Only got a piano.

[alan29]

Where I play, there is only a clavinova. Now the piano sound is fairly reasonable, but the organ sounds are pretty unusable - all sorts of strange octave doublings and generally a bit shrill and not good for accompaniments. On Sundays I play with the band - the usual fare, so it isn't much of a problem. But funerals where I fly solo can be tricky. Modern stuff can be made to sound OK, but traditional hymns can sound very chunky on the piano (and just a bit school assembly.) However the main problem occurs when I am asked to play something to cover a bit of liturgical action.
I wonder if others have the same problem. Do they use the not good organ sounds and play something for manuals, or do they use the much better piano sound and play a bit of suitably atmospheric piano music? Would that be blurring the sacred/secular boundary too much?

[keitha]

I have a similar problem, in that my parish church has a seriously limited organ, but a very good grand piano. I almost always use the piano for solo music at mass (including funerals) - I find that slow movements from J S Bach's keyboard works (eg from the Italian Concerto) work very well.......and I even get requests now! I agree with you about the clavinova - we have one in our primary school which has a very good piano tone and touch, and I stick with that when I play it. That having been said, in my view, no parish church in the UK should be without a decent organ - be it digital or pipe!

[Nick Baty]

We have Clavinovas in two of our churches and an Allen digital in the third. Have sometimes shipped one of the Clavinovas to the bigger church at Christmas and Easter when we want organ and piano together – gives quite a bite.

Clavnova's pipe organ isn't very good but Chapel Organs 1, 2 and 3 are rather lovely. And doubled with a Mellotron choir are excellent for accompanying small choral items. Use the guitar sound quite a bit as we don't have a guitarist – OK, I cheat and prepare three tracks as midi adding the fourth live. Used it last year to accompany Coventry Carol with two-part choir and live brass/wind – most effective.

The pipe organ sound is great in the church with a wooden floor but naff in the small carpeted church – and these are identical instruments!

If I could only have one, I'd go for piano as most things can be accompanied on that – if I had only organ I'd be a tad stuck for part of the repertoire. Of course, despite what has been alleged on another thread, I have never been an organist so I don't really know what I'm talking about.

There's also the problem that in some churches (including one of ours until the Allen arrived) the organ is so far away from the cantor and choir that it's almost impossible to use it with singers. At my aunt's funeral during the summer, we had to choreograph things very carefully so the accompanist had time to get from the cantor and choir up to the organ gallery. Once there, he couldn't hear the assembly despite the fact that they singing with real wellie!

[alan29]

We had an excellent 2 man + pedal Allen. It was simply superb. It was disposed of during the period that the church was a school hall - yes, it wasn't only the Puritans who vandalised churches.
Thinking of trying the little Chopin Emin prelude at the next funeral - or is that a step too secular?

[Nick Baty]

Is he related to Tracey Emin?

[HallamPhil]

I prefer the Ugandan edition transposed down a fifth

[musicus]

I prefer the Ugandan edition transposed down a fifth

I see what you did there, Phil

Alan might prefer the recently published choral arrangement with its sacred text: 'Amen'.

[dmu3tem]

Here are some instant reactions of my own:

[1] Since this is a purely musical question (or is it?) why is this thread in the Liturgy Matters section and not somewhere under Sounds Off? Is it because Sounds Off is restricted to purely compositional matters?

[2] I must say I rather agree with Nick's statement that, if a choice were to be made, these days one might well pick a Piano or an Electric Keyboard rather than an Organ given that the latter cannot always very easily cover some parts of repertoire and is often difficult to move around a building. Also they are usually cheaper to buy and maintain!

[3] Maybe this is because I am more 'at home' on the Piano than the Organ, but I must say as an arranger and composer I find the Piano opens up many more options. You have a wider keyboard range, your Bass lines can be as agile as your fingers (as opposed to your feet!), you have the option of using a sustaining pedal and it is easier to balance it against other instruments. The last 'advantage', of course, may simply be due to greater familiarity with what the instrument can do in this respect; but if true, this suggests that organists in the past have not paid as much attention as they should have done to ensemble playing with instruments. One reason for this is the historic lack of standardisation between different Organs; but this may be resolved as Digital Instruments become more widely available.

[4] Yes, to the uninitiated, a Piano can sound pretty 'tinkly' or 'tinny' in a church compared with a Pipe Organ:

(a) Is this because church musicians have not thought very hard about how to use a Piano in church? Do they appreciate the full implications of the fact that they are dealing with a percussion instrument? (Note that at times in the past this was used as a reason for excluding the Piano from church - despite the fact that the Bible is full of allusions to the use of percussion instruments in religious services and medieval images of Angels sometimes show them wielding drums, cymbals and other 'suspect' instruments).

(b) Is it because of unfamiliarity with the Piano in church among some congregations and clergy?

Even if these issues are set aside does not a possible solution lie not so much in using the Piano like a surrogate Organ or as a single instrument but more as a partner in an ensemble of instruments?

