Hello there! Thank you very much.
Whoo-hoo!
Whoo-hoo, indeed! It's great to be here!
Applause
Now, guess what I was in the past? Anybody?
Impertinent speculations
Now, be nice! I was a former church organist in the past, thank you very much!
Snickers
Well, I wasn't a FORMER church organist in the past, I was a CURRENT church organist in the past. (Just raise your hand if I'm telling you more than you need to know.)
Whoo-hoo!
That's right, I've been a church organist in the past. Want to make something of it?
You don't know the half of it! My lively digits were positively gliding over the keys of a half a dozen instruments between 1974 and 1990, piously extorting preludes and postludes from Lowrey, Kimball, and Baldwin alike. My fingers didn't care: just give them a keyboard and they would extract a melody from it, it was as simple as that.
Fun Lies about Crumhorns
For centuries, Turkish shepherds have summoned their sheep home by playing a plaintive ditty on their native Krumka (literally a Turkish 'crumbcake,' possibly a reference to the early instrument's typical coffee-colored appearance).
Are you kiddin'? I was pulling out all the stops when it came to my various registrations: flutes, oboes, and vox celestes for meditative preludes like Bach's "Birthday Cantata" or Gounod's "Ave Maria" -- cornets, gambas and contra trumpets for rousing postludes like a Purcell Voluntary or Verdi's "Triumphal March" from "Aida." I'd even employ the occasional crumhorn (aka krumhorn, aka krummhorn) by way of variation during one of those interminable performances of Pachelbel's repetitive Canon (which is to say repetitive even by Canon standards!) There's nothing like the nasal buzzing of a crumhorn to put a nodding congregation on notice that the organist is still alive and kicking up there and isn't going anywhere soon, so they may as well listen to what he's playing, for heaven's sake!
You know what I'm talking about: church-goers who babble to their neighbors during the organist's prelude. ("Marge, was that you yesterday at K-Mart? Listen, Sue and I are going to Red Lobster after the service -- you're welcome to join us! Oh, my: is that William over there? How big you've grown, young man!")
The very idea. I always had half a mind to crank up the volume on my preludes whenever they were being egregiously ignored in this fashion. Can you imagine? I'd pump up "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desire" to 100 decibels -- just until everyone got the hint and piped down.
Whoo-hoo
Of course, sometimes a noisy congregation works to your advantage -- particularly on those Sunday mornings when your chosen prelude turns out to be overly ambitious for your current level of virtuosity. If your rendition of Handel's Water Music is "all wet," for instance, or you rapidly lose altitude during a performance of Mendelssohn's "On the Wings of a Dove," you can just ease up on the volume pedal until your ineptitude is safely hidden behind the caterwauling of the congregation. (Should you come to a section wherein you feel momentarily confident, simply boost the volume during the proficient-sounding snippet, then return to the face-saving pianissimo.)
Ah, I think we have some organists in the house. Don't you guys ever just want to stop playing in the middle of a particularly well-ignored prelude and give the congregation an evil look? You know, like: "Okay, whenever you're ready, I'll continue. I have all day, you know."
Ba-da-boom
Listen, you've been a great audience! Mind you, you might have laughed a BIT harder, but no one's perfect.
And I'll thank you to pay attention the next time you're in church and you hear an organist playing, okay? (The very idea, talking over a prelude like that!)
