On Teaching

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

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mobile, in that there is one note value (in this case the sixteenth note) that is both always present and never superseded by a quicker note value—that is, until the last several measures, where the intensity is ramped up for a dramatic ending.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gavin Black is Director of the Princeton early Keyboard Center. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].

Boëllmann Suite Gothique, Part 2: First movement
This month’s column looks at the first movement—Introduction-Choral—of the Suite Gothique. In the main, we will outline an approach to practicing the movement, starting of course with working out fingerings and pedalings. We will also consider some interpretive questions, mainly as they interact with or affect choices that must be made about fingering and pedaling.
Several technical features of this movement immediately stand out:
• Many thick chords in the hands—both hands;
• Double pedal for several measures;
• Except for the double pedal passages, the pedal part is strikingly low in compass, with the E-flat in the middle of the pedal keyboard as the highest note;
• Very little indication for swell pedal use;
• The hands sometimes more or less double each other in octaves;
• Conceptually each hand seems to be more of its own part than is usually true in a contrapuntal piece, where voices often wander from hand to hand—however, that does not mean that the hands cannot help each other out a bit;
• Very few chords do not include raised notes;
• There are no explicit instructions from the composer about articulation or phrasing, except for commas in three places, and one important slur, with its repeat.

Articulation
The thick chords raise one important technical issue right away, namely the matter of fingering in relation to articulation. It is essentially always easier—more natural as to hand position—to play successive chords of three or more notes non-legato. Sometimes it is actually impossible to do otherwise, more so the more notes there are in the chords, of course, but also depending on other matters, such as the placement within chords of raised notes. However, in a typical passage made up of successive chords, there are almost always some that can be played legato fairly easily, others that can be played legato with some sort of extra effort, and some that really cannot be played legato at all. This is of course different, around the margins at least, for different players, with hands of different sizes.
In music that we believe to be basically non-legato in overall style, none of this presents particular problems. Chord fingerings can be chosen based largely on the comfort of each chord—in turn based mostly on hand position—and the non-legato transition from one chord to the next can be practiced until it is, while non-legato, still smooth and cantabile, if that is what is desired. In a piece or a passage that we want to play legato, we must grapple with finding the best way to make connections between chords when it is not easy to do so. (By contrast, it is, from a technical point of view, almost trivially easy to play at least most of the upper voice melody in the third movement—Prière—legato, as per the marked phrases. The fingers of the right hand are simply available to do so.)
The question of whether this movement is meant to be legato, or the question of whether a given player wants or prefers to play it legato is unclear, or, more accurately, it is one that different students, teachers, and players will answer differently from one another (and from me). I am not interested in prejudging questions like this—that is, I want to try as best I can to leave all sorts of interpretive possibilities open as we consider how to work on the pieces under discussion. Also, there is a close relationship in a piece like this between articulation and room acoustics. In a very resonant room, a thick texture will come across as essentially legato even if the fingers and feet put small spaces between the notes and chords. If the player literally connects notes and chords, then there is a chance that the result will be enough beyond legato to sound unintelligible. This is an important consideration, especially since most organ repertoire, certainly including the pieces of Boëllmann, was written to be played in very resonant rooms. Of course, we must play in the rooms that are available to us.

Fingering
A fingering for the chords of the opening, in the right hand, that is designed to be comfortable, accepting that most of the chords will be non-legato, might look like Example 1. This happens to suit my hands. For another player, the best fingering might be a little bit different. In m. 5, for example, some players would rather do this (Example 2):

To achieve more full legato, substitution might be used, especially, for example, in the second and sixth measures (Example 3). (I find this fingering awkward, but possible with practice.)
A player with large hands might be able to do this (Example 4),

releasing the lower two notes of the opening chord early, but joining the upper two notes to the notes of the second chord. (I cannot quite do this one. Don’t try it unless it is really comfortable. The stretch could cause injury.)
In the passage at m. 13 (Example 5), the left hand can take some of the notes printed on the upper staff. I have put boxes around a few that I think make sense treated this way, although there are others that are possible. The decision to do this would make it easier to play the upper notes of the right-hand part legato, at the expense of some legato in the inner voices. This is an artistic judgment call, but notice the slurs in m. 18 and later its echo in m. 25. These are the only slurs in the entire movement, and are probably an important part of the rhetoric of this phrase.
Any student must make decisions and choices about fingering matters such as these, perhaps in consultation with a teacher. There are two important technical practicing points to make about some of these fingerings. First, non-legato fingerings will end up sounding smoother and most natural the more they are practiced, at first, with large rather than small breaks between the notes. That is, a gesture such as this (where the asterisks are) (Example 6),

