Elation and Despair: I composed a Chorale Prelude …

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Remember, I wrote a fancy last verse arrangement for a hymn, a few weeks ago? Well, yesterday I sallied forth to do my organ practice, and came back determined to go one step better than last time. This time, I wouldn’t write a fancy last verse, oh no!

I’d write a whole chorale prelude. In other words, instead of writing a fancy harmonisation to accompany the congregational singing, I would write a whole solo piece for the organ, and play it before the service. 

Writing ‘last verse’ arrangements and chorale preludes both share one feature: the hymn tune is there, providing a kind of framework which the arranger/composer works around, like decorating a house or building an extension – but the house itself is still visibly the same. So, the hymn tune is usually audible. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote dozens of chorale preludes. But sometimes JSB lengthened and ornamented his tune until it would only have been recognised by someone listening keenly  – like, ‘O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross’. That’s the genius of the man, because he created something divinely beautiful out of a tune that was originally very simple. Here’s Anne-Isabelle de Parcevaux playing it:-

Sigh! I can envisage JSB’s organ pupil coming up to him, breathless with admiration and excitement, as the great man tidied away his music. ‘Herr Bach, what a magnificent prelude you have written! Divine!’ But for us ordinary mortals, the chorale prelude format is primarily a useful device to write something appropriate for a particular Sunday or occasion, and we don’t anywhere nearly approach Bach’s brilliance.

In my own defence, it was Harvest Festival today, which is quite a special occasion, and it’s all the more meaningful in a village church where there are farmers. Yes, I’m sure everyone buys their food in supermarkets, but there’s still a special connection with the land that you wouldn’t find in an urban church.

‘We Plough the Fields and Scatter’

It’s one of my favourite hymns. I was determined to write something fairly slow and gentle, despite its usual brisk and upbeat mood, since no-one really wants the organist belting out something loud and brassy before the service. People do converse – it’s not a recital. The louder you play, the louder people have to shout over you, and it’s easy to ruin any sense of quiet reverence or anticipation.

Ploughing a Lone Furrow?

OK, so I’ve set the scene. It was going to be meditative. I’d have the tune in the left hand, and a couple of bars of accompaniment between each line of the melody. It took most of Saturday afternoon and evening, but once I’m in the flow, I don’t like to stop. (Well, apart from cooking dinner, since families need feeding, whether or not the cook fancies herself as a composer. And they like to be fed at set times, alas!)

I got it done and dusted. I have to confess, I was actually rather pleased with my efforts,  last night – I thought it sounded good.

I got to church early today, and played it over a number of times before the congregation arrived. It sounded okay – not as glorious as I expected, but certainly passable, apart from a bar or two where I resolved to re-work it later today. Anyway, its premiere performance passed entirely without comment. Oh, well! A bit of an anticlimax, but I’m forced to concede that I was, to a certain extent, indulging myself in any case. I drove home slightly chastened. How can something sound eminently satisfactory at 10 pm, and … not that special, twelve hours later? What happened overnight?!

I’ve spent another hour tweaking three bars that offended me. I’m sure they’ll make all the difference. Is it finished now? Who knows. 

Maybe Not my Field?

But I definitely won’t be giving up the day job!

In Search of the Trumpet Major’s Youngest Daughter.

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Working or Not Working?

At home, I wonder if I’m perceived as somewhat perverse and illogical. Why would I want to go out early to examine archival records on a ‘Not Working’ day? (Contractually, Tuesday isn’t a day when I work.)

Should I need to justify myself? Arguably not. However, if retirement offers the opportunity to pursue interests, then surely one should pursue them most vigorously whilst one still has vigour? I’m sure scientists would say this was even good for one’s mental health.

If someone was interested in trains, no-one would think it odd if they wanted to find out where a loco was, at different points in time, and where it went – the track layout and the timetables.  It follows,  then, that real people, especially in your own city, and with a connection to your own institution, are every bit as interesting and worth researching. She was an organist, composer and music teacher.

[Incredulously] How many books? How many hours? Really?