Should we import piano techniques assoicated with the concert hall or chamber music into church music? Or should we modify them or devise very different technical playing approaches?

[5] Note that a Piano is NOT THE SAME as an electric keyboard, however much the latter may be designed to mimic Piano sounds. Electronic keyboards are not percussion instruments. As their name implies they produce sounds electronically or digitaly. The range of sounds they are capable of producing is wider - and very different from those of a Piano (and this is expanding all the time). Moreover the use of speakers and amplification has profound implications for questions of balance with other instruments and voices. This is not simply a matter of dynamics, but concerns the 'sound source'. Where are the speakers positioned and how precisely focussed and balanced are the sounds they produce? This means that we should be prepared to think about such instruments differently from how we consider 'real' Pianos or Pipe Organs.

[6] None of this means, of course, that there are certain things a Pipe Organ cannot do 'better' than either a Piano or an Electric Keyboard; but the reverse is also true. In other words we should be alert to the particular properties of each type of instrument. I suggest that our motto should be 'Horses for Courses'.

[alan29]

Took me a few goes to get the joke.
Thanks for the replies.
I posted in this thread as my question wasn't about writing for the liturgy, but about what is suitable to accompany the liturgy.
In a nutshell - on the organ I sometimes used to play Bach tocs/preludes and fugues as voluntaries. There is nothing specifically religious about that music, neither form has its basis in anything liturgical. Now that I am "reduced" to the piano, would a movement from a Beethoven sonata be equivalent? And would a quiet bit of Mozart etc be seen as an acceptable replacement for quiet organ during communion?
Would such music point up the secular nature of the piano too obviously? When all is said and done we are being asked to rediscover our sense of the sacred or something.

[Nick Baty]

The theory's probably the same. Play Moonlight or Elvira and their thoughts will be on all sorts of romantic assignations – play an obscure movement and it will become background music. Anyway, wouldn't folk be singing the communion song at this point?

[alan29]

Communion songs are a bit difficult at funerals where only the priest and I are in any sense practising ...... maybe on ancient aunt, too.
Why people go for requiems in those circumstances is totally beyond my ken.

[Nick Baty]

beyond my ken.

Sounds of Music – Sixteen going on Seventeen!

[Dom Perignon]

dmu3tem said

why is this thread in the Liturgy Matters section and not somewhere under Sounds Off?

.

I see this as being about the use of the piano in the context of the liturgy (and not just as an accompaniment instrument either) and so I am happy that this is the appropriate part of the forum for the thread. "Sounds Off" is really about composition for the liturgy (see PaulW's by-line under the heading of that part ).

[dmu3tem]

If one narrows the discussion to voluntaries then the issue, as Nick suggested, is about associations. An instrumental piece in a service is not necessarily a background accompaniment. If it is, then by defintion, the musical material has to be anodyne and unobtrusive. Music that sets out 'to say something' though is bound either to set up associations in people's minds; or people will do this for themselves. Note that there is little to stop different people having different associations with the same piece of music or, for that matter, the same person having different reactions to the same piece of music according to the time and location where it is played. The result is that the reactions people have to a given piece of music may well change over time.

Bearing these points in mind three things might then follow:

[1] A piano piece that originally had a secular connotation could easily acquire religious associations through repeated use in church. In turn this may be signalled by changes in the style of its performance. The same thing, of course, can occur in reverse. Thus, developing from (or perhaps reversing) Alan's suggestions, a volountary by Bach originally written for church might well be performed as a concert piece.

[2] New pieces for piano, if 'designed' for use in Church, may propagate certain stylistic associations that people come to regard as 'churchy'. For example, taking their lead from Bach, people might lean in the direction of linear counterpoint as opposed to a 'Romantic' style associated with Schubert. Alternatively, they might shape their 'melody lines' with reference to the plainchant styles associated with Solesmes; and this in turn might lead to a greater use of heterophony. The point, of course, is not whether the original 'starting point' is in itself religious but whether people come to think of it in that way.

[3] A new instrumental piece, whether written for the piano or another instrument (or group of instruments), might have built into it quotations from specifically religious pieces (i.e. music that was originally a setting of some religious text), and this would 'signal' its 'churchy' purpose (e.g. in a chorale prelude). Note though, that this might be undermined by the style in which it is presented if that style sets up secular connotations in people's minds.

[Nick Baty]

Slightly OT but, I hope, relevant, I've just bought the new Yamaha P155 (details here). I did consider the P90 at nearly half the price but I was after something with midi to device. Am delighted with the instrument and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for something portable. It's a tad heavy (I bought a gig bag with wheels) but worth the humping around for the quality. Pipe organ not brill but there's a rather nice 8'+4' (well, that's how it sounds to me!) and, of course, Yamaha's standard grand piano. Only had this six weeks and it's already travelled several hundred miles around the motorways of the north west. I've been using it to accompany gatherings of 50-100 without any external amplification. Does that last sentence bring us back on topic?