Hindemith Sonata No. 2, second movement: A Guide Towards Performance

Jan-Piet Knijff teaches organ and chamber music and is organist-in-residence at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College/CUNY. He holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from The City University of New York as well as the Artist’s Diploma from the Conservatory of Amsterdam and is an Associate of the American Guild of Organists. He won both first prize and the Audience Prize at the International Bach Competition Lausanne, Switzerland. His organ teachers have included Piet Kee, Ewald Kooiman, and Christoph Wolff. Visit his website at <www.jpkmusic.com&gt;.

Introduction

Although only a handful of his organ works survive, Nicolaus Bruhns was undoubtedly one of the most important organists of his generation; the famous Bach Obituary mentions him as one of the composers Johann Sebastian took “as a model” for his own work.1 Bruhns was born less than twenty years before Bach, in December 1665, to a family of musicians in Schwabstedt in North Frisia. At the age of 16 he went to Lübeck to study violin with his uncle Peter Bruhns and organ and composition with Dieterich Buxtehude. On the latter’s recommendation, Bruhns worked in Copenhagen for a few years, but in 1689 he returned to the land of his birth to become organist at the Stadtkirche in Husum. He declined an offer from the city of Kiel to become organist there, accepting a 25% raise in Husum instead. After almost exactly eight years in the position, Bruhns died on March 29, 1697, only 31 years old. He was succeeded by his brother Georg, who had succeeded their father in Schwabstedt at the time Nicolaus was appointed in Husum. Georg stayed in Husum until his death in 1742.

Nicolaus must have been an equally virtuoso organist and violinist, and the story that he sometimes accompanied himself on the organ pedals while playing the violin rings true (Harald Vogel was apparently the first to suggest that the arpeggio passage in the “Great” E-minor Preludium may reflect this practice). Although Bruhns’s organ in Husum was not particularly large, it must have been a very fine instrument, as it was built by Gottfried Fritzsche (1629–32), one of the foremost builders of the time. After various alterations, it had 24 stops on three manuals (Hauptwerk, Rückpositiv, and Brustwerk) and pedal in 1723. In addition to a number of sacred cantatas, Bruhns’s works for organ include two preludia in E minor, one in G major, the chorale fantasy on Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, and an Adagio in D major (surely a fragment from a larger preludium in that key, the Adagio was first published by Carus Verlag in the Husumer Orgelbuch, Stuttgart 2001). The authorship of the Preludium in G Minor, first published by Martin Geck in 1967, remains uncertain: its only source mentions a “Mons: Prunth” as the composer, and even if the last name is to be read as Bruhns, it is possible that the work is Georg’s, not Nicolaus’s, as Barbara Ann Raedeke has suggested;2 the piece is definitely much less convincing than Bruhns’s other organ works.3

Editions

Three editions of Bruhns’s organ works are currently available in print:

• Doblinger (Vienna & Munich, 1993), edited by Michael Radulescu. Vol. 1 contains the preludia in G major and E minor, vol. 2 the preludium in G minor and two versions of the chorale fantasy Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland.

• Breitkopf & Härtel (Wiesbaden 1972), edited by Klaus Beckmann. Contains the four preludia and the chorale fantasy. A revision of this edition that will include the Adagio in D Major is scheduled for publication.

• C.F. Peters (Frankfurt & New York, 1967), originally edited by Fritz Stein for the series Das Erbe deutscher Musik in 1937–9, revised by Martin Geck. Contains the four preludia and the chorale fantasy.
Although no longer in print, the following edition can still be found in libraries and sometimes turns up in book sales:

• Kistner & Siegel (Organum series IV, vol. 8), edited by Max Seiffert. Contains only the preludia in E minor and G major.

Although all four editions can be considered scholarly “urtext” editions in their own right, there are vast differences among them. As welcome and “modern” as Seiffert’s editions in the Organum series were at the time of their publication, they are now mostly outdated, sometimes because new sources have turned up, sometimes because eighty years of scholarship (and performance) have led to new conclusions. Important to know is that Seiffert generally supplied tempo indications; he also generously added ties without telling you. The Peters edition, too, is now outdated.

Klaus Beckmann’s editions of the North German organ repertoire (his complete Buxtehude edition is best known, but he also did Böhm, Lübeck, Tunder, and many others) have often been criticized. Given the absence of autographs (manuscripts in the hand of the composer), Beckmann feels it is his task to establish as best a text as he can. In practice this often leads to changes that are arbitrary at best in the eyes of many scholars and performers. While Beckmann mentions everything (or most everything) in his critical commentary, the format he uses is not particularly inviting, to say the least; and if you don’t read German, the abbreviations are practically undecipherable. Although Beckmann’s Bruhns edition is certainly usable, you have to watch out, and better spend a couple of hours figuring out all the changes he made if you want to know what’s actually in the source.

The edition by Michael Radulescu stays much closer to the original: corrections are noted in an accessible commentary; editorial ties are dotted and editorial rests and ornaments put in brackets. The result is an edition that is very trustworthy but at the same time looks a little pedantic. An interesting feature is that Radulescu offers most pieces on two staves, with the pedal notes on the lower staff with the stems down. This is how an organist of Bruhns’s (and even Bach’s) time would have read virtually every organ work (assuming they used staff notation), but it is probably a little unpractical for most organists today, and there is hardly ever any doubt as to which bass notes belong in the pedal in Bruhns.

Most organists may prefer to play from the Beckmann edition after correcting the text on the basis of Radulescu’s edition. As an alternative, I have prepared an edition on three staves in which I have made suggestions for hand division by assigning right-hand notes to the top staff and left-hand notes to the middle staff. Since the source is written in German organ tablature (a kind of letter notation), any hand division is editorial anyway. The practice of indicating hand division however is widely used elsewhere in seventeenth-century keyboard music, and there are very few places open for serious discussion in the “Little” E-minor. The edition will be made available on-line, but for now, simply contact me by e-mail if you want a copy ([email protected]).

Overview

Let’s start off with getting an idea of the whole piece. Don’t start playing right away; just take a look at the score and see what’s going on. At the very beginning, you will notice the pedals rushing in with a dazzling solo, resulting in a “drum roll” (m. 5 ff.), supported by strong off-beat manual chords. This section is followed by a short Adagio (mm. 10–16). Then follows an Allegro in 12/8 with extensive use of the echo effect. Notice how at the end (mm. 33 ff.) the roles are inverted: the echo comes first this time!

Another short Adagio (mm. 39–46) leads to a fugue, marked Vivace (mm. 47–84). Take a look at the pedal and notice how the fugue can be divided in three short sections: mm. 47–67; 67–76; and 76–84. Once again a short Adagio, and we arrive at the final Allegro (mm. 90–105), a dialogue between soprano and pedal, ending in a playful series of arpeggiated chords.

The concluding Adagio begins with off-beat repeated chords in the hands (mm. 106–110), followed by a pedal point supporting expressive harmonies. A diminished-seventh chord is emphasized by a rhetorical pause before it resolves into the final cadence.

Beginning to play

Now that you have an idea of the piece as a whole, it’s time to start playing. But, unless you’re an experienced player and a good sight reader, don’t try to sight-read the whole piece at once. Why not start with the opening pedal solo, clearly conceived for alternating toes and really not very hard to play at all. Play the first four measures (finishing of with the first notes of m. 5) and notice how Bruhns already has told you a whole story! To get an even better idea of the expressive writing, try playing the pedal solo as “solid” chords, either with a hand (or both hands) or actually in the pedal (Example 1).
Now that you have the opening measures under your belt, let’s take a look at the very end of the piece: simply sight-read the last three measures—no big deal. Now, why not connect the beginning four measures and the last three: after the first note in m. 5, simply jump to m. 117. Play this combination of beginning and end a few times; it gives you a sort of “summary” of the piece, a “framework” to fill in the rest of the music. It’s a good idea to return to your little “summary” regularly when working on the piece; it helps you to bear in mind the end-goal of your journey.

For now, continue with the opening section, trying the pedal “drum roll.” This works best when played mildly staccato (as if repeating the note at the same pitch). Forget whatever you may have learned about keeping your knees together when playing the pedals: that doesn’t help very much in this kind of situation. Instead, think of your right knee moving out over your right foot when playing that high b. Once the pedal part feels comfortable, try adding those off-beat manual chords. You want them to be strong and expressive, sure, but since they come on light beats, try not to give them their exact full length (rather something like a dotted eighth note).

In m. 8, there is a mistake in the manuscript; the most logical solution may be to play quarter-note chords (as in Radulescu’s edition), but many organists have become used to hearing eighth-note chords here (as in Beckmann), which does give a little change of pace. See what you like best; it doesn’t really matter too much, and from the point of view of the source, you could argue either way.
When arriving at the Adagio in m. 11, be sure to keep (approximately) the same tempo by “thinking” sixteenths in that measure.

The 12/8 echo section

Think of the eighths in the right hand as triplets; you can maintain the same tempo for this section. It’s easiest to reserve the right hand for the “triplets” and take all the other manual notes in the left hand. Here are some fingering suggestions for the first two measures (Example 2).
Using the same finger for neighboring notes helps creating a clear, slightly detached sound. Make sure not to overdo it: you don’t want the music to sound too jumpy (at least, I don’t). If you feel really uncomfortable using this kind of fingering, you can easily change it, for example by using a thumb on the e'' before the d#'' in m. 18; just try to avoid a “Romantic” legato. For the left hand, you may find it easiest to start with the index finger on the first two notes. The pedal won’t give you much trouble; I would avoid heels, simply playing right-right-left-right in m. 27. In m. 36, simply stick with the right toe; “lean” a little into every note so that they don’t become too short, but you still want them to be clearly articulated.