should be practiced with the A-flat/
E-flat/C chord released almost as soon as it is played (but released gently), so that the motion to the next (B-flat/F/D) chord is as easy as possible. Then it will also be easy, later in the practicing process, to close that gap and make the articulation very small and unobtrusive. If you try to make the articulation too small from the beginning—waiting until the last instant and then quickly moving to, almost lunging at, the next chord—then it is likely to end up sounding awkward and stiff, no matter how much you practice it.
Second, it is important to remember to use the correct order in any fingering that includes multiple substitutions. For example, in this triple substitution (Example 7),

it is necessary to execute the substitutions from the lowest to the highest: 2-1, then 3-2, then 5-4. In every case, it is important to carry out substitutions in such a way that the hand moves inward—becomes smaller—rather than moving outward and stretching out. This can always be worked out by trial and error, and getting it right can make the difference between a substitution’s being impossible and its being easy.

Pedaling
One advantage of double pedal is that it resolves any doubt as to which foot should play which note. In effect there are two pedal lines—in the case of the first four measures of this piece, identical to one another except for being an octave apart—and each line has to be executed by one foot. An approach to pedal playing that involves paying attention to the position of each foot with respect to itself (as outlined in my earlier columns on pedal playing) not just, or mainly, in relation to the other foot, tends to make double pedal passages not seem as different from “regular” pedal as they might otherwise. In the case of this passage, as with the manual part, there is a relationship between pedaling and articulation. If this were a line from a Buxtehude piece (which it, unlike the manual part, could just as well be) then any comfortable pedaling would be fine: perhaps all toe, perhaps some heels when the angle was such as to make that comfortable. If, in keeping with an overall interpretive approach, we want to play this line legato, then a pedaling like this for the right foot part might work (Example 8).
The two quarter notes could be played by rolling the toe area of the foot, that is, playing the B-flat with the outside of the foot and the A-flat with the inside. The first note (G) of the second measure could be played with the toe, creating what should be a small articulation before that note. I might also play the first note of the passage with the toe initially, to make a clean, crisp beginning easier to achieve, before substituting the heel to prepare for the next note. There are other possible variations. The left foot could well use exactly the same pedaling as the right.
For the non-double segments of the pedal line, different players will choose different pedalings based largely on personal preference. Here are two different pedalings for mm. 5–8 (Examples 9 and 10); and of course there are other possibilities.

Practicing
The most efficient procedure for practicing this movement is the same as for almost any piece: work out fingerings and pedalings; divide the piece into manageable sections (in this piece, it makes sense to work with the phrases suggested by commas and by fermatas, although it is certainly fine to subdivide those units into smaller ones); practice these sections with separate hands and feet, very slowly; put hands together, or hands and feet together, only when the separate components are very well learned; increase tempo only when a given tempo has become almost trivially easy. This procedure can never be mentioned too often, and it can never be stressed enough that, if it is followed thoroughly and patiently, it always works.
In the case of this movement, I would strongly suggest that at every stage of working on the piece, until it is really ready to go at approximately the composer’s suggested tempo of half note equals 50, the beat in the student’s head, or coming from the student’s metronome, be equal to an eighth note. The quarter note will be too slow to be followed easily until close to a performance tempo.

