Thoughts on NCOI 2016

The Update

The rules for the next American Guild of Organists National Competition in Organ Improvisation have been released and are available here. While the competition has not been without changes in the past, this set of rules is a significant departure from previous versions. Even if I thought changes in the rules were warranted, I’d like to make some observations about the new rule set that seem to run counter to the spirit of an improvisation competition.

Time lag

Most competitions begin with a recorded round, leading to a selection of semi-finalists who will compete live in person. A smaller number of finalists is then selected to compete in one last performance evaluation. When there are only 5-6 semi-finalists, most competitions hold the semi-finals and finals a few days apart from each other. For the 2016 edition of NCOI, the semi-finals will be held at the regional convention almost a full year before the finals. For a competition focusing on creating music with minimal preparation, having a year between rounds might as well be having two different competitions.

Repertoire

The 2016 NCOI adds a repertoire requirement. To win the competition, not only will one need to improvise, four substantial pieces of repertoire must be learned. To ask an improviser to demonstrate technical ability and mastery of the instrument by playing a piece of repertoire seems reasonable. I know there are other improvisation competitions that demand repertoire, but in no other case does the time for repertoire become more substantial than the time required for improvisation. In the NCOI semifinal round, it could take a competitor longer to play the repertoire requirement than to meet the improvisation requirement!

Hymns

The other new requirements for the 2016 edition are hymns and figured bass. While competitors have been provided hymn tunes as themes for many past competitions, it is now a requirement for a competitor to actually play a hymn with people singing. Recognizing that creating hymn introductions and varied accompaniments is a skill that at least some organists practice every week, this seems to be a more reasonable new territory for NCOI to include. However, as there was a separate hymn-playing competition held in Boston, it seems much preferable to me to continue holding a distinct hymn-playing competition rather than folding this skill into the improvisation competition. While related skills are involved, I would still consider improvising to accompany a congregation as a small subset of the skills necessary to win an improvisation prize.

Figured Bass

While hymn playing may be the bread and butter of most organists’ playing duties, realizing a figured bass seems completely foreign to what most organists must do even occasionally. While improvisers may (should) learn to realize figured bass, it seems to me like asking the entrants in NYACOP to play scales and arpeggios for their assigned repertoire. Who would go to a performance competition to listen to scales and arpeggios or Hanon exercises? While I may be exaggerating slightly to make my point, if a candidate doesn’t know how to realize a figured bass, I feel pretty confident that they won’t be able to improvise variations on a given theme. I say don’t waste time asking for a figured bass, let’s hear the variations!

Preparation

While the rules for the timing of the preliminary round need some further clarification (Does the competitor get three 30 minute preparations or only one?), the significant change in preparation time is the availability to use the organ and the material that is provided more than thirty minutes in advance. Granting access to an instrument during preparation time makes it easier for candidates to verify or practice ideas before performing, but is still a minor change compared to the release of themes days or months in advance. For the preliminary round, the competitor is to improvise five contrasting variations on Vom Himmel hoch. The theme is already known, so there is plenty of time for an enterprising composer to actually write a set of variations, memorize them, and then perform them for the recording. With a few months of preparation, I am sure that the quality of variations heard by the judges will be better than in previous years, but I have no confidence that they will be able to select the best improviser from an exercise with this much preparation time.

Likewise where the themes are given three days in advance for the semifinal and final rounds, I become less assured that what we hear will be an improvisation. Having written a Prelude and Fugue (albeit short) in less than a week and even some compositions in a few hours, I certainly could plan out very carefully if not outright compose my entry. Anyone with sufficient skills to win the competition could certainly posses the skills to compose a piece that fast and either memorize it or bring rough sketches to the competition.

To counteract these potential composition practices, there are very particular rules about what a competitor may write on a piece of paper and bring to the console for the competition. Certainly as long as themes are given out days in advance, what sort of papers one can bring to the competition should be restricted, but what does it mean to compose full harmonies? Would writing out figures over a bass line or using guitar/jazz chord notations be a rule violation? If the goal of all these changes is to raise the level of performances, why couldn’t the competitor take part of the thirty minutes of preparation time to write out harmonies in whatever format he or she chooses? Restricting the paper brought to the competition seems to be a much cleaner rule than trying to tell someone what can or cannot be written down.

