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| All musical instruments in one? |
Around 30 years ago I was on an examining tour of
South Africa which involved a day examining in a violin teacher’s private
studio. The door list showed a plethora
of early grade violins and, strangely, just one candidate listed as doing grade
5 piano, harpsichord and organ. I
assumed that the teacher had merely “invented” the three grade fives in order
to meet the requisite number of hours needed to qualify for a personal visit
from an examiner. On arrival I did question
the teacher about this and, much to my surprise learnt that they were indeed
legitimate examination entries. It
appeared that her students’ accompanist was about to go off to university and
wanted to equip himself with three more music certificates before abandoning
music in favour of chemistry, law, horticulture, or whatever it was he was
going to study at university. I asked
where the harpsichord and organ exams were going to be held and was told, “here”. “Here” was a half-converted garage beside the
teacher’s house equipped with a music stand and an electronic keyboard, which
was to be used for all three non-violin exams.
Around 30 years ago, such instruments were quite
unusual and examination regulations had yet to catch up with technology to the
extent that they made few provisions for non-acoustic instruments. I was able to say that the organ exam was not
possible; the syllabus did specify an instrument with at least “two manuals and
pedals”, and here we had a single keyboard. Despite protestations that the instrument
had been “approved” by the exam board (it had not, although the local rep,
unsure of the regulations, had said it “should be all right”) and that the
requirements could be met using the single keyboard and its accoutrements, I
was sure of my ground and refused to allow the exam to proceed. I was on no such terra firma when it came to the harpsichord exam as no provision at
all was made in the examination regulations concerning the nature of the
instrument. The candidate duly finished
his piano exam, and switched the keyboard from “grand piano” mode to “harpsichord”
for the next exam.
Around 30 years on, this horrific memory has re-surfaced because of two comments made this week by two colleagues.
Last weekend one of them posted a provocative piece on
Facebook suggesting that there should be a competition in which contestants
play the piano, harpsichord and organ. That
was like a red rag to a bull to me, and out I came, nostrils flaring and feet
pawing at the ground, vehemently opposing the whole vile notion. Organists continually suffer the gross
ignorance of those who have a look at what they imagine to be their instrument,
think it resembles a piano, and assume anyone who can play the piano can easily
switch to the organ. Piano teaching
colleagues are similarly appalled when their students are press-ganged into
playing the organ (or harpsichord) by those whose monumental stupidity cannot
recognise that they are wholly different musical instruments. The organ is demeaned by those who believe playing
it merely involves pressing down the right keys at the right time.
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| It looks a bit like a piano? Surely any pianist can play it? |
Playing the notes is the least of the organist’s
concerns. An organist’s skill involves
understanding registration, understanding the properties of the movement of
wind through channels and pipes, manipulating the stop knobs, foot and toe pistons
and crescendo pedals which direct the flow of air to specific ranks of pipes,
and operating the swell pedals which regulate the volume of sound coming from
certain ranks of pipes in certain physical locations within the organ case,
which is as often as not, some distance away from the console – that box of
keyboards, pedals and buttons which the unthinking ignoramuses assume is the instrument
itself rather than simply its command centre.
And all that before you get to the issue of musical interpretation and
accurate playing of the score. In fact,
playing the notes on the keyboard as one might play them on the piano is one of
the very least of the organist’s essential skills.
And, as if that was not enough to convince even the
most stupid that the organ and piano are as different as chalk and cheese, an
organist, unlike both the pianist and harpsichordist, is primarily concerned
with the release of notes rather than the attack of them. Articulation is the principal topic in any
organ lesson, followed by registration, registration control and hand/feet coordination. Do any of these feature regularly in piano
lessons?
A second colleague asked me this week in all innocence
if I was “going to the organ recital tonight?” He was referring to an intriguing
computerised presentation of light and sound in the conservatory staged by a
couple of our more illustrious alumni. I
would have loved to have gone, but I had another concert elsewhere last night, and
tonight (when the event is being repeated) I shall be flying off to a meeting
in Kuching. But I would not go expecting
to experience an “organ recital”; for there was no organ present. True, one of our alumni was playing some
organ works of Bach on a computerised device which has been programmed to make
a sound like a church organ; but it is not an organ and does not even begin to
behave like one.
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| Where the sound emerges shows the REAL difference these two instruments |
Great organ music (and I put much of Bach in this
category) is not merely about nice sounds, it’s about something rather more
fundamental. Pipe organs do not create sound
so much as they create sensation. Air is
at the very core of their being – the movement of air through channels and
pipes may produce a sound, but it also generates a series of vibrations and a
total reorganisation of the environment in which the air is moving so that
those within its physical range do not so much hear the sound as experience the
sensation. The speakers which serve as
the conduits of sound manufactured electronically may move air, but that is a
by-product not a fundamental generator of the sound; and while that difference
may not be discernible to many untrained ears, it governs the whole complex
process of playing the instrument.
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| Alexei Sourin and his Theremin |
Electronic sound-producing/musical-instrument
imitating technology has developed in leaps and bounds over the past decades, and
now we can imitate pretty convincingly the sounds of almost anything we care to
mention. On Tuesday, I attended a
fascinating demonstration of the Theremin in which the presenter, the
marvellous communicator Dr Alexei Sourin, was able to get this weirdest of all
electronic sound-creating devices to sound remarkably like a soprano singer. I myself have played synthesisers which give a
pretty fair impression of the sound of string instruments.
Now, around 30 years later, I am inclined to go back
to South Africa, along with my two contentious colleagues, and meet again the violin teacher in her half-converted garage. I’ll give a violin recital. I can’t play the violin (I passed grade 3 and
then gave up) but I can use a digital keyboard to make a sound like one. Surely, if we accept that a computer can give
an “organ recital” we must accept that one can also give a “violin recital”.
I hope no violin teacher would accept my playing the
Paganini Caprices on a keyboard set to “violin mode” as a legitimate violin
performance. So please, do not belittle
us organists by claiming that making a computer sound like an organ is the same
as playing an organ. We must all preserve
the integrity of our real musical instruments so that we do not lose sight of
the fact that their prime purpose is to make music, not to generate sound.
