The Orgelpark Research Program is a series of organ-art related musicological projects. The first project (2008-2011) focuses on the Art of Improvisation.
Improvisation is a specific and intriguing way of making music spontaneously. Organ improvisation, or, to be less specific, improvisation involving the organ, has become an art in itself during the last few decades. No longer related to religion per se, it increasingly reflects developments in several different contemporary music scenes and, hence, musicological scenes.
Poster notes
A survey of the Improvisation Project is shown on the poster we presented at the 2009 Congress of the Netherlands' professional association for musicology (KVNM):.jpg)
The poster starts of course at the beginning, by addressing the way musicologists have approached the improvisation phenomenon so far. It's save to say that they, generally speaking, focus on 'non-western' musics (as in 'music cultures') and/or light musics (such as some forms of jazz).
One of the reasons for this is easy to see. In the 19th century, many towns opened concert halls. The audiences that visited these, increasingly preferred to know beforehand what music they were about to enjoy; in fact, this was the moment that modern market forces entered the western world of music, introducing stardom among both composers and performers.
Complex scores
A second reason was linked to the first one, but nonetheless of quite another nature. Whereas the scores of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven were still relatively easy to read, later compositions became quite complex: music could be very virtuosic and/or dense at times. On top of that, the size of orchestras increased. All in all, improvising music, which had been a 'normal' way of making music well into the days of Bach, wasn't much of an option anymore after, say, 1850. Whether this should be considered bad or not, what interests us here is the exception that confirmed this rule. 'Located' outside concert halls, facing the task to make music for time-slots of unpredictable length during services, and playing an instrument that almost begged to be improvised on, organists kept improvising. Not only in services, but in concerts as well. Franz Liszt was only one of the main examples.
'New Traditions': Contemporary Improvisation Art
The late 19th and the early 20th century show a special development in organ improvisation. Whereas German organists were hesitant to explore the direction Liszt had suggested, French organists viewed improvisation ever more as an important part of their profession. They even came up with completely improvised symphonies, inspired by the possibilities of the organ type Cavaillé-Coll had introduced in many French cathedrals.
Haarlem
After World War II, another momentum took the art of improvisation to the next level: since 1951, the International Improvisation Competition on the famous organ at Haarlem, the Netherlands, inspired organists to keep track once again with contemporary composers. Historically Informed Performance & Improvisation And even that's not the complete story yet. Whereas current improvisation involving the organ (a new development includes the organ in improvisation ensembles, hence this formula here) mirrors contemporary music in general, it sheds a particular light on the generally accepted and promoted historically informed performance practice as well. The point here is that each organ has its own character. That means that it's never completely congruent with the instrument any composer of any organ composition will have, or may have had in mind. So organists have to 'translate' scores to a far greater extend than, say, a violinist or a pianist. In other words: interpreting a score on an organ always implies a certain amount of adapting the composition to the current instrument. This places the organist in the role of 'second composer': he needs to add some and to take some, in order to be able to play the composition in first place.
Improvisational Approach of Interpreting Scores
To take this one step further: as soon as a musician begins to make/add music himself, be it to a given score (like Liszt used to do) or without a score, he is in fact improvising. Now what does that imply regarding the possibility to perform music in an historically informed way? Can interpretation of organ music in fact be possible without improvisational elements? Is improvisation perhaps still the basis of any organ music? It seems that researching such topics can contribute very well to the contemporary interest in early music. Furthermore, it can be applied as one of the tools of a critical approach of the market forces in the music business, which suggest that 'classical' 'western' music can be seen as a collection of fixed compositions...
Musicological implications
Almost as interesting is that current developments in improvisation involving the organ show that terms like 'western' are well passed their expiry dates: organists tend to include Indian, Turkish, Mexican and western influences to mingle in their music. Here, the field of organ improvisation mirrors the current discussion among musicologists: now that the difference between 'ethno musicology' and other musicologies seem to have been outdated, what should musicology be? In short: researching organ improvisation concerns not just the organ music scene itself, but far wider realms as well, including major topics in the western music culture and, hence, the western musicological culture.
Research
The Orgelpark Research Team focuses on historical, actual and aesthetical aspects of improvisation. Click here to see who's researching which topic.
