This weekend, thanks to Maestro York scheduling my organ lesson for Sunday (because of Saturday rehearsals), and a small "industrial accident" (I sliced my finger on Saturday, setting up to videotape an ice show that evening), I almost had a very "interesting" lesson. Fortunately, the cut was far enough away from the point of contact with the keys that neither it, nor the Band-Aid, affected my dexterity.
Even after giving the Rector his Christmas card, I had well over half an hour of practice time before Maestro York was ready for me. One woman working on preparations for Christmas services thought I played beautifully. Either (A) she's very generous with her compliments, or (B) she's listened to so many "bored housewives" that her expectations have been permanently lowered. ;-)
On to the lesson. We stuck with Peeters, because I was making rather remarkable progress with both the pieces I'm working on.
"Now, my Tongue . . ." is getting cleaner and smoother. Maestro York had me split the two parts between two severely out-of-balance manuals (i.e., first with the right hand "mf" and the left hand "ppp"; then vice versa, allowing me to isolate each part.) Not easy! And it's also an object lesson in the difference between homophonic and polyphonic playing.
The right-hand-and-pedal exercise is now almost flawless, except that I need to work on the breaks between phrases (also a problem with "Now, my Tongue . . .") Funny, all through Piano 1, my playing suffered from inadequate legato.
While we didn't do anything from the piano text in the lesson, we did take a first look at another one-hand-and-pedal exercise, one that's a bit more involved (it has two foot-crossings!) We noticed that it quotes the first few measures of the Dies Irae; could this be an indication of the composer's mood, or an anticipation of the student's reaction?
On the MIDI box, two notes: First, I recently tried it with headphones (to avoid waking the household). Wow! The releases are still far too dry, but what spatial imaging! The other bit of news involves doing something about the dry releases. A local music dealer suggested an Alesis NanoVerb reverb box. I listened to a demo unit, and it doesn't sound half-bad, and the price is quite reasonable.
After a two-weekend hiatus over Christmas, I had my seventeenth organ lesson this morning. I'd hoped, because of the long hiatus, to get there in time to get half an hour or more of practice time before the lesson; instead, I got only about 10 minutes worth (it seems I was up rather late, last night, and had a bit of trouble getting up this morning).
Again, we stuck with Flor Peeters for the entire lesson, spending half an hour on "Now, my Tongue . . .", and the other half-hour on the right-hand-and-pedal exercise I've been working on, and various pedal exercises (including one that took a great deal of concentration, and involved reaches I hadn't made before).
I'm very close to having "Now, my Tongue . . ." right, and the right-hand-and-pedal exercise is flawless about half the time.
This lesson featured a parade of distractions. First, a work crew removing the Advent Wreath (at St. Luke's, it's suspended on a long rope, from an overhead hook). Later, one of Maestro York's young piano students came through with his mom, and they came over to see what was going on. I asked Maestro York if he'd given the kid a crack at the organ. He hadn't, but thought it would be a fun idea. The kid asked why it had three keyboards; Maestro York explained that, counting the pedalboard, it had four, and went on to VERY BRIEFLY explain how it allowed one to have several different sounds available. As they were leaving, I quickly drew the full prestant chorus on Great, and the string and string celeste on Swell (I already had the 8' prestant drawn on Choir, for my lesson), and demonstrated manual contrast with the old 5-finger exercise on Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."
Well, I paid the price of not finding adequate amounts of practice time, over the past two weeks, and found that not only was most of this week's organ lesson an exercise in correcting areas where I'd almost started to backslide; so was my figure skating lesson. I did get "Now, my Tongue . . ." (Peeters, Little Organ Book, Page 8, Exercise 1) to where I think I'm a little closer to a clean performance than two weeks ago, but I still have a ways to go with it.
Maestro York had me begin working on a 16-bar exercise on "God My Father, Loving Me" (Peeters, Page 9, Exercise 2), starting with the left hand alone (which has the Cantus Firmus), then with as an instructor-student duet (he took the rather more complicated right hand part). This could take some months.
We moved on to the 8-bar right-hand-and-pedal exercise (Peeters, Page 50, Exercise 1), where again, my extremely busy two weeks came back to haunt me: it took twice as long as usual to get one flawless performance out of me. We then moved on to some pedal exercises (Peeters, Page 19, Exercises 4 and 5), which had me trying progressively longer reaches on the pedalboard (two octaves, from low C up, for exercise 5). Actually, for one who currently has distressingly little opportunity for pedal practice, I'm not doing half bad.
Finally, we worked on an 8-bar one-hand-and-pedal exercise (in which the first five notes of the pedal part quote the Dies Irae, and MM 5-6 involve foot-crossings. This may take some time.
Also, I showed Maestro York the textbook for Piano 2, which I started this past Wednesday (PianoLab, 3rd Ed., by Carolyn Lindeman). Maestro York and I will be trying to coordinate my organ lessons with my piano class, in order to maximize the benificial effects of cross-training and cross-fertilization, and minimize any destructive interference. The first test will involve playing two-octave scales in a couple of the easier keys, playing Norwegian Wood, by Lennon and McCartney, from a treble staff and chord symbols, and harmonizing the 8-bar folk melody of our choice, from scratch. Hmm. Interesting. Well, I never expected this to be easy.
