Beginning Church Organist Needs Help with Repertoire

[zwielight]

Greetings!

Backstory:

I am 24 and have been a pianist all my life (peaked with Rach 2 eight years ago). In my last semester of college, I decided to take organ lessons on a whim. I learned quickly and mastered half of the Eight Little Preludes and Fugues at the end of the four-month semester.

Then I graduated.

In order to have access to a practice instrument, I applied for and was surprisingly accepted as organist for a small church, playing on a 5-rank organ. A year ago, I was promoted to a better position with a 54-rank Moeller instrument (loud and obnoxious but no complaints!). At that time, I also bought a refurbished Rodgers '86 for a home practice instrument.

The Problem:

My church prefers meditations and arrangements of more contemporary (meaning 150 years old or less) hymns. So I play a good deal of Edward L. Good, Lani Smith, Todd Kendall, and Franklin Ritter, just to rattle off a few names. There's no Vierne, Franck, Langlais, Bach, Mendelssohn... because there isn't time!!

I'm not going to complain about the amount of service music I am responsible for on the organ each week, since I know most of you equal and surpass me (Prelude, Hymns, Liturgy, Offertory, Choir Anthem, Postlude). To find new pieces each Sunday and to keep up with practice takes up all of my allotted 'organ time', so much so that I don't have time to truly practice any organ literature, which I think would be my true love if I ever found a good practice routine to include these pieces.

I find that if I try learning a Bach Pastorale, I can only practice a maximum of 1-2 hours per week, and progress is so slow that I eventually lose interest.

My questions:

What should I do?

Are any of you in the same boat? How do you keep up with your studies and your church duties?

Are there any good collections of accessible French music you can recommend? (I prefer French music to Baroque organ works -- so expressive and dramatic) I won't embarrass myself by listing the very few classical pieces I've actually mastered. I can't practice music that I don't have, and I don't want to waste money on compilations that will be mostly over my head in ability.

Get a Teacher!

I'm aware this would solve many problems

Unfortunately, as a newly-wed working three jobs to support her PhD student husband, it isn't possible financially. In the past I worked with PhD organ students (for free!), but I found that I was wasting my time as I didn't always have the necessary weekly hours to devote to practicing the works assigned to me; I ended up practicing at lessons, and that's frustrating for both parties.


Thank you so much for reading my novella! And I look forward to any comments and suggestions.

Happy Easter!

[Krummhorn]

Hi zwielight

Welcome to the forum .

One of my best sources for service music is the IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library which is a free public domain sheet music library site. All the organ works download in PDF format for easy storage and printing.

You mention French music ... and Alexandre Guilmant springs to mind. On that page the Liturgical Organist and Practical Organist are chock full of easy to medium difficult selections of varied length.

L' Organiste is a 114 page book of Cesar Franck's music ... not all of Franck's music is difficult.

There is a plethora of PD music ripe for the picking on that site ... and it's all free. Even the complete works of JS Bach are there, albeit the Gesellschaft version. The Dupre and Schweitzer editions are still not yet PD.

Anyway, have fun with these and hope this helps out with your query.

[Ghekorg7]

Hi Zwielight and happy Easter too !!
Your situation reminds me when I was 24 and I had to study in the law school of the Athens Univercity and at the same time workin'as a professional piano/multi-keybord/organ player with 5 bands, add to that: studio work, arrangments, composing/performing for the Greek National Radio, TV srs, films, go abroad for live performances, go back to Athens fo give Law exams, study, practice, .... the mouth of madness... I was sleeping for about 4 hous a day and I had some cats to care about. Fortunately no marriage at the time. But no much time to practice my favorite organ repertoire (mainly Buxtehude, Bach, Pachelbell, Bohm) and my piano Heroes music (Chopin,Schubert,Beethoven,List) ....
What I did?
I started to say NO to a lot of propositions and I defined my real needs and what I truly wanted to do. And it worked prety well (exept for my Law diploma ...he,he... I had to work to Thessaloniki and every 3 days I had to go down to Athens 500km drive to give my exams and then back).

Krummhorn gives you the best start (IMSLP) for you quarry. I only think what I would have done if we had then (in 1984) the free library......

I hope I helped and looking forward to hear from you in these Forums
Welcome and Have fun!
Panos

[marval]

Hello zwielight

Welcome to the forum, and a happy Easter.

I will leave the experts to answer your question.


Margaret

[Dorsetmike]

Hi, another free source is the Werner Icking archive, composer list here:

http://icking-music-archive.org/ByComposer.php

I tend to use it more than the IMSLP mentioned above as it also has some Finalé .mus files, IMSLP seems to have more Noteworthy .nwc files.

[el_supremo]

Look up Leon Boellmann's music on IMSLP and WIMA. He wrote a lot of short pieces that are quite easy to play.

Pete

[jvhldb]

Welcome on board.

I had the same problem, to much to learn and not enough time (my teacher usually gives me a work load that require practicing 3 hours a day), so if I have to relief the organist I don't really have time to practice. I found that Franck Cesar's Gregorian albums are ideal for such situations. Some of them are easy enough to site read and by adjusting the tempo they can be used for anything from a meditative service up to a modern/funky service.

[zwielight]

Thanks so much for your encouragement. I had forgotten about IMSLP and what a great resource it is, so thanks for mentioning it! Off to work through some Guilmant and Franck!! It's going to be a good day.

[Corno Dolce]

Hi zwielight,

Welcome aboard to a wonderful website with much to see and do. My colleagues have already covered the resources for easy yet meaningful music that doesn't insult one's intelligence. Please do make yourself feel very much at home here.

Cheers,

CD