Downsizing

Over the course of many decades, I have acquired a sizable collection of recordings, photos, books, and various types of equipment. Nothing is permanent, however, and forms of deterioration overtake these. Moreover, I see that collecting things has a natural physical limit. Eventually, one asks, “Why do I need all this stuff? Does it have ongoing value? Will I really continue to use this or that? How will it be disposed of when I am gone?”

An ancient piece of wisdom says, “The sage gets rid of something daily.” This is probably good advice. Ebay is one way of liquidating assets. Of course, then the value of the item ends up as funds in an account somewhere. At least there is no trouble in “willing” that fund in trust to a loved one or charitable cause.

Possibly the only thing worth making provision for is one’s creative output. In my case, I’ve written some music. At least that is unique and, for whatever intrinsic value it may possess, worthwhile conserving in some manner.

Even then, history will be the final arbiter of the worth of one’s creative output. The good lives on; the dubious will neither be archived or performed.

Performing in Historical Locations

There is something strangely satisfying about performing early music in period architecture. This past Tuesday, a friend and I performed in Morven which is a prestigious colonial-period home in Princeton, N.J. Morven was formerly the governor’s mansion but, more recently, has become a public museum.

The room where we performed was filled with paintings. Our harpsichord was set in an alcove next to the fireplace. As I played, I felt George Washington peering over my shoulder as it were - from his portrait on the adjacent wall.

The occasion we were celebrating was the 225th anniversary of the hosting of the First Continental Congress in Princeton. The Congress had temporariy moved from Philadelphia to avoid further encounters with irate militiamen in Pennsylvania who were looking for payment for services rendered during the Revolutionary War.

E. Power Biggs

For quite some time I have been interested in pre-Baroque music for organ.  E. Power Biggs piqued my interest initially and I picked up a number of his LP recordings. (I’m dating myself). These recordings feature pieces which are found among the following volumes which he edited.

Treasury of Early Organ Music (Music of the 15th to the 18th centuries)
Dunstable / Composition on a Plainsong
Dunstable / The Agincourt Hymn
Tallis / Iste Confessor
Tallis / Gloria Tibi Trinitas
Redford / Glorificamus
Bull / Variations on Laet Ons Met Herten Reijne
Walond / Intro and Toccata in G Major
Gabrielli / Two Intonations for Organ
Frescobaldi / Ricercare
Marcello / Psalm Nineteen
Sweelinck / Toccata in A Minor
Froberger / Toccata in D Minor
Buxtehude / Fugue in C Major (Jig Fugue)
Pachelbel / Toccata in G Major
Pachelbel / Toccata in E Minor
Homilius / Durch Adams Fall
Anon. / verses from Te Deum
Couperin / Fugue on Kyrie
Clerambault / Basse et Dessus de Trompette
Raison / Trio en Passacaille
Daquin / Swiss Noel & Variations

The following organ book has a nice tribute to Mr. Biggs as well as a biographical sketch by Peggy Biggs. It contains mostly Baroque and Classical period music:

The Biggs Book of Organ Music
Adagio - Mozart
All Glory Be to God on High - J.S. Bach
Andante - Felton
Prelude on “Ave Verum” - Mozart
Christmas Pastorale - Valentini
Cuckoo - D’Aquin
Emperor’s Fanfare - Soler
Faithful Shepherd - Handel
Fifers - Dandrieu
Firework Music - Handel
Fugue in C - J.S. Bach
God’s Time is the Best - J.S. Bach
I Stand at the Threshold - J.S. Bach
Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring - J.S. Bach
Musical Clocks - F.J. Haydn
Offertoire for Easter - Dandrieu
Sheep May Safely Graze - J.S. Bach
Shepherds at the Manger - Liszt
Sinfonia, Chorale and Var. on “Christ Lag in Todesbanden” - J.S. Bach
Slow Movement, Conc. in D Min. - Vivaldi/Bach
Solemn Prelude, Cantata 21 - J.S. Bach
The Trophy - Couperin

Performing in New Castle, Delaware

This past Saturday, I and a fellow musician, John Burkhalter, performed at Immanuel Episcopal Church in New Castle, Delaware. John played soprano and alto recorders whilst I performed on an English “leg-o-mutton” bentside spinet harpsichord. The harpsichord was built by Richard Cox in 1977 after an instrument by Thomas Hitchcock (London), circa 1720. It is owned by Mr. Burkhalter and is really a fine instrument to play. The disposition is 1×8 and has a rich sonority.

