144: Why (And How) I Learned The Organ

My first trip to Germany (I was 21) I walked into a church in Weimar and heard— by beautiful coincidence— an unseen organist play Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue, BWV 582. This was a piece I heard for the first time only a year before. I remember exactly in which chair I first heard it. If the Chaconne is Bach’s universe tightly wound into a handheld box, the Passacaglia is a different vision of the same, exploding through thousands of pipes. It is a piece you cannot overlook when thinking of the crowning achievements in Bach’s career.

At 21, I knew Bach was Bach, but I hadn’t yet dedicated myself to him fully. Even so, I knew Bach’s organ works could be the supreme solo musical activity: the most complete musical experience had by a single person. Think about it: it’s making music with all four limbs, drumming on multiple keyboards. The soundboard of this instrument is a church.

But I was a pianist, not an organist. At that young age, I had already excluded myself from being able to participate in certain musical activities. Why? Where did I get this notion?

Knowing your limitations is healthy in many areas of life, but in music— especially young musicians— you should know: your potential is unlimited. I don’t know how or why one draws the line at what a student can and cannot do, why some teachers restrain enthusiasm, or make students feel limited to certain areas from a young age. I’d guess it’s a mixture of abuse and a fear of money.

Abuse is handed down: the teacher was told they can’t do X, soon the student learns to stay away from X. ‘It deepens like a continental shelf.’

We glorify abuse on the screen: teachers inflicting suffering so the student may rise stronger after being broken… but this makes for a good film— not a good life. To actually teach like this is nothing more than sophisticated child abuse. As I’ve said on the show in my ‘advice to musical teens,’ if you ever find a teacher who leaves you feeling worthless or unhappy with music, leave that teacher immediately. There is no reason why a musical education shouldn’t be full of joy and happiness and discovery. Yes, hard work, too, but under the right teacher, hard work can be a joy, not a punishment.

One objects, saying a line must be drawn early in order to mold the student into an employable musician. “You should focus on only one instrument, kid.” In an era of specialization, this seems almost necessary. But is the ultimate goal of music a job? Money? A c-a-r-e-e-r? My colleagues reading this can confirm that many of us in the business have lost the spark that initially made us want to become musicians.

But I won’t harp on the perils of ‘building a career’ or the traumatic musical upbringing I experienced. I want to focus on how, during my few decades in music, I have time and time again doubted my abilities, only to find that there was no reason for doing so. Rather than passing the blame, I’d like to revisit these moments and focus on how I overcame such a crippling emotion.

Transposition

I remember learning a concerto when I was 16 or so— probably Mozart or Beethoven, and I was trying to memorize a section that happened earlier, only now it was in a new key. I explained to my father that, could I transpose, I wouldn’t have to struggle to learn the passage more than once— if I had the type of mind that could transpose. He shrugged and said, ‘so learn how to transpose’ and walked away.

That made me mad. What an idiot! I thought. One can’t learn such things. Some are born with the gift of transposition, I wasn’t.

Why I thought this at such a young age is a bit sad and confusing (and I’ll resist launching into a rant about how, if a student is advanced enough to play Beethoven, transposing should be something they learned long ago.) For whatever reason, in my mind, I couldn’t transpose.

Of course, one does learn how to do such things, and I did— even if it was nearly a decade later. One starts with little things: simple melodies, popular songs, dances… For me the major turning point came when I stopped seeing harmonies as ‘E-flat Major’ or ‘d minor’ but rather as numbers, positions, relations to other chords, ‘this is the sub-dominant’ or ‘this is a whole-step down.’ The name of the chord is meaningless but its number is full of meaning.

At one point, transposing seemed unreachable, unimaginable. But one can always learn the most complicated musical thing if you are completely focused on the specific goal for a very long time. I kept a fortune cookie in my nightstand when I was a boy because I thought the image was hilarious, not because I found meaning— but how wise it seems now! ‘If enough people bang their heads on a brick wall, the wall will eventually fall down.’

Rock, and other genres of music

The next big obstacle in my thinking came at Juilliard, when my roommate, a jazz musician who was more into the NYC rock scene, asked me to cover for the keyboardist in his punk band. Not only had I never played any music besides classical music, I knew I couldn’t play any other music. (I wonder if the arrogance I had developed about classical music as the ‘pure’ art, was fear masking my inability to partake in any form of more social music. I wonder if this is the arrogance of many…) Whatever the case, my roommate didn’t have my personal obstacles in his head. He didn’t see any reason why I wouldn’t make for a fine punk keyboardist.