Special procedures
In the case of this movement, there are a few special procedures that can enhance the learning of the piece—that is, getting to know it musically—while the notes are being learned securely. These are analogous to the practicing of separate voices in a contrapuntal piece, but modified to reflect the texture and structure of this piece: one in which the melody—the top voice—is indeed musically the most important thing, and in which the interaction between that melody and the bass line is the main source of motion.
So the first special practice technique is simply to play the melody and the bass line together, omitting all of the other voices or chordal notes. This can be done with the bass line in the pedal—as soon as the pedal is well enough learned—or with the bass line in the left hand, read from the pedal line or extracted from the left hand part of the manuals-only phrases. It can also be done with the melody in the left hand—since the left hand often doubles the melody—and the bass in the pedal. This can be done before the fingering of the chords has been practiced and made comfortable, since the extracted individual lines are fairly easy to play. But I would also suggest continuing to do it at later stages of work on the piece as a listening exercise and a way of keeping focused on the architecture of the piece, rather than just the complexities of learning it.
In the passages in which the left hand doubles the right hand an octave lower (this is a slightly oversimplified description of the texture), it is difficult for the ears of the performer to follow the left-hand part. The higher sounds of the right-hand part predominate. And, although the left hand in these passages is in a meaningful sense somewhat subordinate to the right hand, the overall texture will benefit from the left hand’s being played in as interesting and nuanced a way as the right hand, and from the two hands really being in sync. One way to work on this is to play the two hands together—once they have been practiced and are secure!—on different keyboards, with the left hand significantly louder. The right hand should be almost but not quite actually drowned out. Of course this only applies to some passages (mm. 1–8, 16–23, and 33–37, more or less). Then, when next practicing on a “normal” sound, try to focus on listening to the left-hand part, and let the right hand take care of itself.
Next month I will return to the Buxtehude Praeludium, looking at the first contrapuntal section beginning at m. 13. We will return later to the Boëllmann, looking at the Menuet.

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 and Boëllmann—final thoughts (for now)
For the last year I have looked, in as much depth as space seemed to permit, at the process of studying and learning two contrasting and, I hope, complementary pieces—the Praeludium in E Major, BuxWV 141 by Dietrich Buxtehude, and the Suite Gothique, op. 25 by Leon Boëllmann. This month I will share a few thoughts about this project as a whole; then next month I will turn to something new.
The goals of this long series of columns were really two: first, to provide a template for working on the two pieces, which, if followed, would help a student learn those pieces securely and comfortably; and second, to suggest ways of thinking about and working on organ repertoire that could be applied broadly to other pieces.

The learning process
The process of learning a piece of music on the organ can be thought of in three parts—parts that are not rigorously separate, but interact with and blend into one another. The first is the very practical: learning the notes by working out fingerings and pedalings, and by practicing the notes systematically and patiently—and practicing enough. The second is getting to know the piece as well as possible. This includes anything that permits the player to know, consciously or subconsciously, what is coming up next in the piece. This has a working relationship with the act of memorizing a piece, but doesn’t depend on memorization. (And indeed memorization does not guarantee really knowing the content of a piece musically.) This knowledge reinforces the learning that comes from practicing—makes it more secure. The third part comprises purely interpretive decisions that are made about how to play the piece: tempo, articulation, phrasing, and so on—and of course also registration.
In the columns of the last year I emphasized the first two of these, writing rather little about interpretation, for reasons that I will discuss below. Also, I only occasionally, when there seemed to be a particular reason for it, outlined a specific protocol for practicing a passage. That protocol is largely the same from one case to the next. Systematically organized and patiently carried out practicing is monumentally important. I will outline the most important points about it once more here.
1) Any student or other player can successfully play any passage right off the bat—sight read it—if he or she keeps it slow enough. The harder or more intricate a passage is, the slower it has to be at first. The simpler a passage is or the more it is broken down into simple parts, the less slow it needs to be.
2) The correct starting practice tempo for any passage is a tempo at which that passage is reliably accurate and feels easy. Again, the simpler a passage is, the less slow that tempo has to be. Practicing hands and feet separately allows the initial practice tempo to be less slow than it would have to be to cope with playing the whole texture from the very beginning. The most important thing to note is that an appropriate practice tempo is never defined in relation to the ultimate tempo of the piece or to anything about what sounds “musical.” Students can get into trouble because of a reluctance to practice too much more slowly than the tempo that they hear in their head for a piece. This should never be a consideration at this stage. The faster a piece is supposed to be in the end, the more important it is to practice it slowly enough in the beginning.
3) Once any passage, in any combination of hands and feet, has been played enough times at a given (appropriate) tempo, and feels really easy—essentially automatic—at that tempo, then it can always be played just a little bit faster. This is simply a fact about the human mind, brain, reflexes, muscles, and so on, which continues to be true as the passage increases in tempo towards (or beyond) where the player wants the piece to end up. Therefore:
4) Any passage or piece can always be learned—by anyone—by starting it at a slow-enough practice tempo and speeding it up in sufficiently small increments. Always—anyone. This only ever appears to have failed when the person claiming to have done it has not really done it. (I should know: I have from time to time been that person, led by busy-ness or laziness or distraction to cut corners. Most of us have done the same.) The teacher’s role in this process is to motivate the student to stick to practicing this way.
5) Choices about how much to simplify the increments in which a piece is practiced—that is, whether to practice a measure at a time, or a few measures, or half a piece or a whole piece, how much to practice separate hands, when to start putting things together, and so on—are really matters of the psychology and motivation of the student. Different choices will affect the trajectory of the learning of the piece, but not the final results, as long as the above principles are followed. Some students like working with larger or more complex chunks of music and are willing to keep them slow enough; other students would rather work with simpler or smaller bits and be able to have the “up-to-tempo” experience sooner with those bits.
(I want to mention, just by way of example, a recent experience that has come my way just by coincidence that touches on this. I have a student who has been working on the first Contrapunctus of The Art of Fugue—on harpsichord, and thus with all four voices in the hands—over the month or so prior to my writing this. She decided—after spending some time working out fingerings—that she would altogether skip the step of practicing hands separately. This was contrary to my assumption that she would work out each hand until it felt really ready before putting the two together. She did this because she found the whole texture fascinating and wanted to experience that texture from the beginning. And—this is crucial—she has made it work because she has been willing to keep the whole thing slow enough, and to crank it up to tempo very gradually indeed. I believe that it will take her longer to learn the piece this way, but she is finding it more interesting, and she will in the end learn it well. I should mention that she is playing through individual voices in the manner that I have often discussed, to learn them both aurally and structurally.)

