The Organ: A Dangerously Inexpressive Musical Instrument?

John Bishop takes on Facebook and wonders how it applies to organists

Facebooking the music

Fifty years ago when television was a fledgling technology, it was touted as a great educational tool. That has proven true to some extent, but I wonder how many of us think that education is the primary function of television. If you took away all the sports, movies, crime dramas, sitcoms, reality shows, and talk shows, you’d be left with the Home Shopping Network and children’s television. Children’s television, carefully filtered, is not far from the only programming that’s specifically intended as educational. Even PBS nature programming has evolved into “blood and guts” television. What used to be beautifully photographed documentaries about tree frogs has become action-terror shows about sharks, crocodiles, and volcanoes with that macho-tension-danger tone of narration. What if some future inter-stellar traveler used a week of television programming to sum up modern American civilization? He would miss the pipe organ altogether.

The origins of Facebook are pretty fuzzy, especially because there are ongoing disputes about who actually came up with the idea and who stole what from whom. But it’s clear enough that one of the early iterations called Facesmash included a trick where photos of two Harvard students showed on your screen and you would vote for which was more attractive. I think I read that Facesmash founder Mark Zuckerberg set this up because he was annoyed when a girl jilted him. This did not fly well at politically correct Harvard University and Zuckerberg was called up in front of the disciplinary board. 

All this implies that Facebook wasn’t founded on high moral principles, but it sure is a medium that is missing its potential by a wide margin. When Facebook started getting popular, I was aware that members of my family were making posts about having the sniffles, or changing brands of toothpaste, and I was easily able to stay clear. But once while I was out of town sharing a nice dinner with a colleague, he talked at some length about how much he enjoyed keeping in touch with what’s going on in the organ business by “Facebooking” with his friends. He showed me how friends were sharing ideas, posting photos of organ installations, and generally carrying on the kind of trade chatter that I love.

I joined. I made it clear to family members that I intended to keep my presence on Facebook professional, and now I have about eight hundred friends, most of whom are organ professionals. Even so, you’ll not be surprised to hear that plenty of my professional friends make unprofessional posts. One guy who posts frequently seems to have nothing to say other than, “Good morning. Got my coffee.” Another friend posts photos of his cats virtually every day. Nice cats, but I get it already. And really, friends, photos of fancy cocktails and beautiful restaurant meals have a way of looking alike. I wonder how long it will take Internet engineers to develop the ability to transmit smells?

Here’s a little lecture, for what it’s worth. When you post something on Facebook, remember that anyone can read it. So choir directors, never post yourself whining about volunteer choir members. Your success as a church musician depends on your ability to recruit, nurture, and maintain volunteer singers. Imagine how dear Mabel, who sings so loud and so flat, is going to feel if she reads you complaining about having to work with her. You’re being paid to do that work. She is giving of her discretionary time for the privilege of singing under your direction as part of her worship experience. Accept that as flattery and work it out.

And organbuilders, never post yourself whining about your clients. If you care at all about your professional future, remind yourself how precious is the client that chooses a pipe organ when so many alternatives are available. We used to take them granted—there would always be organs to build. That’s not the case anymore, and we must recruit, nurture, and maintain our clients. If you feel you have to complain, do it in private.

Why are we doing this, anyway?

Several of my (Facebook) friends stand out because their posts are so constructive, informative, and celebratory. Neal Campbell is director of music and organist at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Darien, Connecticut, and is editor of the newsletter of the New York City Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. He is a wonderful historian, especially regarding church music in New York. He posts frequently on Facebook, sharing photos and information about those organists whose names we all know, and about whom we know nothing. He also sets a standard for how to post about a volunteer choir—sharing his pleasure with the choristers he works with. Neal’s posts are thoughtful, charming, informative, and encouraging. If I were a parishioner at St. Luke’s, Neal’s tone on Facebook might just inspire me to join the choir. It’s obviously the place to be.

Walden Moore is another Connecticut Episcopal organist who uses Facebook wonderfully. He has served Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven for nearly thirty years. He has a long history of mentoring distinguished assistant organists and organ scholars (I suppose I would too if my neighbor were the Yale Institute of Sacred Music—quite a talent pool!), and he leads three wonderful choirs in a beautiful building with a marvelous organ. Walden is a regular on my Facebook page, and his posts reflect the joy of playing the organ, working with choirs, and working with a raft of brilliant musicians. Plenty of the photos he posts show restaurant tables, but it’s not primarily about the food. What stands out is that everyone in each photo is smiling or laughing. Now that’s church music!

Yesterday I saw this post from the mother of boys who sing under Walden’s direction: 

‘Believe in yourself. Believe in yourself as much as I believe in you.’—Mr. Moore to his choirboys at rehearsal tonight as they wrestled with a rhythmically thorny passage in a Distler piece. This is why my boys sing in choirs; would that every child could have this opportunity.

You go, Walden. More of that kind of thinking, and choir practice will take precedence over soccer. If everyone used Facebook like that, the world would be a better place.

It’s not just any wind

Recently, Walden posted photos of the two organ blowers in Marquand Chapel at Yale—one for the Skinner organ, the other for Taylor & Boody. Here’s what he said to accompany those photos:

Looking forward to the first class meeting of Liturgical Keyboard Skills tomorrow. Here are two almost never-seen views of the blowers for Marquand’s two equally fine and beautiful organs, built by Ernest M. Skinner and Taylor & Boody. The two blowers pictured, just like the organs, are as different as they could be, but the difference in the wind provided is not reflected by the impact of the two organs in the chapel space. Both lead in the way in which they were designed, and each is a fine representation of the builder’s art.

A tidbit like this is food for thought. Look at these two photos and note the differences between the two machines. One is modern, sleek, and compact, and ironically enough, provides the wind for a new organ based on ancient principles. The other is a “Spencer Orgoblo,” the workhorse of the twentieth-century electro-pneumatic organ. You can easily find the specifications of the two organs online. They are similar in size, at least in number of stops. The Taylor & Boody organ has more pipes, but I bet the Skinner weighs more!

One organ has sub-semitones on all three keyboards. One has two separate expression enclosures. One has lots of pistons, one has three big wedge-shaped reservoirs that can be pumped by foot power. One is in a chamber with curtains and a discreet façade, the other is in a free-standing case built of hardwood, opulently decorated with carvings and gold leaf. In tonal structure, philosophy, intent, and mechanical systems, the two instruments could hardly be more different, but they are both pipe organs, and they share the same air space. And that same air runs through the two blowers into the wildly different mechanical entities, producing as wide a variety of tone colors as you’ll ever hear on six keyboards. (Curt Mangel and Peter Conte, you stay out of it!)

I love wind. I’ve written about it frequently in these pages. I chose the title of this column because of the organ’s dependency on wind, and because, as Bob Dylan told us in his 1962 song, “The answer is blowing in the wind” is an enigmatic phrase that means either the answer is so obvious that you’re a fool if you don’t get it, or it’s as free-flowing and omni-directional as the wind. “In the wind” is the equivalent of “the grapevine”—a vehicle for the exchange of ideas and/or the proliferation of gossip.

