Hymn Playing (eBook)

A Modern Colloquium

Stuart Forster (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
352 Seiten
Morningstar Music Publishers (Verlag)
978-0-944529-84-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Playing hymns on the organ is a centuries-old tradition that has been passed down largely through osmosis and guesswork. To address a growing need for more explicit instruction, Forster surveys available resources about hymn playing, and then launches a discussion expounding twenty vital aspects encompassing the art of accompanying hymns. To equip the organist with a palette of tools for every occasion, he has amassed the expertise of eleven leaders in the world of hymn playing. The panel considers everything from learning and teaching hymns through the instruments and people involved in growing a community of engaged singers within a congregation. The character and artistry of the participants is revealed through frank anecdotes from their collective 300+ years of experience. Here, we learn from David Cherwien, Mark Dwyer, David Erwin, John Ferguson, Peter Jewkes, Stephen Loher, Walden Moore, Bruce Neswick, John Scott, Jeffrey Smith, and Tom Whittemore.

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CHAPTER 2

Obtaining New Information

The goal of this book is to expand the documented information in chapter one to include the practical techniques related to hymn leadership and accompaniment as described by advanced, experienced players. Organ primers have two limitations regarding hymn-playing instruction: the brevity of the hymn-related section will necessarily allow room for only one point of view, and the writing style of a primer needs to be technical and concise. Both of these issues will be addressed.

Hymn playing is an art form. It requires a palette of hundreds of techniques, to which the organist will have constant subconscious access. Hymn playing, when executed well, is a personal response to other art forms—poetry and music—as well as the spontaneous singing of a body of largely untrained participants. A mere handful of technical basics cannot suffice.

This book documents the responses of leading, experienced organists; many techniques are recorded for posterity, for study by organists at all levels. Moreover, the experts who have been interviewed have been encouraged to speak anecdotally, using “pet names” and personal experience as they describe their techniques, in the hope that the reader will ingest these techniques at a more personal level, thus enabling practitioners to adopt these techniques as their own. The inclusion of multiple viewpoints offers an artist the opportunity to judge which techniques are the most applicable to any situation at hand.

The author of this book has been playing hymns for more than twenty-five years. It is a passion. It is also a source of anxiety upon hearing congregations who are prevented from approaching their potential as a singing community when hindered by an organist’s lack of skill or imagination. To maximize the learning potential of the writer and the reader, each expert interviewed for this book has more experience than the writer. Representing denominations well-known for congregational singing, these experts come from a variety of backgrounds so that many conditions of buildings, instruments, liturgies, and congregations may be included. Each expert has a history of leading congregations who sing together musically, intelligently, emotionally, spiritually, and with zeal to sing more.

One criterion for the final list of interviewees was that each expert had to contribute a unique perspective to the contents of the book. The first few selected were simply to represent successful musical leadership in a variety of sizes of church in a multitude of denominations. For example, many of the interviewees worked in small parishes at some point in their vocation, some have worked in cathedrals and collegiate settings, and all have been successful in multiple environments, sometimes in more than one country. Their collective careers cover most regions of the United States, as well as parts of England, Australia, Germany, and Switzerland. Additionally, several “generations” from a similar background have been included. For example, one expert was at one time assistant organist to someone else who was interviewed, who was, in turn, assistant to another interviewee. Some interviewees share a common parish in their past. Here, the reader may observe similarities as well as techniques that have been developed, or that have been dismissed, between generations. Following this same notion of techniques developing over time, some of the experts have written or contributed to major sources cited in this book. In these instances, this book captures their responses years or decades after their previous publication. The final list, then, does not represent an even distribution of musicians from around the country, and it is certainly not intended to be a “who’s who” list of the most famous organists around. Rather, it is a carefully devised set of studies with many fascinating implications.

