Church Music Woes
Stay on the Bench
When I was just nineteen, my sophomore year in college brought a mortifying introduction to humiliations that public performers can face.
I majored in music. My major instrument was organ, my minor, piano. They are played very differently because an organ has no natural harmonics that carry the sound from one note/chord to the next ones as a piano does. You have to sustain key-pressure from note to note for organ-sound to connect and flow. Additionally, organ music is written with three clefs, not two clefs like piano music. The second base clef is for the pedals.
Anyway, all the music majors had to perform once a semester in chapel, which was held every single day to the disgust of bored-out-of-their-mind students, who can take only so much praying and piety. The occasional shenanigans of us kids at chapel would hearten the most mischievous and were often talked about for months.
The day that I played that semester, there was no need at all for any shenanigans, since I provided all the entertainment anybody could need.
We were given the chapel performance assignment schedules way in advance, so there was plenty of preparation time.
My organ professor, Miss Magin, was one of the oddest, most eccentric, and appealing people I've ever known, a little tiny thing with blonde half-long curly hair, so absent-minded that she missed many students' lessons. I can still see her in my mind's eye walking across the square, curls bobbing as she hurried along, lost in thought, walking splay-footed, every few seconds pushing her glasses back up on her nose. She was probably not more than 6 or 7 years older than I.
She really liked me and had faith in me. When we looked at that schedule at the beginning of the year, she said, "I have just the thing for you to play, a wonderful piece by Dietrich Buxtehude, a contemporary of Bach's. He's a baroque contrapuntalist, and I know you love Bach's preludes and fugues, so you'll love this, too. It's his Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne in C."
It was the most difficult-looking piece of music I'd ever seen, the pages black with hundreds of notes, and treble, bass, or pedal clef measures where nothing occurred except above or below them. She peered at me with her near-sighted eyes and nodded vigorously. "You can do it," she said.
I practiced on that piece for three months, with her very involved and enthusiastic guidance. She didn't forget a single one of my lessons and patiently helped me with the dynamics. The Prelude had complex fingering, a dramatic opening pedal solo, and was a showy introduction to the fugue, which came next. The fugue was more difficult because of the range of all those 16th and 32nd notes over the keyboard and pedals. The ending Chaconne was not so technically-difficult but brilliant and shimmering with flowing notes and chordal majesty.
I was determined. I spent hours practicing this piece. Many hours. There's a point that you reach where you do something very well. I went beyond that point, because that's when things get exciting. You know it will sound simple to anyone who hears you play it because it seems effortless, and that's when it's brilliant.
Well, two days before I was to play this solo, I realized I didn't have anything suitable to wear for performing. So I went out and bought a dress. The skirt has to be just right, full enough so your legs and feet can move freely. It was a blue dress made out of a very smooth fabric. The skirt was fine, and I thought I looked pretty good in it, liked the way it felt on my skin.
I was not even nervous when it was time to play that piece. I was nervous about bowing properly afterwards. But I knew that piece. So with 400 kids at chapel where they didn't want to be anyway, I sat down at the organ bench and began to play.
I was good. That prelude was brilliant, I didn't miss a note, didn't forget a thing -- we had to perform from memory. Miss Magin was standing in the wings, beaming and nodding her head fiercely in approval. I could see her every time I looked up from the organ.
Then I started on the fugue. In a fugue, one hand starts, starkly plays the identifying musical theme (or line). Then the second hand plays the same theme in another octave while the first hand embellishes, echoes, and supports the second hand as it plays the theme. At last the pedals play the theme, while both hands embellish, echo, and support the pedals' presentation of the theme. It is complex, almost mathematical in structure, richly layered, and very thrilling if you like contrapuntal music.
Then I was ruined by the slippery fabric of my skirt. I was playing vigorously with all limbs when I slid off the bench onto the pedals.
Now the volume was set high for the part of the fugue I'd begun playing. For an eternity, it was a discordant sound from hell. Everybody who had been half-sleeping awakened with a terrified jolt. I experienced what it must be like to fall into a locomotive stack. I had trouble getting up and off the pedals. They whooped, bellowed, blared, brayed, and resounded with every move I made. Miss Magin and came running out on stage to help, nearly in tears. She trembled as she tugged at my arm.
With her help, I finally managed to get off the pedals onto the floor, whereupon I stood up. The sudden silence was a shock after such a demonic sound. You could have heard a pin drop. I don't think any of those kids were breathing, but all were watching me, slack-jawed, tense, and fascinated. Mortified, I looked at Miss Magin, whose wisdom shone in that moment like the brightest star. "Play it again," she hissed. "But stay on the bench."
Every keyboard music major was told if you make a mistake while performing publicly, don't stop, just keep going, get back on track, don't break the music. Two years later I heard an organ recital where the performer forgot the music in the middle of a contrapuntal piece, and the audience was treated to a baroque version of "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" and "Mary Had A Little Lamb" before the performer could recall what she'd been playing and smoothly slide into it again.
But I'd fallen off the bench. Gulping, I nodded to Miss Magin and turned to the sea of faces. "I'm gonna' play it again." I said faintly. Nobody moved.
Well, I did. I played the prelude and fugue perfectly and stayed on the bench. The Chaconne was a glorious ending. As I made my very nervous farewell bow, I received a standing ovation. It was comprised of laughter, whistles, clapping, yelling, foot-stomping, and calls of "More, more, more!" I have never received such approval since.
The first musical page of the Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne in C
The music itself (MP3 file)
I Can Play It without the Music
The summer between my junior and senior college years, I was playing the organ for a Sunday morning church service in Oklahoma, which I sometimes did if the church keyboardist was on vacation.
We had rehearsed enough that I knew the music pretty well. But when it came time for the choir to sing their special anthem, I could not find the music. I looked frantically in the few seconds that I had, then made myself calm down. Since I knew it well, I'd just play it without the music. (I was pretty good at being able to play music in any key once I'd learned it in the original key.)
The choirmaster gave the signal for the introduction, my hands fell on the key of F, and I began. The choir joined in. I noticed one of the sopranos frowning but I had no idea why (I learned later that she had perfect pitch), and the choirmaster turned and looked at me with eyebrows up but kept going.
The problem was that the piece was written and rehearsed in C and I had led them a bit upstream with the key of F. But they all managed fine, until the last page. Those sopranos took the leap into the finale and ended up screaming, standing on their toes with a knee hiked up, trying to reach the notes that in the original were a sliding D# into a gradually-softening E but in my version were the G#-A above that.
Most of them did not make it, probably went into anticipatory shock. One of them had the wits to drop an octave, and she sang out in an unanticipated brave solo, filling in for the entire soprano section.
It was supposed to be a moment of great musical importance, with a breathless reverent pause afterward. I'm afraid the congregation was not reverent, most of them laughed. Had it not been a formal public presentation, we could have stopped earlier and started from the right place, but there we were. The choirmaster was shaking with laughter and wiping his eyes as he brought that anthem to a pathetic ending, gasping and bothered sopranos in tow. It was really more suitable for Saturday Night Live than a Sunday morning church service. He told me later he realized what I had done but not why. I was very grateful for his kindness. We finally found the music on a pew several rows back. I don't know how it got there. This was one of my more embarrassing musical moments, but I've had worse.