On Teaching

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

Some thoughts on ornaments I
The playing of ornaments is one of those areas that many—maybe most—students find intimidating. This is only partly because it can be genuinely difficult. It certainly can be difficult, although, like most physical tasks, it can be made much less so through the right kind of technical preparation and through an adequate amount of well-targeted practice. The intimidation factor with ornamentation comes, I believe, mostly from a fear of getting it wrong. There seems to be so much data about how this kind of trill was played in Italy in 1620 or how that kind of appoggiatura was played in Austria in the early nineteenth century that it can seem impossible to keep up with it all. One well-known book on ornamentation is nearly 600 pages long, and that is just one book of very many. Also, impeccably credentialed experts on the subject can disagree. It is easy, looking at a piece of music, to know what the “regular” notes are, though of course it may not be easy to play them. But it is not necessarily easy, or even possible, to know for sure what the notes of ornaments are or what the exact rhythmic shape of a given ornament should be. It is also a common experience for even very talented and “advanced” students to feel that they have learned to play certain ornaments, but that those ornaments just don’t sound very good. This is always frustrating, and extraordinarily so when it happens more or less all the time.
I believe that part of this frustration comes from, or is made worse by, a confusion among some of these issues. That is, students often assume that their ornaments sound bad because they don’t know what the notes of those ornaments should be, or they have gotten something else wrong in the realm of the historical or the musicological, when in fact they sound bad because the execution is awkward or the preparation before the ornament itself is wrong. It may be important to know whether a given trill should start on the main note or the upper note, or how long or how fast it should be, or whether a certain appoggiatura should be long or short. However, any of the above should be able to sound good—natural, fluid, graceful—whether or not it is the correct interpretation of the composer’s intent. It is important to sort these different aspects of playing ornaments out from one another in order to be able to work effectively on learning to play ornaments well.

So, let us consider several issues.
First of all, what is an ornament? On one level an ornament is a note pattern indicated by a sign, rather than by notes as such. If, for example, the three notes c–b–c are indicated by ordinary notes, they amount to an ordinary bit of music, a phrase or perhaps part of one. If those same notes are indicated—as they could be—by a mordent sign on the note c, then that entity is an ornament. Likewise, the three notes c–d–e could be indicated by three ordinary notes or by the note e with the sign for a slide, or the notes d–c–d–c–d–c by six notes or by a trill sign over the note c. This is basic and well known. So, what is the difference between notes indicated by an ornament sign and the same notes written out? Sometimes there might be little or no difference. In fact, there are plenty of pieces in the repertoire with parallel passages in which the same notes are one time written out and another time marked by ornament signs, with no reason to believe that they should be different one time from the other. (This may make it appear that our distinction between ornaments and other notes is at least sometimes arbitrary. This is true, and actually can be helpful in teaching students to play ornaments well and to be comfortable playing them. A significant part of the fear of ornaments comes specifically from identifying them as ornaments, as something other than just some notes to play.) However, when there is a difference, it is likely to be that notes indicated by ornament signs are meant to be quick and light or to deviate subtly from any rhythm that could be spelled out by notes in our rather simple system of rhythmic notation, or both of these.
In fact, from the point of view of execution or performance, ornaments are simply “quick, light notes” or perhaps the greatest exemplar of that kind of passage. This means that playing ornaments well can be achieved by applying the same kind of light, fluid touch that is in fact best for playing any note patterns on the organ. It also means that working on playing ornaments effectively can be one of the best ways of improving lightness of touch and freedom from tension in all playing.
There is an exercise that I use with students that I refer to as a trill exercise. It is extraordinarily effective at helping a player to develop the right kind of touch for playing trills. However, it is equally useful for teaching a light touch for any kind of fast playing, including both non-trill ornaments and any other kind of rapid passage. (It is in fact the only actual exercise that I normally suggest to students, given that in general I believe that it is best to practice pieces or note patterns drawn from pieces.)

