We are approaching the time in musical history when the organ will have been associated with the Christian church for as long a period as it was not associated with the Christian church. The fact that the organ, synonymous for so many people, with the church, not only was not designed as a church instrument but, more particularly, was effectively banned from churches for over 1000 years may come as a surprise. Typical of this ignorance is the concert-goer who, at the concert hall in Kuala Lumpur (the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas) for the organ’s inaugural concert on 29th January 1999 with Simon Preston, asked; “Why do we have a church organ in our concert hall?” The answer was that the organ is NOT a church instrument and that, if anything, the presence of an organ in a Malaysian concert hall was a symbolic returning home of an instrument whose natural habitat had been the Islamic world centuries before it found its way into the Christian church. Moreover, at the time there were more fully-functioning pipe organs in concert halls in Malaysia than there were in the country’s churches.
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Angklung |
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DFP Angklung-inspired organ |
Nevertheless,
that deep-seated belief in the organ as an archetypically Christian instrument persists. The woman who financed the KL organ did so
because she loved the visual effects of organs in the great European cathedrals
and felt that our new concert hall demanded some such similar visual device to
arrest the eye. At the design stage,
Philipp Klais, whose company built the organ, was confronted with a dilemma stemming
from this belief that the organ is a “Christian” instrument. Voices objected to the facts that the pipes “pointed
to Heaven”. His solution came from the
Angklung, hanging in one of the ante-rooms off the auditorium. An Angklung consists of several bamboo rods
on a frame – much as organ pipes of differing lengths sit side by side on a
frame – and Klais saw that if he described his design as being inspired by the
Angklung, people could hardly object. He
also added false tops to the pipes to avoid any suggestion that they pointed to
heaven.
We know
almost exactly when the organ was invented; in the year 250BC in Alexandria in
Egypt. We know exactly when the organ
first appeared in the Christian world; in the year 757 when Constantinus, the
Byzantine Emperor, presented one as a peace offering to the King of France. (“The
Emperor Constantinus sent King Pippin many gifts, amongst them an organum;
which reached him in the villa at Compiegne where he was holding a convocation
with his people”.) We know vaguely when
the first organs started to appear in churches; around 900. And we know even more vaguely, when the organ
first started to become an accepted and common feature in Christian churches:
in the early 1400s. So for 1150 years,
at least, the organ had nothing to do with the church, and for no more than 600
years it has been synonymous with music in church.
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The first organ, ca 250BC |
Early organ
history is largely speculative, but it appears to have been invented and used
as a machine to make noise, with no obvious musical connotations. It roused the rabble at gladiatorial contests
in the colosseums of ancient Rome, and it adorned the houses and palaces of
wealthy Arab rulers and merchants in much the same way as a fleet of Mercedes
or a portfolio of properties and football clubs in the UK does today. When King Pippin got his organ, one suspects
its value was more in its presence than its sound. The idea of putting an organ in a church came
centuries later.
At various
times between the 8th and the 16th centuries, the church
banned instrumental music, and it was not really until the founding of the
Lutheran Church that the organ really established itself as the pre-eminent
church instrument. Its function in the
Roman church had been essentially accompanimental, but with Luther’s belief in
the value of corporate worship and active participation through the mass
singing of chorales, the organ really came into its own. So it’s no surprise that church organists
look to the heady days of North German Lutheranism in the 17th and
18th centuries as a Golden Age; a time when the organ was, at long
last, elevated to the position of Serious Musical Instrument and earning the
closest attention from composers we today regard as “great”.
Congregational
singing in a large space is best supported by an organ. No other instrument or group of instruments
is capable of both leading and supporting massed, untrained voices so
effectively. Just ask any choir-trainer
whose choir has performed with a symphony orchestra, and they will tell you
even the massed ranks of highly-skilled professional players cannot equal the
sensitivity or directness of response of an organist. And with its powerful bass resonance
(physical presence rather than the wall of amplified sound created by
electronic basses), strong central core and illuminating upper register,
singers can both feel and hear the organ, even when they are themselves singing
at full stretch. Add to this the vast
array of colours and timbres, the dynamic range and, of course, the all-enveloping
pitch range, and you can see why the organ was so readily adopted as the
instrument of choice for Lutheran congregational singing. Placing the organ at the west end, so that it
effectively spoke behind the congregation, pushing the sound forward through
their ranks and urging them onwards through its uplifting sounds, also proved
the ideal. And since they were not going
to interfere with the visual focus at the east end of the church, organ cases
could become increasingly spectacular until you got to something like the
stunning organ case at St Bavo, Haarlem, where the organ itself is such an
object of visual beauty, that it is easy to forget that the church has a
function beyond merely showcasing its organ.
