… but only just. 



See Events Page for full details, including timetable, and how to book.  Admission is free.

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Blog will resume after Saturday.  In the meantime some more Australian pictures, this time of delightful Ozzie animals:


a pelican

and a kangaroo!

See you on Saturday!

On Saturday 19 May 2012 Forth in Praise will be holding a Singing Day in Linlithgow, led by the ever-popular Misia Paul.  Admission free, but please book so that we know how many copies of all the wonderful music to make!

More details on the Events page and the Newsletter page.

See you there!

Evelyn

 

 

Sorry the last few weeks have been a bit blog-less. This is why. Here’s the view from the wonderful waterfront flat we had in Melbourne.

Lots of interesting things to recount, including experiencing the Easter Vigil in St Patrick’s Cathedral. And how the Australian Church is coping with the new liturgy (pretty well, on the whole, I would say).

More later, once jet-lag has worn off …

Like everyone else, I’ve been completely taken up with the first Holy Week and Easter of the new liturgy. So I just want to say HAPPY EASTER! to all blog readers.

And good luck with the new Exsultet!

I’ll be back soon.

Forth in Praise has received several queries concerning new liturgy music for Holy Week and Easter.  Mainly people are finding it difficult to read the ICEL ‘blobs’.

Forth in Praise will upload staff notation (i.e. normal music) versions of the Exsultet, the Easter Alleluia, the Litany of the Saints and the Good Friday ‘Wood of the Cross’.

These will appear shortly on what is at present the Publications page. (This is now done)

After last week’s post, I’ve been told by my family that if I want to keep my Church of Scotland friends, I shouldn’t go round attacking their hymn book.  Also, that the pot is calling the kettle black, if my frequent mutterings about Catholic hymnals are anything to go by.

OK, family.  Point taken.  So let’s have a look at the hymnal perhaps most commonly found in Scottish Catholic churches – Hymns Old and New with Supplement, published by Mayhew.

Some time ago, at an organist society party, I played the company a few items from Hymns Old and New.  I played them exactly as they were written, and the audience were in hysterics.  Because the sad truth is that if you are using the ‘full music’ version of Hymns Old and New you have to be experienced enough to disregard very many un-organistic or inappropriate accompaniments and improvise your own.  In fact, this is why many organists find the melody-and-chords version easier to work with.  An additional aggravation is that these books are not cheap.  As one of my C of S friends said, ‘if you pay all this for an organ edition, you should at least be able to use it’.

Let’s take some examples.  ‘Walk with me’ (582) is perhaps the most popular Catholic funeral hymn.  But the bouncy, off-beat rhythm of the accompaniment is anything but funereal.  Most of us just replace it with chords with maybe a crotchet bass line descending by step.  Much more dignified.

My all-time non-favourite is ‘Holy Spirit of fire’ (217).  A wonderful title, which should herald a hymn reflecting the glory and power of Pentecost.  And what do we get in Hymns Old and New?   A trite nursery-rhyme melody in waltz time, rather aimless harmonically and with a quite pitiful accompaniment.

Another promising title with an enormous let-down is ‘Christ is our King, let the whole world rejoice’ (84).  Also in waltz time, this one has oom-pah-pahs, which give it ‘Old Bull and Bush’ overtones.  In fact, it is impossible to play it without making the organ sound like a fairground organ.  One Sunday I decided just to go along with it, in the hope that I might be asked never to play it again.  I articulated the accompaniment in the best Edwardian music-hall style, making the most of the oompah interludes between verses.  The final bar is a rather lame oom-pah-pah above a 6 4 chord, which I changed to a perfect cadence, staccato and senza rall (boom-BOOM!).  Terrific fun, but I was ready for the rebuke which must surely come.  But no, priest and people actually liked it!  Moments like these make me want to change religion.