Take your time for the manual changes to the “echo” manual and back (no matter which manual you use for the echo); the little bit of time it takes to get from one manual to another (and vice versa) actually helps making the echo effect clearer. In general, try to make your movements easy and pleasant; when it feels that way, there’s a good chance the music will also sound that way.

The fugue

Again, resist the temptation to sight-read the whole fugue. Instead, pick out the entries of the theme first and then play them in the appropriate hand or feet. Here’s how it works:

m. 47: theme in soprano, played in the right hand;

m. 50: theme in alto, left hand;

m. 53: theme in tenor, left;

m. 56: theme in bass, pedals.

Those four entries constitute the exposition of the fugue. After an “episode,” a kind of development of the motive from m. 48, we’re back to business:

m. 67: theme in alto, left hand;

m. 70: theme in tenor, left;

m. 73: theme in bass, pedals.

Finally, there are two incomplete entries of the theme:

m. 76: in alto, right hand (but put the left index finger on the long g' in m. 77);

m. 77: in soprano, right hand (with the thumb going under the left index finger on the first beat of m. 78).

This gives you the outline for the fugue. Here, by the way, is my fingering for the theme (Example 3). In the pedal, once again try to avoid the heels (Example 4).

While we’re at it: what is the reason for avoiding the heels in this kind of music? Well, first off, it makes you look good in historically informed organ circles, where the general assumption is that the heel was not (or very rarely) used in organ music up to (and including) Bach. Although we have no idea what virtuoso performers like Bruhns (and Bach) did in real life, most if not all of their music can be comfortably played without using the heel. More importantly, it’s usually easier to get a good sound and the “right” kind of touch that way. It is not true that it was (or is) impossible to use heels on seventeenth-century pedals, although it’s generally more difficult at the center (around c) than at the extremes. If you find it hard to imagine that an inventive virtuoso like Bruhns never ever in his lifetime hit on the idea of using the other part of his foot, you may want to support your theory by pointing out m. 60 in the G-major preludium, where the left foot plays two neighboring sixteenths (B–c) while the right foot is otherwise engaged. However, using the heel does not make this spot particularly easy to play either! In the end it’s not so much what you do in those exceptional cases that matters but your general approach.

Here are some more fingering suggestions for the fugue (Examples 5a and 5b). In mm. 59–61, reserve the right hand for the top voice only, combining alto and tenor in the left hand. In mm. 65–67, I recommend taking the three middle voices in the left hand, again reserving the right hand for the top line. It’s nice to have all of your right hand to shape this nice melodic line as well as possible, and to play a trill on the dotted quarter b¢ in m. 66 (see below).

The section ends with the same two measures three times (Bruhns did that more often, see the end of the second fugue of the “Great” E-minor). What to do? Well, unless you want to be boring, I wouldn’t play them the same three times. Here are some options:

• Change manuals, perhaps playing forte, piano, and pianissimo. On Buxtehude’s organ, the manuals would probably have been Hauptwerk, Rückpositiv, and Brustwerk, respectively. The problem with this is the pedal: you will probably need to adjust the pedal registration at least once (or even twice). It is possible, of course, to play the pedal part in the left hand (combining the three upper parts in the right) when going to a quieter manual (even though Bruhns’s writing does not seem to suggest it).

• Add a few ornaments the second time, and perhaps some more (or different ones) the third time.

• Play on the same manual throughout but “think” different dynamics: really strong the first time, milder the second, as light as you can the third time; or: loud at first, then more quietly, and loud again. Don’t worry too much about how the difference in sound happens; if you have a clear concept and communicate it to the organ the best you can, the result will be noticeable somehow to a sensitive listener.

Finally, a combination of two or all of the above may be even more effective. Whatever you do, if you use pedals, again reserve the right hand for the soprano and make sure to play the left hand pick-up chord really light (and short) in order to make place for the right-hand f#¢. Radulescu’s edition has a half-note chord at the beginning of m. 83; this certainly needs to be shortened to a quarter to make the soprano clear (you find this kind of thing frequently in chorale preludes by Buxtehude, for example).

The Allegro

Since this section is essentially a dialogue between right hand and pedals (think of it as the first violins on the one hand and the cellos and double basses on the other), why not begin with playing just that dialogue, without the supporting chords. To get an idea of how things sound, you can even start off with playing the pedal part in the left hand. However you do it, try to get a smooth dialogue going without “waiting for the bus” at every barline. The fingering is pretty obvious; the pedaling is a little more challenging, although there are really not that many options. Here is my suggestion (Example 6).


Yes, the left foot has to leap around a bit. And yes, you have to be a little careful to make the left-foot notes sound not too hacked (particularly the first g#). But using heels (and, for my part, silent substitution) doesn’t make things much easier either. In my experience, as long as the bench is at the right height and if you let go of the idea of keeping your knees together at all costs, the toe-only solution is easiest and sounds best. Here are some ways to play around with this spot in order to get the music “into your feet” (Example 7).

Make up your own variations! Much better to play around and have fun with a little tune like this than banging out the notes in the score a zillion times. While you’re playing around, try to make things feel as comfortable as possible. If things don’t feel quite right, try to adjust the height of the bench just a little or to move it back or forward a bit; small things can make a huge difference. Become sensitive to the way you move and try to find ways to make it easier for you.

One finger is crucial to keep you going: no matter what finger you’re using right before it (chances are it’s a thumb or else the index), put your little pinky on the third beat in m. 97.

When adding the chords to the soprano-bass dialogue, make sure not to make the quarter notes too long. The eighth-note pick-ups can be nice and short (without making them too jumpy, of course).
In m. 104, the manuscript has g¢¢ followed by f#¢. Clearly, the two notes must be in the same register. It’s really up to what you think sounds best and/or makes most sense here (Beckmann goes for high, Radulescu for low).

At the beginning of the last Adagio, imagine the repeated chords as played on one bow by a group of string players, and remember they’re off-beat, and therefore light (Example 8).

Ornaments

In a number of places, this music needs ornamentation to be at its best, either simple or more elaborate. The soprano d in m. 10 needs a trill which would probably best start with the main note, although starting with the upper note e is certainly a possibility (see below). In m. 39, the long d in the pedal followed by the written-out turn cries out for a virtuoso, long trill, something like Example 9, or perhaps Example 10. In mm. 66 and 75 of the fugue, the dotted quarter in the soprano sounds best with a simple trill, starting with the main note, something like this (Example 11).

The suggested fingering helps to create a nice, clear trill; the articulation before the turn actually sounds good and suggests a bit of a diminuendo. But if you don’t like putting the middle finger over the index, simply put a thumb on the last note of the trill.

Most of the trills I have suggested here start with the main note. But isn’t there some kind of rule that trills in Baroque music always start with the upper note? Well, yes, but that’s one of those gross oversimplifications of popularized historically informed performance practice. In the seventeenth century, main-note trills seem to be the rule, although upper-note trills certainly exist, and apparently became quite fashionable in France in the second half of the century. A rule of thumb: if the note with the trill is itself consonant, start with the upper note; but if the note itself is dissonant, then start with the main note. In both cases, the first note of the trill is dissonant, creating that nice little bit of friction. Also, if the note immediately before the trill is already the upper note, you may not want to repeat it as the beginning note of the trill.

If you want to add a trill on the soprano d#'' in m. 85 (which would sound very nice), consider starting with the upper note. A trill on the soprano b¢ on the second beat of m. 97 could go either way, as long is the trill is short. The soprano c'' on the last beat of m. 100 could also go either way, depending on whether you want to emphasize the c'' (start with the main note) or whether you want to incorporate the preceding sixteenths in the trill (start with the upper note).

More ornamentation: the Adagios

The four Adagio sections, with almost exclusively whole notes and half notes, may sound lovely the way they are written—they would probably be considered an opportunity for (quite) extensive ornamentation by any performer of Bruhns’s time. How much and what exactly you want to do is ultimately up to you, but here are some ideas for mm. 10–16 (Example 12).

With these ideas as a basis, try to work something out for the other sections. Bear in mind that the ornamentation is supposed to make the music more expressive, not to show off your virtuosity or to emulate the composer. Try not to write your ornaments down, but instead play around with as many different ideas as you can come up with. Ideally, your ornamentation is going to be different from performance to performance! In the final Adagio, Bruhns uses imitation: the chromatic line a–g#–g–f# appears in the soprano (m. 111), tenor (m. 113) and, sort of, in the bass (m. 115). In order to bring out the imitation, you may want to use similar ornaments for both the soprano and the tenor line.

Registration

Large-scale pieces like preludes and toccatas are played with an organo pleno registration: principals 8', 4', 2', mixtures, the Quint 22?3' if there is one, and perhaps a flue stop 16' in the manuals (Bruhns might have used his Quintadena 16¢), and the same plus reeds in the pedals (use at least a Posaune 16' if you have one). You can add an 8' flute stop in the hands to make the sound a bit fuller, but avoid throwing in tons of 8' and 4' stops; that tends to make the sound muddy. You probably want a really big pedal registration for the solo at the beginning; if the pedal is not loud enough by itself, couple to one (or more) of the manuals.