So … I know a lot about the trumpet major’s youngest daughter, but if I find a new avenue to research, then naturally, I want to explore it.  And this has been a most interesting and fruitful day, combing through half a dozen large and bulky old handwritten church minutes books.  I now know when the lady in question began her quarter century of service as a church organist, and when she resigned. I’ve seen her resignation  copied into the records. (But it’s unclear precisely why.  She gave a slightly vague explanation.  Ah, well.)

There’s plenty more in my notes that I shall mull over. Just time for a quick coffee before I examine one last document  …

But she was not buried here!

Rose Played On (an Admirable Edwardian Musician)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Why do I persist in researching Rose Smith? I suspect my interest is partly because I see myself in her.

Smith attended, and briefly taught at the Athenaeum.  Throughout her life, she played, accompanied,  composed and taught. I half-wondered if she gave up playing the organ when the family came along, but no! There she was in 1900, and in 1911, still playing. 

Did she leave the baby at home with the maid? There wouldn’t have been a creche! And what about when there were three small children? (They were born ca. 1899, 1903 and 1907.) That’s something I probably don’t need to know.

But when you consider that my own mother told me I’d have to stop playing when the baby arrived (that was in 1993 – and I didn’t stop! Don’t tell me what I can’t do), then for Rose Smith to keep playing in 1899 seems quite unconventional. Or maybe not – I haven’t researched any other Edwardian organists who were mothers.

I’ve temporarily lost track of her organ playing after 1911. And did they move to a closer Episcopal church when they moved house? (I know where to look, but access isn’t easy. Give me time!)

But I do know she was still listed as a piano teacher at the age of 67.

I’ll just keep digging away. I find out a little bit more every time I start looking.  Why, only this afternoon I discovered her younger son was a music salesman for Paterson’s in Glasgow, and must have known J. Michael Diack.  Another little link with what I already know of Glasgow’s music scene …

Image shows the tenement near Glasgow Green, where Smith grew up.

A Wee Hornpipe on the Organ (Don’t Tell Me Not to Do Something!)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Embroidery transfer depicting a British sailor dancing a hornpipe.

‘You can’t play THAT!’ I was told, as I headed out to practise. And although I can’t repeat the precise wording, the gist of the objection was that it was daft and inappropriate.

Well, my supportive congregation didn’t seem to think so, today.  I played all the tunes from Wood’s original Fantasia on British Sea-Songs, along with some of those inserted into the Last Night of the Proms rendition last night, and ended with ‘Land of Hope and Glory’.  The coffee ladies wanted me to know that they didn’t just like it – they loved it.

I did add the Irish ‘The Minstrel Boy’ after ‘Danny Boy’ (The Londonderry Air). But I haven’t yet had time to source the music for the Welsh tune – though I do know what it is.

If you can hear clattering in the background – that’s the sound of the keys and pedals and the tracker action linkage that eventually sends the sound to the pipes. I think it rather adds to the charm of the piece, to be honest!

Vintage embroidery: hornpipe-dancing sailors

One Organist to Another: “Have you got a ‘Last Verse’ for Groeswen?”

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Neilston Parish Church

It sounds like a coded message between members of a secret fraternity, doesn’t it?  Nothing so scandalous, I’m afraid! Although, I’m told it doesn’t make sense.  So, let me explain.

But first, I must clarify: the image above is Neilston Parish Church, where I’m organist.  I can’t find a Creative Commons image of Groeswen Chapel, but you can see it at this link:-

People’s Collection, Wales

(Sensible Alternative Title: Writing a Fancy Harmony for the Last Verse of a Hymn)

Groeswen is a magnificent Welsh hymn tune composed by John Ambrose Lloyd (1815-1874), often used for the hymn, ‘All my hope on God is founded’.  It was one of the hymns chosen by the minister for today’s church service. Now then, organists like to play a more elaborate arrangement for the last verse of a conventional hymn, and there are books published that consist solely of such ‘last verse’ settings.

The Organist’s Playtime

However, my own two ‘last verse’ books don’t contain a last verse setting for Groeswen. I couldn’t do much about it on the spot, but I decided I’d have to write one later on today so that I’d have a setting for another time.  I have added some minor inflections, along with chromaticism and some chordal suspensions.  It is within the capabilities of a competent organist – no need to be a virtuoso.