Hand choices
I wrote quite a bit in recent columns about hand choices. These are a disproportionate and needless source of trouble for many students. Of course, if a passage involves the use of two keyboards, with one hand on each, then the player does not choose which hand plays which notes, and it was the composer’s job to make sure that the note patterns within each hand are plausible to finger and play. If both hands, and thus the whole manual part of the texture, are on the same keyboard, then it is extremely important that the student consider the two hands, ten fingers, to be one unit—a unit with the job of playing all of the notes in the most comfortable way, regardless of what note is printed in what staff. I have seen students classify whole pieces as un-learnable because of disadvantageous hand choices in a few salient difficult spots.

Getting to know the piece
In writing about getting to know the piece, I have tended to emphasize what might be called motivic analysis, but of an informal kind: simply noticing any melody, motif, theme, fragment, etc., that happens more than once. It has always been my experience that noticing things like this, even if this is not followed by the drawing of any particular analytic conclusions, leads both to more solid playing—by improving the ongoing remembering of what is coming up next in the piece as it goes along—and to more rhetorically convincing playing. However, getting to know the piece through noticing things about harmony or chord progressions, while not something that I tend to emphasize, can certainly also be useful.
A piece like the Toccata from the Suite Gothique is strongly chord-based. A trip through the piece, identifying chords by letter-name and type and also by relation to a local tonic or to the tonic of the piece, could aid in finding those chord shapes securely, and therefore in playing the piece well. A passage like the section of Buxtehude BuxWV 141 that begins at m. 60, though certainly conceived contrapuntally, can also be seen as organized around chord shapes, and taking note of what those chords are can also be useful in fixing the piece in the student’s mind.
Practice techniques
Practice techniques that I described in the last year’s columns might of course also suit other pieces. For example, in the final column on the Buxtehude, I discussed the technique of leaving out certain notes in a passage as a stage in practicing. This directs the attention of the ear to the stronger notes, and guides the player towards playing lighter notes lightly. I discussed this in connection with the fugue subject of the final section of the Praeludium. This approach could also be applied to the Boëllmann Toccata, leaving out the latter three sixteenth notes of each quarter-note beat in the right hand over the first nineteen measures of the movement, and similar passages, and playing the on-the-beat notes as (very) detached quarter notes. This would, among other things, elucidate the relationship between those notes and the left hand chords, which are in effect detached quarter notes.

