Father Victor, the pastor, took quite a liking to me. After I played one Ash Wednesday, I stayed afterwards while he waited to give ashes. During that time, I improvised on Lenten melodies. The following is what he wrote in the bulletin and posted online thereafter.

I may not be young anymore, and I have never been Polish; but nevertheless, this is one of the kindest and warmest tributes I’ve ever received. Thanks and Godspeed, Father Victor.

A Priest’s Diary
Ash Wednesday
(posted March 2, 2009)
The Rev. Victor Muzzin, FDP
Pastor, St. Francis de Sales Parish
East 96th Street, New York, NY

…The gentleman invited by the family to play the organ (and
sing) was a nice young fellow of Polish [sic] origins with
extensive knowledge of Church music. He liked the organ. He
said that we have a little treasure there. It is small, original,
renowned builders and good condition. He asked my
permission if he could play for a while after the funeral softly
and unobtrusively and I said of course. I love organ music.
Especially when played with competence. Being Ash
Wednesday Jonathan played all the ancient Lenten
Gregorian melodies starting with Parce Domine, Parce populo
tuo (Spare Lord, spare your people). Playing them gently,
softly, also freely and flowingly, improvising delicately on
the theme and bringing out cleverly the various voices of the
organ. it was exquisite and made my soul sing. Believe you
me, I wanted to write, I wanted to do something else but
for the good part of an hour I was not able to do anything
except just listen, reminisce and walk down memory lane:
my days in the seminary when we would gather and sing the
vespers on Sundays. I miss those melodies. It is high quality,
elevated music mostly in minor keys, hauntingly beautiful; it
digs into your soul…
…

I got interested in this while preparing the Opus 10, no. 2 for a recital in February. I saw clearly that the final movement, while pretending to be a fugue, is in fact in simple sonata-allegro form. That got me thinking.

Long ago, in high school, I’d sung the Hallelujah chorus from his oratorio, Christ on the Mount of Olives. That has some fugue in it, and I thoroughly got into singing it! Here, Beethoven uses fugue as a procedure, integrating it nicely into the largely homophonic texture of the chorus.

Then, last Sunday, pianist Carolyn Enger gave a fine recital at my church, as part of our May in Montclair celebrations. She played the Opus 110, which concludes with a learned fugue, complete with an exposition recto and an exposition inverso, with the last statement of the theme in both cases in the “pedal.” There’s even a “pedal” statement per augmentationem. In between comes passagework.

Remarkably like a North German präludium, when you get right down to it; and in its overt learnedness and especially its use of the bass register, uniquely organistic.

Anyhow, there is a book to be written here,  not just a short public homily. But there ’tis. Go and read, and give me a like.

…the rest of this article, which asks the question “why should an organist play Beethoven sonatas?”, is found on my Facebook page, at JBHorganist.

My Monday-morning coffee-time thoughts are centering on hymn tempi. Looking through many renditions of the Welsh classic HYFRYDOL, I have found that most of them simply go too fast. When they don’t—when the tempo is actually musical, breathable, and religious—there is sure to be a snarky response along the lines of “pick it up, grandma!” Well, hurrah for grandmas if they remind us that hymns are for singing and for worship…and not for the discharge of pent-up emotions in the organist.

I can’t forget a hymn festival in which I sang, at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, back in the ’90′s. John Ferguson played the organ, and we concluded with HYFRYDOL at simply the slowest tempo I’ve ever heard before or since. So convincing was John, so strong his sense of music and leadership, that I feel I surely was levitating by the final verse. There’s no doubt I was in tears.

Trying it out at my own church the next morning, I was promptly conducted, flagged, wig-wagged, and eye-rolled-at by the cognoscenti of the choir loft. Since then, I have settled for a strategy of gradual de-escalation. HYFRYDOL is not meant to be sung at a fast clip…of that I am convinced.

We have come through some of the hardest decades in the history of Christendom. One of the greatest challenges has been in the area of music. Here, the anxiety and addiction to distraction so typical of the modern age have intruded with point-blank demands to “pick up the pace.” Yet there is the wisdom of two millennia to consider as well. This wisdom bids us slow down the tempo, de-emphasize the rhythm, spiritualize the music: to invite what Pope Benedict calls “the sober intoxication of the Holy Spirit.”

For “sober intoxication” one could substitute other antitheses: voluptuous chastity, calm intensity, gentle rage. Dylan Thomas said “there was calm to be done in His safe unrest.” Amen! That breathes an apostolic spirit.

It is hard indeed—sometimes impossible, and sometimes dangerous to a career—to buck the trend and witness to an evangelical spirit in one’s hymn playing. Oftentimes, one is in conflict with clergy as well as with random YouTube commentators. Yet if the organist can make his case with grace, candor, and persistence, and demonstrate a pastoral and teacherly spirit at all times, change is possible. The modern world feels that it just about has the Church where it wants it. May organists one day be remembered as those who helped prove it wrong.

It contains a lot of information on my career as an organist, choirmaster…musician in general…and writer. If you’re on Facebook, please feel free to “like” the page and stay up to date.

Of course, keep in touch via this blog as well…but this blog is more an exercise in self-expression than specifically a focused, professional page.

There will be some links back to this page, but not everything will be carried over.

Come see the Hall Wall!

It’s the work of a minor Abstract Expressionist, a former habitué of the Cedar Tavern and friend of the big names in the movement. Still alive, still painting.

The painting “depicts” an urban scene; probably New York City.

For me, whether I’m in search of a subject to write a book about, something to photograph, or even a role model, I look for the distinct individual. On that basis, the painter and his work, and this work in particular—who knows why? —appeals to me.