And now I’m sorry that we’ve already sung it, so I’ll have to wait until we next use the hymn before I can play it! (It’s just a midi-file from Finale, I’m afraid – you’re not listening to a real organist playing it on a real pipe organ!) I’m putting my ‘last verse’ on ArrangeMe, in case anyone else would like to use it.

Sometimes a Musicologist, Other times at the Organ …

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Neilston Parish Church organ and chancel.

I’ve had my Finale Songwriter music engraving software for a very long time, and it has served me well. Apart from occasional glitches, that is. However, it’s no longer sold, no longer supported – and is installed on a very old laptop. (I only keep it for Finale.) This week, I took it into my head to arrange a hymn for my church choir. All went well until …

RIP Finale Songwriter

The Finale Songwriter sound crashed. And with it, the scrolling playback. I tried to fix it. I tried a system restore, which takes hours and hours, but has always fixed it in the past. However, the system didn’t restore. (It’s a very old laptop.) With much persistence, I retrieved some kind of sound, but not the sampled sound. Hooray – I could playback my efforts with a tinny MIDI sound, and it scrolled obediently along. But it’s not how it should be. It was time to get new software for the new laptop. Before that, however, I thought I’d prune my Finale files, so that I’d have less to transfer across.

I file most of my Finale documents by year, and I’ve only reached 2020 in the pruning exercise. This will take a while! I’m deleting tunes that were either transient, functional versions of hymns, or really not worth saving for even family posterity.

Invisible Organist

But I found a piece I’d written for organ, back in the Covid pandemic lockdown. Entitled, Invisible Organist’s Blues, I can no longer remember if I wrote it whilst literally locked down at home, or if it was written at some stage in the next strange months when we conducted services with no congregation, or no singing. I may have written the piece whilst I was not only invisible but also almost inaudible – with not much to play. It felt as though little notice was taken when I did play.

In other words, I was disgruntled. Invisible Organist’s Blues was born out of sadness and frustration. I think it was only played once. It is blues-y. It ends with ‘Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen’, and that was chosen intentionally. I suspected I might have written something that really didn’t sound very agreeable, but I wanted to hear it again before I deleted it. Finding this piece brought back a lot of unpleasant emotions. In my last months there before I left in 2021, I felt my mental health suffering. I cried behind my glasses and face-mask each Sunday – no-one would have noticed the tears streaming. And I cried as I drove home, which was certainly not ideal. I felt marginalised, and for long enough, I told myself to ‘man up’ and accept that it was all in my head – I was imagining it.

Reality

Until, finally, I came to the conclusion that the sadness was real. Was I imagining my shrinking role? It was shrinking. Churches are absolutely entitled to change ways of doing things, and the organist just has to understand that. Was I imagining that the choir and organ were unmentioned throughout an online Zoom group meeting that I attended? They weren’t mentioned. If I was suffering, then that, too was real. Yes, times were changing – and it was time for me to accept it. I did accept it. A few months after my resignation, I was fortunate to find another organist position, where the welcome was as embracing as a warm hug. This was more how things were meant to be!

Neilston Parish Church, West of Scotland, my new church.

Fast forward back to this present week. My finger hovered over Invisible Organist’s Blues. Should I just delete it, and its uncomfortable memories? I played it back with my tinny, defective Finale Songwriter playback, prepared to be disgusted.

But I wasn’t! The tinny playback certainly didn’t enhance it. It lost any semblance of a deep pedal bass-line, but it felt as though there was something worth keeping. I tried it on the piano at home (and any organist will tell you that playing organ music on the piano is weird, because you have somehow to accommodate music that’s intended for two hands and two feet, without having an organ pedal-board) – and I was quite gratified by the results.

Today, I headed for church and tried it there. Tweaked a couple of chords, and – yes, two movements will be played tomorrow. The third does need a bit of practice. I need to decide whether the rhythms are not only too difficult, but unnecessarily so. (Nobody will hear the trouble I’ve seen, either!)

It would be nice to think that by resurrecting the piece and playing it sensitively, I can put the ghosts to rest, and make use of something that I put a lot of work into.

