First Time Subbing at a Lutheran Church

This past Sunday (and I am scheduled to sub this Sunday there as well), I subbed at a Lutheran church for the first time.  It was only about a 20 minute drive for me (much preferred to the hour-long drive I had to play a service this past Christmas morning!  But at least it all counts as a business expense [can you tell I'm in the midst of doing my taxes?])

It was not a very big church, and it certainly didn't seem like a super-wealthy one either, so I wasn't expecting a great organ, but I was really pleasantly surprised to find this:  

(notice my sneakers, backpack, and winter vest to the left)

A beautiful tracker organ, which was made by Jeremy Cooper, whom I'd never heard before, but at least I gathered that he is a organ maker from New Hampshire.

if you look closely, you can see my knuckles in the reflection

For you non-organists out there, a 'tracker' is an organ where when you press down a key, it physically moves a mechanism which allows the air to go through the pipe, as opposed to most modern organs that have electronic action, where pressing the key sends a signal via electricity in order to move the mechanism.  With a tracker, you also have more resistance in the keys and must press harder or more firmly to make sure the key is pressed, and you cannot move the console around, as it is built into the organ itself.  I really enjoy playing Baroque era music on them (Bach, Pachebel, etc.), but they are not very well suited to playing sprawling, colorful, Romantic era music (Frank, Dupre, Widor, or even Messaien.)

Obviously, all organs were trackers before the advent of electricity, but most modern organs have electronic action, and in my experience, all of the trackers that I have seen and/or played were older instruments, so I was surprised to find a fairly new tracker that was in such great condition (no doubt from being so young).

Upon arriving to practice during the week, I met with the pastor to go over the service order and answer my many questions.  This was going to be my first Lutheran service, after previously only playing for Congregational, Episcopal, and Methodist services, and it was a bit different than I am used to.  The main difference was the singing by the pastor of the plainchant, for which I had to give her the first few pitches, and the responses by the congregation, which I accompanied on organ.  Luckily, thanks to my girlfriend who was raised Roman Catholic, I had been to a couple Masses where they did this and was at least familiar with it.  Additionally, I was given a complete liturgical guide to the service complete with all the prayers and  responses which was pretty easy to follow.  I then went to the organ after being given the warning that the sanctuary was not heated during the week.  It was about 40 degrees F outside, but didn't feel too cold to me, most likely because when I practiced at the church for the above mentioned Christmas service, it was also not heated during the week and I was so cold practicing the organ there that I didn't take my winter vest or my hat off, and I couldn't play for more than a minute without having to blow hot air on my fingers! (maybe I shouldn't have taken off my winter gloves either!)

When I first sat down to figure out the organ, I of course tried out all the stops to see what my options were for registration.  However, when I had pushed all the stops in to clear the registration, there was still a loud reed/brass sound on the pedals!  I spent probably five minutes trying to figure out what was going on!  I turned the organ off and on, I pulled out and pushed in all the stops, pressed some levers near the pedal board (and I still don't know what those levers do), walked around the whole organ looking for buttons or levers that may have been tripped.  I was even considering completely avoiding using the pedals for the entire service!  Finally, I'm not sure how, but I figured out that there were three stops that were for BOTH the pedals and the Great manual: pushed IN for the pedals, pulled OUT for the Great, and left in the middle for neither.  Having pushed in all the stops, these stops were IN for the pedals, hence making sound when I played them.  I'd never run into a mechanism like this before, but on closer inspection, on the stop itself it had some sort of marking that suggested that this was the case (although I probably would never have realized this just by looking at the stop.)

With that mystery solved, I noticed that, as a tracker, there were no presets, no pistons.  Usually when subbing, I like to just use a couple "General" presets that are already set by the regular organist: one for loud hymns, one for soft hymns, and maybe one or two others. I use these presets for all the music in a service just to make my life simpler in my very limited preparation time, but this tracker had none of these.  I decided to use only one registration for each manual for the entire service, with the Swell being softer, just a 8' and 4' Flutes, and louder on the Great, with 8' 4' 2' Principals, plus one registration for the pedals that worked well when combined with either manual.  This way I could have some contrast of sounds by switching between manuals and wouldn't have to do any pulling or pushing stops in between music during the service, while I'd already be struggling to follow the service order and preparing for the next musical event.  I  then practiced the hymns and picked a prelude and postlude that I'd performed before.

On Sunday, I arrived an hour before the service to rehearse with the choir, which consisted of about five older women,  plus one single man who was quite old, hard-of-hearing (which became obvious just by hearing him sing) and seemed to fall asleep very easily.  'Rehearsing' was a bit too strong a word for it, as we basically just ran through the music (usually as a sub, I can do very little to change the sound of a church choir, who usually are very set in their ways anyways,) including a choral anthem that I was not given beforehand (it pays to have good sight-reading skills!)

The service began and everything went smoothly, with only a few minor mistakes (I should have practiced the pedals in one of the hymns a little bit more), but overall I was pleased, and I even got several complements from the pastor and some parishioners.  It looks like next Sunday will be a bit less stressful and go even smoother now, and hopefully our Bass/Tenor section will be more awake.

The (short) story of how I became a Substitute Organist

This is the story of how I became a Substitute Organist (the abridged version).

I grew up in a small town in New England, near Worcester, Massachusetts.  My first musical instruction came at age 7, when I started taking piano lessons, and I soon fell in love with the instrument.  My family regularly attended a congregational church, a typically beautiful old New England church with a tall white steeple right in the center of town, right next to the Old Burying Ground and the Town Green, and I grew up singing all the old protestant hymns every Sunday, singing in the children's choir, and performing on piano often during the services.  My mother was a decent pianist and for years was the emergency accompanist/hymn player until I was about 10 years old.  Then I became good enough to take her place in this infamous position.  During those years, we had a really wonderful music director/organist named George Davey.  He was a kind, soft-spoken Jamaican man with a very deep voice, and as a child I was always in awe of his musical abilities.  From what I can recall, he seemed completely effortless in his playing, always re-harmonizing hymns, connected them together through improvisations, inserting modulations between verses, and making the organ sound as if we were in Notre Dame Cathedral, even though, from what I can remember, back in those days we had a pretty lousy electric instrument with no real pipes (I never played on it).

