An instrumentation experiment

So who was playing the piano?  I got asked that once after services this Sunday.  For the second communion hymn, the first verse was played on the organ and the rest on the electronic keyboard.  Well, the answer is that I was playing both of them from the organ console.

I've mentioned it before, but I know there are still many people who don't know about the integration of three different systems at Bethany - the pipe organ, a set of Ahlborn "electronic pipes," and the Roland keyboard.  They are all linked together with a Midi system that allows me to play sounds from any of them on the organ keyboards.  So even though you don't often see me sitting at the keyboard, you are actually hearing sounds from it almost every week.

I decided this week to make the shift a bit more obvious, partly to show off the technological capability and partly because the particular hymn we were singing was quite pianistic.  It had plenty of rolling eighth notes in the interior voices, which can sound strange and disjointed on the organ.  It was composed by Marty Haugen, who was born in 1950 and is known for composing lighter, modern fare that can be played on a variety of instruments but are particularly well suited for piano (and even guitar in some churches).  He composed the liturgy that we were singing over the summer before switching back to one of the "old settings" this fall.

In my opinion, this particular experiment was only semi-successful.  I had the keyboard volume set too low at first service, for one thing.  It was also a relatively unknown hymn so that the congregation seemed to struggle with it a bit.  (The choir will be singing next Sunday, which always helps provide a solid core sound to any hymn!)

But the whole issue reminded me of the flexibility of some composers and some music.  Early keyboard works were often composed for harpsichord or organ or piano or whatever keyboard instrument you had aruond.  Bach's Well Tempered Clavier (ostensibly a keyboard work) has famously been played by string quartets and recorded by the Swingle Singers.  This coming Sunday, we'll be hearing one of Mozart's oboe concertos played on an alto saxophone.  The variety lets us hear familiar pieces in a new way, and the change of sound helps keep our attention lest we get lulled into complacency during worship.  In that sense, I think the hymn was successful this past week, as well as the change in liturgy.  I hope you enjoyed both!

Practice, practice, practice

When I switch to the piano, it always seems to catch the ear of the congregation. I think that's one reason that so many people commented on this past Sunday's prelude. Since it's my first instrument, I always enjoy the opportunity to play some of the classical repertoire during the service from time to time.

By popular demand (or at least thanks to a few quite vocal requests), I'll be playing the Beethoven variations again as the prelude on July 4th. The more I think about it, the more excited I am to have the luxury of revisiting and polishing the performance. After all, one of the frustrations of a church musician is the lack of practice time. Every week there are 4 or 5 new hymns, a prelude, postlude, and offertory (in addition to the repeated liturgy). That much polished performance repertoire could represent as much as half a semester for most college students.

So in addition to trying to balance musical styles, volumes, registrations, a church musician is always trying to balance the difficulty of the service music. A virtuosic prelude gets paired with a simpler postlude; a newly learned offertory is played the same week as a more familiar prelude. For me, summer means a bit of a chance to catch up, to explore new repertoire, and to keep planning and learning.

John Lennon famously said that life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. Similarly, church music is what you play while you're struggling to learn and plan for the week ahead! I just hope and work to enhance the worship service, remembering that it's not a recital, and that next week is just around the corner so I'd better get back to practicing.

Happy Birthday, Chopin

Today may or may not be Chopin's birthday. He always claimed that it was March 1, though church records put it earlier. No matter what the date, though, this year marks the bicentennary of the great composer's birth.

Chopin composed only for the piano, which is only one of the reasons we don't associate his work with church music. I actually did play one piece of Chopin's during my time at Bethany, employing the A major Polonaise as a postlude (Op 40, No 1, nicknamed the Military Polonaise). It's about as close to a march as we could ever claim he composed and worked as a change of pace, I believe.

However, some people would shun Chopin's music for its romanticism. His pieces plumb the depths of the passions (in the broad, classical sense of the passions, not simply amorous). Despite his fondness for Bach and classical influences, Chopin's piano music was fully steeped in 19th century Parisian salon culture. The turmoil of the era can be heard in the etudes and the romance in the waltzes, as well as the nationalism of the Polonaises and mazurkas.

I find it intriguing that much of the famous and beloved classical music of the concert hall is from the romantic era, but the church largely shuns it in favor of earlier work (or its modern revival and reinterpretation). A Washington Post article on Chopin today might have touched on the problem when it described the challenge of his work as "walking the fine line between emotion and sentiment, between feeling something and looking back, fondly, on the way it felt." The romantics urge us to action and emotion, not contemplation. Romantic music could inspire liberation theology, perhaps, but not push us toward meditative prayer. Thus, the cliche remains of yoga and prayer to the strains of chant or Bach. Is that fair to the composer's intentions? And is it fair to us that such music is not part of our worship experience?

