J.S.
Bach got in trouble in the 1700s for showing an unchaperoned young lady the pipe
organ in the choir loft. I didn’t get in trouble when a young church organist
showed me the Allen organ in the choir loft Tuesday evening, but I did get a
bit winded from climbing three flights of stairs.
Nicodemus
and I, finding ourselves without a Christmas gig for the first time in memory,
volunteered to play for caroling at our church in San Francisco.
Music
at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox is almost exclusively Byzantine chant, as it is
in almost all Orthodox churches. A number of Russian composers have made
beautiful settings of the liturgy’s 11th-century words, but church
choirs find the music daunting and mostly stick to the ancient modal chants.
Some Orthodox churches still use the primitive notation called neumes, music
writing which looks a little like some kind of pasta.
The
choir accompanist is the only organist we hear at church, so I met the wedding
organist for the first time when he came over while we were playing to see if
there was a way to open up the little Rippen piano to get more sound (there
wasn’t.)
After
the carols and the treats—you can imagine the spread a Greek church calls
snacks--we got to talking about organs and the young man, George, said he had
selected the instrumental sounds for the church’s organ, an Allen, when it was
being built. Organists usually sound a little apologetic when they speak of
electronic organs (as opposed to pipe organs,) though the serious electric ones
have a wonderful sound and don’t depend on hard-to-find pipe repairmen.
“Would
you like to see it?” he asked.
“Oh,
yes,” I said. I have never been in the choir loft, which has its own beautiful
mosaics of Saint Kassiani and other hymn composers.
“Oh,
it’s just like the one our local orchestra used for the Saint-Saëns organ
concerto a little while back,” I said, still a little out of breath.
“Oh,
wow,” the organist said, and immediately launched into the famous theme on full
organ with every pedal stop depressed, hands and feet moving happily, drowning
out the taped chanting which goes on downstairs all the time and probably
terrifying a few sleeping pigeons on the roof.
“Oh,
my goodness,” I said, overwhelmed.
Saint-Saëns was a universe—and ten centuries—away from the five-note Kyrie
Eleisons we usually hear in church.
“What
does your trumpet sound like?” I asked.
He
whipped out a computer card, did some sleight-of-hand, and played the Jeremiah
Clarke Trumpet Voluntary, full organ, pedals. I reached over his right hand and
joined the fun up on the high notes.
I got all the way home before I remembered
that there’s a closed circuit TV camera on all the time at church so that
people can look at their computers to see the mosaics and listen to the
chanting if they need a quiet moment. I do it myself from time to time when I
can’t sleep.
If
anybody was watching Tuesday evening, they wouldn’t have seen anything
different, but they would have heard a lot of organ music which was anything
but Byzantine.
