Category: Liturgical

Three liturgical improvisations in a row! I’ve had a good run with my improvisations during services this past month. A very long story short: we had a change of plans and decided to have an evensong on Pentecost as a sending off for the choir season. Because I was in DC the week before and I had to have three other pieces in my fingers, I felt that one more large work was a little too much. Honestly, I should have done more improvisations that Sunday because no practice for a week (well, lots of mental playing but not hands on keys).

But that’s the point of this post! It goes without saying that the most well known work based upon this chant is Maurice Duruflé’s Prelude, Adagio, and Chorale Variations on Veni creator spiritus (here is a link is to Johann Vexo’s superb performance of the piece). I have never played the piece fully but have learned parts of the piece individually – maybe someday I’ll give it a shot and play the whole thing. It’s 20+ minutes of musical perfection that has had a lot of influence on my compositions and improvisations. Check out the opening of my Sonata no. 1 where I try to do a simplified version of Duruflé’s opening to the Prelude. Not that it is an exact copy, it is its own thing but I never want to hesitate from whom I am stealing from.

This particular postlude takes its cues from the IV Variation at the very end of the work. Again, I was doing my own thing especially since it is an improvisation, but I wanted to give the toccata a full journey similar to the toccata in that fourth variation. I took an ABA like structure (my favorite) and I tried to use the same kind of tonal transitions that Duruflé uses in his compositions. The result is something I’m really proud of: an improvisation that is the proper length and moves when it needs to. A five minute improv is not always a part of a Sunday morning liturgy but this particular liturgy afforded me an opportunity to do something a little more epic. So here I present an improvisation from an evensong that was geared towards the music and the musicians making the music!

It has been quite some time since I have presented multiple liturgical improvisations in my blog. A lot of that has to do with the gradual, but fairly dramatic deterioration of the organ at the monastery I use to work at (check out that improvisation here; it’s really noisy as the organ by that point was leaking so much air it was hard to get the recording to sound decent). The other piece is that I use to improvise five to nine liturgies over a weekend which leads to A LOT of improvising. Now it is a single service on a Sunday morning – not that I’m complaining by any means! Just a data point about the number of improvisations I have to choose from in a weekend.

BUT over the weekend of May 14th, 2023, also known in the US as a secular holiday as Mother’s Day! I implore you to check out the history of Mother’s Day as it’s a holiday I am typically NOT enthusiastic for, but this year something really struck me. There are a handful of projects that I’m still in the middle of (go check out the “Arranger” label on my IMSLP) but today’s improvisations will likely turn into one of those things. I’ve been working to arrange music by women and BIPOC composers and it occurred to me that my mother has a whole bunch of music in the public domain just waiting to be arranged!

Well, due to it being May and being tired from the end of the semester (and Easter), I decided to improvise on them rather than arrange them. When I prepare an improvisation like this I like to take pieces and aspects from the works to create the material. Granted, the material I was drawing from was simple (but excellent) music for beginning orchestra which meant that I needed to find ways to elaborate it and draw it out to a work for organ. The prelude was not too hard to elaborate on – I took a Satie-like approach to it. The toccata used the main melody as the toccata theme and I pulled the pedals from melodies found in other places in the piece. I had a lot of fun taking my mom’s music and turning it into something for the organ: be on the lookout for them to be turned into full fledged pieces on IMSLP! In the meantime, enjoy these Mother’s Day improvisations:

The semester is over! Easter is done! And my summer is mostly beginning (still a few more weeks of choir)! Woo! Which also means I have allotted some time to come visit my blog and get a few things up and going. Meaning a few newer compositions here on the site and improvisations via YouTube. The latter is what I have to present today!

I had originally planned on playing a combo of Bach’s lesser Prelude and Fugues in C major (combine the prelude from BWV 531 and fugue from 553) but found out my friend Sydney’s birthday was that particular Sunday. For timeline clarity, that was from the first Sunday in May. So I decided to call an audible and improvise in Bach-ish/Baroque-ish style but using two distinct themes: a musical spelling of Sydney’s name and a nod to the Happy Birthday song.

When spelling someone’s name, you have two options to choose from. The first is the European model where you include Bb as a note (famously, Bach is spell Bb-A-C-B natural: B natural is the letter H) or what I like to call the American model where it is just the letters of the alphabet and sharps and flats can be added where needed (in that system Bach would be B-A-C-A where H restarts the with the musical alphabet). Edit: Okay, so the Wikipedia article on Musical cryptograms where it lays this out calls my “American” system the “French” system whereas the former system is the German one. I don’t have any evidence right in front of me but I know of several French composers that use the German system. It really doesn’t matter as that’s just lingual knit picking – it’s a cool article though, definitely check it out!

