My last lesson for www.organimprovisation.com featured instructions on transposition and suggested using a piece by Louis Vierne as the transposition exercise and a model for improvising. The piece is a relatively simple piece from the 24 Pièces en style libre: 1. Préambule.
After that, I followed the score as a model and improvised some imitation Vierne in F Major and in G minor. There are some hesitations as I searched for similar interesting tonal gestures without following exactly what Vierne did, but that’s why we practice. I decided to make this exercise my prelude this weekend, so there are two more that follow the score less slavishly in A minor and D minor as well.
Music in Mclean presents half-hour recitals on the third Wednesday of the month at Saint Luke Catholic Church. This will be a program of wedding themed music. The complete program is as follows:
Canon in D – Johann Pachelbel Rondo à la Marche – Wm. Glenn Osborne
Prière à Notre-Dame (from Suite Gothique) – Léon Boëllmann
Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring – J.S. Bach
Rhosymedre – Ralph Vaughan Williams
Serenade for Organ, op. 22 – Derek Bourgeois
Organists always love to make lots of sound. Improvisers typically use both hands and feet to play almost all the time while improvising. This weekend, I thought I’d do something a little different and play only one note at a time during the offertory.
Saturday evening, I improvised a slow monody thinking perhaps of a solo cello piece:
Sunday, I decided to aim at something a little more sparkly and bright:
Do you have the courage to improvise only a single melodic line?
Georg Böhm wrote three settings of the chorale Vater unser im Himmelreich. This past weekend at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, I played the first one as prelude. With a rhythmic repeated chord accompaniment and ornamented solo presentation of the melody, it has inspired many of my improvisations.
The other two settings could also be models for improvisations, though the last is much more complicated. The second setting is a duo while the last one presents each phrase of the chorale in quasi-fugal imitation.
One of the refrains that has survived from my first set of psalms written in 1995 with psalm tone and verses from the new Revised Grail Psalter. The choir is in a new location for this Mass, just over my right shoulder in the front area of the upper sanctuary. We have previously been in the back area of the upper sanctuary much closer to the organ.
Recorded live 2 April 2016 (iPhone)
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
Psalm 103 with the response “The Lord is kind and merciful,” appears several times in the lectionary cycle. This was recorded at a wedding, so the small congregation is hard to hear. Only two verses are included in this video because the lack of memory on my iPhone prevented me from capturing the entire psalm setting.
Written to serve as a wedding processional and premiered on a small two-manual organ, the video below shows how the piece can also make use the solo tuba of a larger instrument.
National City Christian Church’s Friday noon-time recital series makes the pipe organ come alive and opens your eyes to the amazing world of the King of Instruments! Come surround yourself by the instrument’s 7,000 pipes and hear the ROAR that Washington D.C.’s third-largest pipe organ makes in this reverberant space. Concerts take place on FRIDAYS from 12:15-1:00pm (August through December & February through June). Wm. Glenn Osborne will perform the program on October 16, 2015. Repertoire for the program is:
Cortège et Litanie – Marcel Dupré
In Paradisum – Henri Mulet
Resurrection – Larry King
Rondo à la marche – Wm. Glenn Osborne
Serenade – Derek Bourgeois
Come hear eight area organists play works of the French masters from 1pm to 5pm on Sunday afternoon. Each performer will present a 30 minute program of music and information about the pieces being performed. Wm. Glenn Osborne will play the following works from 2:30-3:00 pm:
Camille Saint-Saëns – Prelude & Fugue in B Major, op. 99, n. 2
Darius Mihaud – Petite Suite
Pierre Perdigon – Cinq versets sur Veni Creator
Alexandre Pierre François Boëly – Fantasie & Fugue in Bb Major