By the way, “Blowin’ in the Wind” is number 14, and “Heard It through the Grapevine” is number 80 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Funny, I looked up the list and didn’t find a single one of Schubert’s 600. Surely “Der Erlkönig” should have made it. And what about “I Got Rhythm?” All time greatest? How are we defining a song? Dylan gets all the way through his song singing only eight different notes. And I could name that tune in one note.

I think of wind in two different ways. There is the wind I know I cannot control, and the wind I think I can control. We live on a tidal shore and the “sea breeze” is a favorite of mine. This is not just a wind that blows by the sea. It’s a specific phenomenon caused by the warm afternoon sun heating up the land mass faster than the ocean’s surface. The warm air rises off the land, and the cooler air rushes in off the ocean to take its place. It blows up the river and right through our house, and it’s the most refreshing atmosphere ever. The only way I can control that wind is by opening and closing certain doors, causing it to turn at the end of the back hall and blow into the garage, which is my workshop. Wonderful.

In that workshop, I do all kinds of things that make me think I can control wind. I build windlines, releather windchests, and replace gaskets. I releather reservoirs—those ingenious devices that receive and store air pressure generated by the organ blower, regulate it to a specific intentional level of pressure, and then distribute it to the organ’s pipes as the player demands air by playing notes that open valves. I can claim to be in control of that wind, but it’s pretty crafty, always trying to escape and rejoin the rest of its free-spinning family. We call that “wind leaks.”

Here’s a tiny organ blower that’s been on a shelf in my workshop for several years. In the trade, we call this a “pancake” blower because of its horizontal orientation. It’s what you might find in a portable continuo organ, and it would be adequate for a gentle Positiv organ of six stops or less. But it would not provide enough pressure and volume of air for even one Skinner Diapason.

And here is the huge blowing plant for the mighty organ at Woolsey Hall at Yale University, training ground for all those organ scholars at Trinity Church on the Green. These beautiful specialized machines provide all the wind pressure for nearly two hundred ranks of heavy-duty Skinner pipes, including a fleet of thirty-twos. These two machines are redundant—if one quits, the other takes up the charge. They are each 20-horsepower motors that run on 440 volts of direct current. They have two pressure outputs regulated to 12 inches and 27 inches of wind pressure. Joe Dzeda, one of the curators of this wonderful organ, tells me that they run at 900 rpm, were built in 1915 and 1916, and are among the oldest electric motors in the State of Connecticut. Anyone who has been around the students at Yale knows this is a workhorse organ—the blowers are running between 40 and 50 hours each week!

The look of the sound

Look across a modern symphony orchestra and see how many different ways moving pressurized air can be turned into musical tone. The trumpet and the bass tuba are similar in tone production even though their physical sizes are so different. Because the tone is produced by physical “mechanical” vibration (the players’ bi-labial fricative), they are roughly analogous to the reed voices in a pipe organ. The double reeds (oboe, bassoon, English horn) all act the same way, as do the single reeds (clarinet, basset horn, and saxophone). In the orchestra, the only wind instruments that do not have a physical moving part to create the tone are the flutes and piccolos. There, the player directs a carefully produced and aimed column of air across a tiny hole.

Over centuries of experimentation and development, organ builders have created a wide range of tonal colors by manipulating wind through vessels of different sizes, shapes, and construction. Assume an open organ pipe two feet long, which is middle C of an eight-foot stop. It might be the diameter of my thumb (a narrow-scale string like Viole d’Orchestre) or the diameter of a thistle-seed birdfeeder (a broad diapason). It might be made of wood or metal. It might have a narrow mouth (2/9 of the circumference)—imagine the embouchure of the flautist—or it might have a wide mouth. Years ago, a mentor gave me the clear image of air as fuel. In your car, stepping on the throttle (gas pedal) sends more fuel to the engine’s cylinders. In an organ, a wider mouth, a deeper windway, a larger toe-hole all send more fuel to the pipe’s “engine”—the upper lip of the mouth that splits the windsheet creating the vibration that generates the tone. Choosing which of these functions should send more air is at the discretion of the tonal designer or the voicer.

An organ pipe can be tapered, wider at the mouth, narrow at the top (Spitz Flute, Gemshorn) or tapered the other way, wider at the top (Dolcan—an unusual stop). And then—put a stopper in the pipe, cut its length in half, and you have the wide world of Gedeckts, Stopped Diapasons, and Bourdons. In these, a one-foot pipe gives you middle C of that eight-foot stop, and they can be either metal or wood. Drill a hole in the cap of a metal Gedeckt, solder a little tube to it and you have a Chimney Flute or Rohrflöte. I like to think that drilling that hole sets the quint free (22⁄3′ harmonic)—that’s what gives the lyrical brightness to a Chimney Flute.

I think an important test of the tonal content of an organ is to compare eight-foot flutes. A big organ might have five or six of them. Sort out which are stopped flutes and which are open, and play the same passage on each. If they are all different, individual voices, the tonal designer and voicer have done their jobs. It’s surprising how all the flutes sound alike in some large, and otherwise good organs. The wonderful Hook & Hastings organ at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston, now dismantled and stored because the church closed, stood out for me as an instrument with a wide—even wild—variety of flute tone.

Let’s go back to those two blowers at Marquand Chapel. Any organbuilder would be able to tell which blower belongs to which organ by listening to a couple measures played on each instrument, or simply by looking at photos of the organs and the blowers. The type and style of the blower is analogous to the type and style of the organ. And any organbuilder could compare photos of ranks of pipes with their sounds. If you look at a Gedeckt pipe and choose the sound of a Diapason, you’re
no organbuilder!

The wide variety of shapes and types of organ pipes means that one blower can draw air from its surroundings, blow it into the organ, and allow the organist to blend sounds like the old-master painter chose and blended colors. I suppose when you were starting out with organ lessons your teacher may have given you rules about how to choose stops. Here’s one I remember, don’t put a four-foot Flute above an eight-foot Principal. Almost fifty years later I ask, why not? If it sounds good to me, maybe the listeners will like it too.

Or will I read a Facebook whine that says, “I heard Bishop play last night and wouldn’t you know, he used a four-foot Flute above an eight-foot Principal.”

By the way, if you’re lurking about on Facebook, take a look at Andrew Gingery’s page. Andrew is a longtime member of the staff at C. B. Fisk, Inc. They’re installing a new blue organ in Japan. And while you’re at it, visit John Pike Mander of Mander Organs in the UK—he’s installing a new organ at the Anglican Cathedral in Kobe, Japan. Take their cues about what Facebook can be, and stop whining. Wonderful. 

