Playing the Organ

I love to play the organ. Well, I once loved playing the organ, is more like it. I began studying when I was 12 or 13 with one of the nuns at St. Elizabeth's convent in Lafayette. My mother, who hated that hilly, half-hour drive being tailgated by giant trucks, nevertheless drove me every week to Lafayette, where, in a room sparsely furnished with just an organ and one extra chair, a gentle nun taught me about stops (like the Vox Humana) and pedals. In fact, though I can scarcely credit it, for a period of several months we drove there every day after school so I could practice, until we persuaded a local church to let me practice in our town.

 

What I loved about playing the organ was the foot pedals. Organ pedals are long, wooden versions of the piano keyboard. They are arranged just like black and white keys, though the foot pedals are unpainted oak. You play them with your feet just as you play the piano or organ keyboard with your fingers. G in the foot pedals bears the same relation to its neighbouring keys as does a keyboard G. But you play the pedals with your feet. To play a chromatic scale, you move your feet in a heel-toe-heel-toe movement. And when you are good (or at least well-rehearsed) your feet and legs dance beneath you while your two hands play their own part of the music.

 

I no longer play the organ, but my body remembers the intense concentration of coordinating two hands and two feet in the creation of rich, full sound.

 

 

Copyright © 2015 Ann Tudor

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