Adjudication

Sadly, too few organists practice improvisation at the level where they could consider entering NCOI. It is a difficult skill to master, and even more difficult to teach. With only a handful of master improvisation teachers in this country, in order to avoid any potential conflict of interest where teachers judge their own students, many times the best improvisers are left out of the judges pool. Having a problem finding qualified judges however is not solved by adding more people to the panel. I propose following the model of St. Alban’s, Concours André Marchal, Chartres, and Haarlem where the jury is announced in advance. Competitors are hidden from the judges during all rounds of the competition and are free to study however often they can beforehand with the jury members. Having well-qualified jurors seems much preferable to me than having more people on the jury (especially if they cannot improvise).

Final Round

The AGO has a long tradition of offering certification to its membership. Perhaps unknowingly, the AGO has just set up three levels of improvisation certification corresponding to the preliminary, semifinal and final rounds of the NCOI. When viewed through the lens of certification, each of the requests at the different levels seems appropriately graded and a reasonable way to verify that someone has a well-rounded skill set. Just as a math teacher would ask a student to show his or her work to get to the final answer, it seems perfectly reasonable in a certification process to verify that a candidate can cover all the required bases. At a competition however, repeatedly asking a candidate to do the musical equivalent of reciting a multiplication table is redundant and distracting from the primary topic of improvisation.

Coda

I understand that there was an age limit proposed initially in the 2016 rules for NCOI. A competitor in the 2014 NCOI succeeded in getting that removed by appealing to the AGO’s purpose of professional development and the lack of entrants selected for the competition above that age limit. While I hope the committee will consider my viewpoint for further revisions to the 2016 rules, I have no expectations that any further changes will be implemented for this year. The best suggestion I can make for this rule set would be to expedite the process and hold the final round in Charlotte in 2015 a few days after the semifinal round. Launch a new set of rules for 2016 in Houston with a panel of three judges selected and announced in advance with performance requirements similar to NCOI 2014. Remove the hymn playing (and figured bass) requirements from NCOI and establish a regional hymn playing competition that requires improvised introductions and accompaniments. (The winners of this competition could then provide a fabulous hymn festival for the following national convention!) Finally establish procedures to offer one or more certificates in improvisation as outlined above.

As a devoted supporter of the art of improvisation at the organ, I wish to support any effort to encourage more people to improvise and to raise the level of improvisation in this country. (After all, I started organimprovisation.com in my free time.) I hope AGO will take my suggestions and turn NCOI back into a competition and begin to explore the certification and other hymn-playing competition ideas I have offered here so that we may all work together to encourage spontaneous music making.

Glenn Osborne
www.wmglennosborne.com

International Organ Festival Haarlem 2014

StBavoHaarlem

In 1951, Louis Toebosch won the first International Organ Improvisation Competition. He was to be followed by Anton Heiller in 1952, Piet Kee (1953, 1954, 1955) and many other organists who later became internationally known names. Winning ‘Haarlem’ was, and is, the first step to an international career. Even just taking part in the competition has helped launch many a career, as the names of the numerous famous organists among the previous participants testify.

The final round of the 50th Haarlem Improvisation competition takes place this evening. The themes for the final round were composed this year by Louis Andriessen, who descends from a famous family of Haarlem musicians. Threefold winner Hans Haselböck (1958/59/60) wrote the theme for the first round. For the second round the renowned Dutch composer Roderik de Man provided material, accompanied by videos for the audience created by the sound and video artist Marcel Wierckx. The competitors have only one hour to prepare their improvisations with the help of a pencil and paper (but not an instrument).

Beginning from 22 applications from 11 countries, the following 8 contestants were selected to compete in the first of three live rounds from 14-18 July: Jacob Lekkerkerker, Geerten Liefting and Harmen Trimp (Netherlands), David Cassan (France), Lukas Grimm and Tobias Wittmann (Germany), Morten Ladehoff (Denmark) and Luke Mayernik (USA). Four have been selected to continue to the final round at St. Bavo’s Church.

The jury, chaired by Stephen Taylor, includes five internationally renowned organists: David Briggs (Canada), Jürgen Essl (Germany), Zuzana Ferjencikova (Slovakia/France), Gilbert Amy (France) and Jan Hage (the Netherlands).

A livestream may be available here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/orgelfestival.

St. Alban’s International Organ Competition

The St. Alban’s International Organ Festival has included a competition in both interpretation and improvisation since 1963. Previous winners of the improvisation prize include: Martin Baker, David Briggs, Naji Hakim, Jos van der Kooy, André Isoir, and Guy Bovet. The complete list of improvisation and interpretation winners is available here.