Other Hymns Old and New delights include:

• piano-style Alberti basses (442 ‘Peace is flowing like a river’), sometimes with a dotted ‘lonesome cowboy’ rhythm (26 ‘All over the world’).
• banal children’s-tutor-style basses (30 ‘All the nations of the earth’ and 62 ‘Bind us together’, which, heaven help us, is now becoming popular with other denominations).
• an abundance of the guitar-favouring keys of three and four sharps.
• low, low melodies, even down to G below middle C.  Do they think we are a race of gorillas?
• ‘busy’ bass lines, sometimes arpeggiated (57 ‘Be still, and know I am with you’), making it extremely difficult to include the pedalboard.
• tango rhythms which you could do an Apache dance to (400 ‘O let all who thirst’, 122  ‘Do not be afraid’ – this one is also popular at funerals).

Layouts on the page can leave much to be desired. For example, the verses of ‘On eagles’ wings’ (783) have six-stave systems, the four at the top representing each verse of the hymn, and the two at the bottom the accompaniment.  It looks like an orchestral score.  Over the page, the chorus reverts to three-stave systems.  As the whole thing runs to four pages, this means endless turning back and forth, losing the place in every sense.

‘One bread, one body’ (744) has some unnecessarily long, held-on notes, which cause one system – just one! – to land on a third page.  This hymn also has a chorus, so more back and forth stuff needed.

I could go on and on – I haven’t even started on mad melody lines and text mutilation – but probably best to call a halt here.   Still, I must mention one of the biggest irritants:  the fact that the first line index is not at the very back of the book.  You really have to hunt for it.  Grrr!

One serious point.  Hymnals like this are being given to beginners and inexperienced organists, who take them at face value and try to play what’s in them.  When they fail, they blame themselves, and worse still, the congregation blames them, too.  Books like this are not helping with the problems of finding or training organists; they are actually making them worse.

So is it a question of ‘Come back, Mission Praise, all is forgiven’?   Well, no.   But I must admit to liking CH4 (Church of Scotland Hymnary Fourth Edition) very much.

We’ve just had the World Day of Prayer in our church.

When our Catholic rep on the local WDP committee gave me the Order of Service, I realised that there were two hymns, both from Mission Praise (a Church of Scotland hymn book), which our congregation just wouldn’t know. Alternatives were offered which we could have managed, but Catholic rep was over-ruled by the others, and we were stuck with what was in the booklet.

Heaving a sigh, I got out Mission Praise and looked at no. 1008, ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd’ by Stuart Townend (the alternative would have been Crimond). I’d never seen this one before, but it was in the usual singalong, slightly syncopated style that is the hallmark of Mission Praise, and I soon got the hang of it. Having made a mental note to cut out most of the passing notes for the sake of our own congregation, I then considered the tempo. At the top left of the page was written ‘Thoughtfully’. Thoughtfully! What sort of speed is that, for heaven’s sake? I swithered about demanding a metronome mark from the WDP committee, then decided just to play it as it came, and if they didn’t like it, too bad. We might even get Crimond next time.

I’ve come across this sort of ‘tempo-expression’ indication in Mission Praise before, so I spent a few minutes amusing myself by collecting a few. And I found some beauties:

• Worshipfully
• Prayerfully
• Rich and full                        (like double cream)
• Building, with strength         (makes you think of bricklayers and wheelbarrows)
• Growing in strength             (and weight-lifters)
• Easy waltz feel                    (and Strauss)

(and best of all)

• With an ‘island’ feel            (Huh?)

Of these, I think I dislike ‘Worshipfully’ and ‘Prayerfully’ most. Not only do they give no help as to tempo, but they try to dictate one’s feelings and emotions while one is singing or playing the thing. Our own Church can be guilty of this, too; I’ve been to workshops where leaders say, hand on heart, ‘This is how you should feel when singing this.’

It is so silly. Everyone knows that emotions are spontaneous, and you can’t have feelings to order. If the music is good enough to inspire uplifting spiritual emotion, then it will happen. If it isn’t, no amount of ‘prayerfully’-type instructions will help.

Anyway, I did my best with the Townend hymn, but had the definite impression that I was taking it a little too fast for those who knew it. Obviously, I wasn’t having the right kind of thoughts …

I’m busy updating the Music for the New Mass page, and while mending the broken Irish link, I discovered, to my utter and complete amazement, this:

The Irish Catholic Church’s guidelines for payment of their church musicians.

