Piano and then Organ, Organ and no piano. Question

[nachoba]

Acc, that's exactly my question.
cheers

[Wils]

Hi nachoba

Your post prompted me to register! I've been learning piano for five years and have recently begun organ lessons. Now I'm in a quandary as to whether to continue with piano lessons or concentrate purely on the organ. (Time & money are both factors to be considered, unfortunately.) My feeling is that if I stop piano, my keyboard skills will deteriorate rather rapidly. Even now, although I've reached an intermediate grade on piano I find it a challenge to play elementary grade organ pieces.

As to the question posed by acc, I can't imagine an organist wishing to take on a pupil without any prior keyboard experience, irrespective of whether reasonable progress can be made without it.

(By the way nachoba, I have the Orgue Mystique cycles too & am a Tournemire 'nut'!! Have you played his 'Petites Fleurs Musicales'?)

[acc]

As to the question posed by acc, I can't imagine an organist wishing to take on a pupil without any prior keyboard experience, irrespective of whether reasonable progress can be made without it.

Hi Wils,

Welcome to Magle's!

So if I understand you correctly, you can't imagine somebody starting the organ without prior keyboard experience, but you can imagine somebody starting the piano without prior keyboard experience. Why the difference?

[Wils]

Hi acc - thanks for the welcome!

I can't imagine a teacher wanting to teach organ from scratch because it's so much more complex an instrument to deal with, so a teacher would want a potential pupil to have basic keyboard experience as a prerequisite. It's been my experience when making enquiries that the requirement to have around intermediate grade piano is still alive & kicking!! I'm not saying that an organ is more difficult to master than a piano, just that the co-ordination & registration are complex and could be overwhelming for a keyboard novice. (Are there any teachers who are that patient? If so, I haven't met them....)

[pb05]

Like Giovanni, I've always been puzzled about this. I mean: why should the organ be the only instrument requiring prior practise of another instrument?

OK, I have not yet read the article that Aristide posted, but here is what I think.

Even a small two-keyboard organ, is at least one order of magnitude more complex than a piano. On the other hand, there is a non-void intersection between the two: the keyboard. So either way, you have to learn how to move your fingers with precision on a keyboard. Of course this is a generic view of the issue at hand, since each instrument comes with its own techniques etc., as we know very well.

In view now of the complexity of the organ, it should be advisable to already have good keyboard skills before undertaking any organ learning. In this way, you can concentrate on what is organ-specific and mostly: (1) registration, (2) learning to swim between at least two keyboards and (3) develop the very high coordination skills required, so that playing with both hands and feet becomes reality.

Now imagine all the previous, and probably more that the experienced members of this forum may bring forward, combined with a total lack of experience on keyboards and you get the picture. Playing a piece on a keyboard should not be much of a problem when one starts learning the organ for the above reasons. It happened to me to lose completely the control on a simple piece that I knew very well because my professor asked me to just play it with a different registration (a powerful, for my ears, plein jeu actually). I had finally to repeat again alone and be ready for the next lesson. Furthermore, knowing in advance to play keyboards, piano or whatever, will be very helpful in learning solo pedals. And that's how learning the pedals starts, solo.

So, knowing the piano before starting the organ looks to me as the IDEAL situation. Anything different from this should not be excluded, in principle. As for the harpsichord case, yes I feel it is better to learn that instead of the piano since the touch is something between the organ and the piano, so something more close to organ techniques. Again, this should be considered as the IDEAL case.

[Krummhorn]

Welcome to MIMF, Wils ... great to have you aboard

In my own situation, I started with Piano (6 years of lessons) and then going to Organ (6 years of private study, plus 2 years college) but then I was only 6 years old when I began learning the piano ... in teen or adult life the situations would be quite different.

If one has limited funds and their goal is to learn the organ, then by all means go for the organ lessons ... One can always practice any organ piece on a piano on their own time. Actually, for me anyway, a good workout of the notes on the piano always makes the organ practice much easier. Case in point: I am working on the Mozart Fantasie in F minor (organ) ... not an easy task - but working out fingering and learning the notes on the piano seems to be helping.

