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Improvisation: Evening

A prelude, for us organists, is typically the thing we do before a liturgical service. In other words, incidental to another thing that is about to happen. That is exactly what this improvisation is: it is an experiment as I am outlining and sketching a new work. And by new work, I mean a future album of music; at least, that’s the plan. In the mean time, I am playing around and trying to navigate waters that I have thought about and am now doing some practical realizations.

So what is this thing that I’m doing? Let me explain! Outside of the organ world, I also love playing with synthesizers, which is certainly something you can hear in my Aria with Nine Variations. I have played with vintage synths, I own a Yamaha CS1-x that I have used for many years, and more recently, I have been playing with software synths. In the Aria, I used the shareware synth HELM, which I will still promote as one of the best places to start if you are new to synths. For this project I was looking for something a bit more powerful: Arturia’s Pigments!

What makes this synth so special is that it is Arturia’s only true software synth and it has four different engines to create sounds: traditional waves, wave table, granular, and the one I was really curious about, an additive synth generator. Additive synthesis, simply put, is the process of adding partials or harmonics to a fundamental pitch. In part, that is what an organ does – you play a pitch on the manuals or pedals and add and subtract stops to that fundamental. Put the two together and I think there is a lot of potential!

This improvisation is the result of that experimentation. I set up Pigments to work with my travel control synth (Native Instrument’s M25) and here it is! The fun part, for me at least, was trying to imitate and manipulate the sum total of the sound. Since organs cannot play pitches outside of their temperament and tuning, it is really nice to be able to have something that allows me to do that. It was also fun to be able to “dim” the synth and close the box of the organ to create a similar sonic effect. I will be doing a whole series of these as I prepare my next big project!

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Composition: Organ

Two uploads in about two weeks! In fact, I have been sort of sitting on these chorale preludes and postludes for some time. Hence why I have been able to upload two volumes, six pieces in total, in a very short time. I actually have another volume started for some Christmas hymns/chorales, but I may hold off on editing and finishing it until the fall. There is not much need for a toccata on Antioch right now lol.

This particular set is the first “general” hymn volume containing works on general hymns of praise – Lauda Anima, King’s Weston, and St. Denio. I really like all three of these! Small thought from the composer here: I am sometimes ambivalent about the things I compose. In fact, most folks who create art sometimes run into this. Off the top of my head, Tchaikovsky famously didn’t write The Seasons for anything other than money. If you look at my compositional works for organ, I actually have very few compositions based on chorales but recently I have been kind of inspired. Maybe it’s the end of a semester and the desire to FINISH something. Maybe I have been wanting to write down some improvisational ideas. Maybe I have a whole bunch of compositional energy needing to be released!

I think it is all of the above. That being said, I do not want to do the Paul Manz thing where I record myself improvising and then write it down and edit it. Mostly, it’s an avenue to express my thoughts and ideas about a particular tune that I have in the moment I compose the work on it. And here, with King’s Weston, we have something a little different. The outer two pieces, Lauda Anima, a Bach-like piece, and St. Denio, a toccata, are great and would record well but I am always attracted to the introspective pieces.

With the this work on King’s Weston, there is a weird sense of tonality based on the phrases and I attempted to manipulate that as much as possible in this setting. The repeat came generally late in the compositional process but it felt necessary. The way I interpreted that repeat was to change the solo voice by simply add tremolo. I think there is a lot of opportunity for interpretation in that repeat. Read that here: the composer wants you to mess with the repeat in regards to registration! Enjoy my rendition of this work and go download the Chorale Preludes and Postludes V!

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Composition: Organ

In my life and career as a composer, particularly an organist composer, I really haven’t written a whole lot of works on chorales. A big part of that is I’m not wholly interested in using predetermined compositional material as a part of the composition process. I certainly have before, both in choral and organ works, but generally, my primary interest is in creating something new. But one thing I think is important is creating works that are easier and accessible to more people and sometimes that means crossing into spaces that I don’t usually.

Which comes to the Chorale Preludes and Postludes that I’ve put up on IMSLP! It has been a little while since I have posted a new set and it is time that I did. I’ve actually had the fourth set in the queue for a little while and with this current Easter season, it seemed timely to get it out. Granted, the release of it hasn’t been as timely for the Easter season as I would have liked, but it is out when it is out. Keep an eye out as I will have another set or two soon!

