Ein feste Burg

EinFesteBurg
Ein feste Burg is one of the best known of Martin Luther’s hymns. The words, a paraphrase of Psalm 46, and melody were written sometime between 1527 and 1529. It is strongly associated with the Reformation. The original melody was much more rhythmic, but it has been standardized into the isometric rhythm shown above.

See a list of other chorale and hymn themes here.

Videos:
Maria Scharwieß – Organ Improvisation:Ein feste Burg – Nathanaelchurch in Berlin-Schöneberg
Sietze de Vries – Ein Feste Burg improvisation – Martinikerk, Groningen
Sietze de Vries – Improvisation Ein feste Burg – Leeuwarden

O dass ich tausend Zungen hätte

ODassIchTausendZungen

Johann Balthaser König (1691 – 1758) composed this tune, which later became associated with Johann Mentzer’s hymn “O dass ich tausend Zungen hätte” (Oh, That I Had a Thousand Voices).

See a list of other chorale and hymn themes here.

Videos:
William Porter – O dass ich tausend Zunge hätte – Prelude
William Porter – O dass ich tausend Zunge hätte – Canon
William Porter – O dass ich tausend Zunge hätte – Intermezzo
William Porter – O dass ich tausend Zunge hätte – Fugue

Jürgen Essl

essl_juergenWebsite:
http://www.juergen-essl.de/
You can hear him on Spotify.

Jürgen Essl studied organ in Germany and France with Ludger Lohmann and Francis Chapelet, later completing his studies in Vienna with Michael Radulescu. A Professor at The Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart since 2003, Jürgen Essl has also served as Professor for Organ at the Musikhochschule Lübeck and an organist at the Castle Church of Sigmaringen. He has released several recordings of improvisations available through www.ORGANpromotion.org. He is a co-founder of the International Summer Academy of Music – ISAM in Ochsenhausen, Germany.

Videos:
Jürgen Essl – ESPACIOS – Mallorca

Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her

VomHimmelHoch

Composed by Martin Luther in 1535, “Vom Himmel hoch” was first published in Valentin Schumann’s Geistliche Lieder in 1539. Johann Sebastian Bach used the melody in his Christmas Oratorio and as the theme for his Canonic Variations.

See a list of other chorale themes here.

Videos:
Cor Ardesch – Vom Himmel hoch – Grote Kerk, Dordrecht
Maria Scharwieß – Vom Himmel hoch – Nathanaelchurch Berlin-Schöneberg

Karl Richter

Karl RichterKarl Richter (1926 – 1981) was a German conductor, choirmaster, organist, and harpsichordist. He studied with Günther Ramin, Carl Straube and Rudolf Mauersberger. In 1949 he became organist at St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, where Johann Sebastian Bach was once Musical Director. In 1951 he moved to Munich, where he taught at the conservatory and was cantor and organist at St. Mark’s Church.


Videos:
Karl Richter – Improvisation – Bavokerk, Haarlem

Peter Ewers

Website:
www.vpe-web.de
You can hear him on Spotify.

Peter Ewers is a German organist, musicologist and psychotherapist. He served as assistant organist at the Paderborn Cathedral from 1991 to 1996.

Book:

Just play! An invitation to improvisation

Recordings:

Peter Ewers: Les Planètes, Improvisations

He has four albums available at:
www.peterewers.bandcamp.com

Videos:
Peter Ewers – Organ improvisation – La Madeleine, Paris
Peter Ewers – Méditation on “Dich liebt, oh Gott, mein ganzes Herz” – St-Aposteln, Cologne

The Four C’s of Improvisation: Coherent

As we continue our journey through the month of May and the Four C’s of Improvisation, this week, we arrive at #3: coherent. We already explored the first two (competent and convincing) and colorful will be our topic next week. Last week’s lesson from Naji Hakim – “Never play faster than you can think.” – will also be a key to being coherent.

Style

Continuing our general metaphor of music as language, style can be considered the type of language or dialect that we are using to communicate. A coherent speech will be given in the same language. Hopefully, it will be one that the listener can understand. Anyone who has ever had the privilege to attend a multicultural celebration (mass or other worship service) where languages were changed frequently will quickly recognize the difficulty in achieving a coherent celebration when certain segments of the population can not understand what is being said in one or more of the languages used. Just imagine for a moment constructing sentences where all nouns are in German, verbs are in French, adjectives are in English and adverbs are in Spanish. Even though my general comprehension is pretty good in all four of those languages, combining then together into a sentence makes an incoherent mess: Ich voudrais chocolate Eis hoy. While I recognize there are occasional words that have crossed from one language to another, even then, the pronunciation usually changes. It is far more coherent to present in one language than to mix them all together. So it is also with music. Choosing a musical style that one has mastered or playing slow enough in a style in order to master it is a key element to coherent improvisation.

Form

The order can in German words change.
Even if we manage to use the same language, if there is no apparent form, we lose coherence. I remember from my study of German that you could put just about anything at the beginning of the sentence in order to choose to emphasize some particular element. Someone once pointed out to me that I would never hear a German interrupt another German speaking because until you heard the verb – which often was at the end of the phrase- you wouldn’t necessarily have any idea what the person was actually saying about all the other elements you had heard. There are simple forms and complex forms that we can use to improvise: binary, ternary, passacaglia, variations, rondo, sonata allegro, fugue, and so forth.

