The Organ Forum

What pieces are you tired of because they're so overplayed?

I suppose I'll start with T&F in d moll (BWV 565) and to a slightly lesser degree, the Widor toccata.

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Once you can tie your arms into a pretzel and your legs into a knot, you've got it under control

You can add the Boelman Priere and Toccata for me as well as the Franck Chorals. The chance to have to sit one of those (incl those above) whatever recital/concert you go to is to great to risk it.

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Back when I played everyday....30 years ago...I used to call the pieces I had to repeatedly play "The Dirty Thirty".  However, people would come up to me and say, "Oh please play (thus and so)....I so want to hear you play it again"!  So I'd smile and play it again.

Here's my two cents.............

While you may be tired of playing it, or listening to it being played in a recital that you're attending....look around the room, at people's faces.  Are they smiling, maybe nodding their heads to the rhythm of the piece?  In a general audience you're going to always be playing these pieces to at least one of these types.....(Me).  I get to a recital so rarely, that I consider myself a member of the general audience who is familiar with the piece, and I delight in hearing it played again.  If for no other reason than to hear how well you master the piece, compared to another organist I know, who plays it so fine. You do a good job, and I'm going to remember you as being a fine player.   (The Teenager that came with his Grandparents).  He's in his fifth year of piano study, has only heard "The Phantom of The Opera", and is totally open to the impression that a great organ can cast over him.  He might just be inspired enough by today's recital to turn him toward the organ, and ten years from now, could be a graduating organ major, looking for a new organist job..(how many of those jobs will be available in the next ten years?)

 Then you have the well experienced organ recital attending ("little old grey heads").  They just came today to hear you play.  You say to yourself...Oh drat!  Here goes...I swear, this danged instrument ought to be able to play this piece by itself...dumb as it is....So here we go...doing this piece again.  So you play it with flawless execution...as a matter of fact...it was unusually good under your hands and feet today!  The organ seemed to almost jump in anticipation to your playing!  And the little old greyheads just totally enjoyed the piece....so much so, they start talking about it in the car, as they drive away.  Low and behold, next day, your minister gets a call from one of them on the phone.  "Oh he played the organ so beautifully yesterday...we are so fortunate to have such a talented young man...and I understand that the music ministry is going to be cut in their budget next year, what with the way our parish "giving" has been lately.  Why not let me write a check to make up the difference in next years' music budget....it would be a shame not to reward that young man for giving himself so freely to our churches' musical happiness".

The masterpieces you're mentioning here....they are the "benchmarks" of organ playing.  People who know the music, hang on to every note, with great love for that particular "favorite" piece.  They want to experience it all over again...how you treat the music.  Play it well...knowing that you are thrilling someone out in the audience.

I nudge my pew friend I've come to the recital with today...for I've noticed on the program what you're going to play....."Oh look!"  I exclaim...."Austin is going to play the Tocatta and Fugue today.  I haven't heard it in several years...that'll be fun!"

 

 

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....."next" is a four letter word. Jay999

Yep.  If you're tired of it, get over it.  You're not the one it is being played for, because there is probably someone listening for whom it is the ultimate treat.  Think about that person and play the piece better than you've ever done it before just to inspire that person.  Think of the joy you bring to that person's life and be glad you can do it.  We're not all gifted musically but many of us do appreciate fine music.

David

I never get tired of hearing/playing those pieces listed.  I always find something different about a piece or a performance when it is played.  No one performance is the same.  The only time I would get bored of it if I was put in a darkened cell at Guatanamo Bay and forced to listen to Widor's Toccata repeatedly for three days.

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Mark Pratt

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When I am at home I may not choose to listen to some of the old warhorse pieces, but then again I might.

The reason for this is that perhaps I just bought a new CD and want to hear what that particular organ sounds like.

As Jay suggested, that is one of the great things about the organ; when I go to a recital I may focus on the music, or the organ, or the performer, or the acoustic, or even the stained glass (if none of the above holds my interest ).

I could listen to the Franck Chorals a thousand times, and always find something new to hear.

If it was a thousand times on the same organ by the same performer, I might grow a bit weary. 

I think recordings are partly to blame for our becoming so jaded.  When I think of the number of times I've heard famous organ pieces performed live, I realize that I really haven't heard them all that many times.

I was thinking about the number of live recitals I attend... not so many (unfortunately).  If you think of all of the recitals you are likely to attend in your lifetime you begin to realize that you may only hear a piece performed live a very few times.  That is a rather morbid thought, but it puts things into perspective.  It makes me appreciate everything I hear.

