Some Thoughts on Playing the Organ by Willem Tanke: September 2017

Dancing Bach on the organ

Summary: through three basic emotions in my own compositions and improvisations and human life in general—rage, joy and suffering— I liberate my Bach interpretation and make it accessible to a larger public

All music examples are indicated in red. See the YouTube playlist My new way of playing Bach: Dancing Bach on the organ

From when I started professional studies —in 1977— I based my ideal of playing the organ on a passage from the first biography on Bach, written by Forkel in 1802, according to which Bach was able to achieve a huge expression with very small movements of hands and feet only. In 2006 I called this ideal "The Art of Doing Nothing", a multi-layered term which I later replaced by "The art of playing with relaxed precision".
In 2017 I abandoned this ideal, in particular because of three events:

1. Watching Werner Herzog's documentary The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, about the prehistoric cave of Chauvet in the south of France, in which an about 30.000 years old, bone flute was shown. This stimulated me to leave the notion of Western art music and take the perspective of a time traveller, visiting moments that inspire me, like the cave of Chauvet, de water organ in the Roman Empire, gregorian chant in the middle ages, the blind organist Francesco Landini and the Italian Ars Nova, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk Indian in the 17th century, Bach himself of course, pianist Clara Haskil, Olivier Messiaen and his first wife Claire Delbos, organist Feike Asma, pianist Cecil Taylor, hoboist Marcel Ponseele and bansuri player Hariprasad Chaurasia.

2. The performance of my project Olivier Messiaen and the Cave of Forgotten Sounds in the St. Stephen's Church in Nijmegen, during which I felt a perfect harmony between the instrument, the sound and the space of the church.

3. A meeting with my former (i.e. before 1977) organ teacher Rudi van Straten in the St. Walburga's Church in Zutphen, to play and discuss some choral preludes by Bach on the magnificent Henrick Bader organ.

My new ideal of playing the organ is based on playing strong beats with an upward feeling from the lower stomach. This automatically creates a "gut feeling" which balances the activity of the brain.

Physically it results in:

- a dancelike movement while playing (also regarding the wrists, which due to my former ideal of playing are relaxed and supple)
- an improved breathing
- a tendency to lean back instead of forward. I have been searching for this for many years, as I always found that a keyboard player's world becomes small when bowing towards the instrument too much.

Mentally it results in feeling more harmony between the organ, the sound and the space of the church. The organist's ears have to be where the audience is; leaning back with a gut feeling and good breathing makes this easier. You feel more like being at the heart of the event and its meaning.

Rudi van Straten's advice in the St. Walburga's Church was simple and efficient: play Bach like you played Olivier Messiaen and the Cave of Forgotten Sounds in Nijmegen and unite instrument, sound and space. The following video shows a part of that performance:

Willem Tanke - In memoriam Claire Delbos (from: Olivier Messiaen and the Cave of Forgotten Sounds)

Regarding Bach the goal is to combine my new ideal of playing with emotional freedom, through three states of mind which are both very personal and at the basis of human life in general: joy, rage and suffering.

JOY is represented by, for instance, the elegance of the trio sonatas:

J.S. Bach - Trio Sonata in c minor BWV 526, first movement

In this video the reference to dance is also represented by moving wrists while keeping the key down between 2'56" and 3'10". This is a typical aspect of my course J.S. Bach - Analysis, interpretation and physicality in which my expertise as a performer and a theorist are

combined.

RAGE can be both destructive and creative. Regarding the performance of a toccata, prelude, fantasy or fugue with the sound of the full organ it can be transformed into force and majesty:

J.S. Bach - Fugue in F major from BWV 540

Without SUFFERING the depth of Bach's music, for instance in many of his chorale preludes, can not be reached:

J.S. Bach - Das alte Jahr vergangen ist BWV 614

The above examples are played with the digitalized sound of ancient instruments of my study organ at home. A next step will be to realize my new way of playing Bach on some of the many beautiful historical organs in Europe.

As a teacher at Codarts, University of the Arts, Rotterdam, I pass on my new expertise through the minor Soulful Grooves in the 21st Century. Actually I am preparing two new courses: J.S. Bach - analysis, interpretation and physicality and Romantic music- analysis,interpretation and physicality (possibly but not necessarily for Codarts).

In a way this research is about going beyond professionalism and re-discovering a lost naivity, one of the other layers of The Art of Doing Nothing.

Dancing Bach on the organ is dedicated to the memory of violinist and composer Claire Delbos, Messiaen's first wife, who tragically spent the last fifteen years of her life in a psychiatric institute.

See also my blog: Some Thoughts on Playing the Organ