On Teaching

Gavin Black is the director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He was organist and Senior Choir director of the Hillsborough Reformed Church in the Borough of Millstone, New Jersey from 1988 to 1994. He can be reached by e-mail at .

Playing hymns, part 1
This month and next I want to share a few thoughts about hymns and the teaching of hymn playing. There are a few special factors that influence my thinking about hymns and how to learn and teach them. First, I have been a church organist for a smaller proportion of my career than many colleagues—for about six years all together, less than many of my students and many or most readers of this column. I have engaged in the act of accompanying a congregation in singing a hymn probably about eleven- or twelve-hundred times. Many organists have done ten times that much. Although I believe that I have learned a lot about hymn playing from my own experience with it, I have probably learned more from the experiences of my students and from my own experience in helping them with their church work.
Second, I especially love hymns as pieces of music. They resonate, as I think anyone’s favorite music often does, with strong early memories: of time spent as a schoolboy in England, when we sang hymns in assembly every morning; of a couple of years spent as a boy soprano in the choir of Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven in the late 1960s; of travels through Europe, especially Germany, where I looked in on many church services for the purpose of hearing the music. This early exposure was fairly eclectic, and so is my own taste in hymns.
The playing of hymns in church—that is, when you as organist are accompanying people who are singing the hymns but who are there for the whole experience of the church service—is one of the (for me) rather few performance situations in which someone other than the performer has a legitimate interest in questions of what the playing is like, even, in fact, a right to help determine what the performance is like. A listener at a concert might prefer that a piece be louder, softer, faster, slower, registered differently, phrased differently, etc. That is fine: that listener’s perspective might constitute interesting feedback for the performer. If the performer genuinely finds that feedback useful, then he or she should take it into account next time. On the other hand, the performer has every right indeed to ignore that listener’s perspective, and the listener has every right not to come to the next concert! However, in church the pastor, members of the choir, members of the congregation, members of the music committee, perhaps even visitors, all have the right to care about how the hymns are played and to try to influence that playing.
(Bach was involved in a famous conflict about his hymn-playing style, in which he was criticized by the authorities for harmonizations that were too dissonant and too rhythmically complex for members of the congregation to follow. Although we all quite rightly venerate Bach, I myself would not like to try to sing to the few surviving hymn accompaniments from his pen. They are indeed dissonant, in a way that undermines the strong harmonic drive of the chorales, and there are virtuoso flourishes interrupting the rhythmic momentum not just between verses, but between phrases! Bach also got into conflict with church authorities because he wanted to choose the hymns himself, and the clergy wanted to do so.)
It is difficult to predict in any general way what stylistic or performance qualities a particular church will favor, request or require. It is also by no means true that a church organist must always agree to do things in the way that the pastor or music committee or a particular member of the congregation wants. In fact those might well differ from one another within any church situation: an organist can easily get caught in the middle. An organist must, however, be prepared to treat any opinions or suggestions with respect and consider how best to accommodate tastes, habits, and traditions that are found in a given church. It seems to me to make sense for an organist or aspiring organist to do the following: learn to play hymns so well that any stylistic or interpretive approach that that organist favors and wants to suggest will be presented as convincingly as possible, and thus have the best chance of being accepted by the others involved. And, at the same time, learn to play the hymns so securely that the act of changing some aspects of the playing—tempo, articulation, timing between verses, etc.—in such a way as to fit in comfortably with what the church wants will not be onerous.
Fortunately these two things are in fact the same. So how should a student work on learning to play hymns?
As pieces of music to learn on the organ, hymns have certain characteristics. They are essentially written to be sung. Therefore the writing is not necessarily idiomatic or comfortable keyboard writing. Hymns should be “easy” compared to all but the easiest repertoire, in that they have limited range, limited velocity, very limited rhythmic variation, little or no need to try for independence of line of the sort needed for playing counterpoint. However, they often seem, especially for relative beginners, harder than “hard” pieces. Pieces written as organ repertoire are usually written with at least half an eye on the question of what is physically, technically idiomatic to the instrument, so that even hard pieces are often natural and comfortable. This cannot usually be a concern in writing or setting a hymn when the setting is meant to be sung in four parts. (While in many or most situations hymns are not in fact sung in parts, traditional hymn settings are designed as four-voice harmony.) Of course hymns are fully learnable. The point of recognizing that they are sometimes surprisingly difficult is to avoid getting discouraged if they indeed seem that way, and, also, to make a note that it is worth working on them carefully.
Hymns typically have a top voice that is a charismatic or attractive melody—the hymn tune itself—and a bass line that is shaped by the need to provide unambiguous harmonic foundation. Since in turn these voices have to be singable by non-trained singers, they can be neither too high nor too low. This is what causes the inner voices to be (usually) confined within a strikingly small range. This confinement results in inner voices of hymns being characteristically boring (to put it bluntly) as melodies. This can lead to frustration on the part of choir or congregation members who feel that they are supposed to sing those parts, thus missing out on the attractive melody. It also leads those lines, often, to have a remarkably high proportion of repeated notes. This is a well-known issue in playing hymns, one that I will discuss a little bit below and more next month.
There are many ways to arrange the four voices of a typical hymn on the organ. The most common and, I think, indeed most useful is to play the bass voice in the pedals and the other three voices together on one manual. (This is also clearly the best starting place for students working on hymn playing.) It is also possible to play all four voices on one manual (no pedals), or to play the bass in the pedal, the alto and tenor on one, presumably somewhat quiet, manual, and the soprano on a louder manual. Another way of thus “soloing out” the hymn tune itself is to play it (the soprano voice) on the pedals with an appropriately high-pitched stop, and to play the three remaining voices in the hands. Although all of these ways of arranging a hymn on the organ are useful, and although it is never a good idea to rule out anything that might provide greater variety of effect in any kind of music-making, I think that the traditional way of playing hymns offers these advantages: the use of pedal and 16′ sound in the bass emphasizes the harmony in a way that helps keep singers together rhythmically and on pitch (it also makes the sound less directional and helps it to fill the room well); the hymn melody itself will, by virtue of being on the top of the texture, be heard clearly in any case, while the inner voices will—if not relegated to a softer sound—help to enrich the texture, again helping to project harmony and rhythm forcefully.
A student learning his or her first hymns should approach them as if they were pieces of organ repertoire, and challenging ones at that. This means several things:
1) First, the student should learn the pedal part (the bass voice, let us assume for now). This involves, of course, working out a pedaling and then practicing it carefully, by itself, perhaps one foot at a time (see The Diapason, December 2007), slowly and without looking. Pedaling choices at this early stage should be based on what the student is used to and finds comfortable, with a slight bias in favor of pedalings that do not rule out legato, but with a willingness to locate non-legato pedalings (such as the same toes playing two successive notes) in places where the rhythm and meter suggest that subtle breaks will be unobtrusive. Since we are talking about the early stages of learning something new, it should be considered OK if the results are not musically perfect in this respect. Technical, physical comfort at this stage will lead to more secure and flexible hymn-playing in the long run.
2) Second, the student should learn the tenor voice in the left hand. This is often a task that seems trivially easy: the line is essentially sight-readable for even not very advanced players. However, the point is to learn it extremely well, to get it so nearly memorized that it is impossible to imagine not playing it correctly. Also, by working on this one line carefully, it is possible to learn to play it (musically) really well. This involves, among other things, treating the repeated notes in the way that I discussed in this column in January 2009, that is, changing fingers and executing the repetitions smoothly with natural-sounding articulation.
3) When the pedal line and the left hand are really well learned, the next step is to practice the two together. This is the most important step in learning a hymn, and doing this systematically in learning many hymns is the most important technical step in learning to play hymns securely. This is because (even for experienced organists who happen not to have yet delved into hymn playing, but especially for anyone new to the organ) there is a strong tendency for the bass/pedal line and the tenor/left hand line to interfere with each other. This can take the form of the tenor line getting lost in the shuffle and becoming inaccurate or unclear. It also can take the form of the left hand reaching for and playing some notes of the bass line instead of or in addition to the notes of the tenor line. This latter is extremely damaging to the development of an aspiring organist, not just as to hymn playing. Even though it may not hurt the sound of a given hymn (if the manual sound is coupled to the pedal it may be literally inaudible), it can damage or destroy a player’s ability to execute an independent pedal line in any kind of music. Practicing hymns as described here, however, will enhance a player’s overall independence of hands and feet in any kind of music.
4) Meanwhile, the right hand part, consisting of the two upper voices, should be practiced. It is trickier in this case to finger all of the repeated notes in the best possible way, because the hand is responsible for two voices at all times. It is a good idea to come as close as possible to this, again without insisting on perfection.
5) Once steps 3) and 4) are complete—step 3) having been done really thoroughly, no compromise—then it is time to put all four voices together. The experience of most students is that if the pedal and left hand have been prepared really well, and the right hand basically learned, then putting it all together is not only easy but more-or-less automatic. If this stage does not feel easy, then the student should revisit the previous two steps and/or slow the tempo down.
Once a student has worked on a number of hymns this way—six, eight, ten maybe—he or she will be able to learn the next hymn noticeably more quickly. First, this procedure itself will start to take less and less time. Then it will no longer be necessary: the student will be able to learn new hymns simply by reading through them slowly enough, with all the parts, and working them up to tempo gradually. Trying to do that prematurely—that is, without having taken enough hymns apart and worked on them in the way described here—will derail the learning process, but the process should in due course make itself obsolete.
Next month I will discuss various other aspects of hymn playing: rhythm, articulation, repeated notes, registration, accompanying part-singing, accompanying unison singing, “soloing out” lines, and more.

