Catholic ping!
The one thing I learned is that every Church organist is a homosexual. Every single one.
If you need a church organist, just advertise in the homosexual publications. They will come-a-knockin faster than you can say "gerbil".
“A full keyboard organ”, with all the ‘stops’, requires an organized mind, a penchant for loving hard work (playing a footpedal gigue isn’t easy), and no headphone jack.
Look at today’s under 40 folks, wunderkinde not included, and see if they fit this pigeonhole.
Back in the early 1950’s, Leon Russell started playing piano and organ by the age of 6, at his local Presbyterian Church. By the time he was 10, he left to play at the Pentecostal Church, because their music was more lively and fun. He said in an interview once, that the Presbyterian Church, found another 6 year old to take his place.
At our old church (small) the organist was VERY talented and would do improvisions on the pieces. One time I asked him about it, and he said how he worked for days, hours and hours on it, rewriting the entire piece.
A few years later after a very impressive adaptation I asked how long he had spent on re-writing it. He explained how he had gone someplace to learn “jazz” and improv music. Now all he did was he just had a few ideas in his head that he practiced the main ideas the night before, and then just “did it”. He laughed to think about how he used to do them!
My mother was a church organist for our (then) small town church in Mason, Ohio...for 45+ years. When I was a little girl,
I used to sit next to her on the organ bench while she was playing. My Mom passed away 2 years ago. I still, get a tear in my eye when I hear the first strike of a chord on the organ at church every Sunday.
What has changed now? Are incumbents staying on longer than they used to, thus depriving newcomers of opportunities? Has music school enrollment declined precipitously? The general inflation in college tuition costs is turning colleges more and more into vocational education. Music could be among the traditional disciplines affected.
Posting, because this thread demands it.
Garden of Eden, by I. Ron Butterfly.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qSCUhqsy4Nk
If you want mastery in a specialized skill, you cannot expect to harvest existing talent indefinitely. You have to train people for it.
The American Guild of Organists, in New York, has some 25,000 members, but few of them are active organists.
So what is needed is a new college for organists, subdivided into four parts: the organ as instruments (different kinds), maintaining and tuning of organs, organ performance, and historical clerical organ music.
The college should offer at least four “degrees”, the simplest of which is electronic organ and sectarian organ music and hymn and religious service performance.
Next would be organ and choir. A more traditional pipe organ layout with *manuals* (keyboards), pedals and stops.
Third would be the creation, maintenance and tuning degree.
And Fourth would be massive pipe organ and all that entails.
Forget an organist. I’m dying to find a church.
At my parish, the vigil mass for Sundays and 3 of the 4 midimorning Sunday masses, there is an adult choir lead by a wonderful orgin/piano playing music director. The early morning mass for Sunday there an adult guitar music mass. One Sunday at midmorning there is a childrens and families Sunday mass and the guitar and piano is played.
A positive story:
http://www.smarymag.org/uploads/docs/bulletins/20160724.pdf
http://www.smarymag.org/liturgy-music
Here is a hymn played on an church organ with the parishioners participating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlwtgaQZYDI
I am not a homosexual, but I have been a church organist on and off for over thirty years, currently at a church in Chicago, where I have been for 23 years. Over 50 years ago, when I was 9, my parents asked if I was interested in taking music lessons, specifically organ lesson, probably because they would rather hear that than drums, three-chord rock ‘n’ roll, etc. I said yes to organ lessons and also began learning the trumpet in school at the same time.
At that time, organ and piano stores were very common, as were places that offered lessons. It was common for people to have these instruments in their homes. None of those are at all common these days. But learning to play the organ at home provided a gateway for my becoming a church organist. When I was 16 or 17, our church organist wanted to retire, so I took over, and played and worked with the choir for a number of years. The other gateway was provided when I was brought up in church and learned to love the services to appreciate the traditional hymnody and instrumental music played on the organ. These days, if a church has more contemporary worship and a worship band, and the closest thing to an organ is an electronic keyboard (which is to say, not close at all) then it is unlikely to spawn new church organists. It doesn’t even need to.
I am not a professional-grade organist, but I am competent at it. I do it because it enjoy it. God has given me this gift, and being an organist is a way I can give back.
In addition to not being a homosexual, the other odd thing about me is that I am the organist in an Orthodox Church. Orthodox Churches traditionally do not use musical instruments of any kind, but some time early in the last century, some Greek churches in America decided to westernize and add an organ. When I began at this church, I had to learn not only the music, but also had to know the Divine Liturgy by heart, and be able to follow a language foreign to me. I won’t say I’m irreplaceable, but the church is going to have some problems finding someone new when my old hands are no longer fit for the keyboards.
I hate organ music - I find it depressing. What’s that Emily Dickenson verse? “There’s a certain slant of light, On winter afternoons, That oppresses, like the weight. Of cathedral tunes.”
Organists are one of the reasons that churches are struggling to find members. The other reason is the pretend Peter Paul and Mary guitar players which remain a pestilence from Vatican II and the nonsense it gave us.
Go to a seeker church and learn why a church band matters.