A trill exercise
This exercise is not written in music notation, and, although it involves playing notes at the keyboard, it is really a kind of relaxation/breathing/meditation exercise. It can be carried out at the organ or at the harpsichord. It can also work on the piano, as long as the player remembers not to care about producing a robust or loud sound. It goes like this:
1) Sit at the keyboard, and identify the place on the keyboard where each hand can meet the keys with the arm, wrist, hand, and fingers more or less in a straight line. This is usually at the notes written near the top of the treble clef for the right hand and at the notes near the bottom of the bass clef for the left hand, though it varies a bit from one person to another. It is fine to let the elbows float away from the sides. If you are sitting at an instrument with more than one keyboard, choose the keyboard that it is most natural and comfortable to reach.
2) Pick two adjacent (natural) notes and two fingers. Initially it is a good idea to use adjacent and “good” fingers, perhaps 2–3 or 3–4. Later it is fine to do the exercise with any pair of fingers with which you might ever want to play a trill. The two notes should feel as similar to each other as possible. On many organs this is not an issue, though it is on some. It certainly is an issue on many harpsichords. Choose a quiet registration: a Gedeckt or Dulciana, perhaps, or, on a harpsichord, one 8-foot stop by itself.
3) Play one of the notes lightly and comfortably with the finger assigned to it, and hold the note. While holding this note, let your hand relax as much—as thoroughly—as you possibly can. This can be aided by moving the arm around a bit in the air—still holding the note—or by flexing the wrist a little bit, up and down, or by taking calm deep breaths. When you feel that your hand is fully relaxed:
4) Play the other note and then the first note again, as quickly and as lightly as you can. As you do this, you should have as little as possible of a feeling that your hand is bearing down into the keys. Instead, it should feel as if the hand is almost floating up and away—just failing to do so enough to allow the fingers to play the notes that they are trying to play.
5) After you have played these two rapid notes, you will notice that your hand has lost at least a little bit of its relaxation, that it has picked up a bit of tension or at least a bit more muscle tone than it had just before playing those two notes. So, the next step is, while continuing to hold the note that you are holding, again wait for your hand to become fully relaxed. You should then repeat the process described above, that is, the rapid playing of two notes. It can be repeated several times—four or five, maybe up to a dozen. It should never happen according to a beat or a schedule. Each time, while holding the note chosen as the first note, you must wait until your hand is perfectly relaxed before executing the rapid two-note gesture for the next time.
6) After doing this several times in a row, do the same thing but start with the other note and the other finger.
This exercise should be done with each hand, with various combinations of fingers. It is not a good idea to segue directly from doing this exercise to practicing or playing a trill or any other note pattern. Rather, it should simply be done by itself, perhaps for ten minutes or so at some point—or at two different points—during each practice session. Then, when actually practicing or trying to play a given trill (or other rapid ornament or other rapid passage), the idea is to remember and recapture the feeling in the hand, wrist, arm, shoulders, and body that you experienced during this exercise.
I have never known this exercise to fail to help a student, or any player, beginner or advanced, who spent some time with it. It can be used not just to develop a better feeling for the touch of trills, but also to train recalcitrant fingers to play trills and to play rapidly with control. In particular, it is very fruitful to do this exercise with 4–5, after having first done it with more “normal” trill fingers. Almost everyone I know believes that he or she “can’t” play trills with those fingers. In fact, almost everyone can after having applied this exercise to the task.
(I should mention that the original idea behind this exercise was suggested to me by my friend the late David Margeson in the early 1980s when he was a graduate student in organ at Yale. I have refined the idea and adapted it somewhat to the specifics of organ and harpsichord.)

