Recently, I became engaged in discussion with an academic who is considering the creation of a new elective course for piano majors. It would have to do with exposure to, and learning how to play, the pipe organ—for pianists.

This raised red flags for me. In my long life, and especially during my academic training in both piano and pipe organ performance (which I did in that order), the two do not mesh well as a simultaneous endeavor. Furthermore, this department head (of piano) in a well-known school of music, could not elucidate why he would like to have such an elective course added to the piano department curriculum. It seems to be more of a knee-jerk reaction to the potential donation of an organ to the school, rather than a philosophical desire to round out the students’ education.

This is a subject about which I feel deeply, which I indicated in my final missive to him. Please allow me to share it with you:

“….Just so you know, I asked the question about the thinking behind having piano students learn to play the organ because there is such a significant difference between the correct keyboard technique of the organ and the piano. In fact, there was a school of thought, when I was an organist, that one should be either a pianist or an organist, but not try (professionally) to be both.

Similarly, one of the first things that Phil Steinhaus taught me was how NOT to play the organ like a pianist. He yelled at me, in fact, in an early lesson, saying “you’re playing this like a piano!!!” He completely changed my hand placement to accommodate “voice leading” in the fingering to keep the legato line on the organ, which obviously, is not necessary on the piano.

Are all organists playing this way today? Sadly, no. It is one of the biggest disappointments of my lifetime to witness the deterioration of both organ (e.g. Cameron Carpenter) and piano (e.g., Lang Lang, who did not use to play this way when he was new on the scene, and Yuja Wang) techniques.

I believe that the emphasis now is much more on what the performer looks like while playing, than on finding the original inspiration of the composer, and conveying that intent through performance. I blame the creation of the internet and associated outlets like You Tube, Instagram, and the like, on this sad state. Performers are now much more concerned with how they look (impressive) while performing, than in creating music. Add to that an exorbitant need for speed, and you have the picture.

To put it another way, Ego dominates, Spirit does not.

There is, finally, one legitimate reason, I believe, to expose pianists to the organ, which is to help them to understand the differences between the two (which is much greater than learning how to play the pedals) and perhaps give them a more educated understanding of whether they might want to change from piano to organ. Piano playing, of course, is a prerequisite to organ study, but you might be surprised at how many people don’t know that!

As you can probably tell, I feel rather passionately about this. So, let me once again offer my willingness to engage in conversation with anyone who is part of the decision-making process at the ******* school.

I wish you all the best.”