue 21 – 2014 09 22
See the complete list of past newsletter issues here.
Sign up to receive future issues using the box to the right on this page.

Thoughts on NCOI 2016

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The Update

The rules for the next American Guild of Organists National Competition in Organ Improvisation have been released and are available here. While the competition has not been without changes in the past, this set of rules is a significant departure from previous versions. Even if I thought changes in the rules were warranted, I’d like to make some observations about the new rule set that seem to run counter to the spirit of an improvisation competition.

Time lag

Most competitions begin with a recorded round, leading to a selection of semi-finalists who will compete live in person. A smaller number of finalists is then selected to compete in one last performance evaluation. When there are only 5-6 semi-finalists, most competitions hold the semi-finals and finals a few days apart from each other. For the 2016 edition of NCOI, the semi-finals will be held at the regional convention almost a full year before the finals. For a competition focusing on creating music with minimal preparation, having a year between rounds might as well be having two different competitions.

Repertoire

The 2016 NCOI adds a repertoire requirement. To win the competition, not only will one need to improvise, four substantial pieces of repertoire must be learned. To ask an improviser to demonstrate technical ability and mastery of the instrument by playing a piece of repertoire seems reasonable. I know there are other improvisation competitions that demand repertoire, but in no other case does the time for repertoire become more substantial than the time required for improvisation. In the NCOI semifinal round, it could take a competitor longer to play the repertoire requirement than to meet the improvisation requirement!

Hymns

The other new requirements for the 2016 edition are hymns and figured bass. While competitors have been provided hymn tunes as themes for many past competitions, it is now a requirement for a competitor to actually play a hymn with people singing. Recognizing that creating hymn introductions and varied accompaniments is a skill that at least some organists practice every week, this seems to be a more reasonable new territory for NCOI to include. However, as there was a separate hymn-playing competition held in Boston, it seems much preferable to me to continue holding a distinct hymn-playing competition rather than folding this skill into the improvisation competition. While related skills are involved, I would still consider improvising to accompany a congregation as a small subset of the skills necessary to win an improvisation prize.

Figured Bass

While hymn playing may be the bread and butter of most organists’ playing duties, realizing a figured bass seems completely foreign to what most organists must do even occasionally. While improvisers may (should) learn to realize figured bass, it seems to me like asking the entrants in NYACOP to play scales and arpeggios for their assigned repertoire. Who would go to a performance competition to listen to scales and arpeggios or Hanon exercises? While I may be exaggerating slightly to make my point, if a candidate doesn’t know how to realize a figured bass, I feel pretty confident that they won’t be able to improvise variations on a given theme. I say don’t waste time asking for a figured bass, let’s hear the variations!

Preparation

While the rules for the timing of the preliminary round need some further clarification (Does the competitor get three 30 minute preparations or only one?), the significant change in preparation time is the availability to use the organ and the material that is provided more than thirty minutes in advance. Granting access to an instrument during preparation time makes it easier for candidates to verify or practice ideas before performing, but is still a minor change compared to the release of themes days or months in advance. For the preliminary round, the competitor is to improvise five contrasting variations on Vom Himmel hoch. The theme is already known, so there is plenty of time for an enterprising composer to actually write a set of variations, memorize them, and then perform them for the recording. With a few months of preparation, I am sure that the quality of variations heard by the judges will be better than in previous years, but I have no confidence that they will be able to select the best improviser from an exercise with this much preparation time.

Likewise where the themes are given three days in advance for the semifinal and final rounds, I become less assured that what we hear will be an improvisation. Having written a Prelude and Fugue (albeit short) in less than a week and even some compositions in a few hours, I certainly could plan out very carefully if not outright compose my entry. Anyone with sufficient skills to win the competition could certainly posses the skills to compose a piece that fast and either memorize it or bring rough sketches to the competition.