Fingerings
A real necessity in playing ornaments well is planning good fingerings. This has several elements to it. First, of course, is choosing fingers for the notes of the ornament itself. In spite of the claim I made just above, it is a good idea to use the “best” fingers whenever possible. For most people, these are the middle three fingers, or indeed specifically 2 and 3. It is a good idea to use whatever fingers the player is most comfortable with—why compound difficulty by not doing so?—but it is also important not to be so tied to those fingers that passages before and after an ornament end up suffering from convoluted and unnecessarily difficult fingerings. For example, a player who can only play trills or rapid mordents with 2–3 will frequently get into trouble of this sort. A player who is also comfortable using 3–4 will get into much less trouble. Fingerings such as 4–5, 1–2, 1–3 are also useful, though the actual need for them arises less often. A consideration in choosing fingering for an ornament should always be the effect of that fingering on hand position and, in particular, the ability of the player to keep the fingers from migrating too deeply into the keyboard. So, for example, if one note of an ornament is a raised key and the other a natural, then it is wonderful to end up playing the raised note with 3 and the natural with 2 or 4 as appropriate. Reversing this leads to some kind of awkward hand position, and thus makes it harder to maintain a light, comfortable touch. The logistics of this vary at different points along the compass of the keyboard and also from one player to another depending on the relative lengths of the different fingers. The important thing is to remember to pay attention to the hand position that results from a fingering choice with an ornament.
If the note immediately before an ornament is the same note that actually begins the ornament, it is very important indeed to play the two successive iterations of that note with different fingers. This is an approach that I always prefer with repeated notes (see The Diapason, January 2009), but for preparing ornaments it is especially crucial. This is because, again, a light touch and a relaxed hand are absolutely essential to playing ornaments in a way that feels and sounds good. It is very common for a trill that should begin with the upper note to be preceded by that same note. The best way to work out this fingering is to decide first on the best fingering for the trill, based on the player/student’s preferences and on the logistics of the particular notes, then select a finger to play the preceding (same) note from among the fingers not designated to play the first note of the trill. This choice should be made based on the shape of the passage leading into the trill. If it is impossible to make that passage work without using the same finger for the final note before the trill and for the note that starts the trill itself, then the trill fingering should be changed if at all possible. I have very rarely indeed been unable to devise a good solution in this very common situation—perhaps never. The point for the teacher to make to the student is that it is both fairly easy to work this out and abundantly worth doing so. Awkward starts to trills are usually the result of simply not having thought out the fingering both of the trill itself and (especially) of the notes leading into the trill.
It is also very common for the note before an appoggiatura to be the same as the note of the appoggiatura itself. In this situation, using different fingers for the two iterations of that note will not only make the whole pattern of notes sound more natural and give greater control over timing and articulation, but it will specifically create the right accent relationship amongst the three notes: the note before the appoggiatura, the appoggiatura itself, and the note following it (the “main” note). Trying this example with each of the indicated fingerings (both for the right hand) can make this difference seem clear.
One of my frequent chamber music colleagues recently made the following comment to me about a (non-keyboard) musician with whom we both play a lot: “I’ve figured out why so-and-so’s ornaments always sound so good. He plays them quietly.” The above discussion about fingering and the suggested exercise are essentially aimed at helping students to develop an organ and harpsichord equivalent of playing ornaments quietly. Next month I will deal with the sometimes vexing questions about what the notes and rhythms of ornaments should be—on the beat or before, starting on main or auxiliary notes, and so on. I will also address how to use that information to help students feel freer in their playing of ornaments rather than more constrained, and how to help them approach the subject creatively. 

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 4:
Free writing and trillo longo—mm. 51–59
This month’s column is about just a little bit of music—the third overall section of the Praeludium, nine measures long, mm. 51–59. I will provide some analysis of the passage, and offer some thoughts and suggestions about fingering and pedaling.

The Praeludium that we are studying is, as I discussed in the column from June 2010, a one-movement work in several sections. There is both contrast and continuity amongst the sections. Sources of contrast are clear. Some sections are contrapuntal, some are not; some are regular in pulse and rhythm, some are free or essentially unmeasured; some use striking dissonance, some avoid it. Sources of continuity can be more elusive, but can include the use of similar motivic material, or recurring rhythms or harmonies. This is the classic form of the toccata or praeludium as practiced by Frescobaldi and Froberger, among others, and adopted and adapted by Buxtehude as the form of his organ praeludia. It was also used by Bach for organ and harpsichord pieces that we know or believe to come from early in his career: most of the harpsichord toccatas, the famous D-minor organ toccata, BWV 565, and some of the preludes and fugues such as BWV 551.
The section that we are looking at here is essentially non-contrapuntal, in that the writing is not in a set number of voices, although, as we will see, there are recurrent motives. There are fairly quick changes of texture, from one voice in m. 51 and elsewhere to four and five later. Chords are built up out of passagework. There are abrupt changes in the prevailing note values, as in m. 52, which starts with 32nd notes and then somewhat surprisingly sits on the third quarter-note beat with no motion. The lowest notes make up a true pedal part (always a question with Buxtehude, since the sources don’t make it clear, and also since the relationship between the sources and Buxtehude’s original intentions is not always known), since there are stretches that cannot be executed by two hands alone.