The question is to what extent you want to vary registration for the various sections of a piece like this. Obviously, you will need an echo manual for the 12/8 section. You sometimes hear this section with a “small” registration (8+4+2, or 8+4+1, or something like that) and something like flutes 8+2 for the echo. As always, much depends on the organ and the particular situation, but I like to use at least a small pleno for this section with a few stops for the echo (which could effectively be played on the Brustwerk on an organ similar to Bruhns’s).
It could be nice if the fugue is a little quieter than the first and last sections; you could use a slightly lighter pleno or even principals 8+4+2, for example; of course, you would have to lighten the pedal, probably by taking off the reed(s) and perhaps the mixture. M. 85 could be a place to go back to a bigger registration, with further opportunities for a crescendo in m. 90 (marking the beginning of the Allegro), m. 106, and m. 117.

Tempo

The tempo of any performance of any piece of music depends on many factors including the acoustics of the hall, the time of the day, and without a doubt the mood of the performer. Many compositions can sound surprisingly convincing at very different tempi; the most important thing is that the tempo feels right to you! Nonetheless, here are some metronome markings for the piece; take them for what they are: a ballpark indication.

Beginning: ~66

12/8: ~60–66

Fugue: ~60

Allegro: ~96

Discography

Finally, for CD collectors, the following recordings of Bruhns’s complete organ works may be worth considering:

• Piet Kee: Bruhns and Buxtehude. Roskilde Cathedral, Denmark. Chandos CHAN0539.

• Lorenzo Ghielmi: Bruhns, Buxtehude, and Brunckhorst. Basilica San Simpliciano, Milan, Italy. Winter & Winter 910 070-2.

Jan-Piet Knijff teaches organ, historical keyboard instruments, and chamber music and is organist-in-residence at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College/CUNY. He holds the DMA from The City University of New York as well as the Artist Diploma from the Conservatory of Amsterdam and is an Associate of the AGO. He won both the Grand Prix Bach de Lausanne and the Audience Prize at the Concours Bach de Lausanne 1997. His organ teachers have included Piet Kee, Ewald Kooiman, and Christoph Wolff. Visit JP’s website at or contact him at .

The crayfish in his brook

Like so many musicians—including organists—old Sebastian Bach liked jokes and puns. And it was, presumably, the Thomas Cantor himself who came up with the famous one-liner stating his student Johann Ludwig Krebs (1713–1780) was “the only crayfish (Krebs) caught in this great brook (Bach).” Strictly speaking, this was actually not true: Johann Ludwig’s father, Johann Tobias Krebs, had been a Bach student in Weimar in the 1710s, and, having married into an affluent family in 1723, he was able to send not only Johann Ludwig but also his two other sons to school in Leipzig. One of them, Tobias Jr., had, at age 13, “a good strong voice” according to the Thomas Cantor. The other, Johann Carl, was at St. Thomas in the 1740s and eventually succeeded Tobias Sr. as organist at Buttstädt. Johann Ludwig studied with Bach for no fewer than nine years, from 1726 till 1735. The reference letter that Bach wrote for him in August of that year is very good indeed: We learn that Krebs was not only an able organist and harpsichord player, but also excelled as a violinist, lute player, and composer. Earlier, Krebs had applied (along with his father and C.P.E. Bach) for the position of organist at St. Wenzel’s Church in Naumburg. Krebs Sr. withdrew, but neither Jr. nor Carl Philipp got the job. Johann Ludwig stayed in Leipzig for a few more years, completing his education by attending lectures in philosophy and law at Leipzig University until he got his first position as organist in Zwickau in 1737. In 1742, Krebs applied successfully for the position at the Silbermann organ in the Frauenkirche in Dresden, but apparently didn’t accept the post, perhaps because the compensation package left something to be desired. Instead, he took a position at the castle in Zeitz in 1744. From there, he twice applied—unsuccessfully—for the Leipzig Thomas cantorate: first after Bach’s death in 1750 and again five years later when Bach’s successor Harrer had died. Finally, in 1756, Krebs became organist at the Altenburg castle, where he played the fine, large two-manual Trost organ still extant today. Although Krebs had been an avowed admirer of Silbermann organs, he loved the Trost organ very much and looked after it “like a father” (as one organ builder Schramm complained after being denied access to the instrument by the organist). Krebs stayed in Altenburg till his death, though—like his father—he had to pass on his responsibilities to his son Christian Traugott in 1776 due to health trouble.

Krebs’s music

Krebs’s impressive corpus of organ music is so high in quality that it has long been uncertain whether, for example, the famous Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott with double pedal was actually written by him or his venerable teacher. (I think Krebs is the more likely candidate.) But he was also a fine composer of other instrumental music, including concertos for the lute and a “duo for two keyboards” that received such high acclaim in Dresden that it evoked the envy of all the court musicians. Eighteenth-century writers describe Krebs as a virtuoso organist and his organ music as the best of his œuvre. Though Krebs was never really forgotten (a first “complete” edition of the organ works appeared in 1847–49), it seems to me that both the “free works” and chorale preludes are performed less than they deserve to be these days. One reason may be that the works are available in a fine though fairly expensive complete edition: the four volumes edited by German organist Gerhard Weinberger and published as Sämtliche Orgelwerke by Breitkopf. But the nice thing with Krebs is that there are quite a few small-scale pieces that are ideally suited for students but are equally attractive to seasoned professionals. (In fact, both Johann Ludwig and his dad have been considered candidates for the authorship of the Eight Little Preludes and Fugues, though this seems somewhat unlikely for stylistic reasons.) One of those little gems, a Prelude in F Major, is the subject of this article.

Prelude in F Major

This piece is found in Vol. 2 of the Sämtliche Orgelwerke on pp. 16–17. In addition, I have prepared an edition of this and a few other short preludes, which will be available from me (e-mail me at ). The piece opens with a simple chord progression over a repeated bass notes in the pedal (mm. 1–4). The broken chords in the right hand are essentially the same as the “solid” chords in the left. In mm. 5–8, the two hands are inverted (note how mm. 3 and 7 differ in detail). Mm. 1–4 return as a kind of recapitulation at the end of the piece (mm. 22–25), followed by a dramatic coda. In mm. 9–15, both hands move in eighths and sixteenths. Mm. 11–14 look a bit boring on paper, but they’re actually not so bad: the thing is to recognize the inner voices hidden among all these sixteenths. Krebs hints at this in m. 9: the eighth notes in the right hand are “accompanied” in lower sixths and thirds in the left hand; in turn, the left hand is accompanied in thirds by the pedal in the second half of the measure (Example 1). What you hear is really a soprano/alto duet followed by a tenor/bass duet, as is so common in choral music. The bass now drops out of the game; but soprano and tenor continue to move in thirds in m. 10–14 (Example 2). The two hands get more and more excited in m. 15 (it helps that the harmonies move per beat instead of per measure!). This culminates in the free imitation in mm. 16–17 (with the very brief “modulation” to C major) and in the quasi-canonic mm. 18–21 (over a “circle of fifths” and a characteristic pedalpoint on the subdominant in the pedal), leading back to the above-mentioned mini-recapitulation.

Beginning to play

The opening measures (mm. 1–4) will pose no problem to beginning organists with a reasonable keyboard background, yet there is one little trick that will make these measures sound much better right away: the quarter-note chords (pedal and left hand) are best played a little bit shorter—something like dotted eighths or even generous eighth notes, depending on the acoustics. In any event, avoid full-length quarter notes. The broken chords in the right hand are best played slightly non-legato. Before embarking on the slightly trickier middle section, try playing the beginning and the end: mm. 1–4 and 26–28 (or, in fact, mm. 22–28!). It is important to get the hand division right; in my edition, I have done this for you, but if you use the Breitkopf edition, make sure to mark the Cs in m. 1/22 and the Ds in m. 2/23 in the left hand; it will make life much easier. In the middle of m. 4/25, play the first f’ light and relatively short to allow for the left hand to take over; you may even want to take a bit of extra time here to make things clearer (and easier). The shape of the figure in m. 4 is happily different from the broken chords in mm. 1–3; I think it sounds nice if you underline that by playing the sixteenths f’’-e’’-f’’ (and later f’-e’-f’) a little more legato. You could also consider lingering a little on the downbeat a’ (just be careful not to do this always in the same way). The dramatic chords in the last few measures can be divided between the hands in different ways; my suggestion is to add a nice cadential trill on the e’’ in m. 27 (Example 3).