While I say that I do not like using pre-existing material for compositions, there are hymn tunes and chants that I adore. One of those is the tune GELOBT SEI GOTT – the Alleluia at the end of each verse is really awesome! To the earlier point about accessible works, this particular setting is for potentially manuals only. I personally love using multiple manuals and this piece touches on that ever so slightly. But, it is also possible to do this all on a single manual. You’ll hear in my recording where the two manuals overlap – there is even room for the solo to end up in the pedals.

Last thought here: as a composer it is a challenge to write music that has solid flow while being presented in a simple manner. I really like this setting (not that I dislike the other two in the set) as it utilizes the organ instrument in a fun and unique way while also being generally accessible. Click here for the score (go to Chorale Prelude and Postludes IV) and here is my recording of the second of those pieces:

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Improvisation: Evening

Well, well, well, second improvisation in a row where something went wrong! The first thing to point out in this improvisation is the title: 12-Tone Cipher. There are of course, two things to unpack here and I’ll start with the first part: 12-Tone. Something I have been practicing lately (meaning the past 4-5 years) is using all 12 chromatic notes in a row before I repeat any of them. To be clear: I am not keeping a strict measurement of intervals or other relationships to determine a tone row so I can transpose is, just simply keeping track of what notes I have and have not played at a given time. It is not a lack of interest in tone rows, more that it would require an enormous amount attention, skill, and practice to do so, something I currently don’t have the time for. (Someday maybe!)

My interest in doing a tone row is to keep things fresh in my improvs. Simply another way to explore timbre but in a way that contrasts the last improvisation which was through an attempt at literally representing a sound. Speaking of the last improvisation, where I accidentally hit a piston, let me address the second half of the title, “Cipher.” A cipher is when you hit a key and the air continues to blow through the pipe even when the key is not depressed. Well, that is what happened! What I was going to do in that moment was to spell out the 12-tone pattern I had come to on a loud reed stop but the Ab and Bb just never stopped.

In the moment, you can probably hear the mashing of all the keys around those pitches as that sometimes will stop a cipher. Since that didn’t work, the next solution was to turn the instrument off. As the organ shut down, I kept holding on the cluster and the effect was exactly what I wanted: this crazy percussive crash followed the power turning on a return to the opening texture. All that is to say, it was an interesting time as the improvisation developed and changed and resulted in something interesting. Enjoy!

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Composition: Organ

Over the past several semesters at Duquesne, I have taken the task of writing all of the sight reading exercises for the students. It’s been a lot of fun to create pieces that each have a little quirk in them to offer a small challenge as they are sight read. It has been in the back of my head to edit the best of them into something a little longer, approximately 2 minuntes or so, and throw them up on IMSLP. And I’ve finally done it! I like the four of them quite a bit, but my favorite has to be the Fugetta on D-S-C-H.

Quick story there: back in November 2021, in teaching the third semester of written theory, I took a single class to give an overview of fugue as a form and genre. I offered the class the chance to give me a subject of their choosing and I would improvise a fugue on that subject. One of the students then handed my Dmitri Shostakovitch’s musical signature and I have to say, it was an absolute delight! My improvised fugue went well that morning and it inspired me to write that as the “harder” sight-reading exercise last month. Unlike the first three, the Fugetta appears unedited from its original form. Get the score from IMSLP here!

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Improvisation: Evening

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Today I deliver an improvisation I recorded yesterday and today I present it as a case of what to do when things go wrong. Before I begin, I want recall an amazing concert I attended at the University of Kansas where the AGO held a pedagogy conference. There were MANY, MANY great concerts and one of them was a two and a half hour improvisation concert given by Philippe Lefebvre. Holy cow it was a concert of endurance, both for the performer and the listener; it was absolutely amazing and everyone there was on board. There was one moment though, one of many, that stood out to me: Lefebvre hit a wrong piston and then had to quickly adjust what was happening on the fly. It was quite astounding how a “mistake” turned into something as a part of the whole rather than an accident.