Four-note motive
In the following example, some of the notes have been highlighted with either rectangular or oval outlines (see Example 1). The rectangular outlines indicate either an exact form—nine instances, including inversions—or a plausible variant—six instances—of the four-note motive that begins the entire praeludium (see Example 2). This motive is found in crucial spots throughout the praeludium, sometimes as a marker of transitions or important moments, sometimes as part of “officially” motivic material, such as the second half of the fugue subject of the final section of the piece. The section that we are looking at here is clearly chock full of this short motive—it is present almost exactly half the time. This is one of the sources of continuity between this section and the rest of the praeludium.
It could well be argued that this motive is too simple, too ordinary, to count as a real, identifiable motive, or to serve as a source of continuity or unity within a piece. After all, every piece has plenty of short scale passages, and this one in particular is introduced in the most casual possible way. However, it seems to me that if the composer had not intended it to be heard, perhaps subliminally, as a significant motive, then we would not be able to find it quite so consistently through the whole piece. In any case, we do find it, and each teacher and each student—having initially noticed it—can muse about how significant it really is, and decide for him- or herself.

Connections
The second element of this short section that ties it to the rest of the piece is the cluster of notes in the first half of m. 57, highlighted with an oval box. This is a foreshadowing of the fugue subject of the last section of the praeludium (see Example 3), especially as that subject appears when it is in parallel with itself. This happens in several places, such as m. 104, for example (see Example 4).
This section is also clearly related to the rest of the piece by its similarities to the transitional passage that constitutes the end of the second overall section of the piece and that therefore comes just before this section. This transition occupies mm. 47–50. It arises out of the fugue that precedes it without break or interruption. The fugal texture just gives way to non-contrapuntal writing with passagework and built-up quasi-arpeggio chords. This texture resembles that of mm. 51–59, although it has the feeling of both a cadence and coda to the long fugue that has preceded it. The flourish that ends the transitional passage and the pedal solo that begins the third section are more or less versions of each other (see Examples 5 and 6).
(A similar way of linking the end of one section to the beginning of the next was employed by Bach in, for example, the Toccata in C Major, at the transition between the opening manual solo and the ensuing pedal solo, where the first four pedal notes seem to answer the last four manual notes [see Example 7], and in the F-major Toccata and Fugue, where the very last notes of the toccata are echoed in the mordent that begins the fugue subject.)

