MJM, I wonder if Mattmusic would benefit by reading JT's SING LIKE A CATHOLIC would be a prelude to set up the intense scholarship of the Mahrt opus?

One could easily lose enthusiasm if the musical aspirations in a parish are low. High goals and musical challenges will be enough to maintain your excitement alive. I don't know the specifics of your current post. However, if I did the minimum required at my current job I would be bored to death, I think. My priest allows me to expand improvisation and difficult repertoire, I am thankful for that!... Listen to Byrd, Tallis or Palestrina and imagine one day you will be able to bring those treasures alive to enhance the liturgy. Listen to the great works of Bach, Mendelssohn, Durufle, Dupre, etc and establish a goal, they make great preludes, postludes and offertories and a lifetime is not enough to work on their music.. Do not be discouraged, being an organist is a blessing to you and those around you, one could not ask for a more fulfilling job as a musician.

One of the most difficult aspects of being a church musician is being in a situation in which one wishes to share really fine music at a beautiful liturgy only to discover that there is little or no interest in beautiful liturgy and that all the people want is an 'organist' to play only the pathetic songs that they wish to hear (yet again).

What you could really profit from is relationships with other organists (and choirmasters) who can enrich your own musical knowledge and experience, and give you that all-important encouragement and personal friendship. Consider joining your local AGO chapter. Most chapters have special programs to fit the needs and aspirations of young organists like you, and can give direction and advice towards church music as a career (if that interests you). Too, you can benefit from your friends on this forum by becoming a regular participant.

Finally, don't allow yourself to be discouraged when going through a dry spell! The advice from Kathy is spot on and her quote from The Screwtape Letters most apt.
(Incidentally, if you haven't read Screwtape, now would be a good time to do so.)

You have very noble intentions and, obviously, a love for what you are doing. Keep doing it. And Godspeed.

M. Jackson Osborn writes: "Consider joining your local AGO chapter. Most chapters have special programs to fit the needs and aspirations of young organists like you, and can give direction and advice towards church music as a career (if that interests you)."

I cannot sufficiently stress what good advice this is for any organist, but perhaps above all for an organist who is young, conscientious, and intelligent, as you, Mattmusic, clearly are.

The curse of any church organist - and I suspect it is a curse particularly liable to afflict Catholic organists - is simple burnout. It sometimes seems that for every five minutes one spends on useful instrumental practice, one spends at least 25 minutes on such totally unnecessary tasks as nagging a dilatory choirmaster into providing clear repertoire instructions before Sunday morning, or sending out invoices to parish secretaries (who, when telephoned about their payment delays, are invariably "at meetings" and never at their desks), or fending off lay lunatics trying to tell you how to do your job.

Communing with like minds in an organ context is therefore essential. It becomes particularly essential if you are not yourself running a choir and therefore lack even the element of social interaction which choral rehearsals bring.

These are all good suggestions. Please find an organ teacher that can lead you to music that you can use at Mass as well as to continue to grow as an organist. The Catholic church is the most unrewarding church to be an organist in for many reason. A lack of adequate pay, being ignored by the people as being nothing but being part of the building like a potted plant.

The comments you will hear are almost always from unhappy people who will take any chance they have to share their negative emotions and thoughts like a weed-hating neighbor spraying Roundup.

Your music director must care for and feed you with support and encouragement. If this does not happen, leave, find a protestant church where they will be thrilled to take you in, shelter you, pay you and make you ready someday to take on the often thankless position of playing the organ in a Catholic church.

This may be why so many famous French organists hold only titular positions.

However, be careful, very careful to read and keep your brain engaged when talking about what you are reading. Insecurity reigns in catholic-music-hood. Alway refrain from ever referring to any church document with its latin name. Unless someone uses a latin name in your presence, then you may give the secret handshake and then speak in harmony, or polyphony....or just chant.

Gavin, I have been at it for 50 years, and I still need help, too!