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

Repeated notes
The playing of repeated notes on organ and harpsichord has always been an issue unto itself. If two notes in a row are the same, they cannot be treated like two notes in a row that are not the same. The reason for this is simple: in order to repeat a note that you are holding, you must first release it. This seems so obvious to those of us who play only these instruments that it is worth noting that this is not true in all kinds of musical performance. It is not true at the piano, except in situations that rule out the use of the damper pedal. It is not true with plucked string instruments. In singing, the repeated note phenomenon is only rarely an issue in itself. With bowed string instruments and most wind instruments, the relationships among articulation, technique, and pitch are complicated, with repeated notes as such only sometimes being a special concern.
One way to describe the situation with repeated notes at the organ or harpsichord is this: in general, any pattern of notes that doesn’t involve repeated notes can be played legato (though of course it doesn’t have to be), but repeated notes actually cannot be played legato. Therefore, patterns of non-repeated notes have, in theory, the full range of articulation available to them, from “as short as physically possible” to a full overlapping legato. Repeated notes have most but not all of that range of articulations available.
Since repeated notes cannot be (fully) legato, the more legato the overall style of a given performance is—whether because of the performer’s preference, or because of something that is known about the composer’s own style—the more any repeated notes are in danger of standing out, of sounding different at the very least and maybe stylistically wrong, and in any case amounting to a problem to be solved.
This, in turn, may be one reason that repeated notes have often been considered a problem—or again at least a particular issue that needs to be addressed—in hymn playing, since there is a strong tradition of playing hymns legato. Repeated notes are sometimes seen as a source of a disruptive choppiness in hymns, and thus, for some players in some circumstances, are considered worthy of being eliminated through tying.
In addition to obvious repeated notes—instances of the same note occurring two or more times in a row in one melody or one voice—there are various kinds of hidden repeated notes. These arise from voices crossing or from one voice playing a note that was just played by another voice or that is being held by another voice. They can also arise because of ornaments—when there is no repeated note printed on the page, but one arises from the notes implied by the ornament sign.
Of course, repeated notes occur in all sorts of rhythmic contexts. Sometimes the first note is an upbeat and the second a downbeat, sometimes the other way around; sometimes they are two successive weak or light beats, sometimes two successive downbeats. (Of course there are chains of more than two repeated notes in which more than one of the above may occur in succession.) Repeated notes can be fast or slow.
In all of these circumstances the same underlying fact applies: it is necessary to release the first note before playing the next one. It is certainly possible, and often necessary or a good idea, for a student or other player to think analytically about how long or short to make any note that is about to be repeated and to think about how the articulation and timing allows it to fit in to the rest of the music. This has been the subject of extensive discussion, analysis, and debate by teachers and players over many years. For example, David N. Johnson has a detailed and interesting discussion in his Instruction Book for Beginning Organists. Marcel Dupré is famous for having described a very clear-cut system for counting out the amount by which notes should be reduced prior to being repeated. (Perhaps I should say “infamous” since his system is widely considered to be too cut-and-dried to be artistically valid. However, it is worth remembering that he almost certainly intended his guidelines to be a stage in learning, not an end result.)
Rather than suggesting specific musical answers to repeated note issues, I would prefer to begin by helping students to do two things: first, to develop the greatest, most comfortable, and most reliable technical control over the physical act of playing repeated notes; and second, to develop the habit of listening closely to every part of any repeated note transaction—the articulation prior to the first note, the beginning, middle, and end of the first note, the space between the notes, the beginning, middle, and end of the second note, and so on. Once a student has made good progress on these things, then he or she will be able to make choices about how to play repeated notes in various different contexts, and these choices will be able to reflect the whole range of possibilities.
There is, I believe, a simple key to developing the greatest possible technical command of the playing of repeated notes: play them with different fingers, one from the other. That is, if you have played the first note with finger x and are holding it with finger x, then it is appropriate to play the second note (that is, the repetition) with any finger other than x. It is not OK to play it with x. This means that a note repeated more than once can be played with fingers x-y-x-y etc., or with fingers x-y-z-a-b-c etc., until the fingers run out, but not, again, x-x-x-x etc.
When a player repeats a note with the same finger that is holding it, that finger must travel both up, off the key, and back down, to play the note again, in the time that makes up the space between the two notes. This sets up a conflict between making that space short—playing the notes close to legato, at least—and executing the gesture comfortably. If the physical gesture involved is not comfortable, then the musical gesture will almost certainly sound awkward; playing a repeated note with the same finger greatly reduces the extent to which the gesture can come across as musically continuous. That is, either the repetition will have a large enough space between the notes to sound significantly disconnected, or it will have an awkward “hiccup” quality caused by an effort to push the two notes as close together as possible. The part of the “staccato to legato” spectrum that is unavailable to repeated notes intrinsically—because of the nature of the instrument, as discussed above—is made artificially greater by playing the notes with the same finger, and the range of possible, successful, articulations is narrowed.
It is also true that the act of moving one finger up and then back down is, among all of the gestures we make at the keyboard, one of the ones that is most likely to create tension in the hand. The “u-turn” that the finger makes at the top of that arc is a motion that is prone to tension. If it is not dealt with in some way, this tension can build up and, since essentially every passage of music has some repeated notes in it, this can lead to tense playing overall, even for a player who is consciously trying to play in a relaxed, light way.
In repeating a note with a different finger, the player can prepare the new finger in advance, and then release the initial finger smoothly while bringing the new finger into position to play the note and then playing the note. This is an intrinsically smooth, relaxed gesture, and it can actually serve to reduce tension that might have begun to accumulate in the hand.
François Couperin wrote in his L’Art de Toucher le Claveçin that he could tell by ear alone the difference between a note repeated with the same finger and one repeated with different fingers. (This was in the context of the playing of ornaments, which I will discuss briefly below.) When I first read that claim, years ago, I thought it was more or less impossible: that it was probably an exaggerated boast by someone whose eminence was great enough to permit him to get away with it. I would now make that same claim: I believe that, except in rare circumstances, I can detect that difference just by listening.
Once any teacher, student, or other player begins to be able to hear that difference, the motivation to work on playing repeated notes with different fingers follows automatically. Fortunately, it is an extremely easy thing to do. It is no harder, by and large, than playing those notes with the same finger. In fact, once it becomes second nature, then the fact that it is easier—that is, smoother, more natural—physiologically, makes it seem easier as a practical (and psychological) matter.

For a student to get accustomed to the feel and sound of repeated notes played this way, the best exercises are simple enough that they scarcely need to be written out (see Example 1). In this example, the student can play the notes at a variety of different tempos and with a variety of different fingerings: all the notes with any one finger (for comparison); pairs such as 2-3, 3-2, 3-4, 4-3, 3-1, or any others; or chains of fingers such as 2-3-4-5, 1-3-4-3, etc. The student should also experiment with repeating the same note but changing the rhythmic grouping. This can be done such that rhythmic groupings correspond to fingering patterns (that is, a duple grouping with a paired fingering such as 3-2, or a four-finger pattern such as 2-3-4-5; and a triple grouping with a three-finger pattern such as 4-3-2 or a six-finger pattern such as 2-3-4-5-4-3). Or it can be done with rhythmic groupings that are different from the fingering groups, such as a triple grouping with a paired fingering. In this case, the downbeat of each group shifts a finger from one time to the next.
It is very important to remember that repeating a note with a new finger does not mean slipping the new finger onto the note silently while still holding it and then repeating it with that (new) finger, which is now holding the note. This is a temptation—probably subconscious—that many students experience. Of course this is identical to repeating the note with the same finger: the supposedly new finger has become the incumbent finger.

