Category: Improvisation

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.