Well, that happened to me in this improvisation! I accidentally bumped a piston in the middle of this improvisation and it turned out to be way more interesting than I had planned. Here was the original plan: I had transcribed the sound of a bell for a talk I gave at a local AGO meeting and given a short demonstration of what a bell might sound like in the most literal reading of that particular harmonic spectrum (the loudest pitches are C#, E/E#, B, and a higher B). I planned a sort of typical ABA arch form and well, the unintended piston certainly helped that out! I wanted to build the harmonics up and really mess with them and the piston abruptly interrupted that arc: but when given lemons, make lemon bars (I like lemon bars more than lemonade, lol).

All that being said, I like the bell sound! I used a small amount of stops to create the general hierarchy between the manuals and pedals and used the boxes to a sort of maximal affect: a constantly revolving harmonic spectrum. This is even punctuated by the accidental piston which I tried to use in a devolving manner to get back to where I started: thus creating an ABA like form. I recently spoke about this on a podcast and it was kind of fun to have it happen in an actual recording.

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Improvisation: Evening

Look at me get things out consistently! Three weeks in a row no less! Seriously, there is nothing like a little routine and pitting recording back into it feels good. In fact, as of writing this, I also uploaded another silly video with my kids and our stuffed animal, Monster (click here for the fun). Coming out of this pandemic (or limping out? ugh), I am endeavoring be more consistent with my output. A big piece of it is: I have a new church position and I spend time in that space regularly. Also, the organ is an fine enough condition, unlike my last years at the Monastery. That M.P. Möller imploded in those last years and you can hear it in my final liturgical improv there – there is so much noise and it is all coming from the organ and even with the filters on it, it is quite apparent that a lot of noise was pulled out and it affects the sound of the organ in the recording quite a bit.

That all being prefaced, I had been wanting to get back into the experimental side of output by exploring this new (to me) instrument. My first attraction in these situations is to go straight to manipulating the harmonic series. Or some kind of timbrel manipulation. An excellent example of this is Evening Improvisation I, number 11. One of the great things about playing the organ is that spectral (harmonic) manipulation is really easy with mutations. Broadly speaking, mutation stops are a kind of harmonic manipulation and monkeying with them is easy.

Two things I want to add to my thoughts here: the first is that it has been about two and a half years since my last Evening Improvisation post. My interests have evolved as happens to all of us and I think that can be heard here particularly in light of the second thought. I have been listening to A LOT of Kaija Saariaho and it is certainly influencing my more experimental musical self. There are things that are here that are pretty typical: gestures, repetition, ABA improvisational form, etc. But I feel like this shows some change from the last set of Evening Improvisations. Or maybe I am reading into it too much and overthinking it all. Let me leave it at: it is good to be getting things out there.

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Composition: Organ

Look at me get several posts up in a single month! Actually, it has a lot to do with my weekly routine and I have started to include some recording time. Since I have begun my position at St. Andrew’s, I spend most of the afternoon there and take advantage of it. I have been trying to complete Sonata No. 1 at Duquesne University’s Chapel, which I also have occasionally been able to be in, just not lately. In the mean time – I get to start presenting Sonata No. 2!

The Sonata No. 2 begins with a Scherzo – something that may be a general misnomer. Scherzo’s are usually in 3 and are often the second or third movement of a Symphony or Sonata. The word scherzo means “joke” and this piece is not particularly a joke. Scherzos are also often in a Rondo form: ABACA; that is also not the case. This all said, I need to explain how this Sonata came into being. Shortly after finishing the Sonata No. 1, the Organ Artist Series here in Pittsburgh was holding a competition and let me just say that one of the judges commented that Sonata No. 1 would have been a winner. That little nudge included a suggestion to write another one.

I struggled with coming up with new material when I first started trying to compose this Sonata. I had just finished one! How could I come up with more and new material! Well, something I have done for quite some time is hang on to all my old material and I decided to explore some of it and I found something I had written from when I was an undergrad – something from around the time of my first official “BCB” number, The Bishop’s March. The opening 16ths in the right hand and the four note theme: A-E-F-Bb was something I wrote in the very early 2000s. In hindsight, I fell like I intuited that I wasn’t ready to deal with what I felt was a good idea.