Further exercises can put the experience into a musical context. These can begin with something simple, such as Example 2. This can be fingered in a number of ways, such as 2-3-4-5-4-3-4-3-2-3, or 3-4-5-4-3-2-3-2-3-4, or (again, for comparison) 2-3-4-4-3-2-2-1-1-2. The student should remember to keep everything as light, relaxed, and supple as possible. (It is possible to lose the advantages of using different fingers on repeated notes by playing with stiffness or tension.) The student should try different articulations: for example, making all of the non-repeated notes legato, and the repeated notes as smooth as possible; or making everything lightly detached so that the repeated notes are not articulated any differently from the rest of the line.
A chord pattern such as that in Example 3 can be tried with various fingerings, such as RH: 1,3,5/2,3,5, or LH: 5,3,1/4,2,1, and, for comparison, RH: 1,2,3/2,3,5, and LH: 5,3,2/3,2,1.
In Example 4 there is a hidden repeated note. If the two middle-Ds are played with the same finger, it will be difficult or impossible to make the two voices clear. The final quarter-note of the first measure will sound like a released and repeated note in the lower voice. A fingering such as 5,2/3/1//4,2 or 5,1/3/2//5,3 will make it possible for the middle-D to sound like it arises from the upper voice. This comes about because the necessary early release of the whole-note D can be smooth and unobtrusive. In this example, it would also work well for the left hand—any finger—to play the whole note, and for the right hand to play all of the other notes.
In many ornament situations such as this common one in Example 5, there are hidden repeated notes (assuming that the trill starts on C). A prudent way to work out a fingering here is to decide first of all which fingers should play the trill—say 3/2—and then to make sure that the note immediately before the trill is played with a different finger, say 4 or 2. Many problems that students (and others!) have playing ornaments are in fact problems with setting the ornaments up correctly. If, in this example, the student plays the C with the third finger and then repeats the C with that same finger as the first note of the trill, the attempt to play the trill will be undermined by tension before it has even begun. If the eighth-note C is played with 2, and the C that begins the trill is played with 3, then the trill will get off to a lighter, more fluent start.
Students and teachers can invent exercises to try different repeated-note fingerings, and can extract repeated-note situations from repertoire to use as exercises, before going on to finger and practice such passages in their original contexts. It is important to try different fingering, including those same-note fingerings that I would not recommend, in order to learn what the differences are between them. After a while, if a student finds the approach described here convincing it, becomes second nature, and, if anything, extra thought is required to play a repeated note with the same finger. (I sometimes need to do this as a demonstration, and I often fail to do so, out of habit!)
Sometimes a note pattern is such that it is actually impossible to change fingers on repeated notes. This is because the relevant fingers are doing something else. When this happens, then a student can draw on what he or she has learned through practicing the technique described here to be aware of what the goal is—in both feeling and sound—for those repeated notes. That awareness gives the student the best chance of coming close to achieving that sound or feeling even when the best technique for achieving it is not available. This can involve first isolating the repeated notes from the rest of the texture and practicing them separately with a good different-fingered fingering. After this, with all of the notes back in place, the memory of what the repeated notes would ideally sound like—and a generally very relaxed, smooth touch—will enable the student to get the best results under the circumstances.

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 3:
Menuet Gothique
This month’s column focuses on the Menuet Gothique, the second movement of Boëllmann’s Suite Gothique.
The Menuet Gothique is an extraordinarily tuneful piece of music. It has always been right at the top of my list of pieces which, when I am teaching them or otherwise have them on my mind, tend to run through my head as I am walking along the street or relaxing. I believe that this—although it is just a subjective reaction on my part—provides a clue about some effective ways to practice the piece, as I will discuss below. I will start out, however, with a few thoughts about the overall shape and structure of the Menuet.

Structure
The form of the piece starts out as that of a classic minuet. That is, it is in triple time, neither very fast nor very slow, and it begins with two phrases, each of which is repeated. (In this piece, the first time through a phrase and its “repeat” are not identical, but I am treating them as identical for this brief analysis. I will also discuss this below.) The lengths of the two phrases are in a traditional, classic proportion: the first phrase eight measures, the second sixteen. Furthermore, the opening of the second phrase is a variant of the second half of the opening phrase, or perhaps a kind of answer to it. This way of linking the two halves of a binary keyboard dance—minuet or any other—was common at least from the time of Froberger, that is, from the mid-seventeenth century.
The next section of the piece—beginning with the upbeat to m. 49—continues the classical minuet structure, at least at first. Since it is in the same triple time, but presents different thematic material, it has the feeling of the traditional trio section of the classic “minuet and trio” form. (This was a form in which one minuet was followed by another, which in turn was followed by a literal repeat of the first minuet. This was one solution to the issue—always present in music—of the balance between contrast and continuity, or between the familiar and the new. Typical examples of a minuet and trio can be found, for example, in the first “French Suite” or the fourth “English Suite” of Bach. And this form was commonly used in the Classical period, in symphonies and other orchestral music as well as in keyboard music. Because the third section in this form is exactly the same as the first, it can also be thought of as a rondo or ritornello form.) The section beginning at m. 49, which I am considering evocative of the “trio” of the minuet and trio form, opens with another eight-bar phrase, which is, like the opening phrase of the piece, then repeated. This in turn is followed by a new eight-bar phrase. According to the model that we are developing, that is, according to the way that phrases have been dealt with in the piece so far, this phrase—mm. 65–72—should also be repeated. If Boëllmann had repeated these measures and then directed the player to return to the beginning and play to measure 48, ending the piece there, then the whole work would have been in the most traditional, old-fashioned, minuet and trio form.
(I suspect that the classic structure of the beginning of this piece, something not by any means found in all minuets written in the late nineteenth century, reflects the composer’s intention to write a piece that deserves to be called “Gothique”. Of course, the minuet was a Baroque rather than Gothic form, but this is, at least at the beginning, an old-fashioned piece, evocative of old-fashioned style.)
However, Boëllmann does not repeat the second half of the “trio” or return to the beginning just yet. Instead of the repeat of mm. 65–72, the composer gives us new material loosely based on what has come just before it. The next 40 or so measures of the piece consist of material derived from what I am considering the “trio” section, interrupted occasionally—three times—by short bursts of material derived from the opening theme. This also makes a sort of rondo or ritornello form. It sets up a final return of the opening theme, without the repeats that characterized its appearance in mm. 1–48, but otherwise essentially the same. This “da capo”—mm. 113–136— brings the piece to a close.
(To me the penultimate section of this piece, mm. 73–110, is strangely reminiscent of the middle section of the fugue from Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E Minor, BWV 548. In that [much longer] section, rather free-sounding passagework is also occasionally interrupted by brief, almost abrupt-sounding, statements of the opening theme.)
The passages that I have been calling “repeats” are, as I suggested above, not actually identical to the passages being repeated (or, so to speak, not quite repeated). They differ in the following ways: the bass lines migrate from manuals to pedal, or vice versa; the right hand parts, bearing the treble melodies, change octaves; and left hand parts, essentially doubling the right hand in octaves, come and go. Meanwhile, the treble melodies and the bass lines remain, as far as the note patterns are concerned—octaves aside—identical. These note changes on the repeats are accompanied by changes in the suggested registrations, and all of the changes work in sync with one another. The phrases in which the treble is higher, the bass is in the pedals, and the texture is thicker are also the passages in which the registrations are louder, that is Grande Orgue with couplers, marked ff. The manuals-only phrases—treble lower, texture thinner—are marked to be played on the Récit, p or pp. Either the changes in registration alone or the changes in the note picture alone would create a noticeable forte/piano contrast in the repeats. Together they reinforce one another and make that contrast stronger. To me it makes sense to think of the changes in the note picture in these repeats to be a change in registration rather than a change in the music. I am pretty sure that listeners hear it that way.

Tunefulness
The tunefulness of this piece derives from two things, I believe. First of all, the melody in the upper voice is memorable and easy to sing or hum or whistle. It is a tune that would probably make a good hymn (more so, I would say, than the melody of the first movement of the suite, even though that movement is marked “Choral”). Second, the bass line is—like a quintessential continuo line from the late Baroque, say of Handel or Telemann—a line that combines convincing melodic direction with strong unambiguous underlining of the harmony. It is a line that exists to support and bring out the melodic strength of the upper voice. In this respect it also resembles the bass line of many hymns, though it covers a much wider range. Also, the piece is—except for the interaction between the treble and the bass, and that only in parts of the piece—unambiguously non-contrapuntal. The inner voices are important, but their importance is in the way that they provide harmonic support for primarily the melody and secondarily the bass line, and in the ways that they influence volume through the changes in texture described above. There is no moment in this piece when the listener’s attention is meant to focus primarily on an inner voice or when that attention is meant to perform the feat of dividing itself among several voices in a way that shortchanges none of them. There is always a principal melody, and, with the exception of a couple of measures around m. 78, it is always in the top voice.