The next competition will be held July 8-18, 2015. The competition is open to organists born after July 20, 1982. The guidelines for the improvisation competition (including initial themes) can be found here. Complete information about the competition may be found at the competition website:
http://www.organfestival.com/St_Albans_International_Organ_Festival/Competitions.html

André Marchal

MarchalAndré Marchal (1894-1980) was born blind. He studied organ under Eugène Gigout at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1913, he won the First Prize in organ-playing and four years later he also won the prix d’excellence for fugue and counterpoint. Marchal taught organ at the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris, in addition to serving as titular organist of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (1915–1945) and Saint-Eustache (1945–1963). He was an unparalleled improviser and was recognized as such by Fauré. Among his students are many brilliant musicians such as Peter Hurford, Louis Thiry and Jean-Pierre Leguay.

There is now a Concours André Marchal held every other year in Biarritz, France offering prizes for interpretation and improvisation. Previous winners of the improvisation prizes include: David Cassan, David Maw, Noël Hazbroucq, Martin Bacot, Olivier Perin, Alexandre Mason, Torsten Laux, and Frederik Malmberg.

Videos:
André Marchal – Improvisation on theme of George Dyson – Royal Festival Hall, London

Competition and Twitter

This week I am attending the AGO National Convention in Boston. There will be several events that include organ improvisations during the week: a concert by Thierry Escaich, a Hymn Sing with Bruce Neswick and Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra, a silent movie accompanied by Peter Edwin Krasinski, and several workshops and masterclasses. You can see the complete list that I compiled here. While I am always excited to see many familiar people and hear some fabulous playing, one of the highlights for me at the national convention is always the National Compeition in Organ Improvisation (NCOI).

After a preliminary selection round by recording, five candidates were selected to participate in the semi-final round. For this round, the candidates will have 30 minutes of preparation time with the themes and then will be required to play 1) a historically inspired improvisation based on a given hymn melody, chorale tune, or plainsong and 2) an improvisation on one of the given free themes, or on one given free theme and a secondary theme of the contestant’s choosing. Total performance time for these two improvisations is a maximum of 27 minutes. While that may seem like a long time to improvise, most candidates usually create a suite of variations on the hymn, chorale, or chant, so it becomes a little easier to fill the time requirement with short manageable movements. In fact, over the years, I’ve seen a few candidates have to end quickly in order not to play too long!

A maximum of three candidates will then be selected to continue on to the final round. The requirements for the final round are 1) a prelude, fantasia, or toccata and a fugue based on given theme(s), which may be sacred or secular and 2) a free improvisation based on a given musical theme or a given nonmusical theme (literary passage or artwork). Total performance time is again limited to a maximum of 27 minutes.

How many of these tasks would you feel comfortable doing now? Even if you aren’t able to hear the competition this week, the AGO has previous competition recordings available in the AGO Store. I found the recording from Nashville in 2012 listed in the Organ Music/Essays/Catalogs category. It also seems like you may be able to obtain other recordings from AGO National if you call and ask.

Now on Twitter

Because I received a request to report on the competition from someone who is not able to attend, I decided to set up a twitter account and live tweet the competition. I’ll eventually post a summary at organimprovisation.com, but if you’d like to follow along as it happens, I’ll do my best to make it informative and entertaining. With everyone following the World Cup, here’s my chance to be the announcer for the “American Cup” of organ improvisation. Follow me at @organimproviser to see if improvisation can be more exciting than soccer!

After a week of competitions, concerts, and workshops, I hope to have more practical advice for you next week.

Hoping you are having a fabulous summer of learning and fun!

Glenn


 
Recent additions to organimprovisation.com:

Organists:

Review:

Themes:


 
Newsletter Issue 9 – 2014 06 23
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Frédéric Blanc

frederic_blanc_mediumFrédéric Blanc was assistant organist at Saint-Sernin de Toulouse (1987-1995). A finalist of the International Improvisation Competition of Strasbourg in 1989, he has also been a prize winner of several other International Improvisations competitions, including Nuremberg (1996) and 2nd Prize in the Grand Prize of Chartres. In 1997, he was awarded the Grand Prize of the city of Paris, an international competition. Frédéric Blanc maintains an active career as a concert artist throughout Europe, as well as making several concert tours in the USA. He has recorded several CD for EMI, Aeolus, Motette devoted to improvisation and organ literature. Since 1999, Frédéric Blanc has served as organist at Notre Dame d’Auteuil, Paris.

Recordings:

Blanc: Live Improvisations


Blanc: Live improvisations


Organ Improvisations on Bach Toccata & Fugue in D Minor
This recording features many performers, including Lionel Rogg, Barbara Dennetlein, Frederic Blanc, Holm Vogel, Johannes Mayr, Vincent Thevenaz, and David Franke.