The 'new' organ at my home church.

Around the time I began high school, George left us to take a prestigious position with a large church in Manhattan, but his contract stipulated that the church install a new organ before he left.  He performed a complete recital on the new organ just before leaving and asked me to turn pages for him during the recital.  This was my first experience being up close and personal with an instrument like this, and George had planned out all of the registration and set the pistons himself (things that I had no knowledge of at the time).  However,during the recital and in the middle of one of the pieces, he turned to me and in his deep, soft voice said to me (while he was playing with his hands and feet! My young mind was blown!) that he needed me to press the "Number 3" button on his cue, that he had forgotten about!  Of course, it seemed to me that there were a MILLION "Number 3" buttons on this complicated thing!  Flustered, I managed to find one, put my finger on it, and on his cue hit it, and, in my imperfect memory, it unleashed all those glorious stops for a triumphant, powerful, and joyful finale.  This moment had quite an impact on me.

After high school, I went off to college at Baldwin-Wallace College and enrolled in their Conservatory of Music, studying to be a composer with piano as my primary instrument (and indeed, it is as a composer and pianist that I primarily am trained and make my living.  See my website www.keanesouthard.blogspot.com for my bio, performances, and recordings of my compositions.)  But part of my requirements for my degree was to study a secondary instrument for two years (for non pianists, piano is their secondary instrument, but for pianists it can be any other instrument.)  I chose to study the organ as my secondary, partly because my hands already knew their way around a keyboard, partly because I thought it would be cool to play notes with my feet, partly because I thought I may want to have a part-time job as a church organist/music director some day (thank you, George), and partly because it's the 'King of Instruments' and you can nearly knock down walls with the sound from some.  Later, I learned that BW has a really fine history when it comes to organs, as the founder of the conservatory was Albert Riemenschneider, who is famous for his scholarly editions of the organ works of J.S. Bach.  

At BW, I had an organ lesson once a week (I believe it was a half-hour lesson, but it may have been an hour) plus an hour-long studio class every other week.  Because organ was behind composition, piano, and most classes in terms of priority, I usually managed only about a half-hour to an hour of practice per week (whereas my teacher wanted me and assumed I was practicing that much every day).  But somehow over those two years I became a competent organist, and during my second year of lessons I shared, with another organ student friend of mine, a position as substitute organist at a small Episcopal church in Cleveland for one semester (BW is about 20 miles outside of Cleveland, OH.)  The pay was minimal, and for a student in college, I didn't appreciate waking up at 7am on a Sunday morning, but the church had a nice small tracker organ and it gave me some good experience.  I also started subbing as needed whenever I was back home in Massachusetts at my old church.  

After finishing my Bachelor's degree (in addition to my major in Composition, I added a major in Music Theory, as well as a minor in English Literature.  I definitely tried to get my money's worth out of my college education!), I went straight to graduate school at the University of Colorado in Boulder for my Master's degree in Composition, where I was also a teaching assistant in Music Theory.  Being both a student and a teacher (making enough money to just get by,) I didn't have the time to find and hold a full music director position at a church, so I made a very half-hearted attempt at trying to get my name out as a substitute organist in the area, and nothing came of it.  I didn't have the money or the time to take organ lessons at the university, but I met with the organ professor about what churches to inquire about subbing at and to see if I could get a key to practice on the organs on campus.  But as someone who wasn't taking organ lessons and because they had had some issues in the past with people stealing pipes (why would anyone do that?), she wouldn't let me have a key.

During my second year at CU, I found an opening for a pipe organist (just playing the organ, not directing the choir) at a Methodist church a town over and figured I could find the time to practice one night a week and play Sunday morning (when I'd just be sleeping anyways) while making a little extra money.  So I decided to audition, despite the fact that the single hour I had to practice on the organ a couple of days before was the only practicing I'd done in over half a year!  Somehow I got the job, and it was very good for me in improving my organ chops, especially in learning pedal parts more quickly, and I learned lots of hymns and new pieces.

I completed my degree after my second year and now I have moved back home to the Worcester area.  Because I'm hoping to head overseas next year and I wanted to apply for some short-term artist residencies as a composer for this year (and I was accepted to two of them, Playa, which I just returned from a 4-week residency, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, where I'll be spending 6 weeks as composer-in-residence in March-April,) I have not sought a steady job and instead have taken the opportunity to see how much work I can make for myself as a freelance musician (performing piano recitals, composing on commission, etc.), as a substitute teacher in the public schools (similar in many ways to being a substitute organist, perhaps that is another blog post in itself), and as a substitute organist.  I joined the Worcester chapter of the American Guild of Organists to get on their Substitute List and have been steadily finding work.

Me on my 'home' organ

And it was just today, going to practice at a new church for a service I'm subbing at this Sunday, when I had the idea to start a blog about life as a substitute organist.  As anyone who has done this work knows, all organs are different, nearly all churches, church services and clergy are different. (Except for Roman Catholic services; you can go anywhere in the world and the services are all the same [or all equally confusing to a non-Catholic like myself.])  You have a lot of little quirks and things to figure out, and usually very little time to do so, yet then you must perform on the most unforgiving of all instruments, where all your mistakes are as loud as all your right notes.  So, welcome to the "Diary of a Substitute Organist"!

-Keane