I’ve installed new music-engraving software. I haven’t even tried it out yet, but I did bite the bullet, decide which one to go for, and pay for it! Maybe at some point I’ll convert Invisible Organist’s Blues into music XML and transfer it across. Alternatively, I could just save it as a pdf and accept that that’s it, finished and unchangeable!

I’m not going to share it here yet – not whilst it’s still technically a work-in-progress! However, here’s a Scottish folk song that I played as my warm-up when I was practising this morning – Flow Gently, Sweet Afton – clattering tracker action and all!

Are You Defined by Your Desk?

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
11th Hussars (Cherry Pickers) The Drums and Band, by Harry Payne

I sat down in my home office alcove this morning, and realised that my desk actually tells you everything about me!

  • ORGANIST
  • the Billy Graham All-Scotland Crusade 1955 song book, open at ‘The Solid Rock’
  • Ancient laptop – used only for Allegro Finale Songwriter (I was transposing the song, and reducing it to three rather than four vocal parts)
  • Under my desk, a box containing new choir anthems …
  • MUSICOLOGY
  • CDs of an organ that had been inaugurated by the Athenaeum’s second Principal, Edward Emanuel Allan
  • Picture of a Victorian 11th Hussars trumpeter
  • ANYTHING FABRIC-RELATED
  • Samples of fabric, most of which I won’t be ordering!

(I could add context, and explain that I’m a semi-retired researcher and a church organist!)

Right, the song book and old laptop are closed. I fix my eyes firmly on the Leng Silver Medal on my pinboard. That’s this morning’s focus! But I just can’t put away the 11th Hussars trumpeter – it’s the closest I’ll get to Trumpet-Major James Smith today!

You Can Please Some People Some of the Time

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

… But you can’t please all of the people all of the time. So (apparently) said John Lydgate in the fifteenth century. (Thereby proving the veracity of another old adage: ‘There’s nothing new under the sun’.)

I play a wide range of organ music. I throw in a generous pinch of Scottish songs – although not to excess, I think – and cover a range from Baroque to modern. Not wildly modern – Messiaen is beyond me! And I realise that what I consider ‘middle of the road’ may not be the middle of everyone else’s. However, my conscience is pretty clear – because I do try to please everyone at some point or other! So, it is a little hurtful to hear adverse comments. I do rather wish this hadn’t been relayed to me.  (I mean, why? Was it well-intentioned? Was it a direct quotation or paraphrased?)

She always plays such miserable stuff!

I genuinely feel that’s a harsh and rather unjustified criticism. I disagree with it!

However, I got some new organ music last week, and eagerly took it to church to try out yesterday (Saturday) morning. I’d found Robert Gower’s organ arrangement of Amy Beach’s Scottish Legend, op.54, which by any stretch of the imagination should have been perfect. I like to play music by women composers; I like Scottish-influenced music; and I like turn-of-the century harmonies. The American Amy Beach, currently enjoying a deserved new fame, lived from 1867-1944. I haven’t yet looked into why or when she wrote this particular Celtic-inspired piece, but I do know that it was originally one of the Two Piano Pieces, op.54:-

IMSLP piano original

From my perspective, it looked like a perfectly good, gentle and tuneful piece, and I was looking forward to working on it.  However, when I tried it at the organ, I felt only disappointment.  It sounds like a ‘Coronach’ – a Gaelic funeral song, or dirge. So how will that go down? No-one can say it’s a happy, upbeat tune!

It’s reminiscent of, but slightly more cheerful than the contemporary Coronach by pianist, organist and composer Edgar Barratt (1877-1928). This, too originated as a piano piece:-

Edgar Barratt, Coronach (piano)

Here’s the organ transcription of Barratt’s piece:-

Barratt- Coronach (organ)

Edgar Barratt was the son of English organist John Barratt (b.1848), who by 1881 at latest had moved to Paisley to be the Abbey organist. I haven’t yet discovered where Edgar Barratt trained, although I know his brother William Augustus studied composition at the Royal College of Music. Perhaps I don’t need to know. Anyway, I’m surmising they may have spent most of their childhood in Paisley. Edgar had clearly absorbed the Scottish idiom when he wrote his Coronach. Stylistically, his piece, and Amy Beach’s, sit alongside pieces like Hamish MacCunn’s Land of the Mountain and the Flood, even if they’re on a smaller scale.  There has long been a fondness for Scottish-sounding music!