To counteract these potential composition practices, there are very particular rules about what a competitor may write on a piece of paper and bring to the console for the competition. Certainly as long as themes are given out days in advance, what sort of papers one can bring to the competition should be restricted, but what does it mean to compose full harmonies? Would writing out figures over a bass line or using guitar/jazz chord notations be a rule violation? If the goal of all these changes is to raise the level of performances, why couldn’t the competitor take part of the thirty minutes of preparation time to write out harmonies in whatever format he or she chooses? Restricting the paper brought to the competition seems to be a much cleaner rule than trying to tell someone what can or cannot be written down.

Adjudication

Sadly, too few organists practice improvisation at the level where they could consider entering NCOI. It is a difficult skill to master, and even more difficult to teach. With only a handful of master improvisation teachers in this country, in order to avoid any potential conflict of interest where teachers judge their own students, many times the best improvisers are left out of the judges pool. Having a problem finding qualified judges however is not solved by adding more people to the panel. I propose following the model of St. Alban’s, Concours André Marchal, Chartres, and Haarlem where the jury is announced in advance. Competitors are hidden from the judges during all rounds of the competition and are free to study however often they can beforehand with the jury members. Having well-qualified jurors seems much preferable to me than having more people on the jury (especially if they cannot improvise).

Final Round

The AGO has a long tradition of offering certification to its membership. Perhaps unknowingly, the AGO has just set up three levels of improvisation certification corresponding to the preliminary, semifinal and final rounds of the NCOI. When viewed through the lens of certification, each of the requests at the different levels seems appropriately graded and a reasonable way to verify that someone has a well-rounded skill set. Just as a math teacher would ask a student to show his or her work to get to the final answer, it seems perfectly reasonable in a certification process to verify that a candidate can cover all the required bases. At a competition however, repeatedly asking a candidate to do the musical equivalent of reciting a multiplication table is redundant and distracting from the primary topic of improvisation.

Coda

I understand that there was an age limit proposed initially in the 2016 rules for NCOI. A competitor in the 2014 NCOI succeeded in getting that removed by appealing to the AGO’s purpose of professional development and the lack of entrants selected for the competition above that age limit. While I hope the committee will consider my viewpoint for further revisions to the 2016 rules, I have no expectations that any further changes will be implemented for this year. The best suggestion I can make for this rule set would be to expedite the process and hold the final round in Charlotte in 2015 a few days after the semifinal round. Launch a new set of rules for 2016 in Houston with a panel of three judges selected and announced in advance with performance requirements similar to NCOI 2014. Remove the hymn playing (and figured bass) requirements from NCOI and establish a regional hymn playing competition that requires improvised introductions and accompaniments. (The winners of this competition could then provide a fabulous hymn festival for the following national convention!) Finally establish procedures to offer one or more certificates in improvisation as outlined above.

As a devoted supporter of the art of improvisation at the organ, I wish to support any effort to encourage more people to improvise and to raise the level of improvisation in this country. (After all, I started organimprovisation.com in my free time.) I hope AGO will take my suggestions and turn NCOI back into a competition and begin to explore the certification and other hymn-playing competition ideas I have offered here so that we may all work together to encourage spontaneous music making.

Glenn Osborne
www.wmglennosborne.com

Puer Natus Est

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PuerNatusEst

Puer natus est is the introit chant for the Third Mass of Christmas Day (Mass of the Day). The chant is in the mixolydian mode.

Find a list of other chant themes here.

Videos:
Olivier Messiaen – Improvisation “Puer Natus Est” – La Trinité
Tobias Schmid – Improvisation ‘Puer natus est’ – Rottenburger Dom
Jonathan Wessler – Fantasy-improvisation on Puer natus est nobis – Christ Church Episcopal, Rochester, New York

Mixolydian Mode

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MixolydianMode
The Mixolydian mode is Mode 7 of the church modes used in Gregorian chant. In modern terms, it is most easily described as the scale from G to G using only the white notes of the piano. In order to construct the scale starting on other notes, follow the pattern ascending from tonic: whole step – whole step – half step – whole step – whole step – half step – whole step.

A handout showing the mode starting from all twelve notes is available here.

