Subject: Adventures in Creative Futility: Organ Lesson No. 24
Date: Sun, 05 Apr 1998 18:18:26 -0700
To: {The Adventures in Creative Futility Network}
Ladies and Gentlemen, Maestras and Maestros:

    After a two-week hiatus, five days of which were spent without
access to anything with a keyboard (well, anything without a keyboard
with sharps and naturals arranged in octaves), I finally had my 24th
organ lesson today.
    While I was out of town (my employer, as I'd posted to PIPORG-L, had
taken me to San Francisco, for the JavaOne developers' conference), all
of the coffee-puns and coffee-metaphors gave me an uncontrollable
craving for a CD of the Bach Coffee Cantata (BWV 211), which I satisfied
at Tower Classics, after a rather nice pasta dinner in North Beach.
    The real reason for the hiatus was, however, economic: at the time,
I was under the impression that my income tax burden would be enough to
beggar me for over a month. Happily, this was not the case, but since I
was off to San Francisco, it wasn't practical for me to get in touch
with Maestro York, to arrange a lesson time; also, immediately after the
trip, my "chops" would hardly be up to a lesson.
    Before we actually began the lesson, we went over my next piano
test, to see what could benifit from "cross-training." First, I'm
expected to play eight bars of blues. If I repeat the two-bar right hand
pattern four times, over a blocked-chord I-I-IV-I-V-IV-I-I pattern, I
get the points, but Dr. Gould would like everybody to be at least a
little more creative than that. Then, B and F Major scales, a
harmonization exercise on our choice of "On Top of Old Smoky," Brahms'
Lullaby, or "Kum Ba Yah", our choice of either a march by Daniel Gottlob
Turk, or the Study for Two, by Cornelius Gurlitt (to develop
hand-independence), and our choice of Joy to the World or The First
Noel.
    Finally we began the lesson. We started with "Now, my Tongue . . ."
(Peeters, 8), and found that the hiatus had strongly highlighted the
trouble spots, but I hadn't really lost any ground, and it helped a bit
that I'd found some practice time last night and this morning. We spent
the rest of the lesson working on "God, my Father, Loving Me" (Peeters,
9); it's in need of a lot more work before it's even marginally
presentable, despite the fact that it's only 16 measures long. We worked
on it for quite some time, one hand at a time, both with and without
metronome. When I finally put it together at the end of the lesson, the
rhythm was rather spastic, but the notes were mostly right.
    Wonder of wonders, the organ was actually available for practice
after my lesson; after Maestro York left, I tried the Turk, from the
piano test (Lindeman, PianoLab, page 123), with indifferent results, and
Joy to the World, with somewhat more pleasing results then played my
Beethoven Ode to Joy arrangement from the second test, and then worked
on the right-hand-and-pedal exercise (Peeters, 50, Ex. 1) a few times
before leaving.
    I've also been given notice that my first student recital is coming
up, probably in June. I don't know how much time I'll be alotted, but
I'd like to do "Now, my Tongue. . . ," a simple arrangement of "All
Things Bright and Beautiful," and at least one entirely secular piece.
--
James H. H. Lampert
http://www.hb.quik.com/jamesl