In other words, do you ever feel that church music (or perhaps even the worship experience in general) intellectualize faith too much (exclude too much romanticism), and thereby diminish the experience? Or does such an emphasis wisely avoid the irrational whirl of personal emotions in order to instruct us and learn God's will?

The church picnic

I'm writing this post a few days before our Sunday picnic, and the weather forecast is still not entirely clear. It looks like a hot weekend, with a chance of rain. Let's all cross our fingers and pray that we get a beautiful morning for our outdoor service.

Since I'll be playing a keyboard and not the organ, I'll get to play some of my favorite piano repertoire. You'll hear music from three centuries and styles. First, Mozart's Variations on a Theme of Duport from the 18th century. Second, Schumann's Fantasie in C Major will represent the romanticism of the 19th century, and third, I will play the 12th of Ginastera's 12 American Preludes.

Ginastera is likely an unknown composer for most people. He was a major 20th century composer from Argentina, whose early work often integrated Argentine folk sounds and whose later work tended to be more abstract and contemporary. The American Preludes were composed in 1944 in the middle of his career (he lived until 1983), and the music reflects both aspects with a rhythmic, dance-like motif in the bass and broad dissonant chords around it. The music may stretch your ear a bit during the offering, but I hope you enjoy the change of pace.

The sound is always different outside. There's no reverb and less sound from the organ than the keyboard. In the different setting, you'll hear yourself and each other in a new way. Don't shy away from it! Confidently sing the great hymns we've chosen, including a great spiritual "My Lord, What a Morning." Then stick around to enjoy the picnic!

Faure, Liszt, and Silence

The Good Friday service at Bethany will include a wealth of good music, scriptural readings, and silence. The choir will perform selections from Faure's Requiem. It is a dramatic and challenging choral work that uses the text for the Catholic mass for the dead. I encourage you not to let the Latin text create distance between yourself and the music. Instead, use the beauty and drama of the work to enhance your Good Friday meditation.

I will be playing Liszt's Consolation III on the piano during the worship service. It's a piece that I have played numerous times for Holy Week over the years. To my ears, it conveys not just the heartbreak of the Passion week but also the hope and calm - the "fear not" message of Christ's ministry.

Finally, the service will include a great deal of silence for meditation. There will be no prelude and no postlude because Good Friday is part of the larger worship experience of Holy Week, not an independent service. For musicians, silence is the necessary space that surrounds a piece of music and that gives it shape, definition, and meaning. The moment before a musician plays is universally a time to take a deep breath and prepare. The moment after a piece ends - before any applause or movement begins - that is often the most beautiful and sacred moment of a piece of music.

Music is literally all around us - not just the junk elevator music and the noise from our ipods. Our hearts keep a beat; trees rustle and the wind whistles; trains and traffic and the conversations of passers-by can coalesce into a symphony; our homes and offices are filled with the sounds of furnaces and the hum and clicking of computers. Even when we are alone and quiet, there is a current of music running through our lives. The silence of Good Friday is a needed corrective to get past the "noise" of life to the contemplation of the beauty of the music of our lives and the story of the Passion narrative.

More WTC and Dies Sind

This Sunday's preludes both hail from the root of our Lutheran musical traditions. First, I'm continuing with my Lenten presentation of selections from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, this time the c minor from his second book. I'll be playing it on the piano instead of the harpsichord, and I'm hopeful that it will make the fugue structure even clearer.

Second, I'll be playing a setting of Luther's hymn of the 10 commandments. Most of you will know that we're singing it on Wednesday nights, and I'll be echoing that melody in the prelude on Sunday morning. The hymn may be unfamiliar now, but it will be returned to its rightful place in our congregation's musical canon by our repetition of it this spring.

Incidentally, I read a brief snippet this week that claimed Bach's later career was "Christianity's gain but...music's loss." The author lamented that Bach was not free to explore all of the musical forms and instruments that were becoming known in his later years. I can't help but disagree and argue that a man who wrote "Soli deo gloria" on so many manuscripts was too devout ever to view his years as a church musician as negative for his musical career.

How do you feel about Bach and his music in the church today? Should we hear more of it? Should we move on to a more contemporary sound? Should we strive for balance? I tend to fall into the latter camp, and I hope you're enjoying the WTC series for Lent!