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Bloke,

I've got an brass quintet rehearsal at 6:30 this morning to go over Easter repertoire.

Each member of the quintet will see a printout of your post on their music desk before we play a note.

We should accomplish a lot.

Sometimes it's not the operator.

We're very fortunate here to have some very nice instruments in town and an organ performance program at the university. Generally speaking, no slouches here, unless it's at one of the very small churches where "Miss Lulu" has been playing for the last 77 years.

About 10 years ago, the late Bill Albright did an organ-piano program here. He kicked the program off with the D minor Bach organ concerto (BWV 596, I think). It was a complete mess. Bill got some courteous applause, but it must have been a devastating experience for him. Turns out that the instrument hadn't been serviced in a long time and had some real problems. Fortunately, the bulk of the program was on piano, so the audience probably forgot about the clambake on the box of whistles.

Chuck(G) wrote:Sometimes it's not the operator.

But sometimes it is.

I was married later in life, and my wife and I paid a professional organist out of DC to push the keys (the demands of an organist for an Episcopal church are more liturgical than musical, so we opted to hire from the outside).

The lady agreed to the program. But I think she played the recessional with her elbows. I assume that she could have demurred and suggested an alternative. The string quartet we hired for the reception was stunning, and they got an enthusiastic letter of praise from us in addition to a good gratuity over and above their fee. The organist got a check for the amount agreed, period.

Ray will remember that she had a bit of trouble with the fairly straightforward accompaniment to the solo he played. Not what you expect from an organ professor at a major eastern university.

What was the recessional?

Of course, the Widor Toccata.

(The organ was a fairly recent Allen computer organ in well-maintained condition. It doesn't sound like real pipes, of course, but it ought to be easy enough to play.)

Rick "who should have stuck with Wagner and Mendelssohn" Denney

Rick, that remeinds me of my wedding. When I was married in 1982, I had a brass quintet play the ceremony at the church. I still had to pay the organist, as she was the musical director/contractor for the church. When I told her I was having brass music, she was so excited and she told me how she loves playing with brass. I told her that the music I chose was for brass quintet and without organ. She insisted that she wanted to play, as she was being paid. Having heard her numerous times at mass, I knew I didn't want her playing at my wedding. So, I paid her not to play!!

Bloke,

is your gig at CUMC by any chance . . . ?

I lucked out this year with a gig at Grace St. Lukes. No extra rehearsals, just show up for a runthtrough at 7:00 on Easter morning. Top $$.

Last time I had a gig there was with Ryan Anthony. I wanted to make a positive impression as he was sitting right in front of my bell and hadn't heard me play before. On the first note of the first tune during the performance, the bumper fell out of my F-attachment. My horn half vavled, and it took me several bars of nothing coming out of my trombone to figure out what had happened. A few more bars to find the bumper and put it back in place. Major red face on a Canadian bass trombonist

bloke wrote:' too late now, but maybe (for your daughters?) hire an organist, rather than an organ professor

How about neices?

But she had a strong reputation as an organist. I didn't learn until later than she was an organ professor. Then again, my experiences with organ professors to whom I've listened (in particular, Frank Spelling at the University of Texas) demonstrated clear mastery.

This mistake I did make was in taking the word of a friend rather than in asking her for an audition tape. The string quartet provided us with a CD without hesitation.

Rick "trust, but verify" Denney

We had a wonderful Easter service. The church I recently joined has been raising money for three years to buy a pipe organ, and it was installed and (mostly) tuned and voiced just in time for the Easter service. The choir is normally dismissed along with the congregation during the postlude, but today the choir director informed us that we would be seated during the postlude, to listen to the organ. The moment came, we sat, and our sweet little old lady organist started in on the Widor...

... and nailed it to the wall. Absolutely beautiful, in spite of an unfamiliar instrument that hasn't been fully adjusted.
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Unrelated to my experience this morning, and no doubt familiar to many of you, is what someone (anybody know the particulars?) once said of the organ: that it is the perfect instrument for worship, for in its sounding we know of God's power, and in its ceasing we know of His mercy!
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Joe Baker, who can tell you some things he would change about his church, but has no beefs about quality of the music.

Joe Baker wrote: Unrelated to my experience this morning, and no doubt familiar to many of you, is what someone (anybody know the particulars?) once said of the organ: that it is the perfect instrument for worship, for in its sounding we know

Dunno, Joe, but I thought it had been originally used by the Romans for sports events:

http://www.pipeorgan.org/service/manual ... theo4.html

Not to sound overly sensitive, the tongue-in-cheek comment speak only as to suitablity, not origins. In fact, I'd never even considered the origins of the pipe organ. Thanks for an informative article.

So that picture Bloke posted is Nero, huh?
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Joe Baker, who wonders if those Roman hydrauli played "Baby Elephant Walk" or "Charge"...

