Overture
Now that the fall season is underway, I’ve been taking advantage of the rich diversity of performing arts options that take place at the Big J and in the City. Last week I attended an organ recital, featuring six rarely heard Bach Trio Sonatas.
Organ, Auntie Nettie? Really? Yes. Organ … More precisely, the Pipe Organ.
Exposition
You see, once upon a time, not only did I used to be a pianist, I was also an organist. Well, almost; I played the manuals—the two to three keyboards that came standard on our (LDS/Mormon) Church electronic instruments. I used the various deep, rich, pre-sets to make it sound like I was using the foot pedals, though occasionally I did manage to use a few of them as a special effect.
As the ward organist for my congregation, I got to sit up, or rather hide, behind the instrument during Sunday services. I would play the preludes, the two to four hymns (we’re a singing people) in the main meeting, and then do a short postlude to usher the congregation out and on to their next meetings. My technique was amateurish at best, especially since piano technique and organ technique are very different. On top of that, my classical training had been a bit “corrupted” once I started playing for the musicals in high school. I would get some interesting looks from my parents as our hymn tempos got a bit faster than normal, or a rockin’ syncopated backbeat would sneak in—not to mention the raised eyebrows I would get when I would improv riffs on the traditional Christmas carols. (Hey, I think Handel would have enjoyed a bit of swing in his songs.)
Typical Mormon congregational chapels are fairly small and their electronic instruments modest, compared to Catholic/Episcopalian cathedrals hosting larger pipe organs. The only two instruments that we have to compare would be the two housed at the conference centers in Salt Lake City, with the most famous “Mormon” pipe organ the one that usually accompanies the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
There’s no really comparison in the sounds. When you hear a pipe organ in full voice, it can’t compare to all the electronic organs most people have at home or at church. It really needs the proper setting to appreciate it. One of my biggest thrills as a musician was when I got to play on a pipe organ at a cathedral in Middletown, CT with my high school madrigal choir. The cathedral’s organist was kind enough to acquiesce to our requests to use the instrument at least once in rehearsals. Upon determining that I knew enough about what I was doing, he actually agreed to let us use it during the competition/concert. He sat alongside me, working the presets/stops, so I could play the registers and work the pedals. Learning how to pick up conductor’s cues while seated far from the choir, and to learn how to gauge reverb, echo distortions, and balance with the size of the vestry was invaluable to me as a musician.
I always meant to try and take lessons on how to play correctly. My undergraduate college offered lessons and had a large instrument and chapel where I could have practiced. My four-year prospectus/business plan outlined how and where I could later use these skills. However, as the years went on, fitting in the requirements for my major and double minor, plus other life demands conflicted with classes. I eventually even stopped taking piano lessons since there just wasn’t enough time to do everything.
Development
To this day, I’ve always been intrigued by what a trained and talented organist can do. As I sat at this concert, surrounded by a standing-room-only crowd of other organ aficionados, I watched in awe as the musician made it look so effortless. Prodigy and genius are two overused terms, but in this case they were both appropriate. Not only was it a feat of technical mastery (you do see why there are few overweight organists), it was a feat of memorization. Bach counterpoint is notoriously tricky, and the Trio Sonatas created a musical “dance” between both hands maintaining separate lines on separate keyboards, with both feet flying as a continuo on the pedals. At times the interweaving of the melody lines almost seemed “modern” to me, like the techno or electronica that I enjoy.
At the organist’s suggestion, I closed my eyes, so as to not be distracted by the blur of his hands and feet. The music was transporting. I sat there, letting the music wash over me, while the various melodies wove their various ways in and around and through each other.
Suddenly, their melodic mysteries helped me to solve one of mine, one that I’ve been pondering for more than 20 years. It was a wondrous moment, and proved to me that you never know the place, time, or means in which you will receive your personal revelations.
Revelation and Reverie
Like most musicians, I spent a good deal of time practicing in solitary conditions. I snuck in practice time on the church organ during some weeknights when we had other youth activities at the building. While others in my age groups were either in scripture study classes, gossiping with peers, having enrichment classes, or participating in rough and tumble games of church hoops, (or flirting with those boys), I was in the chapel figuring out how to use the organ. I kept most of the lights out, except for a few ambient exit lights plus the ones right over the instrument, which created an intimate feeling to the sanctuary. I was alone with the instrument … usually.
Sometimes I had a visitor.
I have to preface this by saying that boys were, and remain, a Great Mystery to me. Although I had a couple of boyfriends during high school and college, I’m not sure I ever really understood how to deal with them. Part of me was entirely confident in myself as a student and musician, but another part of me always felt like I didn’t belong; that I wasn’t pretty, or cool, or sporty enough, or enough of whatever the definition of “popular” was at the time ... so I didn’t mind hiding out alone in a chapel to practice in near darkness.
And then there was “that boy.” You know, “that boy.” There’s always a “that boy,” when you’re a teenager. One you have the secret crush on; the one that causes you to freeze up and turn from the confident person into the shy silent wallflower. That “bad boy” who would never go for a good girl; a boy that you always hoped would notice you, but one you wouldn’t necessarily know how to handle once he did turn his regard upon you. Plus, he was a jock, to boot, who would never cross social lines to hang out with a music nerd.
Sometimes when I was practicing alone in the chapel, I would suddenly realize I wasn’t alone. I would emerge from the rush and magic of the music to discover that “that boy” was with me, perched quietly at the foot of the stairs, hiding in the dark – just outside of the range of the circles cast by my overhead light. To this day I’m not sure if I was even ever to know that he was there. He would slip out as quietly as he slipped in. We never spoke about it, and I was loathe to mention it to anybody for fear of scaring him off. It was like those visitations existed out of time.
Until last week’s concert, I always wondered: Why? What brought “that boy” to me, and in this way? What did he want?
More than twenty years later, as the music washed over me, I had very clear revelation that IT DIDN’T MATTER. I was now sitting as “that boy” had done. Maybe his eyes were closed too, to shut out all distractions of the day. Perhaps the music and the reverberations of the organ soothed away whatever demons drove him to seek sanctuary in “my” chapel those nights long ago.
It was obvious that we traveled down, and would continue to traverse, different paths; maybe those long-ago musical interludes were to be our only interactions in the great twists of our eternal journeys – perfect moments of togetherness left unspoiled by our friends, teenage angst, peer pressure, and expectations of social spheres. And, if so, I realized, all was well.
It was enough.
If he does remember those moments, I hope “that boy” thinks back on them fondly. I hope he found what ever he needed from those visits. I hope I offered him an oasis of calm, just like the one I had found behind the keys of my organ and piano.
Finale
It was an emotional evening. I came for a concert, where I knew I would be thrilled the musical skills of the evening’s soloist and the genius of a master composer. I didn’t expect to experience a powerful catharsis, the acceptance and putting by of an ongoing personal mystery. The tears that welled up in my eyes by the end of the encore (Bach Organ Fugue in A minor, BWV 543) were not only from the music, but from the appreciation of the gift of revelation —one that came in a still moment when my soul was open to the Spirit and to Art.
Bravo and Amen.
