The Organists' Toolkit
A Guide for Reluctant Organists

|Hymn Playing| |Simplified Hymns| |The Play Over| |Voluntaries| |Filling In| |Other Pages|

Hymn Playing

500 simplified hymns available HERE
Covering the whole year.
No large stretches. No Pedals.
Never more than three notes at a time.

The accompanying of hymns constitutes the universal bedrock of what church organists do. The following comments apply also to simple service settings and other similar music you may be asked to accompany.

Unless you are familiar with them, if asked to accompany Anglican Chants, just say NO! They provide endless difficulties and problems which are hard to deal with if you are getting used to an unfamiliar instrument.

One serious problem for an organist, in all accompanying, is that  you both lead and accompany this singing. The comments below will talk about maintaining a sense of rhythmic flow and consistency but, ultimately, the congregation consists of a body of undirected singers, each with his or her idea of how things should be sung.

A skilled professional organist can deal with most cases of congregational waywardness, but this cannot be expected someone just helping out. Try to be rhythmically coherent, but listen to what is being sung and, if the congregation goes its own way, go with them. It may be a bit unmusical, but it's far better than a clearly audible death-struggle.

Most hymns are written for a four part choir and don't take the limitation of two hands into consideration. It becomes necessary to redistribute notes from the Alto and Tenor (middle two) parts across the hands according to how far a hand can stretch.

Alternatively, the bass notes between the brackets could be played an octave higher.

One of the greatest limitations that pianists find when transferring to the organ is the lack of a sustaining pedal: if you release a note, the sound stops. Whilst it is not absolutely necessary to maintain a strict legato (smoothness) at all times, it 's not so good if the music seems to be hopping from one chord to the next. One way of maintaining a better legato is to use finger substitution whilst holding a key down. Something like this:

It's actually quite hard to do this efficiently in all parts if the hymn is moving at a fair pace. As a compromise, you could aim at maintaining a legato in at least the soprano (top) part. But, bearing in mind that it is of absolute importance to keep the hymn flowing in an even tempo without fits or starts, and you find the above difficult, you could settle for playing just the melody and bass:

It sounds like this:

The harmony may seem a bit thin, but you will be playing to two most important parts. Also, if you are using 8', 4' (and 2') stops, you are actually playing a lot more actual notes than your fingers suggest.

If you don't like the thinness of this, check out the Simplified Hymns below for a compromise solution.

Ideally, the gaps between the verses should not be random but be part of the rhythmic flow of the verses. Something like:

The above example gives the congregation time to breathe and gather their thoughts.

This does not:

If you are going to change stops between the verses, the two silent beats would be the place to do it.

If you are confident using a combination piston to do this, it's relatively easy to operate one in the gap. It's more risky when changing by hand, as one hand of the other has to reach out, change the stop(s) and then get back into position. It can be useful, on a final chord, to take that chord with one hand so that the other can be in place for a stop change the instant that chord ends.

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Simplified Hymns

Organists Online provides a growing repertoire of simplified hymn accompaniments. They can be accessed HERE.

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The Play Over

In most churches, a hymn is introduced by playing over the first line or couple of lines. This should be in the same tempo in which the hymn will be sung. The rhythmic gap you have planned to place between the verses should also be used between the play over and the first verse.

It's helpful to a congregation is first verse is a little louder than the playover. Something like this:

If you are not confident about changing stops or manual, it's always possible to playover just the top line in single notes and then introduce fuller harmony for the verse. Something like this:

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Voluntaries

Strictly speaking, it's not absolutely necessary to play music before or after a service. However, it has become customary and is generally expected.

If you are a competent pianist, you will find that much of your Bach, Handel, or other Baroque repertoire will work well. (Things might not be so ideal with your Chopin Études.)

If, however, you decide to play voluntaries, but lack a suitable repertoire, there are some downloadable pieces to be found on page 3.

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Extemporisation
and Fill-Ins

It's not uncommon that music is required in a service at short notice, perhaps to cover a gap, or possibly as an unexpected prelude, or maybe as a triumphant conclusion to a hymn. If you feel that you have no skill for extemporising, the following might help.

These examples show how to create music, apparently out of thin air, but actually 100% (or at least, 99.9%) derived from common hymn tunes, and are NOT dependent on the organist being able to improvise or having any keyboard harmony skills. It can all be done by rules of thumb.

FIRSTLY, we are going to construct a little prelude based on the melody Anima Christi (Soul of My Saviour). For those of you who don't know it, here is a video of the complete melody. (The harmonisation used is that to be found in the Simplified Hymns on Organists Online. The suggestions made below work equally well with standard harmonisations.). As this is envisaged as an introductory piece to a service, it can be played in any tempo which suits the mood at the time.

The simplest thing to do is extend each line with an echo on another manual. (If you don't have two manuals to play on, there are suggestions below for organs with only one manual.)

If you want to, you could add a second echo by closing the swell box or changing stops.

Another way to make the piece a little longer is to lengthen (augment) the notes of the second echo. It will sound best if the lengthened notes have some rhythmical relationship to the original notes. For instance, crotchets (quarters - US) could become minims (halves - US), or minims (halves - US) could become semibreves (wholes - US). In a triple time, crotchets could become dotted minims, and so on.

If you a playing on a one manual organ and have little or no chance of changing stops, echos can be suggested by playing the melody notes in different octaves.

As commented in the video, this can sound somewhat thin. A solution is to play in 3rds with the melody. (The adding of thirds is the ONLY time, on this page, that it is suggested that you add notes not printed in the hymns tune.)

Here is a version with 3rds added below the melody during the echos.

And here is a version with 3rds added above the melody.

If thirds are added below the below in the concluding echo of a piece, the final effect might not sound complete. In such a case, just repeat the last line of the hymn again, as in the following example.

It's possible to make a little introduction to the piece by playing fragments of the first line in various octaves without accompaniment - as in this example:

So, here's a complete example of a little prelude based on Anima Chirste, selecting several of the suggestions from above.

SECONDLY, we have a complete example of the continuation of a hymn tune to cover a gap or, possibly, as a concluding voluntary. For this, we are using the hymn tune Blaenwern, which is sung to a variety of words, including Love Divine.

As it's the continuation of a hymn being sung, it's important that it maintains the tempo and mood of the hymn, so something like this should be avoided:

Here is the complete piece based on Blaenwern with added comments. It makes use of most of the techniques suggested above. It is entirely on one manual, makes no use of a swell pedal, and doesn't require any change of stops. Using simple techniques of repetition and echo etc, a little piece of nearly three minutes has been created.

You will notice that the last line of the hymn is repeated before the introduction in fragmented octaves begins. This helps to ensure that the congregation don't think, as you carry on, that another verse is to be sung.

You will also notice that some mid-line echos and repetitions have been included. The example will make these clear without the need for special explanation.

Now, nobody is going to claim that following the suggestions above is going to produce a great piece of music that will resound down through the ages, but the end products are servicable. If might take a little practice to get used to the ideas but, once they are known, there are as many piece of music at your fingertips as there are hymn tunes in the hymn book.

Here's another example based on the hymn tune Old 100th:

If you have a large gap to cover, you could have a second hymn tune ready in a related key (one sharp or flat more or less in the key signature) and daisy chain them, using a variety of the techniques describe above for each.

Something like: tune 1 - tune 2 - tune 1.

You could easily fill up seven or eight minutes likes this.

Other Pages

The first page includes information about the organ, manuals, pedals and the mechanics of the instrument.

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The third page includes links to useful repertoire and books for further study.

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