Interpretation
I am very much a non-authoritarian when it comes to interpretation. I have no desire whatsoever for my students to play pieces the same way that I do, or in a way that I consider “right”. If a student of mine, or any other musician, plays a piece in a way that I really don’t like, or that I consider “wrong”, either based on analysis of the piece or historical considerations, then that is their business and not mine.
I am happy to share my reasons for liking or not liking anything, but only if the person with whom I am sharing those ideas is not going to feel obliged then to do things the way that I seem to want them done. I fear that the hand of a teacher’s artistic, aesthetic, and interpretive judgments can be a very heavy one for a student, even long after the teacher has modified or abandoned the particular opinion.
I try to consider any aesthetic judgment that I formed more than about five years earlier to be officially out-of-date and subject to being changed—or at least needing to be consciously re-thought before it is ratified. However, if I conveyed that judgment to a student with a kind of teacherly authority, then the student might have a hard time letting go of it, even if unknown to that student I have already done so. This is why I have tried to avoid statements of the sort—“this theme (or passage, or piece) should be played legato (or staccato, or with this or that phrasing)”—in these columns. Another reason for avoiding this is that my own interpretive thoughts about these pieces have changed at least somewhat as I have gotten to know them better by writing about them.
For example, I would now play the Prière à Notre-Dame a bit less slowly and significantly more freely than I would have expected to play it a year ago. It is also true that, outside of a certain level of generality, interpretive decisions in organ music depend on the instrument being used and on the acoustics of the performing space. The more solidly a piece has been learned, the more readily a performer can adapt his or her performance to the needs of a new instrument or a new acoustic situation.
I have enjoyed living with these two works for a year. They are both, beyond the nitty-gritty of working on them, expressive, exciting pieces that are viscerally fun to play as well as wonderful to hear and interesting to think about. Next month I plan to write about memorization. This is a subject that arises fairly naturally out of the attempt to learn a piece or two really well. The question of the relationship between memorization and really thorough learning of a piece is a complex and controversial one. I will try to explore a number of different ways of thinking about it, and give an account of my own views and my own experience. 

Gavin Black is Director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. In the spring of 2011, he will be playing recitals around the Northeast. Details and contact information can be found at gavinblack-baroque.com.

Buxtehude BuxWV 141 – Part 5
So far we have looked at the first three—or possibly four—of what might be seven or eight sections of the Buxtehude Praeludium in E Major, BuxWV 141. (As I discussed in the column of June 2010, there are a number of different ways of counting sections, depending on choices about how to count brief changes of texture at cadences and several other such issues. Are mm. 47–50 their own section? This does not really matter when it comes to understanding or learning the piece.) Several sections remain, and, as with the three already discussed, they display considerable contrast in texture—where that means primarily the extent to which the texture is or isn’t contrapuntal—rhythm, tempo, meter, and mood. Three sections—mm. 60–72, 75–86, and 91 to the end—are truly contrapuntal. The latter two are real fugues or fughettas, constructed quite rigorously from their subjects; the first could probably also be analyzed as a fugue, but really comes across as a sort of contrapuntal mosaic derived from very short motifs.
The other measures—mm. 73–74 and 87–90—are non-contrapuntal. This does not mean that they fail to follow the normal rules of voice-leading when there is more than one note sounding. It means that they are not essentially constructed through the impulses and imperatives of imitative counterpoint, and that the listener’s ears will not respond to them primarily by following an interaction between independent melodies. The first of these sections, mm. 73 and 74, resembles the trillo longo section discussed at length in the November 2010 column. The passage in mm. 87–90 is a texture new to the piece, something like a four-voice chorale, though not with the aesthetic of any chorale meant to be sung.
In this month’s column I will talk about all but the last of the remaining sections. That section, mm. 90 to the end, will be the subject of next month’s column, which will also include some overall thoughts about this Praeludium and the act of learning it.