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Soubasse32

If you think of all of the recitals you are likely to attend in your lifetime you begin to realize that you may only hear a piece performed live a very few times. That is a rather morbid thought, but it puts things into perspective. It makes me appreciate everything I hear.

True, but isn't this because you start to actively avoid some pieces? I know I do. If there is a recital, I first see if there is a program of it before I go. If it is a mashup of popular composers and they don't list more precisely I don't go. If the program is more romantic and/or 20th century I don't go. If there is more detailed info, and more than half of the the pieces are schlagers then I don't go. Sorry, I want to enjoy new discoveries. That can be new organs (very rare), new artists (more common) or new composers (rather rare but the most interesting).

A few years back at the organ week in Brussels they played twice the Grand Dialogue by Marchand. Why? I mean, the organ isn't suited for it and it isn't a popular piece. And it wasn't his year of birth/death. And then they combined it with some other completely non-complementary music. 

It can be interesting to have a know piece by a "new" artist on a know organ. It makes for easier placement. But I don't want to hear always the same music. If they play both a piece of Bach, it is often enough to get a good impression of their style/interpretation.

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Expert in non-working solutions

Austin766:

What pieces are you tired of because they're so overplayed?

I guess I'd have to agree with the masses here.  The same goes for any musician who performs.  Part of being a performer is the ability to perform the given piece as freshly as the first time you performed it--even though it is the 1,000th.  That ability is what makes the difference between a person who plays music and a musician.

OTOH (the first time in my life I've used that abbreviation!), I believe your question is directed toward the listening audience.  I will have to agree with you there.  I have a hard enough time attending organ recitals/concerts because it's so hard to find competent performers--even among the professionals out there (myself included).  However, it is a bit tiring listening to the same pieces from recital-to-recital, concert-to-concert.   OTOH, I've also attended some organ performances where I recognized NONE of the music.  Pieces chosen were so esoteric, I believe they should have stayed where they were buried instead of being resurrected.

I see both sides, and thanks for bringing up the topic.

Michael

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Thanks, Soubasse32, for your defense of Franck's Chorals!  To this day, I can recall the first time I heard them.  My first reaction was "Hmmmm, that's mildly interesting....).  They have grown more interesting with each hearing since.  What glorious, up-lifting music!

DR 

Funny, the more I hear those Franck pieces, the more I find them boring and less of a choral, certainly not uplifting, rather gloom and doom to me. "De gustibus..." I guess.

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Expert in non-working solutions

Dana Rabenberg:

Thanks, Soubasse32, for your defense of Franck's Chorals!  To this day, I can recall the first time I heard them.  My first reaction was "Hmmmm, that's mildly interesting....).  They have grown more interesting with each hearing since.  What glorious, up-lifting music!

I feel profoundly sad whenever someone says they dislike Franck.

I've been performing the Franck Violin Sonata quite a bit lately.  Talk about 'old warhorse' ... I suppose that sonata is as overplayed as any of them.

But the music is indeed uplifting.  While I am playing Franck it is as if he is taking me on an emotional journey.  There is both breadth and depth to his writing.

Interesting too that my violinist friend has the same exact feeling - we both feel so emotionally deprived when the music stops, that we immediately want to play it again!

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Soubasse32

soubasse32:

Interesting too that my violinist friend has the same exact feeling - we both feel so emotionally deprived when the music stops, that we immediately want to play it again!

And that feeling is the primary reason that music exists!  No other arts can equal its abilities to invoke moods and incite emotions.  (Well, possibly video.)  I know that music has the ability to cut through my "shell" and stimulate my emotions like nothing else.  I think music encapsulates memories, too, and that also has an emotional impact.  We remember the first time we heard a piece, or it is associated with someone in our life or a particular experience, and that memory carries emotion.  Music seems almost uniquely capable of this phenomenon.

Now I'm being metaphysical, I guess.

David

Havoc:

If you think of all of the recitals you are likely to attend in your lifetime you begin to realize that you may only hear a piece performed live a very few times. That is a rather morbid thought, but it puts things into perspective. It makes me appreciate everything I hear.

True, but isn't this because you start to actively avoid some pieces? I know I do. If there is a recital, I first see if there is a program of it before I go. If it is a mashup of popular composers and they don't list more precisely I don't go. If the program is more romantic and/or 20th century I don't go.

You say you actively avoid some pieces and then you say if you don't precisely know what will be played (and it is romantic or 20th cent.) you don't go. How do you know you aren't avoiding something you might like?

And to lump romantic and 20th century music (apparently all of it) into one category and label it as all not worth your time is astonishing. There is a good deal of music in both categories which I don't like but I can't see how I could dismiss everything ever written therein. (Especially if I haven't heard it.)

 Rob