And while playing the piano, ones feet are not always idle ... ... ... there are the 3 pedals: Gas, Brake and Clutch

[acc]

I can't imagine a teacher wanting to teach organ from scratch because it's so much more complex an instrument to deal with, so a teacher would want a potential pupil to have basic keyboard experience as a prerequisite.

In view now of the complexity of the organ, it should be advisable to already have good keyboard skills before undertaking any organ learning. In this way, you can concentrate on what is organ-specific and mostly: (1) registration, (2) learning to swim between at least two keyboards and (3) develop the very high coordination skills required, so that playing with both hands and feet becomes reality.

I agree that good keyboard skills should be trained before tackling the complexities you both mention. But that still doesn't answer the question: you have to acquire those basic skills at some keyboard instrument, but why does it have to be the piano, and why can it not be the organ itself right away?

(I don't see the problem with a sensible organ teacher taking things step by step, telling a beginner "just play on the first manual for now", and "just draw the stops I tell you, we'll come back to that later". Same for the pedals.)

[pb05]

I agree that good keyboard skills should be trained before tackling the complexities you both mention. But that still doesn't answer the question: you have to acquire those basic skills at some keyboard instrument, but why does it have to be the piano, and why can it not be the organ itself right away?

Perhaps you noticed it, but in my answer i tried to use interchangeably the terms keyboard and piano. But which music school will learn you just "keyboard"? The piano is today, and in the past century, the universal image of what one means when he says "keyboard". It is a "normal" mechanical and so widely known instrument, a ubiquitous figure, probably synonymous to the "keyboard". I think this is the reason you will hear "one has to first learn piano and then organ". I don't see anything inherent to the piano techniques that would be organ related, other than it is just a keyboard. The way I understand it is something like a code to transmit the idea that ideally one needs keyboard skills before approaching the organ techniques. Then yes, one can have as a keyboard the one of the organ, I can take that. But if the said organ is a big one, then it is like riding a tank to shoot a mosquito. Some people don't care, others probably they do.

[acc]

Put like that, I agree: the piano out of ubiquity, rather than necessity.

As for your last point, a big organ is indeed not a good idea for a beginner, especially if its action is not mechanical (the latter type being essential to foster good habits of touch).

[nachoba]

Wils,
Good you found some answers here. I don't have that work you mention, however I played several "variae pieces" from Tournemire. They were, I think, written for the harmonium, however like Franck's "l'Organiste" if played at the organ with proper registration they sound really nice and much better than at the harmonium.
Going back the the discussion of this thread, I guess that may be we are at a turning point in organ teaching. I guess that in the past (and with past I mean since the piano appeared) piano skills were "the" way to go. Prior was the harpsichord, etc.
Aristide, I've read the article on Bach's clavichord technique, it's quiet interesting. I have a question that sometimes puzzles me, at the clavichord one it's able to perform dynamics, isn't it? Then, why Bach and other composers stated whether it has to be played piano or forte, etc?
regards

[Thomas Dressler]

WOW, now here's an interesting thread!

This subject seems to really get organists going, and opinions tend to be strong on this. I'll chime in with my own opinions and experience on this issue.

My own opinion is that piano is not at all necessary, and can be counterproductive if the student really wants to play the organ and not the piano. Why do I say this? Because that's exactly how I was. Over the years, I got to really like the piano, but I never took a piano lesson until I was in college. I started on the organ in a "preparatory" program at Susquehanna University for local music students (not university students) when I was 13. The teachers were themselves university music students, and my teacher had no idea what to do with this rebellious upstart. She asked her professor, James Boeringer, for advice and he told her to just teach me technique at the organ. I even played some of Bartok's Mikrokosmos on the organ! But the point is that it worked fine for me, and if I had been forced to play the piano at that time I don't know what I would have done.

