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The Sauer Organ of St. Mary’s church, Rostock
The Arp Schnitger Organ of Neuenfelde
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Teaching
I like teaching very much! I am doing it since 1999, when I started at the church music department of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany. Working at the University of
Music of Lübeck, Germany, and the University of Music and performing Arts of Graz, Austria, followed. I want to express some thoughts here about what is important in my personal view, hoping there is also some common truth in
it...
I make much use of telling stories and situations which strongly impressed myself - talks with teachers and artists, realizations during playing or listening. What strongly impressed myself may also impress my
students.
I do tell about other ways of playing and teaching and make no secret of the fact, that there are other ways. But I trust in my own persuasive playing to lead the students somehow on my way if interpreting the
music as a base for their own future interpretations.
Personal thoughts on teaching
Playing organ literature
One dopes often hear organ music
played in a boring manner. I think this is really dangerous. As organ today is acoustically not so impressive as it was centuries or even decades ago (due to synthesized surround sound floods...), every organist must have the
mission to keep his instrument fascinating for the public, not by doing showpieces, but by playing really good music really well.
Often organists say: “Why should I add the x-thousandth interpretation of Bach’s Prelude
in X? There are so many other nice pieces by ....(names deleted...)”
I do not agree. Very often this statement shows that it’s author has nothing more to find, to discover, to elaborate or just to enjoy in one of - let’s say
- Bach’s masterworks. During my lessons, I can hardly hesitate to play the masterworks againg and again for my students. I could weekly play pieces form the “III. Teil der Clavier-Übung”, of Franck’s “Trois Chorals”, Reger’s
“Wachet auf”... and during organ demonstrations in Neuenfelde I normally play the same good pieces by Buxtehude - and I’m fascinated that I still love to play them on and on!
Sure, for the enhancement of concert programs and
for achieving contrast one also takes music by the smaller masters, but by the very small only to illustrate the magnitude of the greatest.
(By the way, often one can can hear some people say “Bach is often played much too
fast” - those people, in my opinion, are often not judging on the base of competence and mature taste, but only because they themselves would be unable to play Bach “fast” (How fast, you mean?). Oh no, I play Bach very fast -
and very slow. And in every speed betwenn the two poles, depending on the piece, the situation...)
All in all I want to say: Be as expressive as possible! Give as much musical experience to yourself as artist and the
audience!
Making boring organ music is not only cutting off the branch he is sitting on but also that one the colleagues are sitting on!
Improvisation
I don’t think there is a special improvisation
talent - improvisation can be tought and practised like anything alls in music. There are just fine grades of inhibition - those who are less shy start earlier and thus make more progress.
(That’s why it looks like that
women can not improvise as well as men. It is just that women do not dare to present the public something they would be dissatisfied with, something immature - men do not hesitate to music in public which they know off, that it
is not really good...)
It is the mission of improvisation teachers to free the inhibited, and to pull out the weeds in the fields of the “talented” - and at least, to give both of them an education, which is based on the
written art of the (organ) music we focus on - the music of the last 400 years.
My method is the try to make a walk through music history, starting at the birth of “harmony” with thge introduction of thorough bass
around 1600. At that time the elements of learned counterpoint, as we know it from the polyphonic masses of the decades before, were still alive and known. Departing from that crossing of the large musical systems, one goes
further in the aspects of form, harmony and counterpoint. Special studies develope special elements, allowing the recreation of music of former times. As models one should certainly choose the works of smaller masters, even the
word “Bach style” is arrogance when talking about improvisation.
At the end of the studies in style, one should arrive in the our time - and if it lucks, even a personal style can emerge. I can recall some few students,
who were able, after four or six years of studying, to create music which was individual and personal, but also contemporary, and may it only be as a new mix of other personal styles which was never heard before. That’s what
always happened in written music, too.
If you want to have an impression about my method (or my trials to find it), open the following pdf-file. It is in German, but you might understand it somohow. It shows a sketch of a
schedule of learning styles of organ music and reproducing them by improvisation, reaching from 1600 until 1880. Some of the modules already have their specific handouts, some are otherwise part of my teaching, some more have
currently to be developed:
www.edition-kbk.de/material/curric01.pdf
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