Parkey OrganBuilders

Duluth, Georgia, Opus 14

Providence United Methodist Church

Charlotte, North Carolina

Adam M. Ward, Director of Music Ministries, Providence United Methodist Church

From the builder

In December of 2011, my long-time friend and colleague Irv Lawless informed me that Aeolian-Skinner Opus 1472 would soon be available for relocation. Though the dialogue made clear that the organ’s location was not to be revealed, it only took an Internet search to reveal it as the organ located in the Concert Hall of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, home for the National Symphony Orchestra. 

My first contact with this organ took place in summer of 1996 during the removal of the organ for a complete renovation of the Concert Hall for both visual aesthetics and acoustical renovations. Jack Bethards was enlisted as the consultant for the project, and Irv Lawless, installer and long-time curator of the organ, was to carry out the removal and re-installation of the organ. Those were early years for our company and it was a thrill to be involved with such a job. Though many of the recommendations of Mr. Bethards and Mr. Lawless were followed for the removal and re-installation of the organ, the Concert Hall had presented several acoustical issues over the years and the organ never achieved its intended success. 

The gift for the purchase of the Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ came from the Filene Foundation under the direction of Mrs. Catherine Filene Shouse in memory of her parents and was known as the Great Filene Memorial Pipe organ. The grant was given in 1965 and due to economic inflation, the size of the original organ specification was reduced considerably by the time of its installation in 1971. Many of the delays were due to funding of construction of the Kennedy Center itself. Sadly, despite the corrections of chambers and straight-line egress made for the organ placement, the organ was moved physically further out of the room and the prospects of reverberation chambers offstage proved to only further hinder the acoustics of the room.  

During the re-installation in 1997, I personally noted the peculiar characteristics of the Concert Hall. Sound projection from the performance stage was weak, but while taking photographs of the installation I observed that people speaking in the balconies could clearly be heard and understood at odd locations throughout the room—not the desired acoustical results of the space. The ultimate attempt to improve the sound projection from the stage into the hall was to hang an acoustical reflecting cloud over the stage area, prohibiting the egress of organ sound even further.

Aeolian-Skinner Opus 1472 featured an extensive specification, including the signature Skinner strings in the Swell and Flauto Dolce and Celeste in the Positiv division. Many reed stops and Pedal stops often duplexed or unified in smaller instruments were complete and straight in this instrument. Conversations among our crew during the re-installation concerned the challenges still confronting the organ and its limited success in the Concert Hall. However, we all agreed the organ offered a substantial range of possibilities as a church instrument. Thus, the decision was eventually made to move another organ into the Concert Hall and relocate Aeolian-Skinner Opus 1472. It was noted, however, that no acoustical changes were made to the Concert Hall for the introduction of the next organ.

As the chapter of life for Opus 1472 with the Kennedy Center concluded, Mr. Lawless contacted us regarding the options of a new home for the organ. Our personal list of clients provided us with three very viable options for Opus 1472 and contacts were made. Responses came immediately from two of the clients expressing an interest in the instrument. Ultimately, Providence United Methodist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, would become the new home for Parkey OrganBuilders Opus 14—from the core of the instrument of the Aeolian-Skinner Opus 1472.    

We were fully aware that the organ was due for mechanical renovations to the chests and winding system and that the chances of finding the perfect “fit” for existing chests would be slight. The console and relay systems had been renovated several years prior and were in excellent condition. The scaling of the organ was perfect for the church of 800 to 1,200 seats rather than the Concert Hall of 2,700+. With that, we explained to the clients the benefits and changes that would ensue to repurpose the organ as a church instrument.

The organ was completely removed from the Kennedy Center in June of 2012 and shipped to our company in Duluth, Georgia (a suburb of metropolitan Atlanta). The stop list was revised to complement the new installation. New cases designed for the Williamsburg-style sanctuary were part of the new installation. The organ was placed on all new electro-pneumatic slider and unit wind chests. Some minor changes were made to the stop list to reduce the number of mixtures and replace several reeds for a better match to the new location. The original console was retained and refinished with several upgrades to the current Solid State Organ Systems capture and relay systems.

The organ still reflects many of the strong traits that made the Aeolian-Skinner reputation what it is. The organ possesses colorful, complete principal choruses in each division. The Swell offers a large battery of reeds with no unification. The 8′ Vox Regal from the original Aeolian-Skinner installation was retained for the other organ installed at the Kennedy Center. With that, the door was open for a new English-style 8′ Vox Humana featuring separate tremolo. Dr. Adam Ward, director of music ministries at Providence United Methodist Church, was instrumental in providing directions for the tailoring of the instrument to be a strong leader in worship music.

Our Opus 14 replaced a much smaller and failing pipe organ that was built and installed by a local Charlotte firm in 1964. The previous organ’s design was strongly rooted in the neo-Baroque style of organ building. Our Opus 14 has a much warmer and richer sound, providing a strong foundation to lead congregational singing. The benefits of the concert specification still provide endless potential for the performance of an extensive range of literature.

On the surface, the organ is at most a compilation of wood, metal, and wire constructed in a fashion to create sounds for making music. It is the organist and musicians that lend it life and passion to make music for the masses. The original organ served as the leader for a national performing arts center and paved the way for many to experience and hear the sounds of the pipe organ. Countless international organists performed at the Kennedy Center on the organ. Every president since 1973 has been in the audience at some point to hear the organ, and it served to ring in the Christmas season for nearly 41 years with performances of Messiah. Opus 1472 served as the ambassador for the pipe organ and its music.

Providence United Methodist Church will usher in the next chapter in the organ’s history by continuing its strong presence and contributions to music through its ministry in Charlotte, North Carolina. As an active force in missions and community outreach, the church appreciates the history and envisioned the potential in this organ to make an impact on its community in Charlotte. Many of us are glad to see the opportunity for the organ to finally realize its potential of surviving in the “right” location for size and acoustics. The mechanicals, new look, and careful restoration of the pipework have blended together seamlessly for a resoundingly successful organ. The palette of sound will allow organists to paint and weave their magic, and provide support for singing. This will follow the decades of famous organists who have already graced the keys of this organ. Alan Morrison played the dedication recital in September 2013 and provided the Charlotte AGO chapter with a wonderful masterclass during the dedication weekend. Parkey Opus 14 has proved to be a solid selection to complement the music and worship for the congregation of Providence United Methodist Church.

It is a distinct honor for Parkey OrganBuilders to have led this project. The visual and aural aspects of the instrument and its new look and casework are products of Parkey’s experience and understanding of the instrument and the church’s space. The pairing of the Parkey expertise with the passion of the church staff and membership for enhancing the quality of music in worship has produced a phenomenal instrument that will remain a cornerstone to the Charlotte community for years to come.

—Phil Parkey

From the director of music

Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle wrote: “Listen, and for Organ-music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the Morning Stars sing together.” We at Providence United Methodist Church now have the opportunity to hear the morning stars join their chorus in our worship as we pray, sing, listen, and celebrate the sacrament together. It is a rare and wonderful opportunity and privilege that a church can take on a project as vast as an organ installation. I count myself and our church as fortunate to have had this opportunity to watch what is, in essence, a living and breathing entity take shape in our worship space.