Measures 60–72
The passage beginning in m. 60 is a contrapuntal section in three voices. It is noteworthy for several things. It is the first section of the piece to have a tempo marking—Presto. Since this section immediately follows one that is essentially unmeasured, it is quite possible that the function of this tempo marking is more to make clear to the player that we are back to measured and regular music than to suggest a specific speed. Of course, it does at least place the music in the realm of “fast” rather than “slow”. This section is in three voices, with the exception of a few beats where a fourth voice briefly appears. (Two of those beats are at mm. 65–66; the other two are part of the cadential measure, m. 72.) The lowest of those voices has a compass that would not have been playable on the pedalboard of Buxtehude’s time. Therefore it is almost certainly not a pedal line, even though it would fall under the feet fairly well. Oddly, the lowest voice does not go very low. Its lowest note is tenor D-sharp, more than an octave above the lowest note of the manual organ compass. Therefore the entire section has a “high” feeling to it.
The section opens as shown in Example 1. This could be read as the opening of a fugue exposition, with a measure-long subject in stretto with itself from the very beginning. However, as the section unfolds, each of the two halves of this theme (Examples 2 and 3) occurs more often by itself than paired with the other half. (The whole theme occurs six times, one or another half occurs separately sixteen times.) Furthermore, two other short themes are introduced, each of which occurs nine times (Examples 4 and 5).
These four short motifs, including the quarter-note that ends each one, account for by far most of the notes of this section. It is this pattern of four short motifs each recurring many times, not really coalescing into “subject” and “countersubject”, which leads me to describe the section as a contrapuntal mosaic. Since for the performer the important point about this kind of analysis is to allow the mind and the ears to know without fail what is coming up next in the piece, the act of going through the score and highlighting each of the motifs is probably worthwhile.

Hand choices
Since the lowest of the three voices is quite high in compass, it is not surprising that the middle voice can fit—almost every note of it—at least reasonably well in either hand. Therefore, this a good passage for a student to use in practicing the art of making hand choices—something that was discussed at some length in last month’s column, though in the context of a very different piece. Here it is possible for the student to play the lower two voices all the way through in just the left hand—omitting just a few notes of the middle voice, in m. 67 for example. Then it is also possible to play the upper two voices in the right hand, again being required to omit only a few notes. Neither of these is at all likely to be the best way to play the passage, of course. The next step is to go through and figure out what choice of hand actually works best for the middle voice as it goes along. This will be different from one student to another, based on existing fingering habits, details of hand size and shape, and musical goals. Any student should be able to work this out essentially for him- or herself, and it is a good exercise to do so.
Once the hand choices have been worked out, since this is a contrapuntal section, the player should practice the middle voice alone with the correct fingering, in order to make the transitions from one hand to another seem as smooth and natural as possible. This can supplement the usual practicing of individual voices and pairs of voices.
(In the few beats where Buxtehude has violated the voice structure by adding anomalous extra notes, it is fine to fudge the voice practicing a bit—omit the extra notes, or expand the voice that you are playing to included, briefly, two notes. As long as the student is aware of doing one of these things, it is fine.)
An important compositional/aesthetic point to notice in this section is that it ends with an incomplete cadence. Everything that develops in mm. 71–72 points strongly to a C-sharp triad on the first beat of m. 73. (It could be major or minor.) However, instead there is nothing there. The timing and pacing of this non-cadence is important, in particular, in setting up the next section.

Measures 73–74
This next “section” is short enough to earn quotation marks—only two measures (Example 6). This section is preceded and followed by contrapuntal sections that are longer than it is, and that are different from it in mood. That is, they are—though also quite different from each other—both marked by strong rhythmic motion and a regular pulse. This section is marked con discrezione, which would strongly suggest free, perhaps even unmeasured, rhythm, even if the overall nature of the writing did not already suggest that. The combination of the shortness of this section with the importance of the contrast that it offers to the sections around it suggests something to me that might seem a little bit simplistic but that I think is valid, namely that within the bounds of what can work, it is a good idea to let this section take as long as it can. That is, the slower and freer it can be, the less perfunctory it will seem as a way station between the contrapuntal mosaic discussed above and the fughetta discussed below. This is just one thought, however; it certainly would not be a good idea to play it more slowly or more freely than seemed appropriate for the passage on its own terms. But all else being equal, perhaps the more time it occupies the more effective it will be.
The elements of this short passage are drawn from other sections of the work. The student should examine the notes of the solo opening measure for motivic connections to the previous section, and the notes of m. 74 for connections to earlier part of the work, in particular the trillo longo section. It becomes apparent that none of this is filler or cadential material. (I should admit that I myself did not notice the relationship between the melodic shapes in m. 73 and the material in mm. 60–72 until I had been studying the piece for quite a few years. There are probably details of the construction of this extremely well thought-out work that I have not noticed yet. Students should be encouraged to undertake as much detective work as they like, picking apart themes and scanning the whole piece for connections.)
Since the pedal note that enters in m. 74 does not change anything about the harmony or anything significant about the counterpoint, it is perhaps there for emphasis. It makes more emphatic the negation or contradiction of two things: first, the B-sharp that has prevailed since m. 71; second, the high tessitura of the section that has just ended.

