Author: Benjamin Cornelius-Bates

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Improvisation: Evening

Happy Thanksgiving!  Almost that is.  And if you’re in the US (hi Canadian and non-US friends!).  I have sat on a few improvisations that I was not too crazy about from a recording session at Duquesne’s Chapel with the new organ.  I decided this week that I would head back in and try again.  To explain: my goal with the Evening Improvisations was twelve total recordings.  Six from the Monastery, and six elsewhere, Rice and Duquesne.  That plan was built as I was making recordings and in my mind, make a nice cycle.  It happens though, that I become unhappy with a product and feel the need to go back and start over.

In this case, over the weekend, I played for the Retreat Center side of the Monastery as my counterpart was out ill.  Part of their format includes two evening prayers where I get to improvise a long prelude to the service.  This improvisation was born out of one of those evenings.  It starts, as I often like to do, with a collection of harmonic inspired pitches and builds from there.  Unlike the electronic Rogers, the chapel organ has much more timbre to explore.  And unlike the service, I let it get a bit more dissonant.

 

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Composition: Piano

Oof.  That is how I will being today.  I have never thought of myself as much of a pianist and the technical ability on a high performing level feels much out of reach.  I hosted a recital where the fantastic Ching-Wen Hsiao played some Debussy and reminded me how much I am not a pianist.  (This is a backward compliment to say that she is FANTASTIC).   That being said, I do try to keep my fundamental skills and technique together by doing my scales and other exercises.  Combine this with a renewed interest in piano repertoire (I have been playing through Beethoven and Gershwin for fun) and I have decided to tackle and create some etudes.

The etude, study, is usually used to enhance one’s technique.  That means the piece needs to offer some technical challenge while being artistically pleasing as a piece of music.  Ideally, of course.  My favorite set of etudes are Ligeti’s.  So good.  There are others, perhaps most famously Chopin’s Etudes.

What can add to this genre?  I’ve thought about it and I think there are things that I may be able to offer.  This is the second of the Etudes that I plan to write and the first one that I have completed and performed.  And as stated at the very beginning: oof.  It was hard!  The goal of the piece is to stretch your wrist motion and it certainly does that.  I’m generally happy with my performance here and I hope to have a few more etude recordings posted over the next several months.

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Improvisation: Liturgical

Since Easter, one of the local parishes on the South Side of Pittsburgh unfortunately closed.  While this situation is certainly an unhappy one, the Monastery, located up on the South Side Slopes, has become a new home for many of those church-goers.  We have enjoyed being as welcoming as we can even though we are not a parish and I must say, those who have joined us seem to be quite happy.  On the smaller scale, it has often meant longer processions in the liturgies.

For example, I was afforded more time to explore the chant proper.  I have lamented before that I felt there was a sameness to some of the improvisations I was posting so I opted not to post liturgical improvisations for a while.  Now that life since DMA comps has returned to some normalcy, I decided that it was time to post.

Tournemire.  I have had him on my mind quite a bit lately.  I gave a lecture on his music about a year ago and my fascination with his music and his potential manipulation of harmonic spectre.  That means I have spent a lot of time with his music and it has certainly had a great effect on my approach to liturgical improvisation.  I often feel quite blessed that the Monastery and its people are so welcoming of these kinds of improvisations.  Perhaps, this sort of meditation is what I feel being monastic is.

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Composition: Organ

I am pleased to present the second set of Chorale Preludes.  This being November (or as conceived, October), I figured a set of Advent Prelude and Postludes would be most appropriate.  As mentioned in a previous post, I really haven’t tackled many chorales as an organist/composer because it has never really interested me.  Not that I dislike them by any means, because I improvise on them all the time.  Composition and improvisation are such different things to me that I feel it’s worth mentioning and exploring.