The Mixolydian mode is considered a major mode because of the major third above the tonic. It differs from the major scale by having a lowered seventh degree. The ancient Greek Mixolydian mode in the diatonic genus resembles the Locrian mode rather than the ecclesiastical Mixolydian mode.

Some themes in the Mixolydian mode include:

  • Asperges me
  • Puer Natus Est
  • In Paradisum

Léonce de Saint-Martin

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Leonce de St-MartinLéonce de Saint-Martin (1886-1954) became titulaire of Notre Dame de Paris from 1937 until his death. He succeeded Louis Vierne after a decision by the cathedral authorities. But it was a controversial appointment, a petition from 55 organists and other church musicians of Paris has asked for an open contest as were Vierne’s wishes, but it was not to be. St Martin’s appointment was to remain controversial for the rest of his time at Notre Dame, his abilities were not held in high regard by many in the Parisian church music scene.

Videos:
Léonce de Saint-Martin – Elevation – Notre Dame
Léonce de Saint-Martin – Noel – Notre Dame

Jerusalem

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Jerusalem
Composed by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry in 1916, Jerusalem is probably one of his best known works. Originally composed for “And did those feet in ancient time” by William Blake, in the US, it is often used for the text “O day of peace that dimly shines” by Carl P. Daw. The song was used by the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies until they won the right for women to vote, and it is now sung every year at the end of the “Last Night of the Proms” in the Royal Albert Hall. It is considered to be England’s most popular patriotic song.

Find a list of other hymn tune themes here.

Videos:
Kerry Beaumont – Free improvisation on the hymn tune ‘Jerusalem’ – Coventry Cathedral

Jörg Abbing

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JoergAbbingWebsite:
http://www.joergabbing.de/

Born in 1969 in Duisburg, Jörg Abbing began studies in piano and composition with erste Alexander Meyer in Bremen and organ with Günter Eumann. He then studied church music, organ playing and musicology in Düsseldorf and Saarbrücken where his teachers included Almut Rößler and Volker Hempfling. He also studied organ with Gaston Litaize. He also studied privately in Paris with André Isoir, and Naji Hakim.

Since 1995, he has served as Kantor and Organist at the Ev.Stiftskirche St. Arnual in Saarbrücken. He also teaches liturgical organ playing and improvisation at the Hochschule für Musik Saar in Saarbrücken. He has written biographies on Maurice Duruflé and Jean Guillou.

Recording:
Symphonische Orgelimprovisationen
IFO-Verlag, Saarbrücken: 1998.

Videos:
Jörg Abbing – Improvisation (Intermezzo) – Saarbrücken
Jörg Abbing – Improvisation – St Matthias Kirche, Berlin

Twenty ways to improvise on a hymn

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As this issues is number twenty in the series of newsletters, I thought I’d offer a simple and practical list of twenty ways to practice a hymn that you can make part of your regular routine. Depending upon your experience level, some of these might be considered warm-up exercises while others will hopefully help you expand your improvisational toolbox. While I typically only give hymn melodies on the website here, I’m writing this list with the presumption that you have a four-part harmonization in front of you, so break open the hymnal and get started!