Many years ago I offered to play violin at the wedding of a school friend, and she accepted. It went well except for the fact that the organist had MS; he "stumbled" on the keys while playing, and the results were audible. He had been the organist "forever" and I guess they didn't want to let him go. It didn't ruin the wedding as I chose an easy piece to play, but the keyboard stumbles were evident. Oh well, huh? Sometimes there is more behind a bad performance than just idiocy.

MA, who would wish for perfection but who has never attained it except on extremely simple but beautiful violin works.

With regard to the Widor, I must say its prerequisites are, perhaps moreso than many other works, a real balance of player and instrument. To stick to the given tempo, the organist must have impeccable independence and agility in the 4th and 5th fingers of the right hand, as well as impeccable agility in the left wrist. Even people who possess those are challenged by having to do so ad nauseum. Unfortunately, many churches either cannot afford to maintain their instruments as they should, believe it is unimportant, or a combination of both. I've played on many such instruments. Should the organist possess the aforementioned abilities, they can be hampered by a sluggish keyboard. It is at this point it comes to the ego of the organist, and whether he/she recognizes either their own lack of preparedness or the inability of the instrument to keep up, and decides repertoire accordingly. On top of that, if it's a guest organist, pipe organs rarely respond similarly. If you've ever had to perform in a funky hall, under a dead spot, etc., you know what a tribulation it is to perform without hearing yourself, or the trombones, the violins, etc. I've performed on organs where, due to the placement of the console with regard to the pipes, there's been as much as a full two second delay between striking a key and hearing the sound, or, worse yet, you can't even hear half of what's heard in the hall/church. You're flying along blindly, without the reinforcement of hearing what you think you're playing.
So before we get down too heavily on any particular group of instrumentalists, remember that we're all instrumentalists here, each type with its own unique set of challenges.

Mitch "who played organ from the age of seven and studied organ as well as tuba at two major universities" Williams

Mitch wrote: I've performed on organs where, due to the placement of the console with regard to the pipes, there's been as much as a full two second delay between striking a key and hearing the sound,

Mitch, at 20C (68F), the speed of sound is about 1127 ft/sec. Two seconds would put the speaking pipe (as the crow flies) 2252 feet away, or almost a half-mile (assuming that there wasn't something really funky in the key action (both tracker and electrical action wouild entail negligible delays) or some idiot had done a really lousy job in voicing the pipes)). That's some big instrument!

The voicing of the pipes was bad, it was old wiring with bad transistors and relays, and the contacts under the keys were shot, and there was so much dust in the pipe loft that the valves were probably caked. The "running" joke was that we could probably go up into the loft, run from pipe to pipe and blow in it and still get a better result than using the console.

Mitch wrote:With regard to the Widor, I must say its prerequisites are, perhaps moreso than many other works, a real balance of player and instrument...

Scenario 1:

Rick (to organist): We'd like the Widor for the recessional. Is that a problem?
Organist: Of course not.
Rick: And the church has an Allen.
Organist: Fine.
Rick: You are welcome to rehearse on the evening before the wedding.
Organist: Okay, to get the program and work through the solo accompaniment.

Result: Hamfisting the Widor, damaged reputation for organist, no referral.

Scenario 2:

Potential Client: Mr. Denney, we'd like you to perform the Vaughan Williams concerto for our engagement. Is that a problem?
Rick: Yes it is. Let me give you the names of some performers who can take care of that for you, or perhaps Come to Jesus in whole notes would be acceptable?

Result: Music well played. Rick thought of highly.

As any wedding photographer can tell you, weddings are dangerous occasions on which to expand your horizons. My experience with music at weddings is that the music selection should only require 60% of the player's ability to have any hope of being played over 90%. It's just the nature of the beast.

Rick "who thinks a man (or an organist) has got to know his limitations" Denney

Rick, it must've been the bench:

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml04/04556.html

I got snared into playing a wedding for a lady who was a regular at a bar I played at for two years.She had some set-in-stone requirements for her
wedding music and seemed to believe that the wedding music would somehow define her.
She insisted on "Color My World" by Chicago to open the ceremony and I requested a piano player and told her I would sing it and play the flute solo on trumpet.She assured me her cousin from California would be more than adequate on piano.
At rehersal,the piano lady kept missing the C7 chord change.I explained that the song changed chords every two bars except the C7 change which lasts for four bars.I even drew a pair of glasses on her sheet music over the C7 change so she could watch for it.
At the ceremony,she played C7 for two bars and went on to the next chord.When she realized she was off she stopped playing and put her hands in her lap-leaving me to play the last eight bars alone.The bride turned around and glared daggers at her from the altar.

I believe if you press the red "Demo" button twice on an electronic church organ it plays the Widor for you. Press it once and you get Bach in D minor.

The coolest organ concert Ive ever attended was a screening of the old silent movie "Phantom of the Opera" for the 100th anniversary of Boston Symphony Hall. The accompanist cranked that old organ up and it put THX to shame!

-Eric