When I came to Providence, I was excited to know that the church was in the process of procuring an organ. While the former instrument had given the church many years of uninterrupted service, it was no longer functioning as a leader in worship. Through the diligence of our congregation and its unfaltering support of the finest music in worship, we now will be led by an organ that will undergird our song, whisper with our prayers, sigh in our mourning, and offer fanfare for our celebration.

We are thrilled to have the opportunity to preserve an American treasure. Aeolian-Skinner Opus 1472, now Parkey OrganBuilders Opus 14, could have been repurposed in a variety of ways; however, we have taken it, given it a new home that is appropriate in every way for its unique identity—and we are the benefactors both visually and sonically. Parkey OrganBuilders’ casework has melded perfectly into our chancel area, looking as if it were original to our room. Furthermore, the commitment to the tonal concepts of the Aeolian-Skinner “sound” have been preserved or, in many cases, restored. It has been exciting to see and hear the progress take place each day.

As we worship at Providence United Methodist Church, we will benefit from the strong support that this instrument will offer. The artistic community of Charlotte will benefit from the musical beauty that will emanate from this organ. Young musicians and old alike will benefit from the education that will be provided by this teaching tool. For the gifts of worship, art, and education, we at Providence United Methodist Church are grateful. We are proud that this instrument will support these endeavors for many years to come.

Acknowledgements

Dr. Adam Ward—Director of music ministries, Providence United Methodist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina

Dr. James Dorroh—Technical consultant, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church Birmingham, Alabama

Irv Lawless—President, Lawless and Associates Pipe Organ Company, Hagerstown, Maryland

David Nelms—Pipe Organ Services of the Carolinas, Monroe, North Carolina

Parkey OrganBuilders staff

Phillip K. Parkey, President and Tonal Director

Josh Duncan, office manager, installation and wiring

Kenny Lewis, voicing

Michael Morris, case and windchest design, installation, tonal finishing

Philip Read, shop supervisor, construction, installation

Mike Quinn, windchest and case construction, winding and installation

Victor Thomsen, case construction and installation

Otilia Gamboa, chest actions, wiring, installation

Aaron Cobb, onsite installation

Dominique Wilson, onsite installation

Charlie Talmadge, onsite installation

The start of a century

At 10:24 a.m. on October 15, 1947, Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager flew the X-1 experimental aircraft faster than the speed of sound. That’s 761.2 miles per hour at 59-degrees Fahrenheit. It was quite a technological achievement. You have to generate a lot of power to move a machine that fast. But there was a spiritual and metaphysical aspect to that feat. Engineers were confident that they could produce sufficient power, but they were not sure that a machine would survive the shock wave generated by a machine outrunning its own noise. They supposed that the plane would vaporize, or at least shatter, scattering Yeager-dust across the landscape.

In his swaggering ghost-written autobiography, Yeager, he casually mentions that he had broken ribs (probably garnered in a barroom brawl) and had to rig a broomstick to close the cockpit hatch. He took off, flew the daylights out of the thing, and landed, pretty much just like any other flight. By the noise, and by the cockpit instruments, he knew he had broken the sound barrier, but to Yeager’s undoubted pleasure and later comfort, the worries of the skeptics proved untrue.

Invisible barriers

Remember Y2K? As the final weeks of 1999 ticked by, residents of the world wondered if we would survive the magical, mystical moment between December 31, 1999, and January 1, 2000. Of course, the world has survived some twenty-five changes of millennia since we started to count time, but this would be the first time with computers. The myth that computers would not be able to count to 2000 had us hyperventilating as we ran to ATMs to grab as much cash as we could. People refused to make plans that would have them aloft in airplanes at that horrible moment, supposing that cockpit computers would fail and planes would fall from the sky. The collapse of the world’s economy was predicted. Public utilities would cease to function. Nuclear power plants would overheat, and soufflés would fall.

As the clock ticked closer to midnight on New Year’s Eve, we waited breathlessly. Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…sometimes it causes me to tremble…eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven…all good children go to heaven…four, three, two, one…

Humpf.

I have no idea how the venerable astronomers settled on how to organize the calendar and define our concept of time. I imagine a committee of bearded and wizened wise men gathered in a pub, throwing darts at a drawing of a clock. However they did it, they didn’t fool us. Cell phones, ATMs, airplanes, power plants, railroads, and thank goodness, icemakers just kept on running. However accurately that moment was defined, it was meaningless—a randomly identified milestone amongst the multitude.

Then we worried about what we call those years. The oughts? The Ohs? Shifting from ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine to oh-one, oh-two, oh-three seemed impossible. I managed, and so did you.

Centennials

The twentieth century started without the computer-induced hoopla, but I suppose that our heroes—Widor, Puccini, Saint-Saëns, Dvorák, and Thomas Edison—watched in suspense as the clock ticked past the witching hour. The real upheaval happened more than thirteen years later. On May 29, 1913, Ballets Russe danced the premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Stravinsky had used traditional and familiar instruments and all the same notes that people were used to, but the way he arranged the tonalities, the maniacal organization of rhythms, the angular melodies, and the radical orchestration set the place in an uproar. The bassoon that played those haunting melismatic opening solos could have been used to play continuo in a Bach cantata the same day. Legend has it that the audience couldn’t contain itself and there was wild disturbance. How wonderful for a serious musical composition to stir people up like that. I haven’t seen people so worked up since the Boston Bruins failed to win the Stanley Cup.

Everything’s up to date in Kansas City

About five weeks before Stravinsky tried to ruin the theater in Paris, the Woolworth Building designed by Cass Gilbert was opened on Lower Broadway in New York, April 24, 1913. Like Stravinsky, Cass Gilbert used a traditional vocabulary—the prickles and arches given us by the Gothic cathedrals. But Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “gone and built a skyscraper seven stories high” was not as high as a building ought to go. Cass Gilbert went fifty-seven stories—792 feet; the building remained the tallest in the world until 1930. Gilbert hung those classic Gothic features on a high-tech structure and startled the world of architecture and commerce.

Besides the technical achievement of supporting a massive structure that tall, the building had thirty-four newfangled elevators. The engineers executing Gilbert’s design had to figure out how to get water more than 700 feet up. Just think of that: pulling up to the curb in a shiny new 1913 Chalmers Touring Car, and stepping in an elevator to go up fifty-seven stories. Those folks in Kansas City would have flipped their wigs.

The Woolworth building is still there a hundred years later. Like The Rite of Spring, it’s a staple in our lives, and it seems a little less radical than it did a century ago. After all, a few blocks away at 8 Spruce Street, by the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, the new tallest residential building in the Americas (seventy-six stories and 876 feet), designed by Frank Gehry, towers like a maniacal grove of polished corkscrews. Gehry took the functional aesthetic of the glass-and-steel Seagram Building (375 Park Avenue, designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, built in 1958), and gave it a Cubist ethic by twisting the surfaces to create the signature rippling effects.