Since I have the American/French model memorized, I spelled Sydney’s name E-D-D-G-E-D. Since the there were so many “Ds” I improvised in the key of D for both the Prelude and Fugue. The Sydney theme comes in about halfway through the prelude and the at the end of the fugue. The fugue subject is, of course, a brief outline of the beginning of the Happy Birthday theme: sol-la-sol-do-ti. I kept out that dotted rhythm at the beginning because it is so distinct: my hope was to not make the theme wholly apparent. With an improvisation like this, I’m always hoping to trick enough folks into thinking that I’m stumbling through a Bach piece when I’m simply making it all up! Enjoy!

It has been a while since I have posted one of these improvisations and I check that too – the last time I uploaded a liturgical improvisation was about a year and a half ago. And before that, it had also been quite some time. Part of the reason was the decline of the instrument I use to play at the Monastery and for my current job, I just haven’t had the wherewithal to review the improvisations I occasionally do. BUT, this week was something special and fun and it was recorded by one of my choir members and I thought it would be fun to share my thoughts about it.

Quick story: for a short period last fall, I was playing a few weeks of Couperin’s music and during one of the postludes (Offertoire, from on of the Masses, I think) and a big ole cypher went off. Whenever that happens, the ear perks up and the brain is trying to assess what is going on and I remember pausing for the briefest moment, figuring out it was a C reed in the pedals, Tromba specifically, and then improvising in that key in that French classical style to undo the cypher. Then I cadenced and was able to continue into the next section without dropping a moment. The funniest part was telling folks that I had done that and no one really noticed! They all thought it was just a part of the music.

In my estimation, that one marker for a successful improvisation: fooling people into thinking that what they are hearing is the real thing. I won’t claim to be a master at this all of the time, but every once in a while I have been able to do so. That brings me to this morning: I forgot my score at home! When it came time to the postlude, I remembered that the Marchand was in D minor and like a lot of that French music, it uses a lot of suspensions. Outside off that, I used a simple tonal outline of D minor – F Major – D minor to get me from beginning to end. I think the result is pretty solid and I hope you enjoy it!

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!

One of the funny things about improvising is how things can change in the course of developing the initial ideas. First, I always try to keep the initial idea in my head, because being able to return to it gives the improvisation a roundness (binary roundness! – oof, sorry, bad pun). I feel it helps those listening, or meditating since it is communion, not to have to work at understanding what the music is doing and simply accept it. I suppose that may go a little into left field, psycho-acoustics and what not, but it certainly plays a key role.

This particular improvisation, while having those long sustaining pitches and fast moving motives, is really just to set an aesthetic. I really do love using subito piano an effect. The very full sound of the 8′ flutes in the swell with 16′ and 4′ in the pedal give it a very rich and full sound. I only wish I could have set up the recorder in the church to get a better sense of the space, but I am certainly not about to walk out during communion to hit record. Nope. Enjoy!

It’s been a little while since I have posted an improvisation and part of that is due to technical difficulties as well as the complications to my life and livelihood.  The largest change is in where and when I am playing at the Monastery.  Due to serious illness, my counterpart in the Retreat Center of the Monastery, I have been playing for all of those services and Masses as well.  One of those additions has been to play for a Friday evening Mass as a beginning to the retreats.

You may notice a lack of video as I usually include myself playing.  I have been trying for several weeks to get a good video and they never seemed to turn out due to various technical reasons (that’s code for unfocused lens, bad angle, forgot to hit record…).  So here it is, an improvisation without video.  One little bit about what musical material I am using: in melodic minor, with raised scale pitches 6 and 7, five of those notes create a whole tone series, leaving out do and re.  That’s cool and I used it.

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.

Many of my recent posts have been composition posts and decided it was high time to post an improvisation.  I have been really enjoying posting the various compositions, particularly the real and rejected sight-reading examples, that I haven’t been recording any of my improvisations.  This is a shorter improv, recorded at one of the Monastery’s Monday Novena Masses.  Someone complimented me yesterday in how much she thought my improvisations were always so “mystical.”  I like that description!

Today, I had hoped to present one last Alleluia before Lent starts on Wednesday, but I was unable to get a decent recording that I felt was worthy of posting.  This Communion improvisation, on the other hand, is quite nice.  It’s static opening motive, I think, lends itself well to the meditative qualities of the communion procession.  I am still fascinated trying to use one stop or one color for as long as I think is aesthetically pleasing, which I feel works well here.  Not in a contrapuntal way either, simply that the aesthetic and color lends itself to slow change before truly introducing the chant.