Practicing
This suggests a starting point for practicing the piece. The equivalent for this piece to playing and learning separate voices in a contrapuntal work is first to play and learn the soprano melody. That is, by playing it all by itself, without the rest of the right hand part: playing it as naturally and easily as possible, letting it become second nature, a tune that will go through your head when you least expect it. For this purpose the repeats, with changed octaves and thicker texture, don’t matter. The next step is to practice the bass line, in the left hand, enough to get comfortable with it, and then put the bass and the melody together, still without the inner-voice chords. This is a straightforward enough procedure that it doesn’t really need a formal protocol, but if it had one, it might look like this:
1) play the melody from mm. 1–8 a dozen times
2) do the same with the melody from mm. 17–32
3) play the left-hand part from mm. 1–8 a dozen times
4) do the same with the left hand part from mm. 17–32
5) put #1 and #3 together about a dozen times
6) put #2 and #4 together about a dozen times
(Then do the same thing with any other measures where new material is introduced, such as mm. 49–52 or 73–78.)
The purpose of this is the same as that of practicing each voice in a fugue and then putting those voices together in pairs. It is to get the ears to follow the most important melodic and rhythmic elements of the piece so naturally, so instinctively, so strongly, that it will be nearly impossible not to bring those elements out convincingly in performance, even when the complication of playing all the notes is added back in.

Articulation
At this stage it is time to think about the meaning of the various indications for articulation given by the composer. Such signs are almost entirely absent from both the first and the last movements of the Suite Gothique. They are found throughout the third movement, the Prière à Notre- Dame, but only to do one thing, namely to delineate long phrases with slurs. In this movement, articulation is used at several levels. First of all, the entire piece is marked non-legato. That is, the marking occurs at the very beginning and is never contradicted. Non-legato articulation is the context for the whole piece. However, within that context, a certain number of notes are marked either with slurs or with staccato dots. The vast majority of the slurs are written over two-note groupings, the first two quarter-notes of a measure. This happens in the quarter-note bass line at the beginning (Example 1). And in the treble elsewhere (Example 2).
Staccato dots are used mostly in two of the ways shown in the examples above: either on a third beat quarter-note following a pair of slurred quarter-notes or in the four-beat eighth-note upbeat pattern that is characteristic of what I have been calling the trio sections.
What is the purpose of all this articulation? Of course it is not particularly ambiguous what it means. The slurs mean real, perhaps even overlapping, legato; the dots mean very short notes, perhaps as short as they can be without losing pitch sense and sonority. Non-legato, which would seem to apply to notes that have neither of the other markings, is somewhere in between. There can be, within the meaning of the terms, some variation in legato and staccato and a lot of variation in non-legato. However, what is it all in aid of? This is a question that does not ever necessarily have—or require—an answer. But if it does have an answer, that answer might help the student/performer make specific decisions about how to carry out the articulations, and might make it easier for those articulations to come out sounding natural and convincing. I suspect that in this case there is an answer or two to that kind of question.
The slurs over pairs of quarter-notes sometimes occur when the rest of the notes in the texture are half-notes (Example 3) and otherwise occur, when they are in the treble as in Example 2 above, in such a way as to join a second beat to a downbeat and emphasize that downbeat. Both of these uses of the slur seem to be designed to create or to bring out the kind of lilt associated with the minuet. This is a triple-meter rhythm that is better represented by this:
than by this:

I would say that interpreting these slurs as saying “feel and express a lilting motion” rather than as anything more technical than that would be the best guide to playing them naturally and flexibly.
When the bass line moves to the pedal, beginning in m. 8 and then throughout, the articulation marks are absent. There are no articulation marks anywhere in the pedal part. Does this mean that the bass line should not express the same articulation when it is in the pedal that it has when it is in the left hand? Or does it mean that the composer has assumed that the player will take the articulation given in the left hand as a guide for how that line is meant to be played? I am not sure that it is possible to decide this by rigorous logic. To me the second possibility makes more artistic sense. The concept that I outlined above—articulation in service of the minuet-like lilt—can guide the ears and feet in shaping the pedal line. That is, the specifics of legato and staccato—how much overlap, or how short certain notes can be or need to be to get the right effect—will be different with the deeper sounds of the pedal, but the concept can be the same.

Fingering and pedaling
When it comes to the practical side of working on this movement—that is, working out fingerings and pedalings—the (practical) truth is that the overall non-legato articulation creates great flexibility and choice. It makes things just plain easier than they would be if the long chains of chords had to be played legato. Legato in that case would have to mean legato as to non-repeated notes, with the many repeated notes as close to legato as possible. This would be entirely doable, with lots of substitution: there would not be a lot of different ways to do it. As it is, planning on an overall non-legato, each player can pretty much look at each chord separately and decide what fingering fits that chord shape the most comfortably. As usual, hand position is the main guide. Then non-legato transitions from one chord to another can be made in a way that is physically comfortable.
There are two important things to remember about this process. First, non-legato passages, whether single-note lines or chords, end up sounding more natural, closer to cantabile, less choppy, the more comfortable and relaxed the hands and feet are. This is because choppiness and a lack of cantabile are caused not by space between notes but by choppy releases and physically tense attacks. The second thing concerns the physical or technical act of putting spaces between notes or chords. If the player, having worked out a fingering or pedaling, practices at first with so much space between notes that it is easy—blissfully, unambiguously easy—to move from one note to the next, then, when those fingering or pedaling patterns are well learned, it will never be difficult to reduce the amount of space between the notes.
In the case of this Menuet, the act of playing the simple treble melody until it is a familiar old friend—as suggested above—will guide your ears in shaping the articulation in a way that expresses the lilting minuet-like feeling of the piece. The act of practicing the notes and chords without, at first, trying to make them anything other than very detached will create the physical, technical basis for projecting that feeling when playing all of the notes.
Next month we will look at the Prière à Notre-Dame. In the case of that movement, the major technical concern is indeed the shaping of long legato lines, some with one note at a time, some with more complicated textures, and therefore with more involved fingering problems. ■

Gavin Black is director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He welcomes feedback by e-mail at . Expanded versions of these columns with references and links can be found at .