How poetic that the Woolworth Building and 8 Spruce Street, opened almost exactly a century apart, stand just a few blocks apart, trying to out-loom each other. I took these photos of them while standing in the same spot on City Hall Plaza.

Frank Woolworth made a fortune in retail, the Sam Walton of his day. F. W. Woolworth stores dotted the country, making goods of reasonable quality available to residents of small towns. However, I doubt that anything sold in his stores would have been found in his houses. His principal residence, also designed by Cass Gilbert, was at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 80th Street in Manhattan, across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among dozens of priceless artifacts was a large three-manual Aeolian organ. Woolworth was one of Aeolian’s prime customers, and, rare among that heady clientele, he could play the organ. 

His estate Winfield (the “W” of F. W. Woolworth) on Long Island boasted the first full-length 32-foot Double Open Diapason to be built for a residence organ. Now that would shake your champagne glasses.

Woolworth’s funeral was held in the Fifth Avenue mansion. Frank Taft, artistic director of the Aeolian Company, was on the organ bench.

The twenty-first-century pipe organ

There’s a lot going on here in lower Manhattan. South of Union Square at 14th Street, Broadway stops its disruptive diagonal path across the city, and assumes a more reliable north-south orientation, forming the border between Greenwich East Village and Greenwich West Village. On the corner of 10th and Broadway stands Grace Church (Episcopal). Three blocks west on the corner of 10th and Fifth Avenue stands Church of the Ascension (Episcopal). Both are “Gothicky” buildings—Grace is whitish with a tall pointed spire, while Ascension is brownish with a stolid square tower with finials. Both have pretty urban gardens. Both are prosperous, active places. And both have radical new 21st-century organs.

Taylor & Boody of Staunton, Virginia, is coming toward completion of the installation of their Opus 65 at Grace Church, where Patrick Allen is the Organist and Master of the Choristers. In 2011, Pascal Quoirin of Saint-Didier, Provence, France, completed installation of a marvelous instrument at Church of the Ascension, where Dennis Keene is Organist and Choirmaster.

Both of these organs have as their cores large tracker-action organs based on historic principles—and Principals. And both have large romantic divisions inspired by nineteenth- and twentieth-century ideals. Both are exquisite pieces of architecture and furniture, and both have been built by blending the highest levels of traditional craftsmanship with modern materials and methods.

At Church of the Ascension you can play the core organ from a three-manual mechanical keydesk, and the entire instrument from a separate four-manual electric console. At Grace Church, the whole organ plays from a four-manual detached mechanical console, and contacts under the keyboards allow access to electric couplers and the few high-pressure windchests that operate on electric action.

A more detailed account of the organ at Church of the Ascension has been published (see The Diapason, November 2011) and no doubt, we can expect one about the Grace Church organ—so I’ll limit myself to general observations, and let the organbuilders and musicians involved speak for themselves. I admire the courage and inventiveness exhibited in the creation of these two remarkable instruments.

I expect that purists from both ends of the spectrum will be critical, or at least skeptical of these efforts to bridge the abyss. But I raise the question of whether purism or conservative attitudes are the best things for the future of our instrument. We study history, measure pipes, analyze metal compositions, and study the relationships between ancient instruments and the music written for them. We have to do that, and we must do that. 

After finishing the restoration and relocation of a beautiful organ built by
E. & G. G. Hook (Opus 466, 1868) for the Follen Community Church in Lexington, Massachusetts, I wrote an essay in the dedication book under the title, The Past Becomes the Future. In it I wrote about the experience of working on such a fine instrument, marveling at the precision of the workers’ pencil lines, and the vision of conceiving an instrument that would be vital and exciting 140 years later. I saw that project as a metaphor for a combination of eras. And I intended the double meaning for the word becomes. The past not only transfers to the future, but it enhances the future. I could carry the play on words further by misquoting the title of a popular movie, Prada Becomes the Devil! 

Another tense of that use of the word become is familiar to us from Dupré’s Fifteen Antiphons: I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem. We don’t typically use the word that way in conversation, but if you read in a Victorian poem, “she of comely leg,” you’d know exactly what it meant!

Speaking of the ballet…

Recently, renowned organist Diane Belcher mentioned on Facebook that the recording she made in 1999 (JAV 115) on the Rosales/Glatter-Götz organ in the Claremont United Church of Christ, Claremont, California, has been released on iTunes. Buy it. This is a smashing recording of wonderful playing on a really thrilling organ. It’s a big, three-manual instrument with mechanical action and a wide variety of tone color. The recording has long been a favorite of mine—I transferred it from the original CD to my iPhone and listen to it in the car frequently.

The first piece on the recording, Tiento de Batalla sobre la Balletto del Granduca by Timothy Tikker, was commissioned by the organbuilder to showcase the organ’s extraordinary collection of reed voices. The piece opens with a statement of a measured dance, familiar to organists who grew up listening to the recording of E. Power Biggs, and proceeds in a dignified fashion from verse to verse. I picture a large stone hall lit by torches, with heavily costumed people in parade. But about three minutes in, things start to go wrong. It’s as though someone threw funky mushrooms into one of the torches. An odd note pokes through the stately procession—you can forgive it because you hardly notice it. But oops, there’s another—and another—and pretty soon the thing has morphed into a series of maniacal leaps and swoops as the reeds get more and more bawdy. Tikker established a traditional frame on which he hung a thrilling, sometimes terrifying essay on the power of those Rosales reeds.

New threads on old bones

• Igor Stravinsky used an ancient vocabulary of notes and sounds to create revolutionary sounds. The same old sharps and flats, rhythmic symbols, and every-good-boy-deserves-fudge were rejigged to start a revolution.

• Cass Gilbert used 500-year-old iconography to decorate a technological wonder.

• Frank Gehry gave the familiar skyscraper a new twist.

• Taylor & Boody and Pascal Quoirin have morphed seventeenth- and eighteenth-century languages into twenty-first-century marvels.

• Timothy Tikker painted for us a portrait of the march of time.

Organists are very good at lamenting the passage of the old ways. Each new translation of the bible or the Book of Common Prayer is cause for mourning. I won’t mention the introduction of new hymnals. (Oops!)

We recite stoplists as if they were the essence of the pipe organ. We draw the same five stops every time we play the same piece on a different organ. And we criticize our colleagues for starting a trill on the wrong note. 

I don’t think Igor Stravinsky cared a whit about which note should start a trill.

The end of the world as we know it

Together we have witnessed many doomsday predictions. I’ve not paid close attention to the science of it, but it seems to me that the Mayan calendar has come and gone in the news several times in the last few years. A predicted doomsday passes quietly and someone takes another look at the calendar and announces a miscalculation. Maybe the world will end. If it does, I suppose it will end for all of us so the playing field will remain equal.

But we can apply this phrase, the end of the world as we know it, to positive developments in our art and craft as the twenty-first century matures. Your denomination introduces a new hymnal—the end of the world as you know it. So, learn the new hymnal, decide for yourself what are the strong and weak points, and get on with it.

Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, and kept flying faster and faster. On October 15, 2012, at the age of 89, Chuck Yeager reenacted the feat, flying in a brand new F-15 accompanied by a Navy captain. But imagine this: it was the same day that Austrian Felix Baumgartner became the first person to break the sound barrier without at airplane! He jumped from a helium balloon at an altitude of twenty-four miles, and achieved a speed of 843.6 miles per hour as he fell before deploying his parachute. Both men lived to see another day.

A Taylor & Boody organ with multiple pressures and expressions, powerful voices on electric actions, and seething symphonic strings—the end of the world as we know it. Embrace the thoughtfulness and creativity that begat it. And for goodness’ sake, stop using archaic words like comely and begat. ν

It has always struck me as interesting that changing fingers on repeated notes and substitution are so similar to one another in what they actually involve physically. Thus it makes sense to me to use one of them to introduce the other. It is also important to keep them straight: it is extremely common for students to fall into the habit of doing a substitution when they think that they are changing fingers from one note to the repetition of that note.   

This continues without a break from last month’s column.

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.

A further practice step is to try patterns in which the hand plays more than one note at a time (Examples 1–4). The fingerings given above and below each line are alternates. There are other possibilities, for example, involving pairs such as 1/4 and 2/5. You can adapt these exercises in ways that occur to you, such as using black notes. Once again you should experiment with articulation. You can make non-repeated chords legato, and repeated chords any degree of non-legato; or try to match, as nearly identically as possible, the articulation of each of the motions from one chord to the next; or use a variety of non-legato articulations. Keep the hands light and relaxed, especially while releasing notes. Pay attention to the direction in which you release each finger when another finger is preparing to play that same note: up, down, slightly (or fully) to one side or the other. These logistic possibilities all have their place. They work out differently for players with varying relative finger lengths, and also for varying note patterns. It is your job to pay attention as you work on these exercises and figure out the most comfortable ways.

Repeated notes often occur in the context of ornaments, especially trills. The exercise in Example 5 allows you to practice that, assuming that you start each trill with the upper (auxiliary) note.You can play the opening note with 3 and each of the trills in succession with 4-3, or play the opening note with 2 and each of the trills with 3-2, or perhaps other patterns. You should adapt this exercise to other specific note patterns, including some involving black notes and the left hand. Do not worry about making the trills especially long or fast: the focus of practicing is the repeated note that initiates each trill.

Another ornament-based repeated note exercise, involving mordents, is shown in Example 6. You can play each quarter note with 3 and each mordent with 2-3-2, or other fingering patterns. For the purpose of this exercise it is only necessary that the final note of each mordent be played with a different finger from that which you want to use to play the following quarter note. Again, adapt this exercise to different specific note patterns and to the right hand.

Playing repeated notes with different fingers, in addition to giving the player more control over the timing, articulation, and sound of the repeated note patterns, also gives the player a free chance to re-position the hand. It can actually clarify and simplify fingering patterns for the passage around the repeated notes themselves. The excerpt from Rameau shown in Example 7 (part of the fifth of six variations on a Gavotte in A Minor) is an example of this, so extreme that if Rameau hadn’t written it, anyone discussing the fingering of repeated notes would have had to do so.

For all players except those with the very largest hands, changing fingers on the repeated notes in each group of four sixteenth notes is actually necessary to permit the playing of the other sixteenth notes. The same is true in the left hand sixteenth note pattern in the sixth variation from the same piece (Example 8).

But in being necessary it also guides the shaping of all of the rest of the fingering in such a way that the passages are actually quite natural and straightforward to play. Each decision about what fingers to use on the first and second notes of each pair of repeated notes should be based on where your hand is coming from and where it is going. Example 9 shows one possible fingering for the left hand part of the preceding example.

In Example 10, from the Brahms chorale Mein Jesu, der du mich, there is a moment, at the beginning of the second full measure, where the use of a different finger on a repeated note makes it possible to set up a simple and effective fingering for the succeeding passage. (My suggested fingering is not the only way to do it.)

The musical advantages of using different fingers to play repeated notes can only be heard and felt if the hand is very relaxed and the touch smooth and fluid. Any repeated-note moment (such as the one in this Brahms example) is a good place to remember, recapture, and apply the feeling of lightness gained from the trill exercise described above. 

Substitution

As opposed to changing fingers on repeated notes, the technique known as “substitution” is changing fingers on held notes. While these two techniques serve very different musical and technical purposes, and indeed are most typically associated with different historical periods and repertoire, they have so much in common technically as to be essentially versions of one another. 

There are several things to bear in mind when beginning to work on substitution:

1) A substitution can be either measured—the new finger placed silently on the note at a predetermined time, probably defined in relation to the beat of the passage, or instant—that is, the new finger slides in to replace the original finger as part of the gesture whereby the original finger played the note in the first place. (Whereas the timing of finger change in a repeated-note passage is determined by the timing of that passage’s notes.) A substitution can also be somewhat in-between: that is, not instant, not a one-gesture slide, but not specifically timed to be on a beat or subdivision of a beat. This latter is probably the most common in practice, though all are quite useful.

2) In any substitution there is likely to be something to observe about the specific direction in which the original finger departs and the direction from which the new finger arrives. It may make sense to get the original finger out of the way by lifting it up, moving it sideways, allowing it to curve downward, or something else, or some combination. The new finger can slide in under the old, or from above it, or from one side or the other. All of this affects or is affected by hand position and by the relative lengths of the fingers. It is not—since the substitution is silent in any case—something that affects the musical results. It is about comfort and reliability. 

3) Substitution is generally associated with legato. The usual reason for introducing an extra gesture into the act of playing is to permit the hand to be in a position to play the next note or notes without having to release the existing note(s) in a way that creates an unwanted break. Sometimes, however, substitution simply seems to make a passage easier. Different players develop different degrees of comfort with substitution and use it to differing extents. 

4) Substitution is more likely to be necessary or to provide an appropriate solution for creating true legato in situations in which a hand is playing more than one note: counterpoint or chords. In single line textures, substitution is rarely necessary to effect a particular musical result. (When it is necessary, that is usually a result of something having to do with very wide intervals.) That is not to say that it is not often comfortable or convenient. Sometimes it can serve the same function as changing fingers on repeated notes in that it can allow the hand to reposition itself efficiently.

5) Substitution—unlike most of what most performing musicians do while playing—creates physical gestures that do not correspond to anything that the player or the listener actually hears. This can break or weaken or generally interfere with the player’s ability to experience the rhythmic vitality of the music through the kinesthetic experience of playing. For some players this sense—almost of dancing to the music while playing, but doing so with the playing gestures themselves rather than by literal dancing—is a real and valuable aid to vivid and convincing performance. If the feeling that the hands (and perhaps feet) are doing things that aren’t part of the rhythmic flow of the music seems, to a particular player, like a problem, then that player might well be inclined to use substitution less than other players. There are also ways of counteracting or compensating for that effect. At an early stage of learning organ, and of becoming comfortable with substitution, this is something to file away at the back of the mind, in case it seems like an issue to be dealt with later.