A few fingerings

Nothing in this piece will create major problems for the beginning organist with a decent keyboard background. Yet there is one fingering, in m. 15, that people seem to miss out on, but which, I believe, will make life easier for you (and, as a bonus, it will sound better too). Every student with whom I worked on this piece chose the fingering in Example 4a; Example 4b offers my own suggestion. First, the two pinkies on a’’–g’’ ensure that these two notes are nicely articulated (after all, the g’’ is part of a new chord, and that relatively fast harmonic rhythm is one of the exciting things in this measure). My fingering avoids the slight turn of the hand necessary to put your thumb on the b-flat’ (and then turning back to put the thumb on the a’ again) and the awkward and unnecessary silent substitution on the b-flat’. Using the 5-2 option on the eighth notes means that the two consecutive sixths c’’–a’’ (“hidden” in the group of sixteenths) and b-flat’–g’’ are played with the same fingering, which somehow feels natural. Finally, putting a little finger on the g’’ fits nicely with the left hand, which undoubtedly uses a little finger at the same moment (the index finger on b-flat’ also coincides with the index in the left hand). Not that this is a “proof” of any kind for my suggested fingering; I just find it nice how these fingerings seem to “rhyme,” particularly in a piece that is obviously meant for beginning organists. Even a beginner on the pedals should be able to deal with the pedal part in our piece: the repeated F constitutes the pedal part for almost half the piece, and for what is left, you don’t need much wizardry either. While some teachers may recommend a heel in m. 9, it sounds just as good (and is just as easy to play) with toes only, as shown in Example 5. In mm. 11–14, make sure that your left foot is guided by your (left) knee; as in walking, the knee moves out, as it were, over the foot. (I know this is the complete opposite of the “knees-together doctrine” that so many of us have grown up with; I will deal with this in a separate article.) In m. 15, some teachers might recommend silent substitution on the cs, but in the overall non-legato style of playing this is hardly necessary. Leap with whatever foot you like; it doesn’t really matter. Example 6 offers my pedaling suggestion for mm. 16–17. I personally like putting a left foot on the strong, long B-flat in mm. 20–21, but this may be a matter of taste.

The tricky part

Mm. 16–19 are undoubtedly the trickiest part of the piece. Here’s how I would deal with them. First, get comfortable with the pedals. The best thing is to sing along as you’re playing. (If this embarrasses you too much, you can always “sing in your head,” but I do find that singing aloud works better.) Then, add one hand; perhaps the left and keep singing (it doesn’t really matter whether you still sing the pedal part or the left hand, as long as you’re singing). Next, pedal and the other hand (keep singing!). Finally, try both hands and pedals together and keep singing. Very important: Try not to stop for mistakes. Play the fragment at a speed that sounds reasonable to you (or a little slower) and simply get as many as the notes as you get—don’t worry if half of them are wrong. Try another time, and you’ll probably do better already. As you get to know the music better (and singing helps a lot with that), you’ll make fewer and fewer mistakes. If there’s a spot that keeps bothering you, consider different fingering options. Even when playing slowly, try to find a tempo that makes musical sense. Avoid losing track of the music and getting lost in learning “just notes.”

Ornaments

To my mind, there are basically three ways to perform the trill in m. 21, as I have shown in Example 7. I don’t see too many opportunities in the piece for adding extra ornaments, except perhaps at the very end: The rests between those dramatic chords over the chromatically descending bass could be filled out a bit. I’m not sure that I would do this or necessarily recommend it to students, but many people seem to like this kind of thing, and it’s always good to have as many arrows on your bow as possible. So Example 8 shows what I might do in a concert after a good glass of German wine (or after a service with lots of incense).

Tempo and Registration

The piece is intended for organo pleno, as indicated in the title. A big pleno registration—Principals 16’, 8’, 4’, 22⁄3’, 2’, Mixtures and optional Sesquialtera on all manuals, reinforced in the Pedal by Posaune 16’ and Trompete 8’—will work very well, but a smaller registration—say, Principals 8’, 4’, 2’, with a 16’ in the Pedal—can be equally fitting, depending on the situation. One may be inclined to take the tempo a little slower with the big pleno sound and a touch faster with a smaller registration; likewise, one will probably take a bit more time in a big church with cathedral acoustics than in a small hall with little reverberation. Try to find a tempo that works well for all “sections” of the piece: the broken chords in the beginning, the “canonic” section in the middle, and the dramatic chords of the coda.

Gavin Black is Director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He can be reached by e-mail at <A HREF="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A&gt;.

Boëllmann Suite Gothique, Part 4: Prière à Notre-Dame
Last month I wrote of the Menuet Gothique as an especially tuneful piece, one that I often find myself whistling or humming as I walk along. The next movement of the Suite Gothique—Prière à Notre-Dame—is also one in which the treble melody is a large part of the artistic effect of the piece. However, the mood of the piece is as different as can be, and the implications of the shape and nature of the treble melody for the act of learning the piece are also largely different.

Texture
In the Menuet, the treble melody should be practiced all by itself, as a single line, and then accompanied just by the bass line. This is both because of the essential tuneful nature of that melody, and because all of the other notes—the inner voices, so to speak, though they are not by and large organized as voices—serve primarily to reinforce the harmonies and rhythms of the melody. This approach to practicing the Menuet strikes me as being the equivalent for this piece of practicing the separate voices and pairs of voices of a fugue or other contrapuntal piece.
Looking at the texture of the Prière, it strikes me that the essential element is the whole texture itself. That is, the treble melody seems to float on the bed of the pedal and inner-voice chords in a way that is essential to the nature and effect of that melody. This is of course a subjective analysis. Perhaps it is supported by the somewhat odd fact that the composer has emphatically not “solo’d out” the melody. For almost all of the piece, both hands are meant to be on the same keyboard, sometimes the Récit, sometimes the Grand Orgue. And this is in spite of the fact that as early the first measure the treble line encroaches upon a note being held by the inner voices, forcing at least a brief departure from the legato with which that inner voice would otherwise be played. (Only near the end of the movement, when Boëllmann has the treble melody briefly swoop down low and then continue to cross the [fairly high] left-hand chords, does he ask that the two hands play on separate keyboards.) If I am right about this, or more meaningfully, if any other player, teacher, or student also wants to see it this way, that would suggest that practicing separate components—right hand, left hand, pedal—while almost certainly still a good idea and indeed still quite important, would serve primarily a technical rather than a musical function.
(A practical consequence of this idea: when practicing separate voices or one melody for the purpose of learning it musically, it is normal to use a fingering that is specifically not the fingering that will be used in learning the notes. When practicing separate components for technical reasons it is crucial to use the fingering that will be used in learning the notes.)
In the Menuet, the rather jaunty melody is presented as the upper line of a series of chords in the right hand, marked non legato. The notion of practicing the top line of notes, the melody, all by itself comes from the desire to allow the ear to engage with that melody as easily as possible. The nature of the melody and the non legato instruction from the composer then allow the fingering and execution of the melody and its chords to be performed in a technically very natural way. Each chord can be given whatever fingering feels most comfortable to the player, based primarily on hand position, and the transition from one such comfortable position to the next can be practiced. The situation with the Prière is almost exactly the opposite of all of this. The treble melody is a single line, not the upper note of a series of chords. In 45 out of the 55 measures of the piece, the upper line can be played all by itself in the right hand while the left hand takes care of the other manual notes. This is not always necessarily the best fingering by any means, though it often is. This line is clearly meant to be played legato. There is no overall articulation instruction at the beginning of this movement, however the melody exists under long slurs—some one measure, some two, a few slightly longer. This movement, marked Très lent at the beginning and Animato later, has no metronome marking, whereas all three of the other movements do. While pieces with metronome markings are certainly not meant to be played “metronomically,” and pieces without them certainly do not have to be played very freely, this state of affairs at least suggests the possibility that the composer meant for this piece to be freer or more fluid rhythmically than the other movements.
Meanwhile, whereas the pedal line in the Menuet is quite active and, just as a matter of note-learning, rather challenging, the pedal line in the Prière is slow-moving throughout and simple. Its note patterns could be learned by someone who had started pedal-playing that month, perhaps that week. (Furthermore, 49 of the 72 notes of the pedal line are on raised keys, which helps! In the Menuet it is eleven notes out of 165.) However, the non legato of the pedal line in the Menuet allows the player to address each note with the most comfortable (part of a) foot and, by and large, simply move from one note to the next. The legato of the Prière requires a different kind of planning and practicing.

Hand and fingering choices
So, what do any of these observations tell us about mapping out, practicing, and learning the piece? First of all, except in those few measures where the composer has done this for us—mm. 36–42 and the last two measures—the first task in the manual part is to work out which hand will play which notes. This is always the case, of course, unless the piece has been set up by the composer to be on two manuals. The first consideration is always this: what distribution between the hands makes it easiest and therefore most reliable for the fingers to get to the notes? In this piece, this should be supplemented by an awareness of the need to make the melody legato as indicated by the slurs, or, to put it perhaps more accurately, by an awareness of the implications of handing choices for the legato of all of the lines.
The beginning of the piece already provides opportunities to think about hand choices and other aspects of technical planning, as well as interpretation (Example 1). In the first measure, the dotted half-note E-flat on the fourth beat can be reached by either hand. Any player, but especially one with small hands, might want to take that note in the right hand. (Playing the entire chord in the left hand could create tension in the outer part of the left hand.) That would, however, make it harder, or more involved, to make the transition from the third to the fourth beats in the treble voice completely legato.
Here are some possible fingerings for that moment in the piece (Examples 2, 3, 4, 5), and there are many others. (In this and other fingering examples I have omitted the slurs and other markings to make more room for the fingering numbers.)
In mm. 5–6, the notes that are printed as the lower of two voices in the upper staff can be played by either hand. Of course those eight notes do not all have to be played by the same hand. Here is one way to divide the notes between the hands (Example 6).
There are, as usual, several other ways to do it. This one in particular is designed in part to minimize the extent to which the thumbs play black notes, and in part to feel comfortable. Of course, in general it is a good idea to keep the thumbs off of black notes, as I have discussed in other columns. However, in a piece written in a key with four flats, of course it will not be possible to accomplish this completely. It is also not necessary to be absolute about it, especially when all of the notes in one hand at a given moment are on black keys, as in the left hand in m. 1 above. Students should try several possibilities, especially in spots where the notes are all close enough on the keyboard that many of them could go into either hand, and make choices.