While most of the songs never had more than a few chords, and there’s nothing ‘technical’ to play, rock music was an absolute education. Never learned from sheet music, finding where and how to improvise, finding a ‘feel’ that is unlike anything in classical music, this was a new world for me that influenced the way I think about music to this day. Again, there was an initial stage of feeling stupid, both musically and socially: all of this can make you feel out of place, but pushing past this doesn’t take very long.

Rock music opened up other genres to me, bluegrass, jazz… my forays into these genres helped develop my ear. I learned to play the accordion because I wanted to play with my friends who played bluegrass outside. (The accordion, by the way, expanded my mind: the left side is buttons, organized by circle of fifths. The right side is a normal keyboard. When I realized this is because harmony, the left side, doesn’t move by step like melodies, but moves by fifths, I was forever changed.) I ended up touring with some bands for a few years, playing in settings that undoubtedly made me a better classical musician. If you can handle people spilling beer on you, you can handle an audience clearing their throats.

Why I had assumed I couldn’t play rock is maybe not so bad as why I assumed I shouldn’t play rock. Both ideas were built into my identity as a pianist. When I was in the van, driving to grungy venues, playing for $13 a show, when my instrument was missing two of few of the plastic keys it had, was I a pianist?

Giant, impossible Bach

The next large hurdle deals with those activities that a pianist should do, namely, memorize large amounts of music. When I had heard of Paul Jacob’s triumphant marathon playing the complete organ works, my immediate thought was, ‘I could never do something like that.’ My reaction to Paul’s achievement was one of instant self-doubt. Had someone shrugged like my father, and said, ‘so memorize all of Bach’ I would have said, again, what an idiot!

I hadn’t set out to achieve any goal: my marathon started small, with a single volume of The Well-Tempered Clavier., and I didn’t set out to memorize that either, but after two years playing selections in concert, I realized I had performed most of Book Two. Could I memorize all 48? There are rumors of pianists having had all 48 from memory, could I join that club? This was something I never imagined I could do, in fact when I played my first prelude and fugue at 16, I was told it was already too late.

A year later and I had done just that. Looking at the density of the counterpoint, I was quite convinced that I had memorized some of Bach’s most complex music, so would the suites come easier? Another year, I had all the suites, the next, all the partitas, on and on until about eight years later, I had memorized Bach’s near-complete1 keyboard works. I celebrated by playing everything in six five-day, five-hour cycles at the first Bach Store.

Were my past self to look at this accomplishment, I’m quite sure he’d say, ‘I could never do something like that.’ This is because it really does look impossible —but it isn’t! It might take nearly ten years of fairly constant dedication, but that time is the blink of an eye, and such discipline stays with you forever.

Pianist or keyboardist?

I was having an identity crisis: was I a pianist? Or was I into Bach? Are these ideas mutually exclusive? How could I consider myself ‘into Bach’ if I wasn’t familiar with his instruments? Yes, Bach on the piano is a miracle, but a Bach pianist sounds sort of like hypocrisy.

I started small: I was given a clavichord by a lovely lady who hadn’t ever used it but as a table. I brought it home and, within seconds— this is an accurate measurement, not an exaggeration— I realized the way I had been fingering Bach and other early music wouldn’t work on such an instrument. Could it be, I asked, that our modern approach would have been completely foreign to Bach? This instant lesson from a clavichord put me in the middle of a dark forest.

I set out to tune the clavichord, but I didn’t have a hammer so I used pliers. I broke strings which distressed me immensely at first, but later became a blessing: the world of instrument repair is not something most pianists are familiar with, but it was a world that Bach knew intimately. Learning how to wind a tuning peg, how to tie hitch pin loops, these are skills that put me in direct touch with an older world of musicians who knew how to care and look after their instruments. This gave my musicianship a feeling of competence I never knew about. Again, I wonder, is the disdain with which pianists look down on the humble life of a piano tuner a fear of not knowing how to tune their own piano?

Now, the clavichord is a nice transition for pianists because one can still inflect, it is very much like a delicate piano, but the harpsichord is utterly foreign. So was I pianist or Bachian?