We can also construct our form as we go through motivic development. The key here is to have a plan in mind. Sure, we may need to end the prelude or offertory quicker than expected, so our form may be subject to change along the way, but if we started with a plan and know where we are in it, then we should have a pretty good idea of how to bring the piece to a coherent close. I remember once hearing Naji Hakim improvise for an offertory where he started treating a chorale (or chant) in a specific way as an ornamented chorale. It became clear to me that if he continued this for all the phrases of the chorale, the piece would be too long, so just before the last phrase, he changed and did something different. I remember being quite shocked at the time, but in the twenty or thirty seconds that he took to wrap up the piece and include that last phrase, he managed to turn it into something completely coherent with what he had done before. I could have hardly imagined a more fitting ending to the piece. One of the simplest, yet perhaps most difficult ways to practice form is to practice repeating oneself. Play a melody or chord progression and then immediately repeat it. Increase the length or complexity of the phrase until you have difficulty. Repeat yourself, but change tonal center in the repetition (transpose the idea). If you are playing just a melody, repeat yourself with the other hand or even on the pedalboard with your feet. Repetition is the key to motivic development and a comprehensible formal plan, and these are the keys to coherence.

The Store

Hopefully you found some time to practice your competency and conviction last week and didn’t get stuck in a YouTube spiral watching Derren Brown clips after my last email…. While working to add as much useful information to organimprovisation.com as possible, this week, I set up a store on Amazon.com where you can go to purchase items related to improvising at the organ. When I have access to the items, I expect to offer reviews and critiques of the items in future newsletters or posts. Perhaps because I’ve been working on my collection of improvisation materials for some time, I find the sample available at Amazon.com to be a little sparse at the moment, but then again, I think most of my materials I’ve picked up from a specialty retailer (if not from the organist on the CD directly)…. Have a look and let me know if there is anything that catches your eye that I should review promptly. I also added a list of summer courses in 2014. Please let me know of any others that you might know of.

Next week, it’s on to color!

May all your improvs be coherent!

Glenn Osborne


 
Recent additions to organimprovisation.com:

The Store

Summer Courses for 2014

Organists:

Themes:


 
Newsletter Issue 4 – 2014 05 19
See the complete list of past newsletter issues here.
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Hymn To Joy

HymntoJoy The melody of the final movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s final symphony, Symphony No. 9, is often associated with the English text “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” written by Henry van Dyke in 1907. Beethoven originally used portions of a poem by Friedrich Schiller (“Ode an die Freude”, first line: “Freude, schöner Götterfunken”). Beethoven’s tune (without Schiller’s words) was adopted as the Anthem of Europe by the Council of Europe in 1972, and subsequently the European Union.

See a list of other popular hymn and chorale themes here.

Videos:
Vincent Dubois – Improvisation on Ode to Joy by BEETHOVEN – Reims Basilique St Remy

Stephen Tharp

Stephen_Tharpx_May_2007Official Website:
http://www.stephentharp.com/

Having played more than 1400 concerts across 43 tours worldwide, Stephen Tharp has built one of the most well-respected international careers in the world, earning him the reputation as the most traveled concert organist of his generation. He is an important champion of new organ music, and continues to commission and premiere numerous compositions for the instrument. The first such piece was Jean Guillou’s symphonic poem Instants, Op. 57, which Tharp premiered at King’s College, Cambridge, England in February 1998. Works dedicated to him include George Baker’s Variations on “Rouen” (2009) and David Briggs’ Toccata Labyrinth (2006).

Stephen Tharp earned his BA degree, magna cum laude, from Illinois College, Jacksonville, IL and his MM from Northwestern University, Chicago, where he studied with Rudolf Zuiderveld and Wolfgang Rübsam, respectively. He has also worked privately with Jean Guillou in Paris.

Video:
Improvisation – St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York

Otto Maria Krämer

OttoKraemerWebsite:
http://www.orgelimprovisationen.de

Otto Maria Krämer studied at the Folkwang Hochschule, Essen and at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf. His teacher was Wolfgang Seifen. In 1995 he won the first prize of the Concours d’Improvisation a l’orgue Montbrison. He teaches now in the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne.


Recordings:

Otto Maria Kramer: Improvisations

Videos:
Suite Francaise – Plein jeu
Suite Francaise – Fugue
Suite Francaise – Récit
Suite Francaise – Basse de trompette
Suite Francaise – Quatuor
Suite Francaise – Duo
Suite Francaise – Tierce en taille
Suite Francaise – Dialogue sur les grands jeux
Symphonie Francaise – Allegro ma non troppo
Symphonie Francaise – Cantabile
Symphonie Francaise – Scherzando on “Macht hoch die Tür”
Symphonie Francaise – Prière
Symphonie Francaise – Final
Improvisation in Memoriam Marcel Dupré on “Ave maris stella”