First Organ Lesson and Birthday Party
Paycheck from Library: €140 income
Book of Renaissance organ music: €18
Lunch at Nordsee: €2.10
The two cutest postcards EVER: €3
First organ lesson with Gottfried Zyklan: €16
Two drinks at Birthday Party: €9
A rose for the Birthday Girl: €2
Playing organ for the first time in almost three months: Priceless
Class this morning was pretty normal....we were supposed to go to the Haydn museum for Classical Symphony today, and before class Mike and I went to Doblinger so that he could get Schirmer opera anthology, and I got this awesome book of renaissance music for organ (mostly italian) which looks like tons of fun. On the way back we had a small lunch at Nordsee, which is this take-out/eat-in seafood place....I got a really, really delicious fish sandwich for relatively little money....After lunch we went back to school to meet the rest of the class for the tour, but as it turns out, the Haydn museum is closed between 12:15 and 1:00 or something, which is right when we would have been there, so instead we went to (drumroll please....) the Figaro House! That's right, the same place we went with Music History....so I got to go back, which was fun, especially since in a couple of weeks they're closing the museum for 1.5 years to do a huge renovation/expansion, so I won't get to see it again, but I had to go through the museum and listen to Solvik's speech about everything again....it was a bit repetitive, but now I feel like I know the museum in and out....it's burned into my memory. After the tour, I printed out the scanned copies of the organ piece (Mader: Benedictus) which the 'rents and C Brown were nice enough to procure and send to me.....(it worked perfectly!! Thank you!!) so then I practiced a bit (the organ stuff on piano) until there were coachings in that practice room and Greta kicked me out....after that I dicked around at school, then went home and dicked around a bit more, then left at 4:30 for my 6:00 organ lesson, to make sure that I could make tons of mistakes and still get there on time.
I actually made no mistakes and got there way way way early.....the lesson took place at the (maybe private?) school where Gottfried teaches called Marianum, which is in the 18th district. Getting there involved taking two U-bahn lines towards the Gürtel, then waiting for a Straßenbahn to take me from the Gürtel the rest of the way. The Straßenbahn was a pretty short walk form the school, which I found with no difficulty. I got there ridiculously early, so I walked around for a while enjoying the cute suburb and taking a few pictures. I walked into the school and up to the chapel fashionably early, and at exactly 6:00 Gottfried walked up the door. Introductions were made and we headed into the chapel. It was a great space, and the organ is beautiful. He's also a really great guy....his English isn't fantastic (it's way better than my German) so we spoke a lot of German...it was good practice, and we each learned a lot (he'd occasionally ask me what a word was in English, etc.....) I have no idea how old the organ is, but my instinct says pretty old.....150 years, maybe? I honestly have no idea, and I'm probably way off.....but it is all manual, no electropneumatic anything, and fairly small....only 16 stops or so. (the Mader, for instance, would have been interesting without all the registration choices and swell boxes.....I didn't play it for him) It sounds beautiful, though, except for one stop which sounds disturbingly like a bagpipe (it's even out of tune in some of the same ways!). The pedals are so different....they're smaller and closer together, and the black keys are not much higher than the white keys.....I kept accidentally playing Eb when I hit D because the other side of my foot was grazing the Eb pedal, a problem which didn't come up nearly as much on the Oxy organ. Anyway, I played the 'Bach' Prelude that I've been doing for some time.....it definitely had lost of a bit of whatever luster it had.....anyway, we had a really great 40-minute lesson for the low, low price of €16 (he only charges €25/hour!! I think he's worth way more though....) he gave me lots of great advice, mostly re-iterating things that either James or David had said to me, but that i had just forgotten to apply, but also some really good stylistic techniques for playing the Bach which I really liked....it'll be nice to sort of focus on stuff that will sound good on the organ, like baroque and classical churchy stuff....the French stuff and the modern stuff not so much (I saw the funniest book at Doblinger today....it was a book of improvisations for organ which could be stretched or shrunk to fit whatever space you needed....but it was called "Plugging the Gaps"). I talked to him about when I could practice, and he said that after his lessons on Mondays he can let me into the chapel and I can stay to practice for 2 hours or so, and I can stay after my lessons for a while to practice. It's not too much time, but it's probably as much time as I would spend on it anyway.......so after the lesson I stayed behind, worked on the stuff we talked about, re-read some of the old favorites, and sight-read some stuff from later in the Organist's Manual......it was really fun to play again, and especially on such a cool organ in such an intimate space. I can't wait until I get to go back and play again! It was also nice to communicate with someone in German....it gave me the sense that, given the opportunity/necessity, I can communicate effectively!
After leaving the school I took a slightly different route back home (it turned out to be quicker to take U4-U2 instead of U4-U6.....) and helped make a simple dinner of penne and half-homemade sauce with Kielbasa for Nick, Mike, and myself. After that we prepared to go to the huge joint birthday party that happened tonight.....Hannas, Mel, and Beth decided to have a joint birthday party at this club near our apartment....they rented it out for the night, which was cool because it was just IES kids in the bar (and we about filled it.....it turned out to be quite the social event) and two drinks (whiskey sour and tequila sunrise) were discounted for us.....I had one of each, and I enjoyed the whiskey sour much more.....I had an amazing time.....four of us from Dürergasse (Nick, JB, Dave and me) even put together an ad hoc barbershop arrangement of happy birthday, which we sang to the birthday peeps with resounding success.....it was tons of fun. I was pretty tipsy, but the room wasn't spinning or anything....I had a fantabulous time with all my friends just being loud and crazy....I couldn't do it too often, but it was a fun way to end a week which felt hecka long. Now, I go to bed before I pass out on the keyboard, and hopefully sleep until late, late, late!