Trillo longo
One interesting feature of this passage is the use of the term trillo longo, placed over two spots in the pedal part, as seen in Example 1. Of course it seems obvious, on one level, what this term means: long trill. And in both instances it is written above notes that are in the shape of a trill, one that begins on the lower of its two notes. One surprising discovery about this term—trillo longo—is that there is no evidence that it was ever in common use as a technical musical term or as a piece of accepted musical jargon. A bit of research reveals that it is not listed as a musical term in any music dictionary or encyclopedia, and there are no papers or articles that discuss it as a term or that mention any piece in the entire history of music that uses it as a term, other than this piece. (A Google search on the term “trillo longo” returns seven results, one of them about a piece that does not in fact use the term, and all of the other six about this passage. Included in these search results is one prior column in this series.)
So if this term was not in particularly common use—even if its basic meaning is clear—why did Buxtehude (or his copyist: we can’t be sure) use it here? Was he simply observing that the printed notes constitute a “long trill”? Or was he instructing the player to execute a long trill beyond what the notes indicate? If so, is this to be accomplished by adding notes and time, or by adding notes and making them faster? Does the designation of a group of 32nd notes as a “long trill” suggest that they can or should be played freely, or given some particular grouping or shape? (For example, the 16th-note B that falls on “the ‘and’ of three” in m. 51 could be thought of as the beginning of a trill, and the 16th-note/32nd-note rhythm rendered freely, as the gradual beginning of the trill.) Or was he just reminding the player to resist the temptation to shorten or omit or simplify the trill due to its being in the pedal, and therefore tricky to execute? Here’s another possibility: perhaps Buxtehude wanted to employ some Italian language at this point to signify that the trills in question were Italian-style trills, that is, trills beginning on the main note.
I don’t know the answers to these questions, or whether any of these thoughts really apply. I throw them out there for the student—or teacher—to muse about. Meanwhile, the “long trill” continues to be important as the section goes along, especially as manifested by the (very long) trill in one of the inner voices in m. 56. In this spot, unlike in mm. 51, 53, 55, and 57, the trill is accompanied throughout by motion in other voices. This is also the measure in this passage that is in five voices—and five notes are actually sounding throughout the measure—therefore it is literally the loudest measure within this section. It has the largest number of total notes played of any measure at 32. (The following measure is second at 29.) All of this suggests that this measure might be the rhetorical climax or high point of the section. The major interpretive or performance issue in this measure concerns the trill. Should the notes that follow the pattern of a trill on E and D-sharp be played “as written,” that is, as more or less measured 32nd notes, or should they be untethered from that timing and played as a fairly free trill? The latter is, to put it plainly, harder. It requires that the trill pattern be learned and practiced so well that the fingers can execute it while the mind of the player is, in a sense, ignoring it. The player must let those notes go their own way rhythmically and concentrate on playing the other—right hand—notes in the desired rhythm, regardless of how those notes do or don’t line up with the notes of the trill. In any case, the student or player should initially practice the notes of this trill in the “as written” rhythm, learning them more and more securely while thinking about whether to try to set them free from the printed rhythm.

Pedaling
Pedalings in this passage are mostly straightforward. That is, there are easy pedaling solutions involving toes—mostly alternate toes—as would have been the norm in Buxtehude’s time. A possible pedaling—along with some fingering—is suggested in Example 8. The pedal notes marked with asterisks are (some of?) those that could very easily be played with heel if a player is so inclined, either because that happens to be more comfortable for the particular player or to avoid a disjunct articulation at those spots. (Just for the record, I believe that I have usually used the left heel on the asterisked note in m. 51, where my particular posture makes it extremely comfortable and natural to do so, but not on the one in m. 53.) The transaction that takes place between the second and third pedal notes of m. 51 (G# and F#) is interesting. The articulation created by simply using the right toe for both notes, as I have indicated it, is natural and “musical” in that it precedes a note that is on a beat, and confers a slight accent on that note.
However, if in a particular player’s conception of the passage that articulation seems jarring, then it is difficult (but probably not impossible) to figure out a way to avoid it that works. Players with very wide feet can play the G# with the extreme outside of the right toe and rotate the foot in order to play the F# with the inside of the foot—the big toe. Some players might be comfortable initially catching the F# with the left toe and quickly substituting the right toe, in order to free the left toe up to aim for the following note. It is hard to picture getting the heel involved since we are dealing with black notes. It is very possible to turn the logic of this around and say that since it is so much more natural to use a pedaling here that creates an articulation, perhaps that is how the passage was meant to be played.