Interpretive/technical points
There are two interesting interpretive/technical points that arise in the opening measures. In m. 1 at the sixth quarter-note, the treble melody plays a note that is being held by an inner voice, probably in the left hand. There is one simple basic answer to what to do here: release the dotted half-note and play the quarter-note in the treble melody. It is fairly clear that the playing of this treble note is more important than the holding of the last quarter-note’s worth or so of the longer note. Of course this is not a rigorous, scientific truth. Some players might feel that holding the long note is more important, here, or, more likely, in various other places in the repertoire where this type of conflict arises. A student can certainly try it both ways: the holding of the long note, combined with the correct timing of the release of the treble A-flat might give an illusion that a new E-flat is being played at that moment. This illusion might or might not be convincing.
If the player is going to choose to release the E-flat and play it again on the sixth quarter-note, then it is important to do it the right way. To start with, it is only the inner voice E-flat that must be released early. It is surprisingly easy to borrow this release for the other voice that is involved: that is to release, in this case, the treble A-flat early, with the inner voice E-flat. This creates a discontinuity that is unnecessary and that is probably responsible for giving the whole phenomenon of voices bumping into each other like this a bad name! In fact, if the dotted half-note E-flat is released appropriately early, then the treble line can be played exactly as if it were the only thing being played, with whatever articulation and timing that implies. It is also important that the note be released as lightly and gently as possible. After all, the real goal is to release it without the listener even knowing that it is gone. It is better to release a note in this situation a little bit earlier than absolutely necessary than to release it abruptly. If the note being released draws attention to itself by snapping off, then the other voice will not sound cantabile or legato, no matter how it itself is played. It is important that the held note and the newly played
E-flat be played with different fingers. This is of course accomplished automatically if they are in different hands.
Then in m. 2, moving from the third quarter-note beat to the fourth, the inner voice takes over a note—D-flat—that has just been played by the treble melody. In this case, in order actually to play the inner voice D-flat, it is necessary to release the treble note early, breaking the legato of the upper voice. Again, the way that this is done can affect how disruptive it is: if different fingers are used, and the release of the treble eighth-note is made lightly and gently, then the interruption of the legato will be minimal, perhaps not really noticeable to a listener. There are also a couple of other possibilities. The treble eighth-note could be tied to the (no longer really) new dotted half-note D-flat. Or the three-note left-hand chord can be arpeggiated, thereby delaying the upper note of that chord and removing the conflict between that note and the upper voice. In general we do not necessarily think of arpeggiating chords or staggering notes on the organ, except as instructed to do so by the composer. However, the aesthetic of this movement suggests to me that this could be appropriate not only at this spot, where it also helps to solve a specific problem, but also elsewhere, where it might support a gentle flowing feeling in the piece. Of course this is quite a subjective interpretive choice, but something that a student can ponder.
This kind of analysis of the effect of hand and fingering decisions on the interpretive impact of the performance of the piece can be carried out throughout the Prière. This movement reveals itself to be perhaps the most complicated of the four movements of the Suite in this respect, and the one requiring the most meticulous work; though, because it is a fairly slow movement and because the pedal line is not virtuosic, it is probably not the most difficult in performance for most players.

Pedal line
The pedal line is, as I mentioned above, slow-moving and fairly simple. There are, as always, various possibilities for pedaling. A basic pedaling for the beginning might look like that shown in Example 7. It should be noted that Boëllmann in this piece only asks for the use of the swell pedal at times when the pedal part is on low sustained notes, as in m. 8 or m. 11, or during rests. In the above example, the main thing that could be different is the use of some same-foot substitutions for students who would rather strike notes initially with the toe (Example 8).
I myself would probably do the first of these substitutions but not the second. There are also places in the piece—mm. 6–8, mm. 25–29—where both-foot substitution is necessary to preserve complete legato. In this passage (Example 9), the student can listen to the difference between the strict legato created with the help of the indicated substitution and the slight articulation that would result from this pedaling (Example 10).
Practicing
As always, the practicing of separate components is crucial to the learning of the piece. After hand assignments, fingering, and pedaling have been worked out, the student should practice pedals, including the choreography of the swell pedal where it is indicated, and separate hands, as much as is needed: that is, until each of those components is absolutely secure. My guess is that with this particular texture, the first step in putting things together should be the two hands together, and that this can be followed by adding the pedals (again, assuming that each of these components is very well learned). That is, I think that practicing each hand separately with pedal is not as important here as it is with some pieces. Of course there is no harm in doing some of it. Everything should be kept slow enough to feel easy. Since the final tempo is not meant to be fast—très lent—the process of speeding up to tempo should happen naturally and fairly easily, but should not ever be rushed.
Next month I will return to the Buxtehude Praeludium in E Major, looking at some contrapuntal and some non-contrapuntal sections. ■

Gavin Black is Director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].

Boëllmann Suite Gothique, Part 5: Toccata
In this month’s column we look at some aspects of the fourth and last movement of Boëllmann’s Suite Gothique, the Toccata. This is the last column in this series to deal in detail with a specific movement. Next month’s column will wrap up the yearlong series with a discussion of some general points.
The Toccata is probably the best-known and most popular movement of the Suite Gothique. (One singularly modern measure of popularity suggests that it is: it has far more entries on
YouTube than any of the other movements.) It is a true perpetuum mobile, in that there is one note value (in this case the sixteenth note) that is both always present and never superseded by a quicker note value—that is, until the last several measures, where the intensity is ramped up for a dramatic ending. The relentlessness of those sixteenth notes, along with a sense that the piece at least comes across as being difficult to play—virtuosic—is part of what makes it fit the genre of “toccata” as that genre was understood in the late nineteenth century. There are, of course, other organ toccatas from about the same time as the Boëllmann that are constructed similarly, in particular the work by Boëllmann’s mentor Eugène Gigout—the Toccata in B Minor from 1890—and the famous Widor Toccata from 1879.
It is interesting to remember that in the Baroque period, the word “toccata” was understood entirely differently. A toccata was a piece in several sections, with contrast between the sections. The Buxtehude Praeludium that is the other subject of these columns is in toccata form, though under a different name. Whereas we sometimes think of a toccata as a piece that is meant to show off virtuosity, in the sense of speed, dexterity and general flashiness, originally the word denoted a piece that was meant to show off the variety of possibilities inherent in a keyboard instrument. Of course in this Boëllmann Suite, the work as a whole, amongst all of its movements, shows off a generous subset of what the organ of the composer’s time could do, with different textures being assigned to different movements rather than to different sections of a continuous piece.

Textures
The sixteenth-note perpetuum mobile of this movement manifests itself in three different specific textures, with slight variants. The first texture, found initially in the opening, occupies about 55 measures out of the total of 111 (Example 1). The second texture involves the sixteenth notes’ moving to the left hand and the introduction of syncopation (Example 2). This texture is present in 32 measures. In both of these textures, the sixteenth notes are in chord patterns and remain within one hand-span. That is, the hand does not have to turn over to reach the notes of each chord shape. This is a crucial factor in the technical learning of the movement. The third texture displays more variety within itself. It first shows up in measure 26 (Example 3). With its variants, it accounts for 18 measures, only three of which occur before measure 67. It more or less takes over the ending of the piece.
Each of these three textures is first introduced in a manuals-only passage. The pedal, whenever it comes in, is providing slower-moving motifs, starting with what most listeners familiar with the piece would probably identify as the principal theme (Example 4). This theme returns several times, sometimes as is, sometimes in octaves. Other than this, the pedal provides quarter-note or slower harmonic foundation.