Fast forward to late 2017 and I need to figure out what to do and this old material was the catalyst for the entire Sonata! I have told the handful of composition students that I have had to hang on to EVERY idea as you can never predict when something might become useful. I was in part imitating Enrico Bossi’s Scherzo, which in my memory, I didn’t hear until I was in Vancouver where Denis Bédard played it, but I distinctly remember composing my idea in Missoula, MT before moving to Vancouver, BC. Memory is a funny thing! To this Sonata, it doesn’t matter – I found my inspiration!

What is clear: the simple gesture in the Right Hand is really fun to play fast and the Theme mentioned above is harmonically dubious setting up a nice tour through a series of harmonically and chromatically related key areas. In my more wizened years as a composer, improviser, and performer, this movement really wrote itself. I remember struggling with the harmonic language about twenty years ago and when it came to writing it in 2017, it was so much easier to deal with the dissonance. I don’t have too much more to add here (I could talk about this movement FOREVER), just know that this movement is the fruition of about TWENTY years.

The Sonata No. 2 is available here in my shop: https://baetzeditions.com/product/sonata-no-2/

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Improvisation: Liturgical

Oh my gosh – I have not posted an improvisation in a very, very long time. I just looked it up and it has been two and a half years! It’s not as if I haven’t been improvising this whole time, but recording them has been a total crap shoot in regards to the tech as well, oh, I dunno, the pandemic. Since beginning my position at St. Andrew’s, I have tried to perform as much repertoire as improvisation. Unlike my position at St. Paul of the Cross Monastery where I played nine Masses from Friday to Monday, I only have one Mass at St. Andrew’s.

That doesn’t matter though! Most of the improvisations I have posted in the past several years have been in the Evening Improvisations, the more experimental side of my experiments. It was so nice to improvise in a liturgical context and enjoy it and it was recorded! Those three things have not always lined up and I am more than happy they did for this one.

Here are a couple of thoughts in my preparation for this improvisation: the first is that it is in F major. The opening hymn was in F as well as the closing hymn and postlude (not nearly as good as this prelude). This led me to a “Pastorale” like texture due to J.S. Bach’s Pastorale in F. You can here that influence in the opening of the improvisation. I think what I like the most about the improv is its simplicity: the progressions are fairly typical for my kinds of improvs/compositions but I believe this particular improv is really satisfying. I do love a 6/4 chord as a transitional chord to get things moving in interesting.

All things being said, I am happy to share an improvisation that I find satisfying. I would love to hear thoughts about this topic broadly, but also specifically. I am working on a document that puts my thoughts about improvisation into a single place. Keep making great music my friends!

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Composition: Electronic

Ha! It has once again been a while since I have been back on my webpage doing anything, but I’m hoping to change that this Fall. Couple of personal things, my position at Duquesne as a full time professor seems secure and I have taken on a part time church job at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Highland Park. The latter position just began this month of September as I was only the interim. In fact, I was interim for a year and half, which is a long time, but not Widor length.

I’m back with another insight into my Aria with Nine Variations; the third titled “Ostinato.” Obviously, there is an ostinato, or repeating figure, in the piano part. It was taken from the final notes from the previous movement titled Pattern. The final pitches were created using a plugin called Krush: without getting too technical, the pitches were created from the harmonics of the notes and chords being compressed. Rather than use some tool to help discern the exact pitches, I used my ears, which is why the piano plays those pitches at the end of the 2nd Variation; in ascending order: C, D, F#, and B.

Two things about this movement, the first, is that formally the movement should not go general consonance to dissonance. The Aria and first two Variations have done that. Which leads to the second formal question, then where should the piece go? In the planning or composing vs. improvising-as-I-go, this one fits somewhere in between. The Ostinato offered the opportunity to change things up a little bit by also including an antiphonal response to the pitches from the previous movement. Put simply the pitches also allowed me to also have the antiphony switch between a major and minor tonality.

Second, I really wanted a chance to do something more with the piano: those two antiphonal synths are broken by when the Left Hand of the piano comes into the texture. And what seemed to me to be an obvious choice, they combine at the end to set up the next movement with a low G on the bass synth. One small note: like much music made on DAW, I had the opportunity to quantize that Right Hand ostinato and I’m here to admit that I did not. As a seasoned keyboard player, it only took two takes to get the feel of playing the same thing for five minutes straight. Enjoy and see you all soon for the next post!