Last weekend, I had to cancel my lesson, because my employer is moving from Lake Forest, CA to Costa Mesa, CA, and last weekend was the critical weekend. My skills at carpentry were needed more than my skills at programming (or what little bit of skill I've picked up in music).
This weekend, it came down very nearly to the last minute, as I hadn't heard from Maestro York since the cancellation. I finally called him Friday evening, and scheduled the lesson for this afternoon, after I finished a four-hour shift at what had to be the shortest two-day skating competition in history (30 minutes the first day, 90 the second). A competition in which the setup and teardown time was double the competition time. Each.
We started out with a few of the scales I'm learning for second-semester piano (my first test is this coming Wednesday evening: one scale in each hand, two octaves each, up and down, most likely in different keys, the professor's choice of C, G, D, A or E, most likely he won't ask anybody for C unless they're really hurting), in the process, demonstrating not only my ability to get through the scales, but to recover from fingering errors. By the way, my piano text this semester is Carolynn A. Lindeman's PianoLab.
We then went on to Now, my Tongue . . . . I had lost some ground, with the constant demands on my time (sticky spots becoming unstuck again), but not much, and I think it's going Ok. We went on to spend most of the rest of the hour on a sixteen-bar two-part setting of God, my Father, Loving Me, (Flor Peeters' setting, on page 9, with the Cantus Firmus in the left hand); I can sort of get through the left hand without too much difficulty; the right hand is somewhat more challenging, and I can only get through the first four measures with both hands. With second semester piano, I expect that my progress will be somewhat slower than before, but I'll be laying a firmer foundation, and things will speed up eventually.
Maestro York also gave me a couple of easy hymn arrangements, for "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" (on Beethoven's Ode to Joy, of course) and "Amazing Grace," to start looking at, but I didn't have a chance to do anything with them until after Maestro York had to leave. (I continued to practice for about 40 minutes after).
I'll be giving Maestro York a copy of the course outline from Piano 2, so that we can try and coordinate my organ lessons to what's going on in my piano class. (The first thing we did, the first evening of the class, was to kiss fixed hand positions goodbye, something I'd already done when I started on Now, my Tongue . . . .) I've also asked him to see about perhaps finding an easy arrangement of "All Things Bright and Beautiful" (which is my favorite hymn, one I learned in kindergarten Sunday school, although I didn't realize it was my favorite until recently). I was delighted to also discover (just a few minutes ago) that Lindeman's PianoLab includes another hymn that has kind of grown on me (through being a "fixture" in 90% of the services at University United Methodist Church), "Morning has Broken."
My next lesson will most likely be next weekend, followed by an "off" weekend (for the Disney Ice competition).
With the move of my company from Lake Forest to Costa Mesa (and my being pressed into service doing everything from pulling half a mile of network cabling to light carpentry), and the beginning of Piano 2, and helping to videotape three skating competitions on consecutive weekends, and having to have major surgery done on my car, in order to get it to pass emission standards (it seemed that it was misfiring, and spewing out obscene amounts of hydrocarbons), I've been a bit busy. Here, without further delay, is the report of my twentieth lesson, and the beginning of my second semester of piano.
Wednesday evening, February 11, I had my first test in Piano 2. On the test, Norwegian Wood, by the Beatles, harmonized from chord symbols, the folk melody of my choice (from page 36 of Carolynn A. Lindeman's PianoLab [Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1996]), harmonized from scratch, and a two octave scale in each hand, each hand in a different key, Dr. Gould's choice of keys (I got G in the right hand, and D in the left).
The test was a rude awakening. I was completely under-prepared, far more so than I realized, going into the test. I ended up with 69 points out of a possible 100. Understandable, considering the demands on my time; well deserved, considering my under-preparation, but still galling.
I'd already decided (and Maestro York agreed) that my organ lessons should, as far as possible, coordinate with and reinforce what's going on in my piano class. On the 8th, after attending the late service at St. Luke's, I had given Maestro York a copy of my course outline, and for my lesson on the 14th, we began doing so.
This was probably the first lesson in quite a while in which we've given Now, my Tongue . . . a rest, and concentrated entirely on other things. We worked a bit with the items on the second piano test, particularly on my arrangement of the Beethoven Ode to Joy (for the test, we're required to transpose it from the original D into the key of our own choice [but not into C, as that would be too easy], and add chords [specified by Dr. Gould in Roman Numeral form, but our own choice of root or inverted]). We fiddled around with it a bit, finding that the clarinet stop works well for the melody, and that the last melody note of measure 12, which vanishes into the V-7 chord, if played on the piano with the chords played in closest possible position, has to be picked up in the melody voice on the organ (I was mildly surprised to find out later that, to a lesser extent, the same is true on the piano, if chords are played in root position). Rather remarkably, when we added a pedal part (nothing fancy, just chord roots), it actually got easier.
We also worked a bit on other piano class stuff, and also found time for a bit more work on God, My Father Loving Me (Peeters, Page 9).
Because of a three-day, 35-hour skating competition on the 20th, 21st and 22nd, there was no lesson this past weekend (but for several hours on Saturday, the thought running through my benumbed mind was "I gave up my organ lesson for THIS?!?"
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