Why not play hymns on the manuals and just ignore the pedals? It is not needed to play chorales on the sonata on the 25th psalm by Ruebke, those things taking 15 minutes or more are for recitals anyway, not Mass.
The reason I mentioned Baptists is I have lot of Baptist relatives, who were always dragging me to church as a child. Most Baptist churches have organs of sorts, but they really prefer the piano with it’s percussive effect. They like fast paced “gospel songs” and dislike hymns.
You never hear the organ played alone, it is an accompanyment to the piano, providing the bass mostly.
No, this is wrong for so many reasons.
Why would you be willing to accept a badly-played organ instead of a well-played piano or guitar?
I think a lot of the problems in the Catholic Church have developed over the decades because Catholics are not willing to put in the work to do things they way they should be done, with excellence and beauty. I’m not talking “perfection”–I’m talking doing things right.
First, an organ keyboard is nothing like a piano keyboard, even though they look alike. There is a totally different attack to play the organ, and if a player tries to play the organ like the piano, it sounds simply awful. (I should know by now!) Choppy, puny, and disconnected. Not conducive to worship at all, in fact, distracting because of its wrongness.
Second, there are the registrations. At what settings should the manuals only be played? There should be different settings for different hymns; Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee should not be played with the same registration as Beautiful Savior or Faith of Our Fathers. Echh.
Third, the pedals are not just “extras.” They make the hymns sound full and “masculine.” They complete the chords. Of course there are times when it is appropriate to play only the manuals even on the hymns. But to leave out the pedals just for the sake of having an organ instead of a piano is simply incorrect.
In addition to the pedals, there are other devices on the organ that are played with the feet; e.g., the dynamics pedals. These shouldn’t be ignored. To play all hymns at the same dynamic level would be grating and incorrect.
Finally, there is a progression to playing the organ, and indeed, little children will play the organ on manuals only, as they are usually too small to reach the pedals. But most of the people in attendance at Mass are not little children, they are adults who deserve adult music. Forcing them to listen to children’s music week after week is just not good form.
Again, why in heaven or earth would anyone be willing to accept something that is incorrect?
That kind of thinking has no place in Christian life. If we are willing to go along with an organ played incorrectly, then how many other incorrect things will we be willing to accept? E.g., why not just read a small portion of the Bible instead of considering the passages in context, and why not just read them on our own instead of correlating our studies with the Catholic Church? After all, it’s the Bible, and reading the Bible is good, even if the technique for reading it is totally incorrect, right?! Wrong! This is what many Protestants do–they read the Bible on their own and impose their own interpretations on a Book that was never meant to be studied outside of the safety of the Magisterium.
We should play the organ correctly, the way it is meant to be played.
We should fix the problem, not gloss over it with half-measures that meet our immediate desires, but don’t ultimately provide for the needs of the Church.
The fix for the problem is for more children and young people to begin taking organ lessons, and for local parishes to make their organs available at no cost for these young musicians to practice. That’s the answer to the problem of a lack of organ music in our parishes.
If this were done right now, starting today, I guarantee that within a few years, there would be plenty of good organists for all Masses. Children and teens learn a lot faster than people my age, and if they are allowed to play on a regular basis for Mass, even at the earliest stages when they will make mistakes, they will quickly become very skilled.
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