6) Sometimes a tendency to rely on substitution as an all-purpose way of finding notes (scrambling for notes, in effect) can lead a player—whether a student or otherwise—to cut short the process of working out good, efficient fingerings and then practicing those fingerings with enough focus and dedication to learn them. In this way, a heavy reliance on substitution—especially by a beginning or “intermediate” student—can actually damage the learning process, sometimes seriously. This is far from being a reason not to learn and work on substitution, since it is a valuable tool, and for some purposes a necessary one. It is simply something to watch out for.

The second exercise given above for changing fingers on repeated notes can be adapted as a good beginning point for practicing substitution, simply by tying the repeated notes, and keeping the fingering the same (Example 11).

And this same note pattern can be used with an extremely wide variety of fingerings, since in principle any substitution is possible and is worth practicing. For example, the right hand fingering could be 3-4-5(1)-2-3-2-1(5)-4-3(5) (The parenthesis indicates substitution. In this fingering, the tied g’ going from the second to the third measure does not have a substitution.) Another possibility would be 1-2-3(1)-2-3(1)-4-3(1)-3-2(1). These fingerings are musically random: their purpose is to help you get the feeling of different substitution patterns.

The two-note chord exercises above can also be adapted as substitution exercises (Example 12). With the same-note chords tied, the fingerings would be carried out as substitutions rather than as changes of fingering on newly played notes. This can be tried with other specific fingerings, and other similar note patterns, and of course also in the left hand.

In carrying out substitutions with multiple notes, it is important to do the individual substitutions in the correct order. The correct order is the one that is the most comfortable and natural physically. (Again, since the substitutions are silent, this is about physical comfort and reliability rather than any audible result.) Usually that means the order that keeps the hand small: that doesn’t stretch the hand out any more than necessary. So, in the example above, the substitutions on the lower notes of the two note chords should be done first. It is always possible to figure out by trial and error which way is best. Sometimes it is also possible to figure it out in advance by analysis of hand position. Performing multiple substitutions in the correct order also has the effect of allowing the whole hand to move in one gesture towards the next note or notes or towards its next position. It is extremely important to get this right. That can make the difference between a substitution’s being easy and natural and its being both difficult and a potential source of strain or even of real injury.

Next month’s column will continue with more exercises for substitution and examples drawn from the repertoire.

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.) 

A church musician’s perspective on the Boston Marathon bombings

On April 15th, tragedy marred the famed Boston Marathon when two bombs went off at the finish line. Three people were killed and 260 persons injured. Over the next week the nation was transfixed by news of the investigation and manhunt that culminated in the unprecedented lock-down of a major metropolitan area. Many still struggle to make sense of these terrible events. Richard Webster, director of music and organist of Trinity Church, Copley Square, Boston, ran the Boston Marathon, completing the race moments before the blasts. His story provides a compelling context for how church musicians can respond to disaster with hope. 

Jason Overall: What is your background as a runner?

Richard Webster: I started running around 1980 when I quit smoking. At first I couldn’t run around the block without collapsing in a heap, but I found running to be a cleansing distraction from nicotine craving. Eventually, regular running became a habit. I completed my first marathon in 1995 at age 43. I had read a book on marathon training and followed its instructions. As race day approached, I was not overly confident that I could run 26 miles, but I did it. Crossing the finish line was like walking through the gates of heaven. I was hooked. The race I ran this year in Boston was my 25th marathon. With adequate training, anyone can run a marathon. Runners come in all shapes and sizes. 

How often do you run marathons?

Usually two a year—Chicago in October and Boston in April. I run Chicago in order to qualify for Boston, an elite race open to those who have run a previous marathon under a certain time, based on your age. I turned 60 just prior to the 2012 Chicago race, which meant that my qualifying time for Boston went up by 10 minutes. As my husband says, “you don’t have to get faster, just older.” 

Have you found a spiritual dimension to running?

Absolutely. I empathize with those who call the great outdoors their “church.” Being in the glory of nature, even on a bad day, doing what God designed your body to do, is hard to top. If your body is the “temple of the Holy Spirit,” then exercise of any kind is basic housekeeping. There is a deep spiritual component to running. As Eric Liddel said in his Chariots of Fire sermon, “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure.” For me, running is meditation. As a composer, some of my best ideas result from a long run when the mind is receptive, empty. I never run with music, earbuds, or paraphernalia. I love the silence. My footfalls and the wind in my ears are music enough. 

What is a typical weekly schedule for your running?

I would love to run daily, but a church musician’s schedule is so wonky that some days it just doesn’t happen. If I put it in my calendar, like a rehearsal, then I’m more likely to do it. I try to run four to six times a week. A day or two off each week is good. Your body needs to rest, repair and restore itself. In the months leading up to a marathon, one long run a week (8 to 20 miles) is key.

Are there parallels between running and musicianship? Has your musicianship benefitted from running?

Exercise, especially the aerobic kind, increases blood flow. More blood through the brain improves concentration, something vital to musicians. Running has increased my stamina in general. This week I’ve been directing the Grand Rapids Choir of Men and Boys in recording sessions for a new CD. I stand for hours, waving my arms, doing all I can to help this fine choir achieve its best. I don’t tire. Being a distance runner steels you. It gives you endurance.

What were your expectations before this year’s Boston Marathon?

The best day of the entire year in Boston is Patriots’ Day, the third Monday in April, commemorating Boston’s role as the cradle of the Revolution. It’s the day of the Boston Marathon, the world’s oldest and most prestigious marathon, something our city is rightly proud of. As a state holiday, businesses and schools are closed. Everyone has the day off. From the starting line in Hopkinton to the finish line in Copley Square, throngs turns out to cheer the runners and enjoy the race. It’s a 26-mile long party. On Patriots’ Day Boston truly becomes that “city on a hill” for all the world to see. The energy, enthusiasm and electricity flowing back and forth between the runners and the fans is hard to describe. It’s like really good church. I find it to be incredibly spiritual.

I usually run marathons in costume. It’s more fun and it jazzes up the fans. Kids particularly love it. I’ve run as the Easter Bunny, Paul Revere, Abraham Lincoln (in 2009 for his 200th birthday), Robin, J. S. Bach (to raise funds for the Bach Week Festival in Chicago), Robin Hood, Cat in the Hat, and a bumble bee. This year, to raise funds for the Trinity Boston Foundation, we held a costume contest. “See Richard run . . . as an Angry Bird, the Pope, or Prince William.” Votes were cast by making contributions to the Foundation. Prince William won handily. The costume was handsome—a red military jacket and sash, à la Prince William on his wedding day. I had a framed photo of Kate Middleton dangling from my neck and wore a big crown so fans could see me coming. All in all, it was a heady mix of fun, adrenaline, and enthusiasm, and for a worthy cause.