New Castle has a historical district which is noteworthy for its colonial-era architecture. We were able to do a little sight-seeing since our musical performances were at 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM and only ran 30 minuets each. My wife, Dawn, and I along with John purused various homes that were open for the house and garden tour that is held annually. It is easy to be “transported” when you are in such locales. At least I find it to be so.

Music Licensing Agreements - Ugh!

I sometimes wonder about musical licensing agreements. While you have the license, you may perhaps make copies of various pieces that fall under the agreement. But what a about later on when the licensing period has ended and you’ve decided not to renew or your successor has no interest in maintaining it. Then you are left with a file cabinet full of copies that, quite probably, can no longer be legally used. What is the long-term merit in that?

I don’t get involved in licensing deals because they can’t possibly cover the entire gamut of music I am interested in performing with my choir. By budgeting with the worship committee to purchase and own the music, we are never nebulous  about whether the choir has the right to perform it, this year or decades later. Moreover, we always acquire more copies than needed — for a possible future increase in the number of our members.

I think musical directors ought to leave a legacy of quality music publications in a church library that may freely used for years to come. It is also helpful if the various titles are entered into a database which may be used for printing out box labels and doing keyword searches later. Such a database helps in coordinating with sermon themes and liturgical year programming as well.

Camille Saint-Saens - Danse Macabre

An interesting place to hear organ concerts these days is on youtube.com. This evening I was listening to an exciting performance of the Danse Macabre performed by Raul Priet Ramirez. If you haven’t already listened to this video, I suggest you have a listen. Click here!

Music Notation Software

I used to dabble in music composition, but didn’t have much confidence in what I was notating on the paper. When the first music notation products for computer started to appear, I jumped on the band wagon. My first efforts were directed at producing legible manuscripts for my choir. I always liked writing introits for them to sing at the beginning of the worship service. Now I write music quite consistently.

The first piece of software I used was Deluxe Music Construction Set. The quality of the music font left a good bit to be desired. But, shucks, it sure looked better than my hand-written stuff. The problem in those days was that I wasn’t using a postscript font nor a postscript laser printer.

When Passport’s Encore program came out, I used that extensively. I even wrote some rather ambitious works that I had my choir perform with members of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, I have been using laser printers for many years now. The quality of the notation is much cleaner. Unfortunately, the Encore program hasn’t seen many improvements in the basic feature set. So, I went looking for other solutions. 

For a number of years I kept getting the latest version of Coda’s Finale which was a professional notation product. But, it seemed when a wanted to write something, I kept going back to Encore because is was simpler and got the job done. I had intended to use my copy of Finale, but never mastered the complex user interface. It has a very steep learning curve. Frankly, it used to annoy me.

For a while, I used Geniesoft’s Overture. This program resembled Encore in many ways. My suspicion was that some of Passport’s programmers became part of the Overture team. Anyway, that had enough new features and a user-friendly interface that I liked. So, I did quite a bit of composing on that product as well.

Along came Sibelius and I found that I liked certain things and disliked other things about that product. Over the years, I have come to terms with the crazy menu system. (Nothing is where I think it ought to be). It is, by far, the best notational product that I have ever tried. The problem is, I want all of my old scores in the new software. The quality of the notation is so clearly superior that there is no doubt in my mind that renotating all of my older music will be extremely worthwhile.

Sibelius has a unique internet browser plug-in called Scorch which allows web surfers to see and play the music notation, transpose and even purchase and print music on demand. (Get Scorch).

Refurbishing the Austin Organ

Our church’s Austin pipe organ was completed in 1971.  Since then, we have had a couple of releatherings. The first releathering was to rid the organ of perflex, which was a substitute for real leather in the pneumatic actions in the instrument. Perflex was a failed experiment in the use of modern materials to replace organic materials. Many organs that made use of this material had to have rebuilt actions.

In recent years, I noticed the overall precision of the organ was deteriorating and I wondered what could be the cause. Various technicians applied different remedies to address my ongoing complaints. These various fixes were draining the church budget from time to time. It wasn’t till I contacted Austin directly about the problem that I finally got results. They suggested I get in touch with Vic Hoyt at Northeast Organ Craft, Easthampton Mass., to do an appaisal of the organ. Vic had factory and field experience with the Austin type of action. He certainly got down to the fundamental issues in the instrument!

The general deterioration in performance was due to something called “rubberized cloth” which needed to be totally replaced in both the swell and the great divisions.  This material serves as a gasket forming a seal in critical areas inside the wind chests. Vic said he had never seen this material in quite as bad a state as it was in our instrument. The possible cause was identified as dank, humid air drawn from the church basement by the orgelblo.