  1. Transpose the hymn to all the other major or minor keys.
  2. Play the hymn in other modes: change major to minor (or vice versa). Try Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian (coming this Friday) as well.
  3. Invert the soprano and alto parts. (If this is your first effort at doing this, don't worry about parallel fifths for this or any of the other exercises on this list. Simply play the notes on the page.)
  4. Play the melody in the tenor (left hand) with the right hand playing the alto and tenor parts up an octave. Play the bass either with the left hand or pedals.
  5. Play the melody in the tenor(left hand) with the right hand playing the tenor part above the alto part. Again the bass can be played with the left hand or pedals.
  6. Use an 8' stop in the pedal to play the melody in the tenor register. Play the bass with the left hand while the right hand fills in from the tenor and alto parts.
  7. Play through the hymn harmonizing each melody note as each of the following functions: tonic of a major chord, tonic of a minor chord, third of a major chord, third of a minor chord, fifth of a major chord, fifth of a minor chord, tonic of an augmented chord, tonic of a diminished seventh chord. (See Issue #7 for an example.)
  8. Rather than applying one type of chord throughout the entire hymn, choose a numeric sequence (such as 1-3-5, all in major) and follow the same idea as above. You could also follow a more complicated sequence, such as 1M-3m-5M-1m-3M-5m. While the progressions might not make much sense harmonically, this will help you think and shift between keys quicker.
  9. Play the melody as a two-voice canon at the distance of one note, a half-measure, and a full measure. Each of these canons can be practiced starting with the right hand, left hand or pedal creating six different combinations for each distance.
  10. Choosing the distance than works best, play through the canons again, but at different melodic intervals.
  11. Play a monophonic variation arpeggiating the chords in triplets or sixteenth notes. Be sure and try different figurations where the melody note is not always the first note of the arpeggio.
  12. Create a duo where the top voice is the melody and the bottom voice plays eighth notes (two notes for every melody note).
  13. Create a duo where the top voice is the melody and the bottom voice plays triplets (three notes for every melody note).
  14. Create a duo where the top voice is the melody and the bottom voice plays sixteenth notes (four to one).
  15. Repeat steps 12 to 14 with the melody in the lower voice and the more active voice above the melody.
  16. Repeat 12 to 14 but rather than ornament the bass, ornament the melody. Instead of a duo, you may choose to play the full ATB harmony as in the hymnal as the accompaniment.
  17. Create echo passages by changing manuals (or registration) and repeating short sections of phrases, i.e. for a two-measure phrase, repeat the second measure, and then repeat the last half-measure again.
  18. Change the meter from duple to triple (or vice versa). How many different ways can you shift the meter? For example, one measure of four can become two measures of three or one measure of three.
  19. Change the meter to 5/4, 7/8 or some other odd (but consistent) meter.
  20. Improvise a toccata following the plan from the newsletter sign-up handout!

Many of these steps can be done at the piano and do not require a significant chunk of time, so I encourage you to practice as many of them as often as you can. If you can’t practice all twenty daily, choose as many as you can and practice them for twenty days and then move on to another set. Slowly over time, your improvisational skills will grow.

May your improvisations be better each day,
Glenn

 
Recent additions to organimprovisation.com:

Organists:

Mode:

Theme

 
Newsletter Issue 20 – 2014 09 15
See the complete list of past newsletter issues here.
Sign up to receive future issues using the box to the right on this page.

Lydian mode

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LydianMode
The Lydian mode is Mode 5 of the church modes used in Gregorian chant. In modern terms, it is most easily described as the scale from F to F using only the white notes of the piano. In order to construct the scale starting on other notes, follow the pattern ascending from tonic: whole step – whole step – whole step – half step – whole step – whole step – half step.

A handout showing the mode starting from all twelve notes is available here.

The Lydian mode is considered a major mode because of the major third above the tonic. It differs from the major scale by having a raised fourth degree, though some chants will use a B-flat negating any difference between this mode and the major scale. The ancient Greek Lydian mode in the diatonic genus resembles the major scale rather than the ecclesiastical Lydian mode.

Some themes in the Lydian mode include:

Videos:
Olivier Latry – Improvisation on The Simpsons Theme – Toronto

Klaas Bolt

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KlaasBoltKlaas Bolt (1927-1990) taught improvisation at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, where Masaaki Suzuki was among his students.


Recordings:

Klaas Bolt: Improvisations
– Haarlem Bavokerk, Haarlem Nieuwekerk, Zandvoort, Krewerd, Groningen Martinikerk
– Disque Lindenberg; CD 38,


Live Concert Maartenskerk Zalt
LBCD16
Includes an improvisation on Psalm 79

Audio:
Entry in the 7th Haarlem Improvisation Competition
Entry in the 8th Haarlem Improvisation Competition
Klaas Bolt – Haarlem, 1958
Klaas Bolt – Variatie over een Sint-Nicolaaslied – Grote of Sint-Bavokerk Haarlem

Videos:
Klaas Bolt – Psalm 108 – Harderwijk