The metronome—pros and cons
For the sweltering summer months of July and August, I have decided to write about somewhat simpler, more circumscribed topics—almost “light summer fare”—that I hope will nonetheless be interesting. Next month’s column will be a potpourri of brief ideas, anecdotes, and questions modeled in part on my long-ago experience as a student in the organ pedagogy class at Westminster Choir College. This month I offer a few thoughts about something that for some people is almost a symbol of music or of being a music student, namely, the metronome.
I’ve always had a sort of love/hate relationship with metronomes. I tend to like mechanical things, especially old ones: clocks, telescopes, some kinds of pens, some kinds of umbrellas—come to think of it, even harpsichords and organs fall into this category! I like metronomes for this sort of reason—that is, old fashioned, wooden, pendulum-driven metronomes. Back when they were still common, I would often feel tempted by one when I happened to be in the kind of music store that had a display of them. This is chapter 1 of the “love” part of the story.
On the other hand, I grew up in music hating metronomes because of what they do. Early on, I thought the problem was that I just found the noise distracting if I was trying to read or play music. In fact, I think that what I really had trouble with was the inexorability of the beat. It didn’t let me get away with taking those extra hundredths of a second to remember my fingering or successfully read what the next note was supposed to be. (This discipline, of course, is what some people like about metronomes!) A bit later on, I disliked metronomes because I disliked playing that was “metronomic.” In the latter part of my student days, I was afraid that if I ever used a metronome, I would be in danger of permanently losing my ability to be flexible as to rhythm, that I would develop the instincts of a metronome rather than those of a musician. Early on in my work as a teacher, I had the same exaggerated fear about my students, and I strongly discouraged any metronome use.
The second part of the “love” is more recent. Over the last eight or ten years, I have begun to discover ways in which metronomes can be used in practicing and learning that are very fruitful and helpful. In particular, these uses of the metronome do not have any tendency to lead to “metronomic” playing. They also avoid various other pitfalls of metronome use—ways in which metronomes can actually undermine basic rhythmic steadiness.
There are a couple of points about the history of the metronome that I think are interesting. First of all, when the metronome was invented and marketed in the early nineteenth century, it was considered to be primarily a device for conveying, across space or time, what the tempo of a piece should be. That is, it was not at first considered to be an aid in practicing a piece or in learning how to play. That came later. The need to convey tempos to someone—an anonymous someone—outside of the composer’s musical community was correlated with the spread of publishing and also with a generalized increase in world travel and trade. This was the same need that gave rise—at about the same time—to a general increase in printed performance instructions: more detailed tempo markings, phrasing and articulation marks, dynamics where appropriate, and, in organ music in particular, printed registrations. All of these things had existed before the early to mid-nineteenth century, but they proliferated then.
I had always assumed that the reason that the metronome wasn’t invented until the early nineteenth century was that the technology of earlier ages was not sufficiently advanced—the same reason that we would give for the failure of the eighteenth century to invent cars or computers. Technological change is—we assume—progress, and of course as soon as something can be invented it will be. I later realized, however, that with the metronome (if not necessarily with the car or the computer) the causality may well have been in large part the other way around. There were ideas put forth by inventors at least as early as the late seventeenth century for metronomes, but they (in the words of the New Grove) “did not attract much attention.”
Quite possibly the technologies that permitted the creation of accurate clocks several hundred years earlier still could have led to the development of a metronome. That this did not happen was probably largely because of what I suggested above, that spelling out performance details on paper is only important to the extent that the music is going to be sent out into the world, away from the composer’s milieu. It may also reflect, at least in the area of keyboard music, the then still strong link between the composing of keyboard repertoire and improvisation. It could be assumed—more strongly the farther back you go in the Baroque era—that anyone playing a piece of keyboard music was also, or even primarily, an improviser of keyboard music and thus had an inner understanding of the compositional process. Such a player, it could be assumed, needed little in the way of performance suggestions or aids.
The main pitfall for players who want to keep a metronome going during practice is this: if the metronome beat is too slow or represents a note too far away from the fastest prevailing notes (for example, quarter-notes in a passage with many eighth- and sixteenth-notes), then there is a significant danger that the player will place many or all of the notes incorrectly as to timing, and actually play less steadily with a metronome than he or she would without it. The most common form that this takes is that someone will play with the metronome on a given beat, then play all of the notes prior to the next beat a bit too soon or too quickly in order to focus on listening for that next beat. Then the player will (probably) successfully play with the next metronome beat, rush the subsequent notes, wait up again, and so on. This can be a slight or subtle effect, but, to the extent that a player cannot just shake it off when the metronome is turned off, it is training the player to play unsteadily and also to ignore the rhythmic shape of the notes that don’t happen to be “on the beat.” Those notes, of course, are just as important as—and usually more numerous than—the notes that are on the beat.
Another form it takes is that of waiting for a tiny fraction of a second after each metronome beat before playing the notes which should be on that beat, in order to make sure that those notes are not early: that is, playing the notes once you have heard the metronome rather than mentally preparing them infinitesimally in advance and playing them exactly when the metronome is (so to speak) playing its note.
Both of these problems come about when the metronome beat is slow enough that it is difficult for the player to feel it internally or to follow it without subdividing. One solution—assuming that there is any reason to use a metronome in these circumstances at all (see below)—is to let the metronome subdivide the beat. We are all brought up to believe that it is usually better—more “musical”—to hear only larger beats and to let the smaller rhythmic units have as little weight as possible. Often it is said, for example, in a rehearsal or a lesson or coaching session, that a passage should be felt in 2 or even in 1 rather that in 4 or (especially!) in 8. This often makes a lot of sense as a matter of performance, helping a performance to flow. However, at a stage at which a piece is being played through with a metronome, the immediate goal cannot be a rhythmically persuasive or flowing performance (that is, not at that very moment: of course the goal is to make such a performance possible later on). The goal is for practice to be as accurate as possible rhythmically, and for it to feel easy to achieve this, with no sense of having to struggle or to pay undo attention to anything other than the notes and fingerings. For most people, metronome beats between about 90 and about 140 are easy to follow. In using a metronome to play through a piece or passage that is already essentially learned (i.e., comfortable as to notes and fingerings), the metronome should usually be set somewhere between those numbers, and then allowed to represent a note value for which that beat speed makes sense.
There is still a question as to why, at a stage when a piece is fundamentally learned and comfortable, it should be necessary or a good idea to play it with a metronome. I don’t see that it ever is, unless the reason for doing so is external. If, however, any player—student or otherwise—finds it useful or satisfying to do so, that is certainly OK as long as the concerns of the last few paragraphs are addressed, along with one further major pitfall. It is extremely important that you not assume that you need the metronome in order to develop an accurate inner sense of rhythm, and in so assuming, ignore that fact that you already have such a sense. This is common, especially for students, and most especially for students who have been told that they need a metronome. Whatever help a metronome may sometimes give, the message, given by a teacher to a student, that the student actually can’t hear accurate rhythm and needs an outside aid to do so is usually destructive.
(I believe that anyone who has ever spent any time walking, chewing, drumming fingers on the table, or listening to almost any kind of music, or who breathes, or who has a heartbeat, can learn to project accurate rhythm and timing on organ and harpsichord without using any external cues whatsoever. I will devote at least one future column explicitly to this.)
There are several external reasons why using a metronome might be a good idea. One of these is that it can stand in for a conductor when you are practicing a piece that will later on be conducted. Of necessity, the metronome beat cannot be any less steady (or even inflexible) than the conductor’s beat will be, and it can get the player accustomed to flattening out any rubato or other inner-derived flexibility. It cannot, of course, imitate any rhythmic shaping that a conductor might do: that must be worked out in rehearsal.
Another reason for using a metronome is to discover where you are speeding up or slowing down. A metronome will reveal this in a kind of mirror-image way. If you feel, with the metronome, that you are going too fast in a passage, then you were probably slowing that passage down beforehand; if you feel that you are going too slow, you were probably previously speeding up. It is important to remember that the speeding up and slowing down is not necessarily bad. The metronome can reveal it, but your ears and your aesthetic sense can evaluate it. The assumption that what the metronome suggests is correct musically—just because the technology of the metronome happens to exist—is the source of “metronomic” playing. That is, the metronome is not the source of metronomic playing, but the attitude that we sometimes bring to it is.
There is a stage of learning a piece at which a certain kind of metronome use can be extremely helpful and important. That is well prior to the time at which a piece is basically learned, but rather when it is still appropriate to be practicing very slowly. If someone is working on a piece that is tricky enough that it should be practiced at a “molasses” tempo—and I have a strong bias in favor of doing that with nearly all pieces—then the metronome can be used to make that process easier. The protocol for that is something like this:
1) For the piece that you are practicing—or the passage or the component of the piece, such as one hand or the feet or a contrapuntal voice—figure out a tempo that is so abundantly slow that playing the piece (passage, etc.) feels extraordinarily easy. At this stage overkill (too slow) is good, inadequacy (not slow enough) is very bad.
2) Find a metronome speed that is well within the range that you yourself find it easy to follow (again, this will probably be between 90 and 140, and within reason, faster is better) and that corresponds to some note value at your chosen practice tempo. If the metronome beat corresponds to a very small note value, that is good. For example, if you are practicing a passage that is primarily in eighth notes, and your chosen practice tempo is eighth note=65, then set the metronome to 130, and let each metronome beat be a sixteenth note. Thus you will listen to two beats for each eighth note. (If for this same passage at this tempo you were to set the metronome to 65 and let each metronome beat serve as an eighth note, then you might well fall into some of the pitfalls described above.) If your passage is primarily in notes that, at your practice tempo, should go at 90, then you should probably set the metronome to 90, and let each beat correspond to one of your notes, though setting the metronome to 180 and hearing two beats per prevailing note would also be worth trying. The two main points are that the metronome beat should be fast enough to be truly easy to follow, and that, all else being equal, it is better to have two metronome beats per shortest commonly occurring note than only one.
3) After you have played the passage (piece, voice, etc.) enough times that it feels truly easy—essentially automatic—then turn the metronome up by the smallest possible increment, and play at that speed until it again feels easy.
4) Repeat step three until you have got the passage up to or slightly above the performance tempo that you want.
5) Then, stop using the metronome.
This procedure is the essence of effective practicing. The role of the metronome here is optional but important. It both helps the process of speeding up actually to be systematic and gradual and, perhaps even more important, reassures the student that this is the case. I will discuss this approach to practicing— though with less emphasis on the role of the metronome in it!—at greater length in a later column.

The leading of hymns is a fine art. I have played for many years in mainline Protestant and Catholic churches in the United States and now have a unique perspective that comes from playing in a central European cathedral. My hope is that some of what I have learned over these years will be of help to others. 

