Questions about toucher

There are some interesting things in YouTube:

Fouccroulle playing the Buxtehude Toccata; and Leonhardt playing the manualiter g minor Buxtehude prelude.


If the urls work, you will see a very pronounced difference between how the keys are stricken.

Foccroulle is an extremely poetic organist. He is not posing, that is exactly the way he plays. For one to be able to play in such a flowing fashion, one has to remove most of the strength from the fingers and feet. That is very obvious when you look at the video.

Leonhardt, by contrast, is a very rhythmical player. For a very sharp rhythmic pattern to be maintained, you have to keep a great amount of tension in your body; this tension is released upon the key (or upon a given rhythmic pattern).

The resulting differences are very clear in the overall conception of the work.

But there is a very important difference in terms of sound: when one strikes a key in a mechanical organ, you produce a distinctive chiff at the beginning of the note -- something like 'tsaaaa'. However, if you only press the key, the sound will be different: something like haaa or maaa.

This is a question I have often wondered about, because the sound is much more beautiful (for my taste) when you definitely strike he keys. However, you cannot (at least I can't, but I think it really is impossible to) relax your body in such a way as phrase the music into long flowing phrases.

The two approaches are clearly illustrated in the videos.

Therefore, I submit that there is no 'right way' to depress a key: it depends upon your particular physical understanding of the music. This is an important subject because there are people claiming there is only one right way (in historical treatises I believe Santa Maria mentioned the two approaches, but I am not certain about the reference or even if it was Santa Maria).

I feel this will interest almost no one, but even so...

 

It is of interest to me, so thankyou for posting this. I have a cd called 'East German Revolution' in which each piece is played on a different organ from the former East Germany and what you talk about with reference key strokes is true though I have found that the organ itself makes a huge difference to the sound of each note. A friends farther used to repair church organs and the mechanics are a feat in there own right. I would say that the two pieces are too dissimilar to compare playing styles but I prefer the first to the second even though the organ in the second piece is superior. Thanks for showing this, Ben.

 

I find the organ to be the most wonderfull of instruments. If the violin is the instrument of the human voice then the organ is the instrument of human endevour and ingenueity.

 

Yes, I agree with you: a beautiful organ is something really amazing. I am pursuing the toucher business, but - this may astonish some miscreants - in the harpsichord. I noticed that many nuances are possible in the harpsichord, and that they produce a definite musical effect, even if listeners are not quite aware of what is going on.

Toucher, in organs, depends on the voicing. Voicing an organ is a very complex affair, as you know. But concerning Bernard Foccroulle, he seems to almost avoid the attacks. This only shows that even a big Schnitger is expressive (in terms of attack). A couple of years ago, I played a small Cavaillé-COll only to notice that it is also expressive in the way I mentioned.

Disjointed remarks, I know, but I just wanted to answer.