The OHS Catalog lists a DVD of Frederic Blanc offering improvisation instruction here.

Videos:
Free improvisation – Notre Dame d’Auteuil, Paris
Frédéric Blanc, François-Henri Houbart and Olivier Latry improvise

Free Themes

For our purposes here, free themes will be considered musical material written by someone else that is not associated with any lyrics. It may be a theme from another musical composition or newly written material.
For example:

Other examples from improvisation competitions are shown below.

2005improvisation1


2005improvisation2


thema 1 website


thema 2 website


See also the themes from the 1953 Haarlem Improvisation Competition. There are also links to hear the performance of each of the competitors.

Bálint Karosi

BalintKarosiOfficial website:
http://karosi.org/

A respected teacher of keyboard improvisation, Mr. Karosi has served on the faculty at Boston University and UMass Boston and is in demand as a private organ and improvisation instructor. In 2012, he won first prize at the University of Michigan Organ Improvisation Competition and was featured in an improvisation duel with renowned Dutch improviser Sietze de Vries at the National Concert Hall in Budapest. He also won a prize at the Brno International Improvisation Competition and the Rochette prize at the Conservatoire de Genève. He is the Minister of Music at First Lutheran Church in Boston, MA.

AGO Boston 2014

The 2014 National Convention of the American Guild of Organists will be held June 23-27 in Boston. The convention website with complete information may be found here.

Listed below is information about the events at the convention that will include or focus on improvisation:

National Competition in Improvisation:

  • Semi-final competition round
  • Monday, June 23, 9am to 1pm
    First Lutheran Church of Boston
    299 Berkeley Street, Boston

  • Final competition round
  • Thursday, June 26 at 9am

Concerts:

  • 2012 winner concert
  • Robert Nicholls
    Arlington Street Church
    351 Boylston St, Boston
    Wednesday, June 25 & Thursday, June 26, 3:30 pm

  • Concert
  • Thierry Escaich
    Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help
    1545 Tremont St, Boston
    Friday, June 27, 9:15 AM

  • Hymn Sing
  • Bruce Neswick and Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra
    Old South Church in Boston
    645 Boylston St, Boston
    Friday, June 27, 2:30 PM

  • Worship: Jazz Service and Concert: Silent Movie
  • Peter Edwin Krasinski
    Old South Church in Boston
    645 Boylston St, Boston
    Wednesday and Thursday, June 25 and June 26, 7:30 PM


Masterclass on Organ Improvisation

Thierry Escaich
Friday, June 27, 1:00 pm

Other workshops:
Tournemire’s Improvisation on “Victimae paschali”: Audio vs. Transcription
Kirsten Rutschman
Tuesday, June 24, 3:00 pm

Practical Aspects of Teaching Tournemire’s Improvisatory Style
Ann Labounsky
Tuesday, June 24, 3:30 pm

Improvisation Pedagogy: Sustainable Musicianship
Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra
Tuesday, June 24, 4:15 pm

Inspired Service Playing: How to Move From Here to There
Joyce Shupe Kull
Tuesday, June 24, 4:15 pm

Accompanying the Divine: Dramatic Improvisation in Liturgy and Silent Film
Peter Edwin Krasinski
Wednesday, June 25, 8:30 am

Extemporaneous Sublime: Indeterminacy and Transience of the Improvised Moment
Zvonimir Nagy

Thursday, June 26, 9:45 am

Harmony by the Numbers – Principles of Thoroughbass Fluency
Dean Billmeyer

Thursday, June 26, 11:00 am

Competitions

While decidedly fewer in number than competitions in organ performance, there are still a few improvisation competitions that take place. Below are brief descriptions of different competitions with links to the competition website for more information.

Chartres

The competition in improvisation consists of a pre-selection recorded round, two live eliminatory rounds (¼ finals and ½ finals) and a final round. The final round will take place on the great organ in Chartres Notre-Dame Cathedral. The competition takes place every four years with the next one anticipated to be in 2016.

Haarlem

The Haarlem International Organ Competition takes place every year in July and is open to organists under the age of 40. A pre-selection recorded round selects eight applicants to compete live in two elimination rounds. The final competition will take place on the Müller organ (1738 / IIIP / 62) in St Bavo’s Church.

NCOI

The American Guild of Organists National Competition in Organ Improvisation takes place every other year during the national convention of the American Guild of Organists. The competition is open to all organists regardless of age or citizenship.