After discussions with numerous respected advisors and a need to balance various criteria, the writer reduced the initial long list of potential interviewees to ten practicing church musicians in the United States. This list includes a mentor from Australia who was instrumental in nurturing the author’s passion for hymnody and the development of this entire project. Each interviewee responded enthusiastically to the request for information. Listed in alphabetical order, they are:

1.David Cherwien, Director of the National Lutheran Choir and Cantor at Mount Olive Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota

2.Mark Dwyer, Organist and Choirmaster, Church of the Advent, Boston, Massachusetts

3.David Erwin, Director of Music Ministry, Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church, St. Louis, Missouri

4.John Ferguson, Professor of Organ and Church Music, Minister of Music to the Student Congregation, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, now retired

5.Peter Jewkes, Organist, Christ Church St. Laurence, Sydney, Australia

6.Stephen Loher, occasional organist, First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Massachusetts (The Mother Church)

7.Walden Moore, Director of Music, Trinity Church on the Green, New Haven, Connecticut

8.Bruce Neswick, Director of Cathedral Music and Organist, Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, New York

9.John Scott, Organist and Director of Music, Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York

10.Jeffrey Smith, Visiting Associate Professor of Church Music and Organ, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Indiana

11.Tom Whittemore, Music Director, Trinity Church, Princeton, New Jersey

Each expert was invited to introduce himself in the form of an informal biography, encompassing educational and career milestones to date. These biographies conclude this chapter so that the reader may appreciate the breadth of education, training, experience, creativity, and dedication represented in the responses found in the following chapters. Using the experts’ own words, here and in the interviews, invites the reader to begin to understand the character of each expert, encouraging a richer awareness of the personality and artistry described in the interviews that follow. This book is not intended to be an instructional volume, but instead is a series of conversations designed to open the mind of the reader to many scenarios, some of which should be directly relevant to most organists. Others may inspire the imagination to new techniques and creativity.

In order to create a record that thoroughly documents issues related to hymn-playing technique, the author devised and refined a questionnaire to cover a progression of topics in detail, yet with enough focus to keep the information relevant and engaging. The questions covered technical, musical, logistical, communal, and political aspects of hymn accompaniment; all elements essential for a successful result. Questions were also designed to stimulate the interviewees to consider a broad-ranging cross-section of opinions. There is some overlap between answers to different questions since good hymn accompaniment requires seamless integration of all these aspects.

Those interviewed were encouraged to be opinionated, since those chosen have learned and experienced such abundance in hymn accompaniment as to warrant documentation of their thoughts on the topic. They were also invited to depict key figures and anecdotes in their experience so that others may benefit from their frank discussion of each topic. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Information was organized and edited for flow and focus in each question within the context of the larger manuscript. Many hymns cited in the interviews are from the standard repertoire and are found in most major hymnals. Less familiar tunes, however, have been notated along with other excerpts essential to clarify a point. To be sure the examples are clear, an appendix lists all references to hymn texts and tunes along with details of authors, composers, and usage in the context of the person identifying the example. Footnotes in the edited transcripts identify books, places, people, and other sources.

Conversations and interviews were expected to take tangents as each musician talked about their own techniques. In order to maximize the accumulation of information that is most important to these experts, the tangents were accommodated, and then the questions resumed with the agreement that any information obtained could be redirected to the most appropriate question. This method resulted in the recording of philosophical gems that will be instructive to anyone interested in hymns. The dominant goal was to record the most comprehensive range of viewpoints possible while collecting anecdotal evidence of techniques that are successful along with techniques that are unsuccessful. Lengthier topics were divided into smaller elements, with each element forming a chapter of the book.

The author acknowledges the subjective quality of the responses. The expert nature of the sources of the responses is the guarantee of their value. Also important to note is the subjective nature of the interviewing technique and the choice of interviewees. The author’s own preferences are implicitly riddled throughout the process. A distinct effort was made not to interact in the interviews in a way that would bias the interviewees’ response any more than required to clarify points being addressed. The design process...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 19.6.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik
• ISBN-10: 0-944529-84-4 / 0944529844
• ISBN-13: 978-0-944529-84-3 / 9780944529843