Fingering
As always, the first step in creating a fingering is to figure out, where there is any possible doubt, which notes belong in which hand. I have indicated some “handing” choices in the example above, using curved lines. There are several other options. For example, it would be possible to take the 16th notes on the second beat of m. 52 in the left hand, or the B# and C# in the second beat of m. 54 in the right hand. In the third beat of m. 57, I have suggested taking the G# in the left hand. This is because I would find it extremely awkward to play the remaining upper-voice notes of that measure while holding the G#, all in the right hand. However, reaching the E/G# dyad with the left hand is indeed also tricky. It certainly involves a break immediately before those notes, and must be practiced carefully to avoid making that break sound jarring or abrupt.
I have included only a few fingerings as examples. Any of them can also be done a number of other ways. For example, changing the numerals printed above the upper staff in m. 52 from 2-3-4-5-4 to 2-3-1-4-5 would result in an also very good fingering (leaving the other fingers the same). In the right hand in m. 53 the fingering could be (instead of 4-3-1-2-1-4-3) 5-4-3-2-3-4-3 or 4-3-1-3-4-5-2 or a number of other possibilities. For that matter either or both D#’s could be taken in the left hand. Comfortable hand position is the main guiding principle, and this is something that varies from player to player, based on posture and the size and shape of the hands.
Notice, however, that in all of these (m. 53) examples I am carefully preserving the use of a different finger to repeat the D# from the one that is already holding it. The suggested fingering for the right hand in m. 56 is also designed to use different fingers on repeated notes. By and large, it is a good idea to keep the thumb off of black keys. In fact, the most physiologically comfortable use of the thumb at the keyboard is for playing white notes just before or just after another finger has played a black note. Much of my approach to fingering a passage like this—in a heavily “black note” key—is derived from this concept of the use of the thumb. This can be seen in essentially all of the fingerings that I have written in here.
The student and teacher can try some of my fingerings, but should primarily work fingerings out from scratch, bearing in mind the ideas discussed above. Then, of course, the next step is what it always is: careful and patient practice, starting with separate hands and feet—doing as much of that as turns out to be needed, better too much then too little—then putting things together at a comfortably slow tempo, speeding up gradually, keeping the hands and feet relaxed.
Next month we will return to Boëllmann, looking at the charismatic and popular Menuet Gothique.

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 the director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. His website is www.gavinblack-baroque.com and he can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].

Velocity III

As a brief addendum to the latter part of last month’s column, I must mention that among famous organ pieces, the Widor Toccata is almost preternaturally well designed for the kind of practicing in altered rhythms that I mentioned in that column. Playing those sixteenth-note mordent-and-arpeggio figures first in fast groups of eight notes starting on the beat, then in fast groups of eight notes starting just after each beat, is remarkably effective for learning the piece itself and is also a good test case for my method. It is also undeniably fun to try to get at least a stretch of that piece as fast as you possibly can—and again a good test case for this approach. As with the Bach Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C, BWV 564, which we examined last month, it is not by any means necessary or even good to play the piece as fast as you possibly can. And with the Widor, there is an interesting history about tempo, since the composer changed the metronome markings through different editions, and he recorded it at a slightly different speed—slower than his slower metronome suggestion. 

This piece—or specifically the passages that are in the shape of the opening in the right hand—is also a good one for practicing stringing together smaller very fast gestures: seeing how long you can keep it going at a tempo defined not by what the music requires, but by simply trying to transfer the “fast, light drumming on a table” feeling to patterns on the keyboard. Once you have practiced two or three adjacent half-notes worth of the sixteenth-note pattern, try going through all of that material, again sometimes playing sixteen or twenty-four notes with the beat, sometimes playing the opening note and holding it for an unmeasured time, and then playing the following two or three groups in one gesture as fast as you can, ending on, and holding, the next downbeat. 

Utter predictability

Of course, this is all based on having achieved the utter predictability that is the foundation of being able to play fast. For one-note-at-a-time lines, that comes from a combination of sensible fingering and enough slow practice to get the elemental learning of the patterns to be way beyond just solid. The reason for considering building a potentially fast passage up out of smaller components (specifically as part of the process of getting it fast, or of testing and figuring out how fast it can be) is that the smaller the bit of music, the more promptly utter predictability can be achieved. In practicing a passage for really learning it—rather than as an exercise in moving around notes as quickly as possible—a player can decide to learn a longer stretch of music and move it up to tempo gradually (this is probably the most common method) or to learn very small bits, and get them up to (or beyond tempo) more quickly, and then work on putting them together. 