Registration

Registration is often a difficult topic to discuss because it is so variable and subjective. It can be affected by the size of the space, the size of the assembly, and the size of the organ—how it speaks into the room, and whether it is directly or indirectly buried behind concrete with a small opening or in a case or chambers. The voicing and style of an organ can vary, so that a “one size fits all” approach to registration simply is neither practical nor even advisable. 

For example, if the organ is of a modest size and voiced properly, it may produce a much larger sound than an organ that is much larger but poorly voiced and speaks not from a case but from chambers. The pipe scaling can also have a dramatic effect; wide-scaled flutes may be enough to lead a large assembly on some organs, while a thinly scaled principal chorus may not do the job. Thus we must know how our organs sound from top to bottom—every octave, every stop, and every pitch.

What does this mean for us as leaders of worship? First, we must do our homework every week. I advocate recording, in order to discover how the assembly responds to various registrations. I have been amazed at what recordings have taught me, and how listening this way has changed my thinking and my playing. In terms of registration, certainly less is more (although it may not be true in every situation). Our calling as artists is to work with the instrument at hand, find what is good about it, and make the most of those attributes. The organ is simply the medium to communicate music. 

After getting to know an instrument, the organist should develop several possible plenums of various volumes on all divisions, coupled and uncoupled. The principal chorus of 8′ 4′, 2′, possibly with mixtures, may not be the answer in all situations. Keep in mind that any stop whose speech is not prompt can affect the congregation’s ability to feel rhythmic pulse. 

Next, devise registrations for soloing out the melody line (playing the lower parts on a lighter sound, on a secondary manual with pedal at 8′ pitch and possibly without 16′). The solo line could be played on a solo cornet (or various related combinations such as 8′, 22⁄3′, 13⁄5′) accompanied by flutes 8′ and 4′, or possibly by an 8′ flute and a 4′ principal. The melody could also be played with a solo Trompete or any combination that makes for a good solo line. If the accompaniment is more than four voices, then on the secondary manual I adapt my left hand, by rewriting positions of chords or leaving out unnecessary or doubled notes.

Another possibility is to play the soprano line an octave higher, with again the alto and tenor voices played in the normal range on the same manual (or on a second manual depending on the size of the assembly), and an appropriate pedal to match. This may seem strange, but the effect is that you are not doubling the congregation at unison pitch—they can better hear the sound of the melody, as it is an octave above. This technique can be used with combinations of various stop families to good effect; lighter 8′ and 4′ stops have worked well for me.

In fact, I have found that doubling the congregation at unison pitch—with many 8′ stops playing in four parts or more—can really get in the way of the assembly being able to hear itself. I would save a bigger registration—say a manual 16′, Principal 8′, and Octave 4′ (or more or less dependent on the organ and room), with pedal—for a climactic verse. The above-mentioned registration can be large or small depending on the organ, so I would adjust to my situation accordingly. On the organ I play in Banska Bystrica, Slovak Republic, that combination of stops is plenty to lead a full cathedral at Sunday Mass. If more is needed, you could add a 2′ or couple something from the Swell with the box closed and open as needed.

Another possibility would be to try a chorus of flutes (possibly 8′, 4′, 2′) on a verse or perhaps add a string to that. This combination can provide a nice accompaniment dependent on the size of the assembly. When we sang a Gregorian Agnus Dei, I used flutes 8′ and 4′ on the Rückpositif for my left hand and used all of the 8′ stops from the Récit with the Hautbois coupled to 8′ flutes and strings on the Great but soloing the melody an octave lower on the Great with no pedal. It was very effective—the assembly could hear itself and also hear the organ because the pitch was an octave lower. 

I believe in changing registrations on every verse, making the registration fit the hymn text that is being sung. The accusation leveled at organists that the registration is too loud can be true when an organist plays four verses of a hymn with principal chorus plus reeds with no variation at all, or plays every verse of every hymn with the same combinations used every time in the same order. Know your instrument. Is what you are creating encouraging or discouraging your assembly’s ability to sing?

In accompanying Gregorian melodies, one could try using the strings (coupled to strings on another division, if available) but not doubling the melody; both hands would play chords an octave higher. This gives an ethereal effect. If one is good at improvisation, adding chord tones of the sixth, major seventh, ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth can also be very effective. In this case the organ is one voice with the assembly rather than playing a leading role. By very slightly anticipating the beat, one can keep the assembly moving along if they are dragging. This would also help if the cantor is singing at the opposite end of the building. 

Rhythm and tempo

Choosing a tempo for a hymn is not an easy task. The real test is: can the assembly sing full-voiced at a given tempo? It is helpful to study the harmonic rhythm of the hymn. Is the harmony changing quickly, on every beat or half beat? Are there a lot of passing tones? Are there many words on eighth notes written in succession? Is the meter in cut time or 4/4 time, and how does that affect the accents? Is a 3/4 meter in a feeling of three beats to the bar, or one to the bar? 

I have learned from recording that playing a hymn quickly is not necessarily exciting, and playing it slowly is not necessarily boring. It all depends on the hymn’s text and mood, whether there is an energized beat even if the tempo is not fast, and the congregation’s tradition of singing a hymn in a particular way (which sometimes we musicians tend not to respect).

One also must consider that meter is one thing but rhythm is quite another. Understanding where rhythmic accents should fall is crucial, is separate from meter, and will also be influenced by the text. 

Then there is the problem of acoustics. Are we in a large reverberant space, or a room full of carpet? Is the organ a beautifully singing instrument, or is its voicing harsh and is it placed in a dry acoustic? All of these must be considered when choosing a tempo. But remember that the chosen registration and the tempo are tied together and cannot be ignored. Only after assessing all of these considerations would I choose a metronome marking. The marking need not be followed slavishly, and in fact is only for a check before beginning to practice.

Conducting and singing

I advocate conducting and singing for all musicians. Conducting always allows for a stretching of the beat that a metronome does not permit. In conducting, one imagines a square for the beat. It can be small or large but it allows for a differing feel at the same basic tempo, be that square small or large. This principle has considerable ramifications for rhythm and needs a good deal of thought and consideration. The principle applies to hymns as well: the size of the square will affect the feeling and rhythm of a hymn and even differences between phrases. Hence, a mastery of basic conducting patterns is necessary. An analysis of large or smaller squares for a hymn (from line to line the feeling of a phrase can change) needs careful planning, recording, and practice.

Singers think differently about a line than organists do, and that is often why a singer and organist may have trouble staying together. Regarding the cantor (usually in Catholic liturgies), I am not advocating what I have heard some singers do, which involves wallowing in a sugary fashion, holding long notes too long, and using too much rubato (which some call “feeling”). This kind of vocal leadership is not appropriate for liturgical use, discourages any kind of assembly participation (especially if the singer is rhythmically impaired), and is unnecessary with a good organist. Remember, it is the congregation’s hymn. I would propose having a cantor with a lighter voice get the assembly started but then step back from the microphone and become one voice with the assembly. Certainly if the hymn is new, more vocal support may be needed, but not to the point where a solo voice is heard above the entire assembly. 

On the other hand, organists need to think more like singers in terms of creating beautiful lines. So often the playing of hymns can be angular, and articulation, while useful, can be overdone to the point where it hinders natural singing, with the music feeling like a series of downbeats. This is especially true when dealing with a dead acoustic and a harsh-sounding organ. A very good technique for organists is to practice singing each of the four parts. Using this technique changed how I played the hymn; the articulation then fell into place as a means of expression, rather than an end unto itself.

Releases of notes are extremely important. Singers will “think” a crescendo on a long note and crescendo to the rest, while organists have a tendency to clip the note before the rest. Singers also can stretch a beat naturally, and I have observed that many musicians do not understand this concept. It relates to conducting, as conductors will stretch a beat with their gesture but they keep in mind you can only stretch so far. Organists can have trouble with that concept, and what comes out has no stretch (is mechanical), or has an exaggerated stretch that sounds ridiculous. With a long note value, try thinking a crescendo to the next beat, and then try putting an ever-so-tiny articulation before you strike that next note—but always be aware that the listener cannot realize that the articulation is there. 

It is not uncommon to develop “systems” of playing—for example, making the first beat always strong, second always weak, third always strong, and fourth always weak. If this concept is followed in every case and is taken to extremes (as any system can be), then the final result could be that a dignified hymn could sound like a circus march. Regarding the hierarchy of beats, there are countless examples in Bach where the fourth beat is very strong harmonically and cannot fit into the “system” some try to create for it. In all periods, styles, and hymns, beat four can be very strong; to try to make it weak in every situation may be at odds with what the music itself wants to do. Every case—every piece of music, be it hymn, anthem, or voluntary—is different and must be treated individually.