I do feel that for technical reasons, the piano can be counterproductive to sensitive organ technique if one is not clearly taught the difference between the two. The major difference is that organ keys have the "pluck" near the top of the keystroke and the piano requires that one "strike" the keybed. To pull through a pluck and to strike a keybed are two completely different things. However, I have seen many, many "organists" play insensitively because they are striking the bottom of the keystroke. Especially if playing a tracker, one needs to sensitively PULL or PUSH through the pluck; and then there is another important factor that can be largely ignored in piano playing--one needs to CLOSE the pallets sensitively, too, which means controlling the speed of the keys' returns as well. It is a completely different technique. In my opinion there is much insensitive organ playing because of too much piano technique at the organ. Even on an electric or pneumatic action, the playing will be much more clean if one is aware of the point of contact and not striking the keybeds.

For this reason, Giovanni's mention of the harpsichord is a valid one, to be sure. Nowadays I practice a lot on the harpsichord because it also has a pluck near the top of the keystroke, much more similar to the organ than the piano. The clavichord also has distinct advantages. Anyone who has played a well regulated one will immediately note the shallow touch. Interestingly, the shallow keystroke is just about the same as the distance to the pluck on an organ or harpsichord. So while one does need to "bed" the keys on a clavichord, this still involves a very shallow touch. One develops a very sensitive awareness of this area where the pluck occurs on organs and harpsichords.

In my opinion, these major differences make careful instruction necessary when moving from the piano to the organ, and it is often done unsuccessfully because the teacher him/herself is not aware or does not clearly articulate the differences. James Boeringer stressed the importance of learning to play tracker instruments and I still remember him stating in his colorful way that piano technique does not work at the organ. He said you could either press the key carefully or hit it with a sledgehammer, makes no difference in the volume! And how many times have I seen "organists" beating the keys when carefully planned use of body weight would work much better, even on the heaviest tracker action!

I will not say piano lessons are bad, just that careful and thoughtful instruction and practice are necessary when making the switch. Non tracker actions are more forgiving, but then one never learns real organ technique, either.

Thomas Dressler

[AllanP]

I recently started organ lessons again after a lapse of several years. My technique of striking the keys led to an uneven attack for the notes. She assigned a piece using percussion to enable my ear to hear the uneven attack. Possibly playing the piano gives the same effect of making clear uneven notes. Tracker action is similar to the piano in that the mechanical nature of the touch gives tactile feedback to create a more even attack. A stop with a lot of chiff may help the ear to hear the uneven attack.

From my own experience, once my ear became able to hear the correct attack of the notes, the use of the percussion to help hear the effect was no longer necessary.

[Wils]

My own opinion is that piano is not at all necessary, and can be counterproductive if the student really wants to play the organ and not the piano.

Thanks, Thomas, for your informative post. Since posting on this thread in September I've been trying to make up my mind whether to carry on with piano lessons and teach myself organ, or commence organ lessons and carry on with piano in my own time. After reading this, I can say I've almost reached a decision! I prefer the organ, but having started learning the piano in my fifties(!), I'm reluctant to let the skill lapse. (I can't afford lessons on both instruments.) Also, the organ feels the more natural instrument for me, as co-ordination is not one of my problems, but expression at the piano is! (So many factors, so little time...hopefully all will be resolved in the new year!)

Thanks once again,
Wils

[giovannimusica]

I concur with Thomas wholeheartedly and I confess that harpsichord and clavichord are relative late-comers to me. I was and still am mad about the Organ - playing, construction, tonal architecture, scaling, voicing..you name it, I'm on it!

If a student has a *burning* desire to learn the Organ - the kind of desire that I had - by all means, dive in head first. I was the happiest man on earth as a kid seated at the console of the West Point Military Academy Organ and played Toccata & Fugue in d-minor BWV 565.

Cheers!

Giovanni

[Diaphone Profundo 64]

Very interesting topic indeed!!!. I have a question to that! If the piano is not necessary for the organ studies, are there any other possible methods or tutorials for a young musician to start playing the organ, but providing the complete technique of the instrument? I really am curious to be informed! Thank everyone who will answer.