Come and fill our depths

When I started playing organ for church services a bit over a decade ago, I didn't see anything too interesting about the instrument aside from the attractive facade, multiple keyboards, and a keyboard for the feet, so the whole thing stunk of oddity rather than art. I had a single cassette tape of Bach organ music growing up and had recently purchased a CD of E. Power Biggs playing some Bach. My father also had an LP of Biggs playing Buxtehude, so I had all the major media covered.

I was still mystified that Liszt had transcribed Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique for solo piano and I wondered how that piece would fit in my current quest to find the most difficult music in the history of piano repertoire, a journey that started when I was a little lad with Chopin's 'Heroic' Polonaise, and later included Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto which quickly led to his celebrated Third. Marc-Andre Hamelin would lead me to other more relatively obscure pieces and composers such as Rzewski's The People United will Never Be Defeated variations. And how could we omit Kaikhosru Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum? Or Michael Finnissy's charming English Country Tunes? And quickly I ran into the wall of avant-garde attempts at randomness and intensely specific rhythms, techniques that are easily improvised but laboriously learned from the page.

With years of high-wire, knuckle-busting, thimble-rigging interest waning, I actually started to listen to the music and tried to figure out what it was all about.

After finishing school with my new title of Bachelor of Music (a great introduction at parties but misleading now that I'm married), I hit the job market and settled on three jobs: two churches and one music school giving private piano lessons. The arrangement was not my ideal, but I didn't really know what I wanted and I could say I made my whole living from music, high praise for a BM.

There was no moment of catharsis for me, but rather a slow displacement, like a gas filling a vacuum. I decided rather lightly to take the organ more seriously and just maybe get pretty good at it. I resolved to start wearing my organ shoes, a gift from a music fraternity back in college. Now stylish and slightly determined, I started purchasing the Dover publications of the organ works of Bach. I was annoyed that the alto and tenor clefs got in the way of my easy breezy sight-reading skills.

A plan began to form as I started to research the AGO (The American Guild of Organists). My organ teacher in college (the obvious choice of secondary instrument for a piano major was the organ) had made reference to the organization and also to Certification Exams that they administered. There are 4 of ascending difficulty: Service Playing, Colleague, Associateship, and finally Fellowship. I found a pdf of the requirements for the various levels and was shocked by some of the upper level requirements.

Transposition?
Continuo?
Open score C clef sight reading?
Composition?
Improvisation???

None of these subjects had been taught to me in college. Not even keyboard harmonization. No matter! My new spur-of-the-moment plan had me ascending the ladder of the AGO Professional Certification Exams by the sweat of my brow and tips of my fingers and toes. One day I would be able to put the letters FAGO after my name... That's : Fellow of the American Guild of Organists.

I had no idea what I was getting into.

Without a teacher I was on my own, the position I preferred anyway. I started playing the organ more often and practicing outside of services. I accumulated some skill at working the instrument, so that I was no longer afraid of pedal passages, or registrations (the two organs I played had less than 10 stops). I also started collecting more cheap Dover music, reading Wikipedia articles about organ composers, and watching YouTube videos of organists. I became more interested in the subject. Eventually I was offered a position at a larger church a few miles away, with enough pay that I could quit my three jobs and have only one, a full-time position as Organist and Assistant Director of Music. I transitioned into my apprentice period.

That was almost three years ago and I've been filling up on books, music, knowledge, and experience. After much research and wrong approaches I've learned how many different subjects need focused practice, and have plans on how to proceed in each. As I dive deeper into the wide field of the organ, it re-shapes my understanding of music and shows me ways to become a better musician, a more complete musician.

I feel that I've shed my naivete along the way and settled on my focus, so I am going to start taking the exams this year. I plan to take an exam each year allowing me enough time to hone the necessary skills. I'm going to write about the experience gambling that it might prove interesting to some, perhaps even helpful to others, and also as a way to organize my own thoughts. With this introduction finished, I will probably stick to matters directly related to these fields of study.

You have been warned!