Not sure about other folks but surely I am very interested in content like this~! The thought process, the different musical aspects to pay attention to and all sorts things, I can definitely learn something from you~ Thank you for sharing Richard.
Thoroughly agreed. The Gigout Toccata is one of my favourite pieces, and seeing the thought process - particularly around the registration choices - was really interesting.
Hum... I’m currently working on the first part of the fugue of the Prelude et Fugue sur le nom d’ Alain - which I think is one of the most beautiful pieces ever written.@@beautyinsound
@@beautyinsound Perhaps Bach's Passcaglia in Cm - on an organ that you're perhaps not super comfortable with the disposition, requiring a little more thought?
This has to be the best performance of this composition I’ve heard. The clarity of lines, the registration, the interpretation -- all were wonderful! Thank you, Richard! 🎶🎵🎵🎶
Great idea, this. I would like to see more. One suggestion: when discussing registration, tell us a bit more about WHY you chose the stops (unless it's in the sheet music, of course). I know registration is a common problem for many beginning organists, especially when working with hymns or earlier composers like Bach and Buxtehude. It would help us to eventually make our own stop choices more appropriate.
I am very interested in such interesting content and I want more !!!!! It's very instructive and enriching to see your way of preparing the organ pieces. Thanks a lot See you next recital !
It's a while since I played this. You've demonstrated how to play this well with your dialog - great idea. Do this again it really helps us organists think deeper into the piece!!!
Your registration was fantastic! I’ve listened to it five times now and get serious frisson at the crescendo into the forest of arpeggios, as you call. I can honestly say this is my new favorite performance of the toccata!
Thank you so much Richard for showing all your preparation and thought process that goes into performance of a piece. I, same as other viewers, would love to see more videos like this. Information on note designations. Breve, double whole note; Semibreve, whole note; Minim, half note; Crotchet, quarter note; Quaver, eighth note; Semiquaver, sixteenth note; Demisemiquaver, thirty second note; Hemidemisemiquaver, sixty fourth note. Last one is a mouthful.
My brain can’t compute it. Why is a minim a ‘half’ note? It’s 2 beats (usually) and a ‘half’ note to me would be a quaver. I have to keep Googling the relations between the two!
See...?! All good things come in threes! Holy desires, good councils, just works - like great music, an instructive video, and a good laugh ... just brilliant Richard!
This is such an interesting and instructional video for those who are in various stages of their careers as organists. As for me, an old gentleman having a dubious combination of really good ears and a musical mind, with an unfortunate, congenital, coordinational dysfunction, I can memorize music and registrations with ease, but can barely manage to actually play the simplest contrapuntal passages. These videos show YOUR hands and feet doing what I know that MY hands and feet should do after years of exhaustive effort. I have long since conceded to my present status as a volunteer small church organist, playing mostly hymns; I am quite satisfied and grateful for the station in which the Almighty has called me. Nevertheless, the vicarious experience with you at your console is an absolute THRILL!! In fact, I am developing a rather strong affinity for your channel.
Thanks, Richard! I really enjoyed that. It's always interesting to watch other organists prepare their music and I enjoy learning new things from them.
I really appreciate when skilled organists like yourself take us through practicing and explaining your approach to difficult sections. Everything from phrasing, fingering, tempo, registration. Master classes like this are invaluable! Question: I assume you are using Forscore on the iPad. What is the online source of the score? I'm looking to build by digital organ library. Thank you!
Thanks so much Richard for this wonderful insight into playing and practising this piece. You mentioned small hands. I can only stretch an octave by playing at the edge of the key and therefore consecutive octaves can be troublesome.. bravo! Please let’s have more of these! Love it! Arthur
Thanks Richard, this video has been a great help to me as I am practicing this piece for a recital later this year on a magnificent untouched lthree manual organ built by Forster and Andrews of Hull in St. Mary’s in Cottingham near Hull, with all the suitable stops to pull off an authentic performance. I am also planning to play this in a session in York Minster sometime this year. I intend to take it slower than I have been doing in order to achieve clarity in the acoustics in both venues . David Craggs (Hull)
@@beautyinsound thanks Richard, I have played in York before and I am using the screen console in order to avoid the slight time lapse encountered when playing from the detached nave console. (A Toccata killer as I discovered a few years ago!)
That was a fascinating insight into how a professional organist practices and prepares. It's actually encouraging to know that even professionals sometimes make the odd mistake but I can make the odd mistake in a simple hymn tune not a complex toccata.
Thanks for the commentary and the use of "red pen" marks on the page that give you difficulty-- either note of fingering. This tpe of BIS video is helpful to those of us learning pieces for the first time.
Absolutely wonderful video. I love this piece by Gigout and I'm trying to learn it but sometimes I have a hard time. Your video answered me a ton of questions about fingering some passages, pedaling, registration legatos, etc etc etc. I will be coming back to seek help when needed. Thank you!!!
What fun to watch you work out how you want to perform a piece! I personally play this piece slightly detached on an organ set like Salisbury, since that set is very wet acoustics. In a very dry acoustic, you may want to play more legato. Beautiful job!
Enjoyed this, thanks Richard! I've never been able to fully get my fingers around this one satisfactorily, but it's good to see and hear your processes!
Thanks. The top live of the 3rd page gets me as I find the stretches there quite large. Placing those quavers in the pedal made me lose a bit of tempo as well which I hadn’t noticed before.
