If you’re a volunteer organist, you listen to those exalted beings high on Cathedral organ lofts with a mixture of awe and jealousy, as they rattle off complex choir accompaniments and rip through a final voluntary of mind-bending complexity.
They’ve been working at it a lot longer than you, of course, and had some expert tuition along the way. As a volunteer organist you’ve probably been surviving on your pianist skills and your native musical instincts, and the odd useful tip you’ve picked up from a website like mine. But now, perhaps, you feel you would like to become a ‘proper organist’, rather than just get by at the keyboard?
Robert Fielding has been teaching pianists to become organists for many years, and he’s condensed this experience into a tutor book. He studied organ to FRCO and was Organist and Master of the Choristers at Romsey Abbey for over 11 years, while working with the Diocese of Salisbury on church musician and young organist initiatives. The book began life as handouts to volunteer organists attending courses, and benefitted from their suggestions as to content. It looks at posture, shoes and pedalling, as well as how the organ works, how to use stops, playing hymns, and repertoire suggestions.
I suggest you read through the whole book to start with – it will give you a practical overview, fill in a few gaps in your knowledge of the instrument, and explain the issues involved in playing it well. Then start work on the exercises for the most challenging part of transitioning from pianist to organist: training your feet to take the bass line, and not your left hand.
Robert has followed up with a supplementary tutor book of exercises for the developing organist: starting with just pedals, and building to quite demanding trios and chorale preludes.
Full details and where to order both books below.
Inevitably, as this is a print book, I noticed a few of Robert’s follow-up suggestions of books and links are difficult to obtain or no longer available: but as he says in his introduction ‘help and support for the developing organist has never been so accessible and widespread’ – more links and useful stuff on Robert’s own website The Volunteer Organist.
TUTOR BOOK FOR VOLUNTEER ORGANISTS
Robert Fielding
£10.25
order from Amazon
or via the Book Depository
The follow-up book, EXERCISES FOR DEVELOPING ORGANISTS by Robert Fielding, (£12.50) can be ordered via Amazon
The feature photograph is of the organ at the Liszt Academy in Budapest. I include it because Liszt must have been the world’s greatest pianist-to-organist. He never really mastered the organ pedals, but that didn’t stop him writing organ music or improvising wildly on the instrument, just as he did on the piano. Read more if you’re interested in this article by Zoltan Gardonyi.
