Your questions go admirably deep and wide. I hope your church, your music, and your remuneration are adequate!

How late do you stay out dancing on Saturday nights?
How many extra sets of car keys do you have handy?
Do you use just one alarm clock or several?
What are your favorite hangover cures and why?

Purple Bold, baby...

If you are selecting a professional musician, please check his/her poker face.
A straight face is the greatest tool we have to maintain employment...well...that and a good Tennessee whiskey. ; )

1. What traits set apart a good organist and a bad one?

If they use the pedals, you got a good one.

2. Describe the role of the organist in church music and what functions he/she serves.

Have you read the documents of the Church on Sacred Music? Do you support everything in there? If so, we will get along like bread and butter.

3. What single project or task would you consider your most significant accomplishment in your career to date?

Going to confession and communion.

4. What are your professional goals for the future 5 years? 10 years?

Remain employed as a Church musician.

5. How do you feel about describing church music with the word "ministry"?

Which church music comes under that category? Please be specific.

** Skills **

1. What is your experience accompanying a choir?

I not only accompany the choir from the organ, but I also direct the choir. I use all four appendages and my head along with facial expressions to do this. Do you want a demonstration?

2. What is some of your favorite repertoire for preludes, postludes?

Anything composed before the 18th Century. I have 10,000 pages of it on my computer. I don't use paper... it projects on a large monitor on the organ desk.

3. (Audition will include playing two verses of two prepared hymns, sightreading a third hymn, and a few repertoire selections. If they're selected, they'll be asked to play a Mass at an upcoming weekend.)

Nice. But how are they at being sensitive to what the Church requires for liturgical music. In general, HYMNS are the last option when all else fails.

** Relationships **

1. When your opinion conflicts with the pastor or the music director, what do you believe is the best way to navigate that?

Always defer. My opinion doesn't matter. I am not in charge of the parish or the music program I am just the piano player.

2. What leadership qualities do you like to see in a music director? In a pastor?

Backbone and both having my back.

3. What are the aspects of a church music program that are essential in supporting you as an organist?

Full time salary and benefits.

4. Have you ever been verbally attacked by someone unreasonably? How did you handle it?

All the time. I smile and say nothing, walk away and say "I will get back to you on that". I then pray the prayer of St. Michael the Archangel, then pronounce the excorsism prayer of St. Benedict (all in Latin). Then I call on the BVM and all hell flees screaming.

If I were interviewing an organist, I would select 5 candidates and have them each play Daily Mass one week. Low Mass. Improvise or play repertoire, their choice.

Then ask them some questions after Mass.

Pick the best candidate and have them come in to play a Sunday Mass and then ask more questions.

Repeat if necessary.

Thank you everybody! What awesome feedback. I love this forum :)

@Liam, your list of specific, "feet on the ground" questions are fantastic. I'm definitely going to incorporate some variant of those.

Just for fun, pick a single hymn and ask them to play each verse differently.
1. Like a Catholic
2. Like a Lutheran
3. Like a Presbyterian
4. Like a Baptist
5. Like an Episcopalian
6. Like a member of the Church of Christ.


(purple bold, if it makes you feel better)

So, Adam, that'd be:

1: At about eighteenth-note = 60, 8' flutes with Tremulant, only tonic, dominant, and sub-dominant on pedal, played by left-foot only.
2: Proper tempo, 8, 4, 2 Principals (with Mixture) on Great, 16, 8 Pedal.
3: Solo melody on 8' Krummhorn, pedal drone, 4' reed, on Tonic & Dominant.
4: On piano, with a gospel-shuffle rhythm.
5: Full Organ, Double Pedal, Free harmonization, soloing the Tune on the Tuba on the last phrase.
6: Moderately slow tempo (because the keys stick), 8' Principal, 4' flute (because they're the only stops available on the single manual), no pedal (because you have to pump it with your feet, since the building, built in 1780, hasn't really been electrified, and the organ, installed in 1826, hasn't seen a tuner or technician since 1907).
7: Was it Organ in 19th Century Russia? It was not! Is Outrage!

Must be sexagesimal music notation.

Illustration:

http://gypsyroadtrip.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/organs-009.jpg

@Liam: of course.

Obviously, the Babylonians did not have the benefit of a Catholic nun's penmanship instruction. Hammurabi was merciful.