Hand placement
What from amongst these initial observations about texture might have interesting implications for learning the piece? Several things stand out.
Although the two hands are never meant to be played on separate manuals (all of the several manual changes, at m. 20, 28, 35, 53, 61, etc., involve moving the whole texture to a new keyboard), there is never any ambiguity about which hand should play which notes. I have scarcely ever seen a piece about which I would so confidently predict that every player would make the same hand choice decisions. The hand choice that makes sense is that represented by the placement of notes on staves in the Durand edition (and for that matter every other edition that I have seen). There are a very few spots where it would not be actually impossible to take an isolated left hand note in the right hand—the first note of m. 10, a few notes in m. 20 and similar passages—but it would always be awkward. This is interesting, since working out hand choices has been a focus of our discussion of several of the previous movements of the Boëllmann and also of the Buxtehude. It is a step that is just not relevant here.
For the majority of the quarter-note beats of this piece, each hand is playing a chord shape that fits under the hand without a change of hand position. Each of the manual examples above illustrates this. (In two beats of Example 3, the right hand’s notes are not chord shapes: this is the exception. In any case, the notes fit under the hand without a shift in hand position.) This means that fingering choices are also subject to less variation than usual, though not as little variation as the hand choices.
Most of these quarter-note-long chord-shaped note patterns succeed one another without the need for any planning. That is, the transition from one to the next is self-evident or, at least, straightforward. This manifests itself in different ways. For the long stretches of the left hand that resemble Example 1—eighth-note chords separated by eighth-note rests, or, looking at it another way, detached quarter-note chords—it is obvious that the rests give the hand an opportunity to regroup between chords and to play each chord with whatever fingering is simply the most comfortable. Furthermore, the chords are never very distant from one another on the keyboard. There are no scary leaps.
When the right hand has the pattern of the beginning measures, the transition from the last note of one (spread out) chord shape to the next is also easy. This is because the new beat begins in the direction in which the hand is already deployed, and the first note of the new beat is never too far away. After the thumb has played the fourth right-hand note of the piece, for example, the hand could easily play any note from c#′ to, say, e′′′. The actual next note, g′′, is extremely easy to find. It lies right under a finger, the fourth or fifth, most likely. This situation is repeated throughout the piece. If the fifth right-hand note of the piece were a middle C, for example, then the fingering and execution of that spot would go from being natural and easy to being extremely difficult. It would require careful planning and a lot of practice, and would indeed set a lower ceiling on tempo. If that note were a very high note, say a′′′ or even c′′′′, then the logistics and planning would still be straightforward but the execution would be much more difficult.
When the left hand has spread-out chords, as in Example 2, those chords are also arranged in a way that lends itself to simple and predictable fingering, much like the opening right-hand motif, though the specific chord shapes are different. In many of these measures—mm. 20, 22, 24, 28 and several similar spots—the right hand has mostly scale-wise quarter-note or slower melodies for which fingering is again straightforward. However, in a few places—mm. 26, 34, 59, and quite a few measures near the end of the piece—there is a new element. The right hand has to play a legato melody in the top part of the compass while playing sixteenth notes below that melody. This is seen in Example 3. These are the spots in the piece where the fingering becomes somewhat involved. The solution, assuming that the legato of the upper line is to be preserved, is to use substitution in those upper notes, so that each note can be played by the most available finger and then held by the fifth finger. This leaves the rest of the hand free to carry out the sixteenth-note patterns (Example 5).
(Of course this is just one way of doing it, based, as usual, on my particular hand. Others might want to use 2/5 on the first beat of the new measure, for example.)
So, this piece—at least the manual part of it—is constructed out of surprisingly simple elements, easy to plan out as to fingering and also easy to execute. That does not mean that a student can play it well without working hard on it. For one thing, the coordination with the pedal is potentially quite challenging; for another, it is all meant to go quite fast—fast enough that it ceases to be easy, even though it is made up of easy elements. In fact, any student should be over-conscientious about mapping out the fingering for all of these simple elements, and also should practice all of the parts amply: short sections, one hand at a time, until each hand for each section has become second nature. Only then should the hands be put together. This is in principle exactly the same as with any other piece.

Pedal part
The pedal part, unlike the hands, does provide the opportunity to make choices that will vary among different players. The opening pedal theme (Example 4) can be played with alternate toes and come out as legato as the player might wish. This way of playing it feels quite natural. Furthermore, there are no indications for use of the swell pedal or other non-note-playing uses of the feet during the passages in which the pedal plays this theme. However, there are also a number of different heel-and-toe-based pedalings that could also make sense. Given the time and place of the creation of this piece, any of the above could represent the composer’s assumptions about how it might be played. Since it is important that this theme be played easily with spontaneity, it is key that the student feel comfortable with the chosen pedaling.
During the middle measures of the piece, the pedal line is often a harmonically based quarter-note bass line. Again, the pedaling can be worked out a number of different ways, none of them particularly complicated. For example, in mm. 29 and 31 the third-beat quarter note can be played with right heel or left toe, consistent with its being legato. Or the choice could be made to play the quarter notes detached, in which case all of the quarter notes could be played with the right toe.
Measures 73–75 are a particularly interesting case. Clearly, the higher notes will all be played with the right foot and the lower notes with the left. The choice as to whether to get the heels involved will be based on personal preference and also on the intended articulation. These notes have no articulation marked. The overall sound and texture at this point in the piece is loud and energetic. Are these notes an energetic driving bass, or a kind of quasi misterioso chromatic near-trill? Or something else? Choices about articulation here will possibly depend in part on acoustics. This is a good place for a student to try different things and listen carefully to different effects.
Near the end of the piece, the opening pedal theme comes back in octaves. (This starts in m. 85.) Needless to say, by physical necessity, the left foot will play the lower octave and the right foot will play the upper. And again, choices about toe and heel will be made based on both personal preference about technique and decisions about articulation. If the student has conceived the theme as legato from the beginning, then it perhaps makes sense to play it legato here. However, the fact that the texture here is very loud and emphatic might suggest a somewhat more emphatic articulation. On the other hand, the composer has altered the upper line, changing it from sixteenth notes to quarter notes (Example 6). What does this suggest about the pedal articulation? This is another place where it would be interesting for a student to try different things and listen carefully.

Pedals in octaves
There are two things to mention about practicing a pedal part that is in octaves. The first is that, all else being equal, it is easier both to learn the part and to execute it in performance if the toe and heel choices are the same for both feet. This is certainly not absolutely necessary, but it will happen naturally here, since the black note/white note patterns largely determine the heel placement. The second thing—more crucial—is that practicing the feet separately is useful and important. Doing enough of that will make everything about putting all of the parts together easier and more secure. The protocol for practicing a passage like this should include practicing each foot separately with each (separate) hand, as well as the feet as a unit with each hand. Probably practicing each foot separately with the left hand is the most important component of practicing the passage.

Crescendo marking
The composer has, rather considerately, limited crescendo marking (mostly, see m. 76) to places where the pedal line is both low and slow. That makes it as easy as it can be to choreograph the use of the swell pedal or, on a modern organ, of the toe studs or the crescendo pedal. This should be incorporated into the separate pedal practicing from the beginning, not left to the step of putting parts together.

Practice strategies
It is always important to practice parts and combinations of parts thoroughly enough so at each step of the way the material being practiced becomes easy and natural. A specific reason that it is important to do so with this piece is that it is meant to go fast. Of course, no one must play it at the given metronome marking. It can be very effective slower than that, and also faster if it is executed well. However, at any tempo, it is important that the feeling of the piece not be at all deliberate, that it trip along lightly but—as it goes on—powerfully. In particular, it is important that the quick upbeat notes in the pedal part slip into the stream of sixteenth notes in the right hand in a way that has energy and momentum, and doesn’t interrupt the flow of those notes. This can be achieved only if everything is very solidly—extra solidly—prepared.
This ends our trek through some aspects of the study and practicing of two very different important works of the organ repertoire. Next month I will give an overview of what we have learned and observed, and try to draw some general conclusions.

Gavin Black is Director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]. He writes a blog at www.amorningfordreams.com.

Substitution in thirds

The left-hand version of this exercise for practicing substitution in thirds starts as is shown in Example 1. Again, you should carry out the multiple substitutions in the most comfortable order. Try out various other fingering possibilities, and also try this, and other similar exercises, with added accidentals, as if it were in C minor, for example, or transposed to other keys. Substitution on black notes is physically different from substitution on white notes, since the black notes are thinner and spaced further apart. The principle is always the same: perform the substitutions in the right order, and plan out carefully the direction and angle from which each new finger arrives and in which each old finger departs. If the departing finger is released down and to the side, you have to be careful that it doesn’t inadvertently play an adjacent natural. 

You can also convert the Rameau passage shown in Example 2 (and discussed in the January 2014 column, as Example 9) into substitution exercises by tying the repeated notes and changing the repeated-note fingerings
into substitutions.

Substitution in fifths

Examples 3 and 4 are exercises for substitutions in fifths. Try these all over the keyboard: as written but with added accidentals, in other keys, an octave up or down. As you practice these exercises and a selection of transpositions, try carrying out the substitutions according to various different timings: 

1) As quickly and as smoothly as possible: instant substitution, but keeping the order correct. For example, in the above left-hand fifths it is better to execute the 4–5 substitution before the 1–2. This keeps the hand compact and avoids uncomfortable stretching. In doing the substitution instantly, as one gesture, this order can be preserved by carrying out something that feels like a rolling motion of the hand. (Technically the 4–5 is closer to “instant” than the 1–2, but the gesture is fast and smooth and should feel like one event.)

2) Very promptly and rapidly, but as a succession of separate quick gestures: in the case of these two-note-at-a-time substitutions, the timing of this approach is similar to that of a mordent.

3) Truly timed finger changes. This can be in a number of rhythms. For example, in the rhythm of the fifths above: triplet quarter notes (i.e., with the new chord, the first substitution, and the second substitution spaced out evenly); a quarter note and two half notes; a dotted quarter note and two sixteenth notes. This last rhythm shades over into the final timing concept:

4) Both substitutions as a quick one-piece gesture at the end of the held note, having almost the feeling of a before-the-beat ornament to the
next note.

I have listed these in a particular logical order: from closest to the beginning of the note to closest to the end of the note. It is important to avoid practicing anything at a faster pace than what you can carry out comfortably. Therefore, you should start with a slower (timed) execution of each substitution, and work towards the faster timings and the “instant” un-timed forms as you become fully comfortable with the fingerings and the shapes of the gestures.

Substitution in scalar passages

Examples 5 and 6 form an exercise that has the appealing feature of being simultaneously silly and efficient. It involves playing simple scale passages, and performing extravagant chains of substitutions on each individual note. This is beyond what you are likely ever to do in fingering a piece of music. There are, however, places where more than one substitution occurs on one note, as we will see below.

