Upcoming events:
Thank you, everyone, for such a wonderful
Beethoven class!
April 20 Musicians with a Mission: Seneca manor
and village
April 21 Easter service at Third Presbyterian
Church, 11 a.m.
(everybody is invited!) 5701
Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA
April 26 Musicians with a Mission: Juniper
Village |
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BEETHOVEN OLLI
class page
link will stay up through May 3rd |
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This week on the
blog: Friday, April 19, 2019
the blog also publishes on Mondays and Wednesdays.
Go here to read those.
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Beethoven and Us |
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I asked students in my class to share some of their stories related to
Beethoven. After focusing on Beethoven's music for four and a half
weeks, I wanted to provide a window for our personal encounters with the
music and the man, whether positive or negative. Here are a few
snippets:
"When my
sister and I were about 8 and 10, we started taking piano lessons. Our
parents, who had had no musical education themselves, were determined
that their children would get the musical education they hadn’t had
themselves. In fact, my mother decided to take piano lessons as well.
I remember one year, night after night, trying to go to sleep as Mom
practiced “Fur Elise” downstairs - painstakingly going over passages
again and again and again. By the end of that year, I swore I’d never
listen to that blasted piece again."
So, no "Fur
Elise" in class. Got it. Actually there were a few of you who wrote that
they couldn't stand that piece anymore.
But not
everybody.
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This weekend,
Widor's celebrated Toccata, the final movement
from his Fifth Organ Symphony, will be heard
throughout the land. It has been a tradition at
our church, too, as the Postlude to our Easter
services. So a few days ago I dusted the thing
off and gave it another go....
In a nutshell, the piece is both viscerally
exciting and highly predictable, which is to say
it soothes the mind and quickens the pulse. I
might differ with some of my colleagues by
suggesting that it is also a great
musical achievement and I certainly don't mind
playing it a couple of times a year. One thing
that none of us can deny is that it sounds very
hard to play and earns many accolades from an
audience. It can also be used and abused by many
an amateur organist or professional trying to
set land speed records as if it were the Widor
100 meter sprint.
The curious thing about all that is that the
composer, in the usually doomed but valiant
attempt by a composer to keep his creation from
being made into a vehicle to simply show off the
performer, put staccato dots above every single
note and it is really impossible to articulate
each note and play the piece ridiculously fast
at the same time.
I'll show you what I mean.
Read blog |
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Piano vs. Organ (part 3)
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We get tourists, sometimes. Or visitors. In
any case, a young woman walked into our
sanctuary one afternoon while I was
practicing the organ and decided to ask the
question that was pressing on her mind:
which is harder to play, the piano or the
organ?
She did not, it seems, want a complicated
answer.
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The boring bit in the middle
part three of the "Flashy French Organ Toccata" Series
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....Transition may be the least natural part
of being human. We like to dance, to sing,
and to react to what is happening right now,
but we aren't very good at preparing for
future events. Sometimes we like to deny
them, like refusing to wear a coat out of
the house because it isn't cold right now
(but it will be in a few hours according to
the weather forecast). This applies to
larger social conditions as well. With gas
prices their lowest in years, many Americans
are lining up to by the same kinds of gas
guzzling vehicles that caused so much pain
at the pump the last time prices were high,
setting themselves up for the same thing all
over. When things are going well, people
always think they are going to last
forever...and when they aren't going well,
it's the same story. But why plan ahead,
anyway?
The point of my little sermon is that
listening for process, for transition, for
the start of something new or its return,
isn't just something to keep us from being
bored in the concert hall; it's also a life
skill.
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