But, to get back to Beach’s piece – that ‘miserable stuff’ comment echoed in my ears – months after it was relayed to me. I put the music back in my briefcase and headed home without giving it a second try.

Repair, Design

I found myself driving behind a van belonging to a whirlpool spa bath firm, with a slogan on the back: ‘Repair, Design’, and a couple of other skills.  I misread it as, ‘Despair, Resign’, and reflected that it felt like a summary of my mood.  Now, this is evidently plain lunacy.  Why should I  despair, for fear a little organ piece strikes a sombre note?

Anyway, I’m starting to like it. I’ve played the piano recording a couple of times. I’ll have another go at the organ arrangement on the piano at home, before I go back for my next practice session.

I think I should stop caring so much what other people think!

Blog post image from IMSLP

Not Research, exactly! The Organist Plays …

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I was playing through some of the songs in Song Gems (Scots) last night. My attention was taken by a song here entitled ‘Mary in Heaven’, set to a tune called ‘Mary’s Dream’. This is a Scottish song – nothing whatsoever to do with the Annunciation in the Biblical New Testament. Rather, it’s a song written by John Lowe in the late 18th century, in which a bereaved Scottish girl has a visitation from her dead fiance’s ghost; it was written for a real person whose fiance had died. You can look it up – there are numerous instances of it in old Scottish song books. Antiquarian John Glen’s collection, now in the National Library of Scotland – and digitised – holds plenty of copies.  As well as collecting and writing about Scottish songs, Glen was a friend of the compilers of Song Gems (Scots).

Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum ,Vol.1

It was in James Johnson’ Scots Musical Museum, and George Farquhar Graham included it in his Songs of Scotland, published by John Wood  (latterly by Bayley & Ferguson as The Popular Songs and Melodies of Scotland).

Suffice to say, I fell in love with this tune! It begins in the minor, goes into the relative major and back, and dallies with the submediant in the second half – it’s beautifully constructed.  But how could I use it? I worked out the meter, and after a bit of digging, found the words of an old hymn in the same meter, which were eminently suitable for an introit.  I’ve added sparing choral harmonies, and obviously it won’t have soloistic ornamention. But I’m still quite pleased with the results.

And so it shall come about that ‘Mary in Heaven’ will most acceptably be sung in a Presbyterian church …

Here’s Anita Rosati’s gorgeous April 2026 recording of ‘Mary’s Dream’:-

Blog post image by bzimm3 from Pixabay

Ways to Play a Scots Tune

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Yesterday being Sunday – and Scotland isn’t out of the World Cup yet – I dug deep to find some more thematically appropriate music to play on the organ.  I’m pleased to report that it IS possible to play, ‘Yes, Sir, I can Boogie’ in a sedate, dignified manner.  Challenging, but possible.  Likewise ‘Scotland The Brave’.  After those, a calmer ‘The Rowan Tree’ and an organ setting of ‘Amazing Grace’ completed the World Cup set.

But AFTER the service … although I nominally stuck with a Scottish titled march, absolutely no-one would have known or recognised it. It was an indulgence of my research interests, I’m afraid!  I played a piece of music by Edward E Harper. So … it was

  • composed by an Englishman,
  • who briefly lived in Scotland.
  • His tune was called a Scots March (it doesn’t sound Scottish) –
  • and it was in a collection published by Bayley and Ferguson, a Scottish publisher.
  • The composer himself had emigrated to Canada by this stage.  I don’t know when he composed it.

It gets more complicated.

  • The copy I own was sold in AUSTRALIA,
  • and taken to California by a talented scientist at the start of his career.

I repatriated it through eBay, so today the not-exactly ‘Scots March’ was played by an Englishwoman in Scotland, not that far from where the English composer was once organist …

I have a problem now. Just supposing Scotland beats Brazil? I can find any number of traditional tunes, but what would I play as an outgoing voluntary?!