G

Yer right! No left foot lucy's in this profession! However, when it comes to jazz, the 'barefoot lady' is tops.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQUCtvt7_9A

Francis, you have a beard so you could do it like an Orthodox. A beard is God's glory - carved in stone somewhere in the Orthodox canon of masculinity and divine and holy order.

Well in ancient Greco-Roman times, a beard was a symbol of masculinity, and a boy was not a man until he could grow one. Hence I tell my 5th graders who want to be baritones like me that they can't sing like me until they can grow a beard like mine.

hmm... it took me 55 years to become a man?

Me too! I am 66 but think I am still 12. I run around and act like it too, at times.

If I were on such a commtittee I should want to know, and would ask:

1. We have been singing (such and such): what is your critique of that, and what recommendations, if any, would you have for improving our music?

2. How do you relate, thematically or mood-wise, what you play for preludes, postludes, and at other moments of the liturgy, to the other music of a given mass?, that is to say, what criteria do you use for choosing the literature or improvisations you play for each Sunday?

3. How do you conceive of the musical relationship between organist and congregation when making music together? And, the relationship between organist and choir?

4. Are you at ease with all our heritage of hymnody? Can you improvise well on hymn-tunes? Do your accompaniments & registrations reflect a sensitivity to the meaning or mood of each stanza?

5. Are you skilled in the art of choral accompaniment? Could you give us a brief outline of your knowledge and experience of the varieties of anthems, Catholic, Anglican, and any other?

6. What are some of your positive experiences working with pastors? With choirmasters? With the congregation at large?

7. Can you improvise on a sacred cantus firmus, i.e., a hymn-tune or Gregorian chant?

One could go on, but the tenor of these questions should be reflective of an earnest seriousness about sacred music and liturgical concerns; they should signal to the candidate that one expects a highly intelligent application of musical skills as they relate to liturgy, to choir, congregation, and priest-liturgist.

Francis -

It occured (sp?) to me that these questions might not reflect the matters on the minds of the typical committee, which often is more concerned with how a candidate can stand on his head to make everyone 'happy'. They are food for thought for those who are open to taking the 'higher road'.

Too, I expect that any real church organist who happened upon such an interview would (to quote C S Lewis) be 'surprised by joy', and indeed would stand on his head to be chosen by such people.

a question that asks about how familiar the organist is with the Liturgy (and the relevant liturgical documents, including the GIRM and Roman Missal).

My parish recently hired an organist/director of music who appears to be TOTALLY unfamiliar with ANY liturgical documents. Using "Variations on The Star Spangled
Banner" as the recessional (!) on the first Sunday of Lent is only one rather egregious example.

Supposedly had been an organist overseas for 15 years and in the Windbag City for 5, all R.C. assignments.

Blaise

...said it well back in 2012.

With all due respect to Rev. Monsignor, I think I can address this "tastes and preferences" and "King's Highway" thing by simply turning the argument on it's head, without reference to ecclesiastical documents and without any sort of theological content whatsoever. The answer? Because in most American Roman Catholic parishes there is only one "lane"--and not even one with the best "scenery", if we continue the logic (how many want a Sunday low Mass with some sing alongs? Passengers, raise your hands. Nobody? Anybody? Everybody?). Many "vehicles", that is parishes, will take the same lane, following each other (that is, copy what another parish is doing "just because"). Occasionally, a vehicle will pay to take a toll way (that is, take a route with one or more of the following: chanted prefaces, choral music, propers, organ, maybe incense or ad orientem). But for most, it is the same rubbish scenery. And even worse yet, some of the "drivers" (priests, musicians, etc.) and "traffic engineers" (following the same logic, that is, liturgical composers) appear to forget where we are going (to paradise, heaven, not Disney World).

appear to forget where we are going (to paradise, heaven, not Disney World).

That about sums it up.

It is assumed that an interview includes an audition in which the candidate will display his or her skill and knowledge vis a vis the above questions asked. It is good, though, that he should be able to speak convincingly and authoritatively of these matters, as well as demonstrate them in audition.

And I know who it was/is! One could list other ineptitudes but one will restrain oneself. And to think so many people think that he hung the moon!

Yes, the clergy are typically the source of the problems, CK. And when you consider that offering the Mass is their principal responsibility, you'd think that they would have learned about the purpose of "liturgy" somewhere along the line.

So it's really the Bishops who were responsible for seminary training, too.