Things organists do that drive you....crazy.

1. Play everything too slow.
2. Play everything too fast.
3. Divide all music into two categories: those that get played too fast and those that get played too slow.

The only things that organists do that drive me really crazy are showing up late and/or hung over.

I don't know how he did it.

He drank a lot.

Recently met a nurse who had been married to a fundamentalist preacher. He passed away, she had no intentions of marrying again, met someone Catholic and married him, went through RCIA. Her priceless comment about all of this change in her life:

"My, Catholics sure drink a lot."

1.Try to improvise when they really can't!

2. Play bad music.

3. Don't allow time for a breath or a tad of reflection between hymn stanzas.

My wife's contribution: organists play (nearly) everything too loud and bombastically.

All that while playing the organ?
My! What a feat.

4. Clueless registration, no imagination.

1.Try to improvise when they really can't!

I have to disagree with Jackson here. To say one "can't improvise" is like the old myth that Jackson rightly argues against that some people (Catholics especially) "can't sing".

Any organist can improvise. All it takes is the ears God gave them, a soul to connect to the sacred rites, and a mind to express creatively the mood of the soul. When I've taught improvisation, I've suggested quite seriously that organists simply pick a scale and play it alone on one particularly beautiful stop. Or a hymn tune, melody only. Pause when you feel it to be needed, speed up when you feel it to be needed. Who among us is incapable of that? Yet so many organists will not, out of obstinacy, rather than from inability.

I've never known an organist play drunk/hung over.

I've known a substantial number of organists who drink profusely. (I hope I'm not giving away your secret, Clerget! ;] ) Part of me would be worried were the number ever to drop. Drunk organists are like the Tzadik Nistarim.

I've never known an organist play drunk/hung over.

You didn't know my 22 year old self.

I readily agree with Gavin if he means to encourage those who have the ability, the talent, to develop improvisatory skills. Many have these. Many don't. Those who do should be encouraged and egged on. There are those, however, who subject people to a boring round of doodling on, or not on, a hymn tune or such at the offertory or communions and call it improvisation. There are those who make a lot of noise for a closing voluntary or a processional and boast that they have improvised. Predictably, an awful lot of people are mightily impressed (and concommitantly deceived) with said noise. Such doodling, whether loud or soft, is not improvisation and should be discouraged. Improvisation is the spontaneous invention of music which is defined by musical thought and form. We encourage and wish to ennervate those who have this gift and wish to develop it. We discourage those who don't and are not embarassed to subject people to their senseless, boring, distracting, doodling and meandering. It is far better to play short pieces or examples of much early music which was written specifically to be cut short or lengthened as needed. Francis is quite correct: 'There ARE organists who can not improvise. Be assured'. Those who can't shouldn't, and those who can should be encouraged, no matter how elementary their first efforts bay be.

Incidentally, for those who are members of the AGO, or can avail themselves of copies of The American Organist, there is an ongoing article and tutorial about improvising in every issue. There is much good advice and encouragement here for those who wish to develop their talent. They may even discover that they can do what they never thought they could do. Many have!

Back in my Anglo-Catholic days, we used to celebrate the Feast of the Circumcision. And there was a tenor who would come in, the worse for wear. I remember one year when he invented "the reverse Picardy third" by going massively flat in a 4-3-2-3 cadence.

Paix -
If you are studying improvisation I applaud you and wish you much gratification from practicing this noble art. Think of improvisation as the musical equivalent of the gift of spontaneous speaking on a given topic. We have all been informed, entertained, and enriched by those who have knowledge in a certain field and the ability to 'invent' a spoken essay of brief or lengthy duration about it. If someone is good at this we applaud him. If he isn't we are likely to be turned off and say that he doesn't know what he is talking about. So is it with music. If you know what you are talking about, improvise away. But if you don't, please don't bore us and clutter the liturgy with musical nonsense. Play a short piece, or a part of one that was meant to be cut short if need be. There is honour in that.

One of my predecessors would hold a chord, then turn the organ off. The sound was hideous as the wind died away. He didn't last long. An organist at another parish was notorious for playing a 1-3-5 melody on a solo stop at the end of every piece. Stuff happens. LOL.

Then there is the aging diva - God save us all. She's been in every choir I have ever worked with. Her hearing is not the greatest any more, so of course I will play her part in addition to the accompaniment when she demands to do a solo. No problem! Being a "star" she comes in late, has to get her music out, and say hello to all her friends in the choir. We are past the Gloria by that point. Oh well, Maybe she can compensate for the deaf and booming bass, who has no sense of rhythm and refuses to wear a hearing aid. I think one could easily earn sanctity through suffering in the field of church music. Who said this work is easy. LOL.

For the win: "Organists become drunks for a reason." Laughing hysterically over here!

Stop making fun of me.

Thankfully, I've managed to avoid drinking and doodling together to this point. I may be guilty of some of the other stuff!

Back to the topic...practical things they fail to understand and do.

1. Playing the last line and expect the congregation to recognize the hymn and expects them to sing.

2. Slowing down at the end of every verse - or worse, at the end of every line.

3. Being totally unable to accept a director's tempo, beginning and plowing along at their own speed.

It is rather a given that the organ sets the tempo for hymns, leads them, and that they are not conducted by the choirmaster. Hymns are not conducted, they are led by the organ. This is a prerogative which I guard jealously when in appropriate circumstances. It is presupposed, though, that one has a real organist, not one who is characterised by numbers one and two. With this caveat in mind, I agree with Noel whole-heartedly about numbers one and two.

The hymn numbers are always on the board and the hymns are familiar. I don't throw new things at the congregation without months of preparation. I set the tempo for the hymns - the choir would drag them to death if allowed - and I direct from the organ. With familiar hymns the last two or three lines are more than enough introduction.

I will add that I tell my choir the hymns are not choir pieces. They are for the congregation.

MJO, I presumed that Noel's comment about tempi was more in regard to Anthems than Hymns.

I didn't take FNJ's #3 to be in reference to hymns, either, when I wrote my response.
That being said, I have also shared in the experience canadash describes. Sometimes the organist leading the hymn is just "getting through it", maybe thinking ahead to a postlude, maybe not liking the hymn and giving it some mental distance, and he or she ends up not choosing a tempo that is comfortable or familiar with the bulk of the people.

Please start a new thread complaining about choir directors and or singers. You guys have beaten the organists up enough.

Start at the 24:28 mark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkTDoOvb1lg

Three things I've heard repeatedly from priests:

1) organ is too loud, this is a constant theme with variations

2) organ is too dissonant, too esoteric. In fairness to organists this can simply mean that the priest doesn't listen to music written in the last 80 or so years, and doesn't think the people do, either.

3) organists or music directors, anyone choosing the hymns picks from among musicians' favorites and not what they think is good for the people.