Speaking again of conducting, there is always a bit of a wait on that fourth beat before the downbeat lands. This is a bit like being up in the air before landing. (Watch a good conductor beat 4 and then 1.) That fourth beat is certainly strong, not weak, and this certainly can apply to all periods and styles (though again not every time). 

Does your playing incorporate the best principles of good conducting and good singing? First, studying voice and conducting is invaluable. Secondly, it is a good practice to record your hymn playing in the nave while the congregation is singing. Then you can answer some of the questions I am posing. The recording will tell you exactly what you are doing with no mercy shown. Recording oneself may be the best teacher and provides a point of departure from which to work and create. 

Don’t let rules and regulations get in the way of the creative process; artists create, and reproducing a mindless system or pattern is not art. Explore every possibility with your instrument in terms of registration and do not let others dictate what “should be.’’ It is important to ask whether what you are doing is effective. Be sure that there is a good deal of color in your leadership of hymns and string out some beautiful lines like a singer would do, but also follow your inner conductor for nuanced rhythm and know that your voice is the organ. 

You will also find yourself spending much more time practicing because this process will cause you to really listen to what you are creating. It is possible to spend an hour getting the ending of a phrase just the way you want it to be, or finding a better registration, or maybe changing a tempo to one that will work in a given room. You will also find this same process will extend into voluntaries, accompaniments, and so on. I find I look forward to listening every week as I keep coming up with new ideas to try out. I can also promise that if you really want to improve, this technique is essential. 

Articulation

Articulation has an effect on rhythm. One cannot simply say that all organ playing is legato, portato, staccato, or anything else. You will need a variety of touches at your disposal, and your ear will have to tell you when to use one or another (or more likely, a combination of all kinds of articulations). 

You can also try staccato or non-legato in various voices. For example, try alto and tenor detached and soprano and bass legato. Or try soprano, alto, and tenor legato and detach the pedal notes. Sometimes you could play the soprano detached and the lower voices legato. Many combinations are possible, depending on the situation. 

Another really effective technique—especially if using a full plenum with reeds and mixtures—is to play the soprano extremely legato and play the lower voices very detached. In this way the congregation is able to cut through, so to speak, the full organ sounds—whereas if all the voices were played legato, it would be difficult for most average-sized congregations to be heard. Some advocate staccato in all voices for a dragging congregation, which can work, but I reserve that technique for very extreme cases. I have found that adding passing notes in the pedal actually does a better job of moving along the congregation. I also avoid heavy 16′ stops in the pedal for that kind of situation. 

If there is a long note in the pedal, adding some passing tones can keep a pulse going. Another possibility is to change a resolved harmony on a long note to one that is unresolved, which will usually keep people from hanging on past where they should, as they want the chord to resolve. 

I also use articulation to energize the beat, which means that the energy is transferred from the fingers to the key. But keep in mind that there must be tension and release/relaxation in relation to what the harmony is doing. It is a bit like the strong upbeat mentioned above. Similarly we cannot have relaxation without tension. Another concept is the idea of inner rhythm—that is what happens in the inner part of the beat; for example, on the second of two eighth notes, that second eighth note must be energized to move a line forward. 

Introductions and reharmonizations

Making hymn singing inspiring can include using creative introductions and reharmonizations. Introductions usually should be in the tempo of the hymn, or at least the last few bars set the tempo of the hymn with a clear reference to the melody. Much depends on whether or not the hymn is well known. 

One need not reharmonize every verse of every hymn, but the art of improvisation, used wisely, can really inspire a congregation to sing better. The study of improvisation is well worth the effort in terms of creative hymn playing. If a hymn verse is to be reharmonized, my preference is that the harmony stays close to the style of the hymn. Again, less is more when it comes to this topic, and much depends on the tradition within any given congregation.

Unaccompanied singing

Over the last few years I have learned the importance of unaccompanied singing within a service of worship. This could happen on a verse of a hymn, a Taizé response, or a host of other places. Listening to my recordings I think that some of the most exciting singing is when the assembly holds forth unaccompanied. For example, on one hymn I gradually reduced the sound from the second verse into the third verse and after two or three bars dropped out, then re-entered gradually before the beginning of the fourth verse. It is a nice contrast and is even more thrilling when the organ returns again after some unaccompanied singing. 

Another advantage is that the congregation is actually able to hear themselves in a different way than when they are accompanied. In a Catholic Mass, the Mass Ordinary and responses, especially during Lent, can be sung without accompaniment. I have used this technique with great success and would urge you to try it as well. If your congregation is used to being accompanied on everything, introduce this idea slowly. Perhaps the first time try it on a simple response like an Amen. Then try it on the other responses and also on a verse of a hymn that is well known. Moderation is the key, depending on what your congregation is used to.

I always tell my students who play for churches that hymn playing should be their first priority when they play for a worship service. Of secondary importance is the accompaniment of anthems or soloists and the third priority their own voluntaries. Hymns involve the entire assembly in a musical prayer. Hence hymnody must be of absolute importance in our preparation for Sunday mornings.

In closing

Hymn playing is a fine art and can be as difficult as playing some of the most challenging organ repertoire. The shaping of phrases and expression while maintaining leadership and playing for large numbers of people (all of whom have their own ideas what the tempo should be) is no easy task. It is hoped that this article will give you some food for thought and new ideas to try out in your own ministry.

Bibliography

Connolly, Michael. The Parish Cantor. Chicago: GIA Publications, 1991.

Day, Thomas. Why Catholics Cannot Sing. Spring Valley, New York: Crossroads Publishing, 1990, revised, 2011.

Lovelace, Austin. The Organist and Hymn Playing. Carol Stream, Illinois: Agape, 1981.

Noble, T. Tertius. Introduction to Free Organ Accompaniments to Well Known Hymn Tunes Volumes 1 and 2. New York: J. Fischer and Brothers, 1946. Later edition by Alfred Publishing, Van Nuys, 1985.

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

Buxtehude BuxWV 141 – Part 3: Practicing the first fugal section
This month we return to the Buxtehude Praeludium in E Major, BuxWV 141, looking at the second section of the piece, which begins at m. 13 and goes through about m. 50. This—except for its last three measures or so, which are a transitional passage, cadential in nature, and which we will in the main discuss next month—is a contrapuntal, essentially fugal, section, a fact which has implications for studying, practicing, and learning the music. Much of what I will suggest here will involve revisiting the ideas that I discussed in the series of columns about counterpoint that began in September 2008, applying those ideas to this specific passage.
The fugal section that begins in m. 13 is in four voices. The musical text could by and large be written out on four staves, accounting for all of the notes, with each staff presenting a coherently “melodic” melody. (It departs from this briefly in mm. 32–33 with the addition of a few “extra” notes, and again in the transitional passage.) The voices behave like the voices of a contrapuntal piece: each of the four voices has a different compass, each of the voices is present most of the time but not all of the time, and, melodically, the voices do the same things at different times and different things at the same time. The section is “fugal” in that the voices enter one at a time, each with a version of the same theme, and that theme recurs a lot during the section.

Theme
This theme is as follows, in its first iteration:

It enters first in the top voice, and then in the other voices in descending order. It is present in 24 of the measures of the section, and a motive identical to the second half of this fugue subject is present in another 3½ or 4 measures. The longest stretch without any of this theme present—prior to the transitional/cadential section at the end—is about one measure.
(There is an interesting side note about this theme, one that in a sense is irrelevant to the piece on its own terms because of the chronology, but which should be intriguing to organists nonetheless. The first half of the theme is the same as the fugue subject of Bach’s Fugue in E-flat Major, BWV 552, and the second half of the Buxtehude theme is essentially the same as a recurrent pedal motive in the Prelude, BWV 552. This Buxtehude work seems like a more likely source of Bach’s inspiration for the so-called “St. Anne” Prelude and Fugue than is William Croft’s hymn tune, which Bach most likely never heard.)

