Introduction post

[gramarye1971]

Hello, all -- I'm a piano, French horn, and organ player who has dabbled (with little success) in double reeds, had a brief fling with a harpsichord, and has daydreamed about buying a hammer dulcimer and being the coolest kid at parties. I've also done my fair share of choral performance, starting as a soprano but now more comfortably in the alto/contralto range.

One of the best classes I ever took in college for broadening my music horizons was a seminar on medieval and Renaissance music, which sparked my love for polyphony and composers like John Dunstable, Guillaume Du Fay, and Giovanni Perluigi de Palestrina. Primarily, I'm a sucker for baroque music, especially the organ works of Dietrich Buxtehude and J.S. Bach and the harpsichord work of François Couperin. In the classical period I look mostly to Beethoven and Haydn, and from the later years I gravitate towards Chopin (mainly his nocturnes), Elgar, Tchaikovsky, and Stravinsky. Operas of choice include Turandot, Cavallaria Rusticana and I Pagliacci, and Don Giovanni, and I'll always make time to listen to Carmina Burana or Pergolesi's Stabat Mater.

Especially happy to chat with other organists, fans of early or late polyphony, or people who listen to something like Mozart's Requiem on a crowded bus and pretend that they're in an action movie right at the part where something epic is about to happen.

Comments

[ghostwire]

people who listen to something like Mozart's Requiem on a crowded bus and pretend that they're in an action movie right at the part where something epic is about to happen.

i so totally do this! not necessarily to the requiem, but other stuff. like gershwin's cuban overture or respighi's pines of rome. heh :)

[gramarye1971]

Oh, Respighi's very good for that as well! I mostly mentioned the Requiem because I distinctly remember strap-hanging on a very crowded train during an evening commute, listening to a random selection of Mozart and quietly zoning out -- until the "Dies Irae" started playing, and I had this moment of total cognitive dissonance where the whole juxtaposition was so absurd that it made me almost burst out laughing. I was mostly curious as to whether other people did this as well...so now I feel less peculiar about it all. ^_^

[lilacsigil]

Whenever I buy multiple cans of tuna in the supermarket, I sing "Oh! Four tuna!" to myself! Everyone needs some epic music in their day.

[kotturinn]

Today I have had "Oh! Four tuna!" and "Rabbit Pi" (new innards for a first generation Nabaztag using...). If there's a third one on the horizon I hope it arrives before basset horn trios this evening because if it arrives during there's going to be no accounting for the result!

[espresso_addict]

...people who listen to something like Mozart's Requiem on a crowded bus and pretend that they're in an action movie right at the part where something epic is about to happen.

Oh, god, yes, that's me! It's when you realise you are singing along and everyone's looking at you very strangely... Ooops.

Not an organist, but very interested in thoughts you might have on playing Bach on piano vs organ. I've just restarted piano after a 30-year gap and am primarily playing Bach, but an organist/pianist friend thinks I'm mad -- he plays his Bach exclusively on the organ and reserves the piano for big romantic music (Rachmaninov, Chopin, Brahms...).

[gramarye1971]

I've really enjoyed playing Bach on the organ, probably more so than on the piano, because...hm, it's hard to describe, but I feel like Bach on a piano occasionally seems oddly cramped by comparison with his organ works. Ever since I had the opportunity to do some harpsichord work, I've noticed that on a piano I now end up playing Bach very tightly in order to mimic the plucked feel and sound of the harpsichord or other early pianoforte-types, because otherwise it seems too messy (for lack of a better word) and my pacing feels off. On the organ, I feel like I can concentrate on the phrasing and flow as Bach himself would have, without feeling like I have to keeping holding myself back or truncating my phrasing in order to maintain a sufficiently Baroque sound and structure. Does that make sense? This may also be totally in my own head, but I then again I haven't been playing a lot lately.

Granted, I've been fortunate enough to have had some very good organs to play on -- proper church organs, two and four manuals, not some small electric ones that feel like keyboards. So there's a bias in that as well...but I do recommend trying Bach on a organ if you have access to one, because the feel is so wonderfully different that it's like finding a whole other side to his compositions.