Author: Benjamin Cornelius-Bates

The eighth Evening Improvisation incorporates something a little fun for me as the performer.  Organists have added elements outside of the notes of the keyboard.  Nicolaus Bruhns was well known for accompanying himself with his feet while playing the violin.  So why not do the same?  It’s pretty easy to figure out what I’ve added and having time on the organ at Rice makes it all that more fun.

Sometimes my own excitement gets the better of me.  I say that because the last post was of the brilliant organ at Rice University.  If you follow the numbers though, I went from Evening Improvisation 5 to Evening Improvisation 7.  And here is the 6th Evening Improvisation from St. Paul’s Monastery in Pittsburgh.

I have mentioned in previous posts that I find it wonderfully challenging to improvise on a single sound for as long as possible – liturgically, it can be fairly doable.  This video contains three individual improvisations, something akin to movements using three different timbral combinations.  I originally was going to use them separately but I recorded them at the same time and felt that they made a nice suite.  Here’s the order:

I. Mutations

II. Flutes (2:13)

III. Reeds (5:13)

 

Last week I was in Houston for the AGO National Convention and what a blast.  In the coming posts, I will include a recording of the Bayoubüchlein piece performance from the convention.  It will not be the actual performance from the convention as the recordings are exclusive to the convention.  That is an aside though to today’s post!  Because I arrived in Houston a few days early, I was able to get into Rice’s amazing organ recital hall and have a go at their magnificent instrument.

This particular improvisation should be reminiscent of an earlier improvisation where I treated the organ as a percussion instrument.  The Fisk/Rosales organ at Rice is a tracker which allows for a different sort of treatment in its percussive qualities.  I do think the improvisation lacks an awareness of all the subtleties of the instrument – I did only have a few hours after all.  My favorite moment though happens around the 2:45 mark when it sounds like something just fell on the ground.  The next several posts will be more improvisations from this most excellent instrument.

When this blog entry is posted, I will be in Houston for the AGO National Convention.  A forthcoming composition is being performed Thursday evening and I am delighted that I will be there for its premier.

The Evening Improvisation 5 is a combination of several different ideas.  The first, one that I do like using regularly, is the tremolo.  The tremolo on the organ can give pitch and rhythm without necessarily giving it pulse.  Another is the spectral manipulation between sounds using the mutations and another base pitch stop.  Lastly, as mentioned in a previous post, I explore ideas that I find interesting while making them my own.  This improvisation is, in a my thinking, I-V-I, or D-A-D as the central areas of exploration.  The function and relation of these areas is based on their tonal relationship, but not in a functional way.  Simplistic movement like this is helpful when other aspects are quite complicated.

 

The fourth Evening Improvisation attempts to use the organ as a percussion instrument.  This sort of thing has been done before, but one distinct advantage to this improvisation is the organ itself.  All organs may have similar aspects while still being unique to their space and builder.  To be totally honest, the instrument at the Monastery is not great.  It’s a mediocre 1980 Moller with some nice colors and everything chiffs.   No kidding, even the celeste chiffs.  Then why not use it for something!  The chiffing combined with the slow speak of the lowest register pipes creates something that I think sounds like a musical saw, only much richer (and less silly?).

A small note about the improv: the clicking you hear is my wedding ring hitting the keys.  I was really digging in!

The third of the Evening Improvisations also uses a simple progression as the basis for exploration.  Namely, a c-eb moving to a d-f, and an f-g moving to f#-a.  Unlike the last improvisation, where the movement is from one pitch to another unfolding over the entire improvisation, this one gives its cards right from the beginning, with all the material being presented within the first minute or so.  Rather, I let the material get used in as many ways as it wanted to which seemed to be more of an exploration of their simple intervalic relationship rather than something else.  I’ll give away something I like using: the opening registration in the hands, on the swell, is 8′ Celeste and 4′ Flute.  This actually creates something shorter than an equal tempered octave and some very cool orchestral sounds.

When I approach structures that are not tonal or modal in convention, I usually pick something simple to work from.  The last improvisation used a set and the theoretical model of the harmonic series.  This improvisation is a simple movement from one pitch center to another: C# to Eb.  But it is far more complex with the organ in terms of orchestration. The addition of mutation stops convolutes the pitch material; something I tried to manipulate as the improvisation went along.  There is also some rhythmic-“Rite-of-Spring” type of pulsing.  A terrible admittance: if you listen closely, you can hear the spring action of the organ ever-so-slightly in the background.

 

The next series of posts will be a set of improvisations I have titled “Evening Improvisations.”  After the previous improvisation post, I realized that I would like to flex other musical muscles that I do not typically use during liturgies.  I doubt that my church and congregation would appreciate this sort of thing during a liturgy.  That being said, this first of the series is simply based on a couple of pitches which upon reflection resemble something like a 0,1,3,4 set (sets are often unintentional until I realize that I’m using it) and the theoretical harmonic series of a D.  Loosely, of course, as it is an improvisation and my ear plays a big part in the overall progression.

Postscript: I forgot to add that though D as a central pitch from which the material was initially born, it’s really F# that takes central focus.