This can also be practiced in different timings. The “instant” version will of course take a discernable amount of time, since there are so many fingers involved one after another. Don’t try to practice this exercise at a tempo faster than it can be accomplished accurately and comfortably. It can still feel like one gesture: sort of sliding or slithering around on the note. As always, you should pay close attention to hand position and to keeping everything relaxed and comfortable. You may notice yourself occasionally inadvertently releasing a finger before the next finger has arrived to take its place: in effect converting the substitution to a repeated note. Do not try to correct this by holding the notes down harder. It is just a matter of timing. If this becomes a problem, slow down the exercise.

Substitution in counterpoint

Example 7 shows a Reger passage (from the chorale prelude Morgen-glanz der Ewigkeit—discussed in the November 2013 column as Example 10), demonstrating the practicing of separate voices, with a suggested fingering involving thoroughgoing substitution. (This is the left-hand part. I have written the fingerings for the two voices above and below the staff respectively, for clarity.)

The following is a detailed discussion of the logic behind these fingerings, but with an emphasis on the substitutions, and with comments on how best to carry out those substitutions. You should read it and correlate it in detail to what you see in the music before practicing the passage. If as you read this discussion you think of different fingerings that you want to try out, please do so. Make sure that you understand your own rationale behind those fingerings and that you are convinced that they will be comfortable and effective.

The choice of the first finger for the first note makes sense both because that enables you to reach down to the second note easily, and because it puts the hand in the best position to play the a# that is coming up. (This is a comfortable fingering in part because of where the passage lies on the keyboard. Try the same pattern two octaves higher. It will feel quite different and might need a different fingering solution, perhaps playing the opening note with 2, and substituting 1 at the last instant before playing the a#.) The choice of 5 for the d that is the second note of the piece is also obvious. The first substitution (4–5 on the note e) should be performed quickly, both to relax the hand and to enable the second finger to reach the c#. The substitution on the f# should be treated the same way for the same reasons. The substitution on the g# can be performed either instantly or on a measured basis (it is the first opportunity here to practice the latter).

Moving to the second measure, the substitution on the c# on the first beat has to be performed quickly so that the hand can move on to the next notes (d′, e′). In theory, the 4–5 substitution on the a need not be done until close to the time to play the b on the third beat. However, at the moment of the first beat itself, it will be more comfortable to carry out both substitutions quickly, with the 4–5 actually happening first. (This is to keep the hand compact and avoid uncomfortable stretching.) This should be carried out as an instant “rolling” double substitution. The b on the third beat of this measure is an interesting case. It is natural to play it with 4, and it also should have 4 holding it when it is ready to end (seven eighth-notes later, in the next measure). However, it is a good idea to hold it instead with 5 through most of the length of the note. This is to put the hand in the best position to reach the notes in the upper of the two voices, especially the f#′ that is the first note of the following measure. There is no particular reason not to do the substitution from 4 to 5 right away. (You could also postpone it until just before the end of the measure, in which case it would probably be more comfortable to play the d# with 2. The advantage to playing the d# with 3 is that it enables 2 to be poised to reach towards the upcoming f# as promptly as possible. This is a positive reason to do the substitution instantly.)

At the other end of this long-held b, the substitution back to 4 should be done only after the upper-voice substitution from 2 to 1 on e′. This is so as not to stretch the hand out uncomfortably. The purpose of that upper-voice substitution itself is partly to un-stretch the hand and partly to free the second finger to reach up to f#′. The substitution from 5 to 4 on the a should be done only after the thumb has played the f-natural. This is, of course, to keep the hand from being stretched out unnecessarily. On the fourth beat of this measure we come to the first substitution of non-adjacent fingers. The switch from 5 to 3 on the g# is motivated by the underlying rationale for substitution: it makes sense for one finger to play the note, but for another finger to be holding when it is time to move on to the next note. The reason for using 3 in the latter role is that the next two notes are in a downward direction. (It would also be possible to do a 5–4 substitution, and then another 4–5 substitution on the g-natural.) In any case, the 2–1 substitution on the e′ should be done first and very quickly.

The first substitution of the fourth measure, on b in the lower voice, is the first one we have seen that must be really instant: fully a part of the gesture that plays the note in the first place. This is, of course, because of the sixteenth-note motion in the upper voice. The hand must be in position to reach for and then play f#′ comfortably, essentially right away. The two remaining substitutions in this measure can be done at a somewhat more leisurely pace. On the third beat in the lower voice, my suggested 4–3 4 could be replaced by 4 5–4. Or indeed you could do a 3–2 substitution on e′ that is the lower-voice note on the second beat, and then play the rest of the lower voice in this measure with the fingers as they come. The 2–1 substitution on the f-natural in the upper voice on the fourth beat exists for the purpose of un-stretching the hand.

There are four substitutions that must be carried out in the half measure coming up, the last part of this excerpt. The switch from 2 to 1 on e′ in the upper voice and the switch from 3 to 2 on d′ in the lower voice (a note that was initiated in the previous measure) must be carried out in the order in which I just listed them, for the most basic possible reason. The “new” finger in the second substitution was just in use holding another note. It had to be freed from that note—by substitution—before it could take over its new note. These two substitutions are ideal to be played quite measured: the upper-voice substitution on the second half of the first beat, the lower-voice substitution on the second beat. On the second half of the second beat we encounter two substitutions, both of which must be carried out within the time span of an eighth note. For most hands it will be more comfortable to do the 2–1 substitution on d′ first, and then the 4–3 substitution on b. This means that the latter must be very fast indeed. The two should end up feeling like one gesture. 

The fundamental purpose of this fingering could be described as a way to play all of the notes legato without awkwardness or discomfort. This is achieved by a significant increase in the amount of fingering busy-ness: as fingered here, this passage involves sixty-one fingering events to play forty-three different notes. For comparison, Example 8 shows one possible fingering without substitution, based on a willingness to allow many of the notes to be played non-legato. (Remember, however, that Reger in his own hand marked this piece sempre ben legato.)

Try this fingering out, leaving aside for the moment its musical or historical appropriateness. Keep everything light, and make the non-legato gestures smooth and non-abrupt. Is one fingering easier than the other? What differences in feel do you notice?

(Note: Based in part on feedback from readers of The Diapason, I will possibly add further exercises and examples to the final version of this section on substitution. These will deal at greater length with substitution on black notes and with non-adjacent fingers. I will move on next month to exercises and approaches to learning to play with hands and feet together.) 

Gavin Black is Director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He can be reached by e-mail at .

Buxtehude BuxWV 141 – Part 2:
Fingering, pedaling, and
practicing, part 1
In this month’s column, we will look at the opening section of the Buxtehude E major Praeludium in great detail as to fingering and pedaling, and outline ways of practicing that section. When we return to this piece, after beginning our look at the Boëllmann Suite Gothique, we will analyze the section that begins in m. 13 with regard to practicing and learning that section. These two sections offer several different textures and types of writing; each suggests a different approach to the very practical act of learning the notes. These textures include the one-voice opening, the multi-voiced but not strictly contrapuntal measures that immediately follow, and the rigorously contrapuntal—fugal—section that begins in the soprano voice in m. 13. Each of these textures recurs in this piece, and of course throughout the repertoire as well.
This and the next few Buxtehude columns will focus on the steps necessary to learn the right notes securely and efficiently. I will try my best to do this in a way that leaves open as many different interpretive possibilities as possible. In particular, I do not mean to take sides in any debate about how much to incorporate “authentic” fingerings and pedalings, or about what those are or might be in any particular case. That does not mean that I will not mention them or include them among the possibilities. As I hinted but did not quite state last month, I will not discuss any work on memorization. (I have, like many performers and teachers, somewhat mixed and complicated feelings about memorization, but I do not consider it to be a necessary or integral part of learning a piece well and performing it in a way that is both solid and artistically worthwhile. I will discuss memorization as an issue unto itself in a later column.)