I went to France to study harpsichord. I am also the proud owner of a harpsichord which I now know how to maintain, tune, repair, voice, even build parts of. But this began with real sadness and frustration, wondering why I’d put myself through such trials. Feeling like a beginner again, and telling myself ‘I can never be a harpsichordist… it’s too late! It’s too late to learn.’ All the skills I now possess began to the sad tune of ‘I can’t do this.’

I was wrong!

The king of instruments

Once, I was shown into an organ loft where I could go and play for however long I liked. This is a life changing experience— seriously. I urge every musician reading to go into that church you’ve never been in, and ask to play the organ. Even if you can’t play anything but a chord, pull out all the stops and play that chord. You’re not going to break the organ, you’re not being rude. Put yourself in the thick of all that power and you’ll see it is no accidental nickname, ‘the king of instruments.’

I used those few hours to figure out what all the buttons and levers do, playing one stop at a time, completely overwhelmed by the physical vibrations— simply stunned by the force and the arrangement of all the pipes. To sit in the middle of such a machine is awesome. Some readers won’t know that organ pipes are often arranged in a ‘stereo’ fashion, where one pipe is placed on the far left, and the closest half-step is on the complete other side of the loft. So, playing a chromatic scale sounds as if each note is alternating from ear to ear — this is an amazing sensation that should be experienced by every musician.

With my interest piqued, but still saddened that I was born ‘pianist,’ I must have mentioned my identity crisis to my wife, who, not plagued by my crippling self-doubt, simply walked into the local London church and mentioned my curiosity. (Nothing anybody could have done for me could have been kinder.) Suddenly I had an instrument!

When I first met with the local organist, I assumed he would be a genius like Paul or Helmut Walcha. Again, self-doubt convinced me that I could never measure up to the musicianship of an organist, even the local church organist, but it didn’t take long before I saw that, while he certainly had more physical ease at the instrument, there was little apart from this physicality he could teach me.

The local organist was also timid in making repairs on the 250-year-old instrument, but I, from my work with harpsichords and clavichords, was not shy. Soon enough I found myself on the inside of the instrument, tuning flue pipes, voicing reeds, replacing trackers, fixing an organ— feeling deeply connected to Bach. Would my 16-year-old self have adored or despised this vision of me, covered in century-old dust, gently tapping pipes into tune?

As for my playing with my feet, I spent only a week or 10 days in London every month. Any progress, therefore, disappeared quickly. I had the same frustrating experience many times: becoming comfortable playing the bass with the feet— not the left hand, a mental gymnastic that must be very familiar to keyboardists. Even after months of practice, this would still take some 24 hours to ‘click.’ By the third day, I had dusted off my brain and was ready to get my legs into shape. Maybe five days later, I was playing organ music— some of it even convincingly! The first time I played, fluently, even the simplest Bach organ piece brought me to tears. Why had I rated such a skill as beyond me? Why don’t other pianists know how to do this? Why did no one encourage this?! What is wrong with the world of music? Playing one page of Bach’s organ music for yourself is worth so much more than a life onstage! Why…?! Why…!?

But then, my sojourn done, I couldn’t practice for another three weeks. Progress faded, improvement was slow. I doubted I would ever be able to play the great masterpieces.

This frustrating period of two years came to an end when my wife and I settled. I bought an organ console. In addition I was given access (and instantly became the local organist) to several churches in nearby towns (the UK is great for that.)

My progress exploded. I had daily access and no excuses now. I began tracking my progress meticulously, noting which pieces I was learning and how fast I could play them. Gradually, as if I were a teenager again, I increased the speed week to week. Since my very first years of learning music, I hadn’t ever permitted myself to go so slowly, to really sound as if I were a complete beginner.

My birthday present to myself

These days, I meet weekly with another organist in the area and we trade ideas about registration (which combinations of stops to pull) which is an endless art, even on the small organ where we meet. One can never forget the comment about Bach pulling ‘the most unexpected combinations of stops to the organ builder’s horror, but, once heard, they found the most agreeable tones.’ Two weeks ago, after I played the ‘wedge’ prelude and fugue— already a huge accomplishment for me— without saying anything, the organist flipped a few pages to the Passacaglia. I laughed in disbelief— still so full of self-doubt!