And just look at them:

• Annual salaries ranging from approx £3500 to £6750 (by my very rough calculation)
• Wedding fees (basic) £170
• Funerals £93.  If previous evening included, £135  (and they’ve informed the Irish undertakers)
• The only area that even approaches my Scottish experience is the deputy fee: £58

OK, I’m no mathematician and euro/pound rates are changing all the time.  But even the most accurate figures must show that the average parish organist in Scotland is absolutely nowhere near this league, though doing the same job.  His or her salary is only too frequently zero, rien, nada, zilch.  Or just possibly a box of chocolates at Christmas – if you’re lucky.

But there’s more.  Look at some of the Irish recommendations:

• They distinguish between amateur and professional musicians.  The latter should be paid more.
• If an organist does not wish to be paid, the church should be aware that this is exceptional, and
  “in such cases the parish should pay the appropriate level of fee into a separate fund as, when the present musician leaves, it is probable that the successor will have to be paid.”
• Where a position is shared by two people, each musician should receive 75% [not 50%, note!] of the fee.
• If a wedding couple bring their own organist, the church organist should still receive a fee.
• Expenses should be paid on top of fees.
• There can be contract arrangements.

All in all, this set of rules is very similar to that of the Church of Scotland and other Protestant denominations.  And of course salaried organists in all churches have real responsibilities written into their contracts, and they can be sacked.

Even so, the gap between nothing at all and these Irish figures is so wide that there would be plenty of room for intermediate levels.  This may even be happening in Ireland; their guidelines are only guidelines.  But out of all this comes one definite statement that has been made by the Irish Church authorities to all their parishes: church musicians should be paid.  Or as the guidelines put it, “it is essential that the value of music in the worship of the Church and the musicians’ training, skill and commitment are realistically recognised in monetary terms.”

And by the by, I nipped over to the English Bishops’ website to see what their attitude was, and – would you believe it? – they give a link to the Irish guidelines!    (Or at least, they try to – it’s broken.)

 

I’ve had complaints that the previous post will put pianists off playing the organ.  On re-reading it, I realised that I missed out the most important bit:  the effect is only temporary and will wear off!  In fact, if I hadn’t had such a long break away from the piano, the problem might not have cropped up at all.

Just as pianists starting the organ tend to hit it harder to make it louder, then realise what a waste of energy that is, and are soon languidly pulling out an extra diapason or a mixture instead, so organists returning to the piano quickly realise that touch sensitivity is very much an issue, and after the first awkwardness are able to get their fingers back into order.  In fact, the experience can make one pleasantly aware that one is in control of two quite different keyboard techniques.

So yes, it is like driving two different cars.  And the Moonlight is back to normal down at the undertaker’s.

Mind you, I still sometimes find my foot looking for the Swell pedal …

This post ought to begin with a sound file, but you’ll just have to imagine it: the first few bars of Beethoven’s piano sonata Op.27 no.2, the ‘Moonlight Sonata’. Those beautiful, slow, atmospheric arpeggios leading up to the entry of that most minimal but telling of themes, brought in on G sharp with the right-hand pinkie (for non-Scots, the pinkie is the little finger). As one plays, the exact amount of weight given to the pinkie has to be calculated to bring it singing out over the much stronger thumb and other fingers. This is what piano-playing is all about.

When I taught piano, many years ago, I used to say airily to any pianist thinking of taking up the organ, ‘Oh, it’s just like getting into a different car. You soon get used to the controls.’ Then I gave up piano teaching, and indeed playing, and for some years concentrated on the organ, delighting in the fact that weight of fingers, hand or arm was no longer an issue.

More recently, however, the local undertaker introduced one of those horrid electronic pianos into his funeral parlour. The organ sound was so limited that I decided to use the thing as a piano except for the hymns. And to start off, for old times’ sake, I brought out the Moonlight Sonata, only to discover that my right-hand pinkie refused point-blank to sing, while the other fingers were quite desperate to make as much noise as possible. My piano touch had gone. Completely.

This post ought to finish with a sound file, but you’ll just have to imagine it.

On second thoughts, don’t.