Fingering
Since the opening of our Praeludium (see Example 1) is a monophonic statement of three rather long measures—49 notes—the first question that arises is which hand or hands should play it. (This foreshadows the most important practical question about any passage of keyboard music; namely, which notes should go in which hand. This question must precede detailed questions about fingering, and it is often overlooked or shortchanged by students. More about this later.) Since the passage is basically high—in the right hand region of the keyboard—and is probably not going to be played in a way that is prohibitively fast for one hand, it makes sense to start out by assuming that it is a right-hand passage.
However, it also makes sense to look for places where taking some of the notes in the left hand would make things easier. Each student can look the passage over and make this judgment for him- or herself. It might, for example, make sense to take the four sixteenth notes of the third beat of m. 3 in the left hand. These notes are lower than the rest and using the left hand to play them would put that hand in a good position to participate in playing the chord on the first beat of m. 4.
It is also possible to share the notes more or less equally between the hands, though I myself have not been in the habit of doing so in this passage. An advantage of sharing the notes between the two hands is that it is just easier to execute. This becomes more important the faster a player wants the passage to go. A disadvantage to dividing the passage up between the hands is that it gives more to think about in the learning process and to remember in playing, and probably takes longer to learn.
On a more positive note, an advantage to keeping the passage in one hand is that it is probably easier or more natural to project the overall rhetorical shape of the line when the shape and spacing of the notes is felt in the most direct physical way by the player. None of these considerations is absolute, and a teacher and student can think about them and work them out.
Just for the record, the fingering that I myself would use to play this passage is shown in Example 2. This is largely a common-sense and hand-position-based fingering. For example, the choice of 1-3 to begin the passage is entirely based on the way that my own fingers happen to fall over those notes, given my posture and my arm angle. (The arm angle stems from my preference for letting my elbows float out from my sides, which in turn is—for me—part of a relaxed posture.) The first four notes could just as well be played 1-2-3-4 or 2-3-4-5. The choice of 3 rather than 4 for the D-natural 32nd note late in m. 1 is designed to make it easier to reach the coming G# with 4 (rather than 5). The point of playing that G# with 4, in turn, is twofold: first, to place the (long) third finger on the F# and the (shorter) second finger on the E; second, to make it easier then to reach the high B on the final half-beat of the measure with finger 5. (It would also be fine to play those notes—G#-F#-E—with 3-2-1.) For me, keeping the thumb off of raised keys is a guiding principle.
A reason for not playing the third beat of m. 1 with 2-1-2-5, etc. (but rather with 4-3-2-5, etc.) is that the gesture of turning the second finger over the thumb to play the G# moves the hand away from the upcoming (high) E, and therefore makes the playing of that note awkward—at least, that is how it works with my hand. In m. 3, the non-adjacent fingerings of each of the beat groupings are all designed to move the hand in the correct direction for whatever is coming up next.
This fingering is not intended to be a recommendation or even a suggestion: it is just how I would probably do it. There are many other ways. (Some of these might be more historically minded—with more disjunct or pair-wise fingerings—or less so—with substitution or more use of the thumb, even occasionally on a black note.) The important thing is that teacher and student work out a fingering that is appropriate for that student. Sometimes that process involves a lot of specific input from the teacher, sometimes little or none. A teacher should always look for ways to let the student assume increasingly more responsibility for working out fingerings. I tend to give very few specific fingering suggestions, but keep an eye out for spots where a student may not have succeeded in finding something that works well. In those cases, I will invite the student to analyze the spot again, perhaps with more input from me.
So in this case, once a fingering has been worked out, the most effective approach to practicing the passage is clear. That is, since it is only one line and one hand—at least, certainly one hand at a time—there is no concern about how to combine parts, and in what order. The plan is just to practice it. First, choose a very slow tempo: slow enough that playing the right notes with the planned fingering is actually easy. This might, for one player, be sixteenth note equals 60, for another 80, for another 45. For an advanced player or a good reader it might be faster, and it might be all right to think about a pulse for the eighth note even from the beginning. Anything is all right, as long as the student does not start with too fast a tempo. Then, having played the passage several times at this starting tempo, the student should play it several times a little bit faster, then a little bit faster still. At some point, the beat in the student’s head will naturally shift from the sixteenth note to the eighth note, then to the quarter note. The crucial thing is not to get ahead of a tempo that honestly feels easy. This, if practiced rigorously, will lead to unshakeable security.
Meanwhile, the rest of the opening section is multi-voiced, a mix of not very strict counterpoint and homophonic writing. In this passage, the main practical question is which hand should play some of the inner-voice notes. As I mentioned above, this is extraordinarily important. I have seen students waste a lot of time or even make an easy passage almost unplayable by assigning notes to hands in an awkward way. This is usually caused by assuming too readily that the notes printed in the upper staff should be played by the right hand and those printed in the lower staff should be played by the left hand. In fact, there should never be such an assumption unless the two hands are meant to be on different keyboards, providing different sounds for different parts of the texture. In general, the two manual staves between them present a note picture, and we have ten fingers with which to play that note picture in the most reliable way possible.
In each of the measures in Example 3, there are notes in what is more or less the alto voice that are printed in the upper staff; some of these might be best played in the left hand. The notes that I have highlighted are those that I would choose to play in the left hand. Again, this is not by any means the only way to do it. The first criterion that I use in working this out is that “extra” notes should be placed in the hand that otherwise has less to do. That is at work very strikingly in mm. 7-8, and the beginning of m. 9, but also elsewhere. Sometimes hand choices are made based on the need to prepare what comes next. That applies here in m. 11, where I am not taking several notes in the left hand that could, or in a sense should, be in the left hand, so as to make it possible for the left hand to play the (tenor) E in the chord in m. 12. (There would be other ways to deal with this, involving substitution.)
Sometimes the notes of a passage in a middle voice can be divided between the hands just to make that passage easier—less inclined to get tangled. This is the case here in m. 5 and to some extent in m. 10. An overriding consideration is hand position: how can notes be divided between the hands in a way that best allows each hand to remain in a natural, comfortable position?
After the hand assignments have been worked out, the next step is to work out fingering. (In the process, some hand choices may be changed.) As always, fingering will depend in part on factors that differ from one player to another, including the size and shape of the hands, existing habits or “comfort zones,” and artistic goals concerning articulation, tempo, and other matters. Example 4 shows a possible sample fingering for one of the more convoluted of these measures. As always, there is a lot here that could be done differently. For example, it could make sense to play the E that is the first note in the top voice of the first full measure with 5, or the D#/B right-hand chord later in that measure with 2/1. It would also be possible to take the A#-B in the first full measure with the left hand, probably with 2-1. The above is just one way of doing it.

Practicing
Once the fingering has been worked out, the next step is practicing. The principles of practicing are always the same, and they are both so important and so difficult psychologically (for most of us, certainly including me) that they can’t be repeated too often: break the music down into manageable units—short passages, separate hands and feet; practice slowly enough; speed up gradually and only when the unit being practiced is really ready for it. In the case of the passage under discussion, one sensible way to divide things up might be as follows:
1) the right hand from the last few notes of m. 3 through the downbeat of m. 9
2) the left hand from the downbeat of m. 4 through the second beat of m. 9
3) the right hand from the first high B in m. 8 through m. 12
4) the left hand from the half note D# in m. 8 through m. 12, and
5) the pedal part, which I will discuss in its own right just below.
(Notice that the sections are designed to dovetail, not to bump into one another. This guarantees that practicing in sections will not cause fissures or awkward transitions to develop. This is quite important. It also applies to practicing across page turns.)
Each of these units should be played many times at, initially, a very slow tempo: as always, slow enough that it feels easy. For most students it would probably make sense, given the somewhat complex texture of this passage, to start with a beat—in the student’s head or from a metronome—that will represent the 32nd note, so that each of the sixteenth notes will receive two of those beats. This 32nd-note beat might initially be at 100, or 80, or 120: whatever feels comfortable. Then each unit should be sped up gradually.
(Some musicians express concern that starting the practicing procedure with beats that represent very short notes—many levels down from the “beat” suggested by the time signature—will result in playing that lacks a sense of underlying pulse, that is too divided into small fragments. However, it is insecurity as to the notes, fingerings, and pedalings that is by far the greatest cause of rhythmically unconvincing playing. At the early to middle stages of learning a passage, the best thing that we can do to predispose that passage towards convincing rhythm is whatever will get the notes learned the most securely. The use of very small note values early in practicing is so removed from later performance, in time and in feel, that I have never known it to come back and haunt or influence the quality of a that performance.)
Some variation is possible in the mode of reconnecting the separate hands. In general, the slower you are willing to keep things, the more promptly you can let yourself put components of the whole texture together. There is some speed at which any given student could indeed skip the step of separating hands. For most of us, in moderately or very difficult passages, this tempo is very slow indeed, and in general it is not a good idea to aim to do this. (Not a good idea partly because it taxes our boredom threshold and partly because separate-hand practicing also allows us to hear things clearly.) In general, if each hand feels really solid at a certain tempo—ready in theory to be performed by itself at that tempo—then it is possible to put those hands together at a somewhat slower tempo. How much slower varies from one situation to another. The overriding principle is a familiar one: when you put the hands together, the tempo should be such that the results are accurate and the experience feels easy—no scrambling, no emergencies, no near misses.

Pedaling
The pedal part in mm. 4–12 of this piece is simple though non-trivial. I would play the fifteen pedal notes with the following feet, all toes:
l-r-r-r-l-r-l-r-l-r-l-l-r-r-l
Other possibilities involve, for example, playing the first note of m. 5 with left toe (crossing over) or playing the second note of that measure with right heel; or playing some of the two-note groupings that span bar lines (between mm. 6–7, 7–8, 8–9) with one foot, either all toes or toe and heel. Once a student has decided on a pedaling, he or she should play through the pedal part slowly, not looking at the feet, until it is second nature. Since the note values are all long, getting the pedal part up to tempo will not take as long or go through as many stages as it would with some other passages. However, it is extremely important not to shortchange the practicing of even this fairly simple pedal line. This is all the more true because in general lower notes and slower notes play the greatest part in shaping the underlying pulse and rhythm in organ music. This pedal line is both.
When the pedal part seems very solid, then it is time to begin practicing it with the left hand. It is often true—for most players—that “left hand and pedal” is the combination of parts that requires the most work. Therefore it should be started as soon as each of those parts is ready. It is also often true that once left hand and pedal is very secure, and the right hand part is well learned, and the two hands together are secure, then the whole texture will fit together without too much trouble. However, it certainly never hurts to practice right hand and pedal as well. In the case of this section, there are a couple of places where the strongest rhetorical and rhythmic interaction is between the something that is being played by the right hand and the bass line in the pedal. This is the case, for example, with the transition from m. 3 to m. 4, and also the middle of m. 10. Practicing the right hand and pedal together will draw the attention of the ears to these spots.
Next month we will start looking at the Boëllmann, concentrating on understanding the overall shape of the piece and looking for connections and contrasts.