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St Bavo, Haarlem |
So while it
was not originally a Christian instrument, we can thank the Christian church
for transforming this noise-producing novelty machine into something capable of
making music, and for developing and extending its scope and range to the point
where, today, it overwhelms any other musical instrument in its range of
pitches, timbres and dynamics. There is
no doubt that the visual aspect of the organ remains, for most people, its most
important facet, and it is a sad fact that, even amongst the musical community,
many do not see the organ as a musical instrument. Nobody seems surprised or even perturbed that
in Asia’s premiere musical conservatory there is neither an organ (other than a
tiny thing designed purely to fulfil a continuo function) nor any training for
budding organists; they are not regarded as musicians on the same level as,
say, violinists, singers, conductors or (for some reason), players of the electone. Many subscribe to the notion that the organ
is something you have in church which has no connection with mainstream musical
life.
The root causes
of this refusal to acknowledge the organ’s musical legitimacy can be put, I’m
sorry to say, at the feet of organists themselves. Few players of the instrument ever seem to
take that extra step from producing noise to transforming that noise into music,
and many seem to regard the mechanical complexities of the instrument itself
and the technical minutiae of the music they play on it as the be-all and
end-all of organ playing. Because the
organ is a machine in a way no other musical instrument is, to get it to create
music, the player has to make a conscious effort to achieve musicality. While other instruments may have an inbuilt
musicality about them, governed by the length of the bow, the fragility of wind
supply or the immediate decay of a note, the organ has no such natural musical
instincts, and the organist has to think each and every aspect of their
performance out in detail in order to produce something musical. This seems a step too far for most organists
today.
Instead
they become obsessed with the instrument.
It was a standing joke in my youth that organists would flock to St
Magnus-in-the-Mud as it had a 32 foot Ophecleide, and issues of tuning temperament,
wind pressures, keyboard action and materials used in manufacture are discussed
interminably whenever two organists are gathered together. The instrument’s enormous repertory is rarely
discussed, with the result that organists seem fixated on Bach (usually the
Trio Sonatas, which are regarded more as technical than musical challenges)
with only very few venturing beyond into the realms of Buxtehude, Franck, Widor
and Vierne. Composers of monumental insignificance
outside the organ world (think Flor Peeters, Marcel Dupré, Sigfrid Karg-Elert
and Josef Rheinberger) are elevated as demi-gods by virtue of writing music
which suits particular stops on particular organs.
Too many
organists are also quite happy to relegate the playing of their instrument to a
kind of group activity, passing responsibility of some aspects to others in
performance. The sight of an organist
playing the notes while a team of acolytes stands in attendance pulling out and
pushing in stops and pressing any of the myriad buttons to be found above and
below the key and pedal boards, is common.
Surely, it is a vital part of the organist’s skill to control the
totality of the instrument – including the manipulation of those parts which
directly affect timbre and colour? Yet few
organists see any issue with this. If I
query it, I am told, “I can’t manage this piece on this organ single-handed”
(in which case, choose music which you can manage on it single-handed) or, even
worse, “Bach did it”. (Yes. Bach also fought with his choir in the
streets, and was imprisoned for offences against his employer; I’m not sure
that Bach was a man whose every action deserves emulation.) If organists do not think musically, how can
we expect the world to take us seriously?
However,
for the vast majority of organists, the organ is not a musical instrument but
an integral part of their lives as church musicians. Big cathedrals and major churches aside, the
overwhelming majority of churches with an organ use it almost exclusively for
supporting congregational singing, and not only are opportunities for playing
musical works of musical worth extremely limited, but since nobody actually expects
you to do so, critical faculties amongst listeners are suspended. You can play a dazzling Langetuit Toccata brilliantly or a dreary Reger Monologue badly, and you will know that
someone from the congregation will come up and tell you it was “nice”. In
church, it seems, it is more about doing something than doing something to the
best of one’s ability, and that attitude has led to an environment in which the
organ is becoming superfluous to requirements and irrelevant. In many parts of the world (south East Asia
amongst them) the organ as a church instrument is now virtually extinct.