Achieving lightness

This feeling that we get from the drumming-fingers exercise of being able to move the fingers even more quickly than playing pieces will actually require is based quite crucially on keeping things light. It is easy to experience what happens if this lightness is compromised. Go back to simple drumming, then selectively tighten up various component parts of the physical mechanism that delivers your fingers to the table or chair-arm: shoulders, biceps, wrist, the fingers themselves. Each of these tightenings will have some effect on the ease, speed, and fluency of the drumming. The tightening of the fingers will be the worst, and will probably bring the drumming down below the velocity that you would like to be able to achieve. It will also most likely hurt. (Don’t do too much of it.) 

Playing lightly is always a good idea, always important. However, in trying to play anything that is fast enough that its speed is an issue, lightness is beyond just a good idea: it is a necessity. (Light, for this purpose, means with not too much more force than you need to make the keys go down, and with no tension whatsoever. It is the absence of tension that is the most important. The actual force of the downstroke of each finger is not as significant, as long as it is reasonably light, and as long as nothing in that downstroke predisposes the finger to have trouble coming back up, which is an impediment to velocity. Holding on to the keys after you have played them is to be avoided altogether. Experimenting with using so little force that you are almost not quite depressing the keys is a good idea, just to get the feel of it.)  

My so-called trill exercise (about which I wrote most recently in the December 2013 issue) is really about incorporating lightness and absolute lack of tension into fast playing. The trill in that case stands in for any fast playing, and, of course, as with the patterns that we have been dealing with here, it is fully predictable. (That exercise can also be found online here: http://gavinblack-baroque.com/trills.pdf). It works well to do a session of this exercise, then do something else for a while (practice something else, or get away from the keyboard altogether) and then play short excerpts from whatever passage you are working on playing at a challenging fast tempo, trying to remember and recapture the feeling of the trill exercise.

Tension and playing fast

Here are a couple of useful points to remember about the interaction between tension and fast playing. Physical tension, which physically inhibits speed, can have mental tension as one of its causes. And in turn, of course, nervousness about the ability to play a passage fast enough or to play it well at the appropriate tempo can be a cause of mental tension. This creates a sort of downward spiral or pernicious feedback loop. Part of the point of using the “drumming on a table” model to convince players that absolute velocity is not often the problem is to break this feedback loop. Also, there is a statement that goes like this: “If we want to accomplish something more, we have to exert ourselves more; playing faster is a form of accomplishing more, therefore to play faster we have to exert ourselves more; and exerting ourselves more means pushing harder.” Of course no one is going to spell this out: when you do it is obvious that it doesn’t add up. But it is a surprisingly pervasive underlying assumption, and we can help our students to let go of it by pointing it out.

(Playing very fast can seem like a tightrope act. The most instinctive way to avoid falling when we are afraid of falling is to hang on tight. This hanging on tight physically is, as I said above, fatal to velocity and to ease of playing in general. But hanging on tight while playing must be mental only: focus, concentration, paying attention to the music or to memory, and so on.) 

Transition points

Transition moments, where the hand has to move in some way, rather than just present fingers to the keyboard in one place, are a big part of the challenge when it comes to velocity. If there were no such moments, we could pretty much just transfer the drumming on a table feeling directly to at least any one-line passages. (But music would be much less interesting!) In real music these transition moments happen sometimes because we effectively just run out of fingers in one position: that is, they happen of necessity. Sometimes they happen because although we could encompass a certain set of successive notes in one position, that is not the most comfortable way to do so. But sometimes also they happen because the change in hand position creates an interpretive effect that we want. This latter situation is found in abundance in “early” fingering, that is, certain fingering patterns that were common and characteristic during and before the early eighteenth century. (Any identification of fingering approaches with any time period is really about tendencies, not absolutes.) These patterns involve using smaller chains of fingers to play small groups of notes, and then turning or moving the hand to present the next small group of fingers to the next set of notes. This was probably done to create articulation or to keep the hands in positions that enabled them to control the sensitive action of the prevailing kinds of instruments as minutely as possible, or some combination of these things. In any case, these fingerings routinely deprive the hand of the ability to sit over a group of notes and just drum those notes out. How does this relate to velocity?