Measures 75–86
The section that begins after the downbeat of m. 75 is a short fugue in three voices. The subject (Example 7) occurs six times in eight measures, followed by a fairly extended build-up to the final cadence—which this time is completed. This is again a manuals-only section—the lowest voice is too high for the pedal compass. Once again the notes of the middle voice can almost all be reached by either hand. For about five measures’ worth of the section, there are actually only two voices being played, so hand choices as such are limited to the remaining measures. (When there are only two voices being played, there is of course rarely a reason not just to split them between the two hands.) The most interesting spots to think about hand choices and fingering are mm. 78 and 82 and perhaps mm. 84–85. Students should try several possibilities and in particular notice differences in the range of possible articulations with different hand/fingering choices.
A particular feature of this fugue subject is the presence of a repeated-note event at a crucial moment in the unfolding of the theme. The articulation and timing of this repetition each time it occurs is probably more important than any other one thing in shaping the overall effect of the passage. Therefore it is a wonderful opportunity for a student to think about planning repeated notes and to listen carefully to them. As I wrote in the column of January 2009, I believe strongly that whenever possible, it is a very good idea to use different fingers for repeated notes. I would, for example, finger the opening statement of this fugue subject as shown in Example 8 (this is in the left hand, of course).
As always, there are many other specific ways to do it. Changing fingers on repeated notes, in addition to giving the player more control over a wider range of articulation and timing possibilities, is also a free shot at repositioning the hand. In a passage like this, which has an active subject and, just for good measure, four sharps, repositioning the hand can be useful. Here is an example of a repeated-note fingering (in the right hand) that also positions the hand to deal easily with the other notes (Example 9).

Measures 87–90
The last of the four sections that we are looking at here is another fairly short non-contrapuntal passage (Example 10). Since the previous section ended with a convincing and well-heralded cadence in B-major, the opening harmony of this section is another instance of abrupt contradiction. The first note in the pedal sounds like it is inviting a continuation of the same harmonic scheme; when the chord is filled out in the hands it negates that harmony quite clearly. This passage is in the form, more or less, of a four-part chorale harmonization. The Adagio marking suggests a slow tempo for the section. Again it seems to me that, all else being equal, the slower these measures are, the more effective they will be as a counterweight to the rhythmic and contrapuntal material that surrounds them. The same range of possibilities for dividing the alto voice between the hands is found here as in other sections discussed above. In this case, since the lines are slow and not very complex, the choices are perhaps low stakes. However, in a slow bare-bones texture such as this, the addition of ornaments is always a possibility, and that might shape decisions about hand choices as well as fingering. For example, I like to play a trill on the final quarter note of m. 88. In order to accommodate that trill the most easily, I use a fingering like that in Example 11. There is nothing surprising or particularly original about this fingering. The gist of it is taking the first D-sharp in the left hand in order to permit the right hand to approach the trill in an unconstrained way. Students should try out various ornaments: trills, mordents, appoggiaturas, slides. (I sometimes play a slide all the way down from the high D-sharp to the G-sharp in the measure just above, or between the two pedal notes in m. 89.) It is in principle fine to ornament all of the notes, or none of the notes or anything in between. The important thing is for the student to try things out, and react and think.
This month’s discussion ends in the middle of a cadence, since the unresolved final note of m. 90 is resolved by the first note of the fugue subject of the final section. We will resolve this cadence and discuss the rest of the piece next month.