Here, the
fault lies with those who hold responsibility for what goes on in church; the
clergy and the various voluntary committees who, by virtue of their willingness
to give up their time, take it upon themselves to be the arbiters of what is
acceptable and what is not. Driven by a
laudable but misguided belief in involving everybody regardless of ability, and
in shaking off the shackles of history (it surprises me that those who peddle a
faith based on events which happened over 2000 years ago, fight shy of maintaining
practices which go back barely 200), music in church is no longer an elevated
and specialist art, but a communal activity encompassing anyone with even the most
desultory ability to play a musical instrument. Miserable, uninspired twangings from guitars,
half-hearted thumps from drums and aimless dribblings from keyboard players,
all well-meaning and all utterly without musical talent, are accepted because
they show “inclusivity” (getting everyone involved) and “relevance” (bringing
music into the soft-core pop world of the 1960s rather than rejoicing in the
hard-core magnificence of the 1700s). These
people’s complete absence of musical integrity means that the great chorales
and hymns of the past, written to inspire and encourage massed participation,
have been abandoned in favour of bland, mawkish lyrics sung to wholly
unimaginative monochrome melodies. With church
music relegated to the position of simplistic background noise, how can the
organist hope to gain any measure of musical credibility?
Over the
weekend I visited Penang where, in St George’s Anglican Church, in an
astonishing reversal of current trends, a brand new two manual pipe organ by Manders
of London had been installed. A visionary
clergyman had encouraged four young people to learn to play the organ and had arranged
for them to have a dedicated and committed organist as their mentor. I had the enormous privilege of hearing each
of these young musicians play, and was greatly inspired by not only the quality
of their playing but also by their instinctive musicality. But two things disturbed me during my talks
with them after they had played to me.
Firstly, as
soon as news of the new organ had reached down to Singapore, the Singapore
Organ cadre (a close-knit body which seems hell-bent on preserving the
remoteness and inaccessibility of the organ to non-organists) journeyed up to
Penang to offer their advice and guidance.
Students remembered instruction concerning technique, registration and
pedalling exercises; none of them remembered any advice about music-making or exploring
repertory.
Secondly,
since the organ was effectively an off-the-peg, free-standing instrument, a considerable
amount of flexibility had been open to those who decided where it should be
placed in the church. So it was rather
disappointing that it had been placed in about the worst situation possible for
supporting congregational singing. While
the ideal places would have involved some structural alterations (out of the
question for both financial and aesthetic reasons) it struck me that
there was one place it would have been far better placed. When I asked why this had not been chosen, I
was told that to have placed it there
would have blocked the door to a cupboard where the guitars and drums were
kept, and the church wanted to have easy access to these,
Notwithstanding
the fact that guitars and drums are portable in a way that a pipe organ is not,
basic common sense should tell you that, with an organ, all other instruments
are superfluous (I attend a church where a very fine organ is regularly
polluted by amplified noises from an assembled band of rag-tag instruments
brought in to give the music street-cred; and I can tell you the combination of
pipe organ and amplified guitars, keyboard and drums, is stomach-churning in
its awfulness). Why on earth would a
church which has just spent a vast sum on a new and fine pipe organ be
concerned about easy access to guitars and drums?
I worry
that this encouraging trend to bring the organ back to the church will be
compromised by the determination of organists to remain on the periphery of musicality,
and by the political fence-sitting of church authorities who feel that
inclusivity and “trendiness” outweigh the lessons and examples of 600 years of history.
I found this really interesting and informative. Thank you for posting.
ReplyDeleteOne thing puzzled me: you say that pipe organs have been synonymous with church music for no more than 600 years, and no so for 1150 years before that. So why the opening sentence ?
For clearness, I am characterizing an instrument as any gadget that has an immediate relationship between's a kid's activity and pitch. For instance, hitting a drum, culling a string, striking a key, or blowing air through everything bring about a tone or pitch being delivered. link
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