Thanks for the inspiration and good humor AND helpful details. Inspired by your video, I made a project of learning this piece. It took 2 weeks of obsessive practice, and I will perform it for the first time - at a conservatively slower tempo - today!! 😊
@@beautyinsound oh, somewhere between tragic and acceptable right now. I have a Masters degree, primarily in voice, but studied piano and conducting at the graduate level. And lots of music history. I played the organ starting at 13 and was a very bad church organist through graduate school. I have a new posting with significant organ expectations and I am deep diving to improve/rescue my skills and repertoire. I have just started with a wonderful organ teacher (who serves at the US Naval Academy - you really need to play there as well as at West Point when you come to the States.) and I have HIGH repertory aspirations. What I play in service right now will be quite simple things that I am confident about, but I am practicing many aspirational things to build my skill set. Next week I will offer Phil Lehenbauer’s Festivities as my new piece. There are six hymns next Sunday so will be crunching to make them solid and interesting. The other stuff is from good composers and serviceable, but not worth mentioning. Thank you again! I eagerly await the next installment.
I do not consider my self qualified to comment on your playing of this pice of music which I have come to love over time. How ever I can say that I like the part which instructs the organist to enjoy a cup of Builders tea!
This is beautiful Richard. I remember requesting this during Virtual church sometime last year, it wasn't played though. Excited that it's finally going to be played.
Thank you Mr. McVeigh, for some beautiful playing here. In my view, I think the opening should be played as staccato as possible; so that there is a noticeable difference in articulation when the legato pedalling and manuals begin later on. Having said that, in a room with much less acoustic, perhaps legato playing is more called for at the beginning. Wishing you well.
This is one of those pieces that I find far more difficult than it should be. I need to revisit it though. As for the marking, I have some things double circled, some double circled with arrows, etc.
Richard, Thank you. I appreciated the talk-through of registration as Salisbury is my primary sample set. I too have an issue with latency in the pedal. If you find a fix- could you please let us know?
I love this videos, even as a violist and pianist it is fascinating to see how one mentally approaches a piece. Hillary Hahn does practice videos also and I have learned that I got good training because not every one I know knows how to slow down a section to get the neurons trained. There is nothing like slow practice, nothing can replace it. I really love the sound of this organ and of course you play this amazingly.
About legato or staccato - I think it would depend on the accoustics of the buillding, the other half of the instrument, of course: letting in some airspace between the notes could help build up tremendous energy.
Super video and performance. A lot of people play this too fast in my humble opinion, but you got it just right, and the articulation worked well too. And I like where you added the 32ft pedal reed. I’ve been living in New York now for 22.5 years (transplanted Englishman) and I still have to think about what quarter notes, eighth notes, 16th notes etc are. There is a logic to it until your playing in 3/4 time and quarter notes seem a bit daft. When I tried to explain to my son what a crotchet and a quaver was, he thought I was joking. Have you played at St Ignatius Loyola here in New York? A biggish 4-manual English organ (Mander 1993) with a French accent. Built in a style of a mid-late 19th Century French romantic organ, but not a slavish copy of a Cavaile-Coll. The Gigout would work really well at St Ignatius.
Fantastic!! This definitely needs to be a regular series. Wonderfully engaging. Something for everyone here. I for one appreciated how to get a more French sound from an English organ - clever use of solo reeds!!
Alright. Now you've done it. I'm utterly inspired to go learn the piece. (again) But, now perhaps a bit a improved. So long& adieu blissful ignorance and Thank you, Richard. Those listening to me play attempt to play this peice will be in your debt. There should be a new calendar: BF - before Richard and AF After Richard.
Hi Richard, Super video. As a fellow organist, I loved the need for you not to turn physical pages but to have a software platform that does this for you! Would you kindly advise what this software is and where I can get hold of it from please? Keep up the great work 🎶
Nice video, but I would like to know if it’s feasible to learn/perform this piece on a modest two-manual “parish” organ where it may not be possible to emulate an authentic French sound.
Don't try to make your organ into something that it isn't - that's where some organists fall down. Use its own merits and make it sound gloriously English if you have to 👌
Very interesting video! While I am happy to take some liberties with registration in this piece and others, I am curious why you added the manual 16's so early. Gigout says to leave them off until the very end. I keep them off as indicated, and similarly, I usually keep the pedal 32's off until those big last chords. I find that leaving the 16s off of the manuals as indicated helps bring out the pedal instead of having it hide under the bottom end of the manual arpeggios.
I would suggest it’s absolutely essential to start off slowly and work out fingering etc if you can play it confidently slowly then you should be able to up the tempo with confidence
Love the commentary! And pleased to see I'm not the only one who's right hand likes to improvise in 'THAT BAR'. Interesting that you finished with LH on the Positif. Was that to lighten the texture a little bit?
Really appreciate this, Richard great video. 1) where do you get your sheet music from? 2) looks like you are using ForScore, are you using the eye blink detection to turn pages?
s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/a/aa/IMSLP130185-WIMA.a4bc-Gigout_Toccata.pdf. No - I don't think there is a blink detection in ForScore. It's a little seamless twitch of the mouth.
@@beautyinsound Hardly! They sell it in one store in New Hampshire, USA. I hate herbal teas, and when the box said, "Britain wasn't built on chamomile", I was all in.
Hello Richard, thank you for this demonstration of Gigout's toccata, however I have some questions about the registration in this piece. I use the Caen organ for this piece but have some issues in registration. I assume that when Gigout suggests Fonds 8' and 4' in the Recit and the Positif he doesn't mean to use Unda Maris (P), V. de Gamba, Voix Celeste, Voix Humaine (R)?? Is that right? Can you help me? Thanks!!
somehow as the video progress I felt you make a very good commentator! It would be interesting to hear you commentating or interviewing on organ/organist stuff from time to time!