Did you have any goals?

No. Unlike Chicago, which is a flat course, Boston is notoriously hilly. Heartbreak Hill is only one of many “ups and downs” in this race. A “personal best” in Boston is as elusive as the Holy Grail. I’m always happy just to finish. Last year’s race, when it was 88 degrees, I ran in 4:30. This year I lopped off nearly a half hour, finishing in 4:03. 

Runners, especially marathoners, rely on their fans to help get them through the race. I knew I’d see one of my choir members at Mile 11 in Natick. She was there with a banana, a swig of water and a hug. Mile 13 is the “Wellesley gauntlet,” with thousands of Wellesley College women hanging over the police barricade screaming and begging for kisses from runners. So inspiring. So fun. At Mile 19 a group of Trinity choir folks awaited me, near the beginning of Heartbreak Hill. One of my tenors jumped into the race. For the next two miles, he ran with me, sticking by my side until we had crested Heartbreak Hill. Thanks to Mark, I forgot about the agony of those two relentlessly uphill miles. A gaggle of friends had gathered at Coolidge Corner, Mile 23.5, cameras and iPhones poised. Their wild cheering jazzed me up so much that I ran the rest of the race. Usually the agony of the last 3–4 miles is so acute that I can’t run continuously. It’s more a mix of running, walking, and hobbling. Lots of runners resort to this toward the end. For me, this time was different. My Mile 26 was the second fastest mile of the entire race. Inexplicably, I just kept running and crossed the finish line several minutes before I should have. Was it the Holy Spirit? Coincidence? The fans? The costume? I don’t know. 

Did you have friends waiting for you at the finish line?

I did, but I didn’t know it. Just after finishing, I spotted one of my choristers and her father in the crowd in front of Old South Church. I went over to the barricade for a quick hug and chat. Soon after leaving them, the first explosion went off a half block away. I will never forget how loud it was. It doesn’t surprise me that some who were close to the blast suffered hearing damage. At this point you think, “Is this a stunt? Fireworks? Something electrical?” Utter bewilderment. When the second blast struck, further down Boylston Street, you knew something was terribly wrong. Suddenly, chaos was everywhere. Sirens. Medical personnel careening toward the scene with stretchers. Emergency vehicles appearing out of nowhere. Choirs of sirens. Race volunteers moving the finishers away from the scene. A cluster of us were standing around trying to figure out what was going on when another runner who had just crossed the finish line, his forehead bloody, staggered up to us. Choking on his words, he said, “I can’t believe I saw limbs lying in the street.” We began to cry. How could this be happening? As this group of strangers wept, race volunteers surrounded us, asking, “How can we help? Can we call a relative for you?” That was futile, of course. Cell phone service was completely down. In the face of evil, the impulse is to overwhelm it with kindness and compassion. People were desperate to find a way to help, to bring relief to the suffering. In the weeks following, this response did not abate. Boston has felt like the Kingdom of God. Goodness, gentleness, and generosity are everywhere. Traffic is less aggressive; crowding onto a rush hour subway more deferential. Our city responded by saying, “The last word will not be evil, but kindness and mercy.” 

Some days later, the same chorister and her father with whom I had spoken at the finish line on race day said to me, “You saved our lives. We had been standing where the first bomb went off, waiting to see you finish. When you crossed the finish line, we left to go find you. Had you not finished when you did, we would have still been standing at that spot.”

How do you make sense of that? Maybe God gave me what it took to run faster than usual in order to spare their lives. But what about those who were not spared? These are hard spiritual questions with no facile answers.

What elements of your spirituality or musicality have nourished you during this time?

It has been a difficult time at Trinity. Our church is near the finish line. For ten days, the Copley Square area was closed as a crime scene. No one could get near the church. We were in exile. Where would we worship the following Sunday? The Church of the Advent graciously invited us to join them. Liturgically, our two churches are famously different. The two congregations worshipping together would have been something to behold. Temple Israel also reached out to us, offering their beautiful, modern building in the Longwood Medical area. “Come and hold your services here,” they invited. Not only did these kind people open up their building, they demonstrated radical hospitality, laying on coffee hour, serving as ushers, directing us to the restrooms. The chief Rabbi publicly welcomed us. We celebrated the Eucharist before the Torah ark in the Jewish temple. Who would ever have thought? Their only request was that we not bring crosses into the building. Roughly 900 people worshipped in a space as un-Richardsonian Romanesque as one could imagine. With a choir of eighty, a grand piano and flute, we were good to go. There was a lightness, grace, and holiness to it all. The congregation belted the hymns as never before, much to the amazement of the Jews, who blogged about “how those Christians really sing!” No one there will ever forget that service. The psalm appointed for Good Shepherd Sunday was Psalm 23. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.” What more needs to be said?

The Trinity choirs have been a unifying thread through these trials. The day after the attacks, a choir dad e-mailed, “My daughter insists that the Choristers go ahead with rehearsal today. She is adamant that they be together. If they can’t go to Trinity, then why not rehearse at Mr. Webster’s house?” A 10-year old gets it. When you’re the choir, you come together to do your job. You have a mission. Two days after the bombings, with the church still closed, our Wednesday Evensong morphed into an open-air service at the police barricade two blocks from the church. Colin Lynch led the choir, and clergy offered prayers for the healing of our city. Though our church building was closed, the community of faith carried on. Trinity finally reopened the following Wednesday. The first public service was Evensong with the Choristers. TV cameras rolled. It was another step in a painful, uncharted, redemptive journey that no one could have foreseen. 

At a time like this clichés are helpful because they convey truth. Life is precious. Life is a gift. It can be taken away or altered in an instant. Thank God for it every day, and tell those you love that you love them. Tell them often.

You express yourself so eloquently through your compositions. Can you envision responding to these events through your music?

I don’t know yet. Here’s another irony. The day before the race was a Sunday, known in Boston as Marathon Sunday. It’s a big day in the city churches, with scores of out-of-town runners on hand. At Trinity we bless the athletes during the services. I had composed a new anthem, Have you not known? Have you not heard? based on Isaiah 40, to be premiered that day. The text includes, “They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.” It had been commissioned by Stephen J. Hendrickson, a parishioner whose partner, David McCord, was about to run his first marathon. The energetic music weaves in the famous theme from Chariots of Fire. The Trinity Choir gave it a rousing first performance. Given the following day’s events, the piece has acquired a particular poignancy.

Are there other aspects of this that you would like to share?

There is no doubt that evil exists. We saw it in twelve horrifying seconds in Boston. But evil is everywhere, every day. Though there was injury and death on Patriots’ Day, there is violence in the streets of Boston, Chicago, Baghdad, and Damascus every day. We who claim the faith of Jesus are called to respond to the world’s brokenness passionately, with courage, mercy, and healing. 

Richard Webster, FRSCM, is director of music and organist at Trinity Church, Copley Square, Boston. He is also music director of Chicago’s Bach Week Festival, and president of Advent Press (www.advent-press.com).