Examples 1 and 2

Considering Examples 1 and 2, do these two fingerings for a basic scale fragment have significantly different ceilings to the tempo at which they can be played? Based on experience with the “drumming on a table” model, I would say that most players could execute the first fingering in not much more than half or two-thirds of a second. (That’s a “tempo” of quarter-note equals 700 or more.) The second fingering? I can’t picture anyone playing it that fast. Someone could surprise me, but certainly for most of us it can’t go at that speed. It is not the “drumming on a table” situation, because the transition points are too many and too frequent: every other note. 

Examples 3 and 4

Now considering Example 3, I feel pretty sure that most people could execute this one, including the transition moment going across the bar line, almost as fast as they could execute example 1: not quite, but almost. So in part it seems to be recovering from the transition, or executing multiple transitions in a row that lowers the ceiling on velocity. 

Practicing this sort of early fingering with a view to getting it fast can involve breaking things up into small units, and applying some of the principles of both my trill exercise and the sort of altered-rhythm practicing that we have been looking at. I have given two fingerings (for the right hand) for this pattern in Example 4. The upper one, with the hand remaining in one position, is for comparison. 

Using the lower fingering, try playing only the first note, then, in an untimed manner, only when you feel relaxed and ready, play the next two notes quickly. Prior to actually playing, map out the feeling of the fingering in your mind. There should be a small articulation between the second note and the third note. (There also can be one between the first note and the second note.) It doesn’t matter exactly how large or small these articulations are as long as the feeling is comfortable. The second finger should be released lightly before moving 3 over it. Don’t hold 2 to the point where the whole hand begins to turn upside down. Try doing the same thing starting on the third note and going to the first note of the second measure. Then try adding notes: start on the first note, wait until you feel relaxed and ready, and play four successive notes. 

Try various small units like this. (You can always try the same groups of notes using the upper fingering, to be reminded of the differences in the feeling.) After you have gone over all sorts of smaller groupings like this, try playing the passage itself as lightly and quickly as you can. (It can repeat indefinitely. Just do it several times, and don’t keep going if it feels stiff.)

Another aspect of the relationship between this sort of fingering and velocity turns things around. If you want an articulation at a certain point, then if you program that articulation into the fingering—using fingers that create a transition moment that makes a space or breath—then that articulation will automatically be there at any tempo. In Example 3 with the given fingering, you will create a small articulation at the bar line. That articulation is not dependent on anything that you do other than executing the fingering. It will be there, proportionate to the tempo, at any tempo. If you change the fingering to 5-4-3-2-1, and still want that articulation (between 2 and 1) then you have to remember to do it on purpose, consciously lifting 2 early by just the right amount. Above a certain speed it becomes very hard; above another, higher tempo, it actually becomes quite impossible. 

In the course of working out these last couple of columns, I have realized that it would be a mistake to try to include a discussion of velocity in more complicated textures here. That would constitute giving it short shrift. Therefore, I will devote a fourth column to that, next month. In addition to talking about two-voice and multiple-voice textures and chords, and a bit about getting comfortable playing fast in both hands together, I will return to some of the questions from the beginning of the first column in this series and talk a bit about the connections between gaining greater ability to play with great velocity and aspects of interpretation and effective performance.

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.

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

Introduction

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

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

Editions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overview

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

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

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

Beginning to play

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

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

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

The 12/8 echo section

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

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

The fugue

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

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

m. 50: theme in alto, left hand;

m. 53: theme in tenor, left;

m. 56: theme in bass, pedals.

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

m. 67: theme in alto, left hand;

m. 70: theme in tenor, left;

m. 73: theme in bass, pedals.

Finally, there are two incomplete entries of the theme:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Allegro

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


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

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

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

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

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

Ornaments

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

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

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

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

More ornamentation: the Adagios

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

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

Registration

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


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

Tempo

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

Beginning: ~66

12/8: ~60–66

Fugue: ~60

Allegro: ~96

Discography

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

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

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