Bass voice in pedal?
The first practical question about working on this section is whether or not the bass voice belongs in the pedal. This is often a question with Buxtehude, since the sources for his music do not often indicate pedal explicitly, and in any case are rather far removed in origin from the composer. In this section, there are several reasons to believe that the bass voice was indeed intended as a pedal part. First, it works on the pedal keyboard, and, in order to make it work, the composer has shaped it a little bit differently from any of the three other voices. That is, there is no scale-wise writing in the bass voice that is any faster than the eighth-note, whereas there is such writing in each of the other voices. Second, there are many places in this passage where it is awkward to play all four of the voices in the hands and where the fingering is much more natural without the lowest voice. (This is true, for example, in m. 33 or mm. 42–43.)
There is, as far as I can see, only one spot prior to the transitional/cadential section where it is actually impossible to play all four voices in the hands, namely the second eighth note of m. 44. Someone else might be able to find a clever way to make it work, and it is certainly possible to do so by fudging the duration of some of the longer notes. (Someone with larger hands than mine would have no trouble with it, but the stretch of a tenth is beyond what is normally found in music of this time.) Furthermore, the transitional section ending in m. 50 certainly requires pedal—really physically requires it—and there is no particularly good place to shift the bass line to the pedal if that line has been played in the hands from m. 20 on. So on balance this seems to me to be a section to be played with pedal.
(The closing fugue of the Praeludium in E Minor, BuxWV 142, presents an interestingly different picture. There the fingering is made dramatically easier, more natural, and more idiomatic to the organ playing of the time by not including the bass voice in what the hands are expected to play. However, at the same time the bass line itself is, if not unplayable in the pedal, still extraordinarily difficult and well outside what would have been the norm at the time.)

Learning protocol
The protocol for learning this fugal section starts with the approach that I outlined in the columns on counterpoint mentioned above; that is, playing through each voice separately and then playing pairs of voices. Here are some specific points about applying that approach to this passage:
1) The section that we are looking at is about 34 measures long—long enough that it should be broken up into smaller sections for this kind of practicing. It doesn’t really matter how it is broken up. It is fine to practice separate voices and pairs of voices in chunks of just a few measures, or in significantly larger chunks. One average way to do it would be to have breaks at around m. 23 and at around m. 36. Each voice will naturally break at a slightly different place. So, for example, it would make sense to play the soprano voice from m. 13 to m. 20, the alto from m. 15 to the middle of m. 23, the tenor from m. 17 through the first beat of m. 25, and the bass from m. 20 through m. 24. Then these sections of these voices can be combined in pairs.
2) When playing individual voices, it is fine to finger those voices in ways that will not be used when later putting the voices together. This is especially necessary and important with inner voices—typically the alto voice in a piece or passage that has three voices in the hands. Such an inner voice will almost certainly end up migrating from one hand to the other. However, at this stage it is important to play each voice in a way that is comfortable and natural, and that makes it as easy as possible to hear that voice as a coherent melody. It is also necessary to be flexible about playing inner voices in either hand. So, of course, when putting soprano and alto together it will be necessary to play the alto in the left hand, but when putting alto together with tenor it will be necessary to play the alto in the right hand.
3) At this stage, it is also not necessary to play the pedal part in the pedals. Practicing the pedal line as a pedal line (see below) can come later or can start in parallel with this process of getting to know the voices. However, for carrying out this approach to learning the voices, just as it doesn’t matter what fingering is used, it also doesn’t matter whether the feet play the bass voice or the left hand does. The important thing is that the student be able to listen carefully and hear the voices well while playing them.
4) In putting voices together in pairs it is a good idea some of the time to play the two voices on two manuals, in order to hear them with extra clarity. This is especially useful when voices cross or, as for example with the soprano and alto voices at mm. 38–39, come very close. The two sounds should be similar in volume and different in character.

Pedaling
While studying individual voices and pairs of voices, it is emphatically not a good idea also to finger and practice the manual part of the texture. That will come a little bit later. It is perfectly fine to practice the pedal part, however. It is interesting that in this piece the pedaling choices are more straightforward, and in fact the pedal part is probably easier overall, in the more active fugue subject and subject fragments, than in the measures in which the pedal is playing long-held notes.
The fugue subject can easily be played with alternate toes, starting with the right foot; the subject fragment that occurs in m. 33 and elsewhere can also be played with alternate toes, starting with the left foot. These pedalings are natural enough that I would expect essentially every student or player to use them. (There are other possibilities: for example, using the same foot to play some of the successive quarter notes, or occasionally using heel to play some of the sixteenth notes that are on white keys when the immediately prior note was on an adjacent black key. On the whole, I doubt that many players would find these variants easier or better, but perhaps some would. They could certainly be OK.) This consistent alternate toe pedaling implies nothing in particular about articulation, phrasing, timing, or other interpretive/performance matters.
However, when the pedal part moves more slowly, particularly from m. 43 on, pedaling choices both affect and depend on choices about articulation. To the extent that the player prefers or can accept spaces between these long notes, he or she can apply the principal of playing each note with whatever foot happens to lie most comfortably above that note. As an example that would lead me to the following succession of toes for the eleven pedal notes beginning with the first note of m. 44 and going to the end of m. 50:
l-r-r-l-l-r-l-l-r-r-l
For someone else it might be a little bit different. Creating more legato in this passage would involve different pedaling choices—for example, crossing the left foot under to play the E in m. 44, and then playing the C# in m. 45 with the right foot.
Of course, practicing the pedal line once pedaling choices have been made involves the usual things: keep it slow and accurate; look at the feet as little as possible—ideally not at all; repeat small-enough passages that the memory of the feeling of the passage does not fade before you get back to it. When the pedal part has become secure, join it first to the tenor voice, then to the left hand part as such—once that has also been practiced as outlined below—then to the hands together. (Of course, it is fine also to practice pedal with right hand alone. However, as always, left hand and pedal is most important. Usually if left hand and pedal has been practiced enough, then adding the right hand is something that feels natural and almost easy.)
And do not forget what might be the cardinal rule of practicing: if you hear yourself make a wrong note while practicing, do not stop or hesitate or go back and correct it. By the time that your ears have heard the wrong note, your mind should already have moved on to playing the next note. Next time through the passage you can make sure to adjust what needs to be adjusted to correct what was wrong.

Fingering choices
Once you have played through all of the voices and all of the pairs of voices, it is time to work out a fingering for the three voices that will be in the hands. And, as I discussed in the column from last July, the first task is to decide which notes belong in which hand. This must come before making specific fingering choices, and it must be done in such a way as to make those fingering choices as easy and natural as possible. As I wrote before: I have seen students waste a lot of time or even make a passage that could be fairly easy almost unplayable by assigning notes to hands in a way that was awkward. However, there is not always only one good answer, and the answer is not the same, necessarily, for any two players.
In any situation in which three voices are present and the notes of the alto voice can be reached by either hand—that is, generally, in which neither the soprano notes nor the tenor notes are more than an octave away from the alto notes—the player can, in a pinch, try it both ways. Generally it is nice to put “extra” notes with whichever other voice is less active. So, in m. 19, for example, I would play the first three notes of the alto voice in the right hand since the tenor voice has sixteenth notes, but then play the half note E in the left hand, since the soprano voice then has sixteenth notes. In m. 24 I would play the one alto voice (whole) note in the right hand, even though the soprano voice notes are a bit farther away, since the tenor voice is more active; in m. 25, however, I would shift the alto voice to the left hand since the soprano voice become much more active. Again, these choices are not right and other choices wrong. It is simply very important that each player—each student perhaps with the help of a teacher—work this out carefully and patiently, in a way that feels right.
After the “handing” and fingering have been worked out, it is possible to try an interesting challenge, namely to play the alto voice alone with the correct fingering. This involves letting that voice move from one hand to the other according to the plan that has been worked out. The goal is to play it in such a way that it sounds as natural and cantabile as it would sound played in one hand. It is simultaneously harder to do this outside the cushion of the other voices and good practice for playing that voice well when it is partly obscured by the other voices.

Practice procedures
Practicing the three-voice manual texture of course follows the usual pattern for any practicing. Each hand should be practiced separately, slowly, until it seems easy. The tempo should be allowed to rise only according to a pace that is comfortable: once a passage is learned well at one tempo, it can be played a little bit faster; playing it much faster will often lead to its falling apart. Once each hand is solid at a given tempo, the two hands can be put together at a slower tempo. This can then also be allowed to speed up gradually. The rule about not stopping or hesitating when you hear yourself make a wrong note is always utterly important.
After a player or student has carried out all of the above—individual voices, pairs of voices, pedal part, individual hands, left hand with pedal, and all the rest—there is an interesting exercise to try. Play the section—well learned, all parts together—and consciously listen only to one voice at a time. This is easiest with the soprano voice, next easiest with whichever voice is the lowest at a given time, quite hard with a real inner voice. The ability to do this and also keep the whole thing going accurately and with a feeling of ease will help to reveal the fruits of studying the voices thoroughly and also test the solidity of the overall practicing of the notes.
Next month I will discuss both the transition measures 47–50 and the free section that follows, beginning in m. 51. ■