Just Right!

(This article originally appeared in the June 2018 edition of the church newsletter.)

Hymn playing is a church organist’s bread and butter, but surprisingly it's not something that gets a lot of discussion. Maybe it's assumed that hymns are the easiest part of the job. In a technical sense that's true — it’s less challenging to master the notes of Amazing Grace than of a Bach Toccata. But at the same time, there are plenty of ways an organist can discourage congregational singing by making unwise choices. Here are some factors I have to juggle in deciding how to approach a hymn:

Registration: in choosing the sounds I use, I'm guided first and foremost by the text. What is its mood: triumph, penitence, hope, longing? (Lent’s sonic spectrum is obviously more muted than Easter’s.) Changing sounds for each verse also emphasizes the progression of the poetry. Some organists use the same sound on every verse of every hymn, but in my experience that quickly gets irritating!

Key: can the congregation reasonably be expected to hit the high notes printed on the page? It depends: people generally aren’t in good singing voice at 8:30 in the morning, so I lower the keys for their comfort. Even at 11:00 I try to ensure that the first hymn doesn’t soar too high. On the other hand, our red hymnal places some of its songs in surprisingly low keys, so I raise them to make them more engaging.

Tempo: This is probably the issue concerning which organists receive the most feedback, whether it’s “too slow!” or “too fast!” (Rarely do we hear “just right!”) Aware of the impossibility of pleasing everybody, I’m guided by several considerations: what is the mood of the text? Can the average singer manage each phrase in one breath? Is there time to actually think about the words as they go by?

Timing: Lifting my fingers off the keys at the end of every phrase allows us all to breathe together. It would be very rude of me to plow through a hymn without giving some space for breathing — although I have heard organists do it! I also add a somewhat longer pause between verses so people can send their eyes back to the top of the page and remember which verse is coming next. Some timing decisions are made on the spur of the moment: on Christmas and Easter, for example, I may have to improvise an interlude before the last verse of the processional hymn to give the choir enough time to reach the loft.

So how do organists learn this art? Formal organ study generally focuses on recital repertoire; only the colleges with a large pool of organ majors tend to offer a course in hymn-playing. For the vast majority of us, it’s a case of ‘learn by doing’…and of course, we also learn by listening to and imitating the people who do it really well.