Who painted it? I’ll let you think about that for a while. I’m busy.

That’s German (using cognates) for “Foresight! Notes! Not To Warp!”

Or simply “Warning: musical score. Please don’t bend.”

It was my long-expected copy of the facsimile of BWV565, the toccata and fugue in D minor by C. H. Dretzel (I think). Published by Verlag Dohr, or Dohr Press in plain English.

It’s a beautiful job, in the exact size and dimensions of the original—tall and slender. Hard-bound, and in a lovely slipcase. Too tall for my bookshelves. The pages of the ms. are in lovely, authentic sepia tones. The back page’s many splatters and stains are lovingly reproduced, almost like the Shroud of Turin.

The cover page is so amusing. It’s the work of a teenage copyist, Johannes Ringk, and is full of the arcane and archaicized preciousness for which he was noted. The writing is full of curlicues and diddly-doos. (This includes a notable skip of the pen just above “Fuga.” The tiny splatters of ink and the “repairs” to the sweeping ornamental line are all too obvious. Rattled and piqued, the boy returned to the word FUGA but slipped from italic to Fraktur hand for the -GA.)

Then there’s his deliciously arrogant young signature: obviously contemporaneous with the rest of the page, obviously the same hand, and also obviously attempting to look, say, two and a half centuries older than the rest of the page. This bright spark had been studying old books and papers, no doubt about it. Lots of ‘em. All at once.

The title page is full of other errors: instead of saying “D moll,” or “d minor,” the key is called “ex D#” —which means “out of D sharp.” Perhaps they used “ex” in Germany to mean “in,” but it strikes me as preciousness. Sharp is just wrong.

Then there’s the composer’s name, “J. Se. Bach.” This is also probably an error. This is the only source we have, whatsoever, that attributes the work to J. S. Bach. It’s also the oldest, thus the closest artifact to the work. By itself—and this ms. is definitely by itself—this is not enough to establish authorship.

I have already written on the clear stylistic link to Dretzel’s work, and the utter, complete, gaping-wide-open lack of any potential link to the style of Bach himself.

The facsimile has a wonderful commentary section, in German, English, and French, in that order. Written by Rolf-Dietrich Claus, whose book-length study of this piece is so fundamentally important (and dang it, still not translated, leaving me to fumfer through with my haphazard German).

Yet the commentary keeps circling, almost coyly, around Johann Peter Kellner. Musicologists will keep trying to pin this piece on him, simply and solely because “he’s more famous already.” This is an intellectual failure, and a minor act of idolatry. To his credit, though, Claus doesn’t push this point too hard.

Most fruitful in all the commentary is the distinction among different methods of noting accidentals. It’s of limited usefulness in the 565 debate, at least vis-à-vis Dretzel, as his Divertimento is engraved at a later date using the “piano-lesson rule” (Klavierstunden-Regel).

I wonder, however, if this avenue of thought might shed light on the exceedingly improbable German-sixth harmony in the fantasia in g minor. I find the e-flat there unlikely to the point of unplayability: indeed, I have normally ignored it—at my own peril, I realize. Is there a heuristic here that might prove me right, or wrong?

It is the final sentence of the commentary that inspires me the most: the search for the true creator…has now begun.

Amen. So it has. And I have something to say about it.

Kudos to Verlag Dohr and Dr. Claus.

The Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV565, was composed by Cornelius Heinrich Dretzel of Nuremberg.

I think.

I’ve said often that shifting the seasons back to the “cross-quarter days” makes a lot of sense. This way, with the equinoxes and solstices at the midpoints, many of our old expressions become clear. June 21 is really “midsummer’s day,” not the first day of summer. Christmas is really “in the bleak midwinter,” not five days into the season.

Judaism is an ancient tradition, and seems very comfortable with more than one start to the year. Rosh Hashanah is the first day of the seventh month, remember, not the first day of the first month. The first month is Nisan, the month of the exodus, the month whose midpoint (the full moon) is Passover. The reigns of kings were always keyed to 1 Nisan. Then there’s Tu b’Shvat, the new year of the trees; and the first of Elul, the new year for the purpose of tithing animals.

In other words, the older and wiser a tradition gets, the more ways it reckons time at once! Actually, by that standard, Christian culture has little to be ashamed of.

Anyway…happy summer, if you like!

The organ was still in its original location, a former German Lutheran church tucked away in the depths of Kings. Now home to a Hispanic congregation, the church no longer felt it had room to house a non-playing old organ. The instrument’s fate hung in the balance.

Well…I just recently heard from Keith Bigger, the curator of the J. W. Steere organ in the Brooklyn Baptist Temple and an organ aficionado from wayback (and also from Queens). It seems that a couple was inspired (at least in part by my article) to rescue the organ, have it rebuilt, and see it into a new home in New York State.

I am delighted–thrilled–tickled pink. With my former teacher Marilyn Keiser, I want to shout “hot dog!” when I think about this. I’m impressed, again, with the power of the pen. I’m delighted with the organ’s enduring ability to inspire and fascinate people.

I’m also grateful for people like Keith, who go about doing good in a quiet, persistent, and extremely devoted way. There are too many grandstanders, too many precious darlings, in the organ biz. Keith ain’t one of ‘em. Thanks be to God.

—My review of three titles from Michael’s Music Service, a great outfit that specializes in high-quality reprints of old and scarce titles;

—A lovely writeup of my January 21 workshop for the Albany chapter. I appreciate how the author took such careful notes! As I said, and as I was quoted saying: the spectacular is optional, but competence is mandatory!

Thanks again to Todd for his fine editorial work.