Our church raised the necessary funds to have the windchests refurbished. The ticket on that was pretty steep and I was pleased that the congregation rose to the occasion and put up the money. In recent weeks, with the newly fixed organ, I’ve been enjoying the use of the instrument. Playing it feels like it did when it was new. The organ is a smallish American classic and voiced very nicely to the room. It is a pleasure to play services there. I never had any issues as far as the tonal design and finishing.

Incidentally, I made friends with Vic along the way. He is a fabulous photographer and, since that is my hobby, we had many good conversations about equipment and photo exhibits. You can see his work at http://www.pbase.com/vhoyt/.  He also has a site at Woodside Studio. Much of his photography has to do with churches and pipe organs due to field work in connection with his organ repair business.

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Hauptwerk software

I’ve gotten into virtual pipe organs - sound samples of real organ pipes loaded together with a suitable computer interface, which conveniently resembles an organ console. Hauptwerk, by Crumhorn Labs, is easily the most sophisticated although I have experimented with others. The software was created by Martin Dyde and the included instrument is based on St. Anne’s Moseley in the U.K.

The name of the game is CPU speed and memory - lots of it.  I had some success with the organ that ships with the Hauptwerk software on my existing computer hardware. Other sampled organs, however, gave me a bit of a problem. The “crackles” I call them. This happens when the combination of CPU speed and memory in your machine doesn’t possess the required computational power to handle large instruments.

Consequently, I decided to get an Intel Duo Core machine from Dell which had 2 Gigs of memory, a respectable CPU speed and ran on Vista. I worked with that for a while. However, it quickly became apparent that even that setup was not able to keep up with the extraordinary demands of large organs with huge numbers of pipes all speaking simultaneously.

I finally ordered up yet another a new computer that was on the bleeding edge of raw CPU power. Essentially, I got a “gaming” computer which had quad core processors running at 3 ghz along with 4 Gigs of memory. I could add an additional 4 Gigs memory for a total of 8 Gigs; however, it seems to work fine so far without the additional head room. The computer was specially built by Cyperpower pc. Additionally, I ordered Windows XP 64-bit edition which enabled me to install the additional memory. Also, I didn’t want the additional demands of the “Vista” OS interfering with my virtual organ. The problem I find with the Windows platform in general is that it isn’t particularly “quiet”. It always wants to do something. I had to tweak it to keep it from doing things other than load the organ – and nothing else! In other words, you need to create a “dedicated” machine that doesn’t run anything else, especially anti-virus software. (Just keep your machine off of the internet after you get it going; that’s where all the viruses come from anyway).

Probably the most demanding of the virtual organs that I have obtained so far is the Mt. Carmel Skinner organ which is available from Milan Digital Audio. I used that organ as the “acid test” to make sure my latest CPU configuration was delivering the music properly. No problem.

My only complaint at this point is that I need a three manual console to properly play the Mt. Carmel organ. Currently, I am practicing at home on a Rodgers Model 530 two-manual digital organ. Since this organ has MIDI capability, I only needed to put a MIDI/Sound card in my new computer to “complete the circuit”. The soundcard I bought was an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 PCI Audio Interface. Works fine.

At my church, I would like to try using a virtual organ to play certain types of music repertoire that wouldn’t otherwise sound effective on my 1971 Austin pipe organ which is a smallish American-classic instrument. However, I don’t think I would attempt to use the virtual organ to accompany the congregation as the real pipe organ is eminently suited for that purpose because it was voiced to the room. But for certain pieces, the incredible variety of sounds available from virtual samples would certainly allow for richer choices in registration.

If you care to try creating your own virtual organs, I suggest using the free software known as “My Organ” availalble at kloria.com. That software along with Hauptwerk version 1 compatible organ samples should get you started.

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Get Eight Little Preludes & Fugues

 

Chant de Mai

Soon it will be May. I am thoroughly enjoying this spring. I’ve been out taking a few photos of the blossoms and the fresh look of things.

I am reminded of an organ piece I once heard and liked… Chant de Mai (Song of May) by Joseph Jongen. It has a peaceful and evocative quality. After I heard it, the thought struck me that I would one day like to learn it. When I got around to looking for it, I never seemed to find it.

A web search led me to the publisher in the U.K. Lucky for you organists in Britain. However, I did find a music shop that actually stocks it in the U.S. … Churchmusic Dot-Com.

If you aren’t yet familiar with this excellent piece, click here and give a listen. Don’t forget to turn on your sound!