Book of Renaissance organ music: €18
Lunch at Nordsee: €2.10
The two cutest postcards EVER: €3
First organ lesson with Gottfried Zyklan: €16
Two drinks at Birthday Party: €9
A rose for the Birthday Girl: €2
Playing organ for the first time in almost three months: Priceless
Class this morning was pretty normal....we were supposed to go to the Haydn museum for Classical Symphony today, and before class Mike and I went to Doblinger so that he could get Schirmer opera anthology, and I got this awesome book of renaissance music for organ (mostly italian) which looks like tons of fun. On the way back we had a small lunch at Nordsee, which is this take-out/eat-in seafood place....I got a really, really delicious fish sandwich for relatively little money....After lunch we went back to school to meet the rest of the class for the tour, but as it turns out, the Haydn museum is closed between 12:15 and 1:00 or something, which is right when we would have been there, so instead we went to (drumroll please....) the Figaro House! That's right, the same place we went with Music History....so I got to go back, which was fun, especially since in a couple of weeks they're closing the museum for 1.5 years to do a huge renovation/expansion, so I won't get to see it again, but I had to go through the museum and listen to Solvik's speech about everything again....it was a bit repetitive, but now I feel like I know the museum in and out....it's burned into my memory. After the tour, I printed out the scanned copies of the organ piece (Mader: Benedictus) which the 'rents and C Brown were nice enough to procure and send to me.....(it worked perfectly!! Thank you!!) so then I practiced a bit (the organ stuff on piano) until there were coachings in that practice room and Greta kicked me out....after that I dicked around at school, then went home and dicked around a bit more, then left at 4:30 for my 6:00 organ lesson, to make sure that I could make tons of mistakes and still get there on time.
I actually made no mistakes and got there way way way early.....the lesson took place at the (maybe private?) school where Gottfried teaches called Marianum, which is in the 18th district. Getting there involved taking two U-bahn lines towards the Gürtel, then waiting for a Straßenbahn to take me from the Gürtel the rest of the way. The Straßenbahn was a pretty short walk form the school, which I found with no difficulty. I got there ridiculously early, so I walked around for a while enjoying the cute suburb and taking a few pictures. I walked into the school and up to the chapel fashionably early, and at exactly 6:00 Gottfried walked up the door. Introductions were made and we headed into the chapel. It was a great space, and the organ is beautiful. He's also a really great guy....his English isn't fantastic (it's way better than my German) so we spoke a lot of German...it was good practice, and we each learned a lot (he'd occasionally ask me what a word was in English, etc.....) I have no idea how old the organ is, but my instinct says pretty old.....150 years, maybe? I honestly have no idea, and I'm probably way off.....but it is all manual, no electropneumatic anything, and fairly small....only 16 stops or so. (the Mader, for instance, would have been interesting without all the registration choices and swell boxes.....I didn't play it for him) It sounds beautiful, though, except for one stop which sounds disturbingly like a bagpipe (it's even out of tune in some of the same ways!). The pedals are so different....they're smaller and closer together, and the black keys are not much higher than the white keys.....I kept accidentally playing Eb when I hit D because the other side of my foot was grazing the Eb pedal, a problem which didn't come up nearly as much on the Oxy organ. Anyway, I played the 'Bach' Prelude that I've been doing for some time.....it definitely had lost of a bit of whatever luster it had.....anyway, we had a really great 40-minute lesson for the low, low price of €16 (he only charges €25/hour!! I think he's worth way more though....) he gave me lots of great advice, mostly re-iterating things that either James or David had said to me, but that i had just forgotten to apply, but also some really good stylistic techniques for playing the Bach which I really liked....it'll be nice to sort of focus on stuff that will sound good on the organ, like baroque and classical churchy stuff....the French stuff and the modern stuff not so much (I saw the funniest book at Doblinger today....it was a book of improvisations for organ which could be stretched or shrunk to fit whatever space you needed....but it was called "Plugging the Gaps"). I talked to him about when I could practice, and he said that after his lessons on Mondays he can let me into the chapel and I can stay to practice for 2 hours or so, and I can stay after my lessons for a while to practice. It's not too much time, but it's probably as much time as I would spend on it anyway.......so after the lesson I stayed behind, worked on the stuff we talked about, re-read some of the old favorites, and sight-read some stuff from later in the Organist's Manual......it was really fun to play again, and especially on such a cool organ in such an intimate space. I can't wait until I get to go back and play again! It was also nice to communicate with someone in German....it gave me the sense that, given the opportunity/necessity, I can communicate effectively!
After leaving the school I took a slightly different route back home (it turned out to be quicker to take U4-U2 instead of U4-U6.....) and helped make a simple dinner of penne and half-homemade sauce with Kielbasa for Nick, Mike, and myself. After that we prepared to go to the huge joint birthday party that happened tonight.....Hannas, Mel, and Beth decided to have a joint birthday party at this club near our apartment....they rented it out for the night, which was cool because it was just IES kids in the bar (and we about filled it.....it turned out to be quite the social event) and two drinks (whiskey sour and tequila sunrise) were discounted for us.....I had one of each, and I enjoyed the whiskey sour much more.....I had an amazing time.....four of us from Dürergasse (Nick, JB, Dave and me) even put together an ad hoc barbershop arrangement of happy birthday, which we sang to the birthday peeps with resounding success.....it was tons of fun. I was pretty tipsy, but the room wasn't spinning or anything....I had a fantabulous time with all my friends just being loud and crazy....I couldn't do it too often, but it was a fun way to end a week which felt hecka long. Now, I go to bed before I pass out on the keyboard, and hopefully sleep until late, late, late!
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