I went home and began learning it at a very slow tempo. A tempo, by the way, that was already nearly three times what I’d have needed just to get through the notes those first days in London: I used to practice at 20 BPM to the 8th note! There are no shortcuts to learning something new.

Learning the Passacaglia, it dawned on me: it was two months before my 40th birthday. I am going to perform the Passacaglia and Fugue before I’m 40. This is where it was all leading. My life, my goals, my work, my passion… I, was going to be that unseen organist in Weimar I heard nearly 20 years before. I was going to travel back, travel through time and pay a visit to my old self, head full of ambitious Beethoven-based goals, and I would drop this orhwurm in his head.

What’s more important, fame or your health?

Objection: Who has the time to work on such difficult goals in the first place? After all, I’ve got to learn the Nellinini quintet-fantasy next week! I can’t just play organ music in slow motion for months!

I read a line in the Tao Teh Ching, ‘What’s more important? Fame or your health?’ This line saw right through me, attacked me, really. It unsettled me but I didn’t know why. I was focused on the conventional path in music: learn big programs, win this award, get this management, A+B+C = career. This is, after all, the way we are told careers happen, unlock one door, then the next one, then the next.

But Lao Tze pierced me. Fame or health? What!? Is it a dilemma? He was staring at me with the same eye-twinkle only the enlightened can give you. I suddenly realized why this line upset me: how could I possibly choose fame over health? Health, meaning mental health, meaning going deeply into all that keeps you sane and happy.

I had (and continue to have) an inner debate about success and validation— are they the same? Can I be fulfilled accomplishing things I value, or would I be happier reaching goals that other people can see: awards, reputable venues, playing with famous people. Or maybe I don’t value the right things? What you personally call success, vs. what the ‘business’ calls it, these might not be mutually exclusive, but for many of my colleagues— and maybe for Lao Tze— they are. There seemed to be a distinct line between what musicians wanted to be doing, and what they were doing. I’ve heard a depressing amount of times, sentiment like, ‘of course I’d rather stay home and play Bach all day!’ But my colleagues were concerned with an image, or a sort of relevance to their community. Of course they wanted to hole up in a cabin for three years, learning exactly the music they most loved, but when they emerged, the business would have passed them by…

But what is this business? I’ve had some colleagues rise to world fame, while others dropped off the face of the earth, and the musicianship, the talent, the hard work, none of that seemed to match proportionally. I was unsettled by the notion of ‘fame’ being something through which others view you, whereas ‘health’ was how the self views the self. ‘Career success’ could emerge or disappear suddenly and without warning, but ‘inner success?’ That would never disappear.

Committing to those ideas which meant inner success, dedicating myself to goals that meant ‘health,’ this required the boldest act of leaving self-doubt behind: it meant trusting that I alone could be the judge of my own success, not other people. I’d never trade my ability to play the organ for a concert at Carnegie Hall. And anyhow, if Carnegie Hall is a reflection of the truth in any way, the people who dig deepest into themselves will play there more often than those who pursue the tired avenues of competition, management, labels…

Opsimath organist

Learning the organ has been the hardest thing I can remember doing. It has taken me back to the beginnings of learning music. I have felt the same states of wonder I felt at nine years old, when I looked at a clef, wondering how it works, counting ledger lines looking for an answer, or writing in one fingering and crossing it out five minutes later. I have sat witnessing my brain form new trenches, uncovering strange habits. I found various rhythms between feet and hands that my body simply refused to do, as if I only just realized I can’t pat my head and rub my belly. These basic problems required such slowing down that I embarrassed my brain by watching how slowly the body was learning.

I feel like I’ve lived a second musical education. In this time, I’ve been able to look back on the organ repertoire as I looked at pieces in my childhood: they looked so much bigger back then! Certain measures of the organ repertoire made my jaw drop at the mere thought of being able to play them. Now I play some of them without thinking. So what am I? Where has all this doubt led me? To an organist? A pianist? A harpsichordist?

I won’t pretend I am as proficient on the organ as I am on the piano or harpsichord, but after all, I’ve only been seriously practicing for 13 months! But this experience has, above everything, affirmed that I can and, should I continue to set lofty goals — goals which at one point I would have deemed impossible— I will.

I performed the Passacaglia (from memory! Thanks, Paul!) two days before my birthday on a program of other organ music no organist would sneeze at. But my next goals are bigger, my next goals I currently think are impossible. Impossible: that is the place to start.