This particular set of Chorales includes three very well known Advent hymn tunes. The first is perhaps the most connected to how I look at improvising a set of chorale variations: chorale, bicinium, celeste, and toccata.  The only missing improvisational element is a trio, which is what happens in the next chorale prelude.  I love BESANÇON as a hymn and it is a treat to share these brief variations on them.  Click the following link for a copy of the score:

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Composition: Organ

Comprehensive exams are over, most things that fell behind are caught up, and things are looking pretty good moving forward.  I have some recordings nearly ready for the blog, but time is always an issue.  That being said, Luca Massaglia recently was in touch with me expressing interest in the Ostinato from the Organbook.  After he received the music, he promptly posted the following video.  And it is great!  I really love how the same work can offer two different interpretations, even when there are slight differences.  It is of course, an honor when performers are interested in one’s own compositions.

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Composition: Organ

As of this coming Monday, I begin the first part of my DMA comprehensive exams.  That being said, I will be taking a short hiatus.  Do enjoy this small update that I will get around to recording: three chorale preludes.  I never have been particularly interested in writing chorale preludes until recently.  You can look at my oeuvre and other than the What Wondrous Love variations, I haven’t done it.  And then recently I got a piece in the AGO Bayoubuchlein and thought that I should explore it further.  Click on the link or head over to the free works and enjoy!Screen Shot 2016-09-10 at 10.59.10 PM.png

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Improvisation: Evening

Now that school is back in full swing, I have had a few moments to capture another recording.  Since the first six Evening Improvisations were at St. Paul of the Cross Monastery Church and the next three were at Rice, I knew it was time to make a recording on the new Jaeckel Organ at Duquesne’s Chapel.  Installation of the organ was completed last summer but I never really thought to swing by there and make a recording.  It is quite the unique instrument with aesthetics based on the writings of Charles Tournemire.

That all being said, after the visit to Houston, I knew this needed to happen.  The Monastery organ is not the best, though I am very fond of it.  For the exploration of different sorts of effects, having different instruments is necessary.  In the case of this improvisation, only 16′ stops were employed: 16′ Quintaton, 16′ Bourdon, and 16′ Soubasse for the pedals.  Only at the very end is the 32’added (I also use the thud from an earlier improvisation too).  The harmonics from the Quintaton that appear are really cool!

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Composition: Organ

The piece I present today comes from a competition that the American Guild of Organists held.  The National Convention in Houston organized a competition of preludes and postludes based on modern tunes.  As an improviser, I often treat modern tunes in old fashions.  This work is simply an ornamented chorale prelude after the style of Bach.  There are some moments that I particularly like in the work, little moments of my interests interspersed in my impression of Bach.  But the best moment happens at the very end when the B-A-C-H(Bb) appears in the final cadence.  I do not regularly try to be clever, but this one I find enjoyable.

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Composition: Organ

At the beginning of the year, I revisited several older works that I have always found attractive here and here.  Both pieces are fairly simple and do not take much time in the way of expertise, skill, or practice for that matter.  Which is fine!  Complication does not equal quality or success.  That is a fine introduction to an earlier work that is not so easy – Trio, II. Adagio.  I LOVE the Bach trios, the Rheinberger trios, and Hugo Distler’s trio.  They all contain amazing implicated harmony and clear counterpoint.  But that does not make them easy to learn or play even when one is the composer of the work itself.  The outer movements are pretty good but I absolutely adore this inner movement.  I did at one point arrange this for ensemble with two violins, cello, and organ comping.  Someday I may resurrect the arrangement!

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Improvisation: Evening

The last of the three improvisations I recorded at Rice is unlike the previous entries in that it is tonal. Or at least within the confines of scale.  To be completely honest about the recordings, they are actually from a second night of recording rather than my first go at the instrument.  The card in the recorder ran out of space on the first night and I went back for a second go at some of my original improvisations.  It is an interesting exercise to recreate an improvisational idea that was completely spontaneous with a new instrument.  I suspect that my first attempt was better, but this is what I captured in a recording.