A collegue of mine recently sent me an e-mail inquiring about my organ experience. I thought I would share a few excerpts with the general public since it seemed to be of interest to at least one person.
Right now, I’m working mostly as a singer at St. Matthew's, but I do substitute for our accompanist from time to time and for other churches. I’m entitled to a solo spot each week, which can be ANYTHING vocal or instrumental. I took a crash course organ workshop way back in the mid 1990's at a Lutheran Worship and Music Conference given by a Prof. from the SF Conservatory and picked up things here and there from other musicians I've known or worked with along the way mostly through listening.
I'm primarily a manuals player and mostly self-taught in regard to organ. Apparently, I practiced enough that it carried over into my piano playing because my legato technique was such that when I first started playing Bach for Dr. Neve at SFState she asked if I played organ. I think and hope that I play with my ears more than my limbs. I have found that what a pianist lacks in pedal technique they can sometimes make up for in keyboard skills and musicianship. Most of my experience on organ comes from an electric organ in Watsonville’s Lutheran Community Church sanctuary about one-hundred miles south of SF. It did have a pedal board and I used it to study pedal exercises on but I’m definitely not a pedal virtuoso (in fact I’ve always felt somewhat clumsy so I don’t use it a lot) There have been times when I’ve been called on to play organ after going for long periods without playing it. I was so grateful for the opportunity because I knew it would be a good excuse to practice in the loft. On those occasions I would just let go of my piano practice and put all of my practice hours during the week on organ and rehearse much more than I needed for just that Sunday. I didn’t know when I would have the opportunity to get on an organ again.
....Some really good organists play way too loud for singers. I think some of the loud playing is a result of having the organ console in the loft rather than the front of the church, which makes it hard for the organist to hear how people are singing. As an accompanist and as a cantor I’ve often insisted on having a weekly rehearsal with who ever I’m working with so that we can check the balance and tempos on the hymns to make sure people will have enough breath support to make it through the phrases. I tell my accompanist to have any improvisations worked out before the rehearsal so that I’m not in for a shock during the service! If I’m accompanying that is my opportunity to experiment. We do everything the way we will do it during the service. If it is a piano accompaniment we play it on piano, if it is an organ accompaniment, we rehearse with organ, etc.
I’ve seen advertisements for organ music written for manuals only.... It's helpful to have a few works under one's fingers in case I want to pursuade a congregations to keep me around, but I’ve always been called to positions as a pianist first. There is an English Suite by David Dahl that I’ve wanted to finish learning as well as Flor Peeters’ Little Organ Book for Beginners in Organ Playing (it seems to be written for people with keyboard backgrounds). It includes graded exercises on well-known hymn tunes as well as pedal exercises.
