How do we get Young People to Learn the Organ?

[@BenBrossMusic]

I'm the music director at our church, which didn't have an organ when built about ten years ago. Due to some very generous donors, my organ dreams came true a couple years ago. As a member of the organ committee, i insisted that we must have an organ scholarship program in place so our keyboardists can learn not just how to play organ, but be immersed in organ culture. From there, the organ culture can spread through the choir to the parish community. Without that education, the organ would be a dead duck, an expensive, unused piece of furniture. I'm happy to report that in the sixteen months since our organ was installed, nine of us have been studying through our organ scholarship program, and slowly, but surely, our organ culture is growing, the organ is finding its rightful place in the liturgy, the parishioners are growing in their appreciation of organ, and even the pastor, who isn't a huge fan of organ, is pleased. Btw, three of the students are teenagers. We have every reason to hope.

[@winneryeahmate]

This sounds a lot like what the Pep Organ dude is doing in his church :)

[@winneryeahmate]

About access to pipe organs, another initiative in Sydney that's been gaining traction over time has been Sydney Organs (Facebook group and KZbin). They do visits ~2-3 times a week to places in Sydney to churches / the odd other place that are normally closed. And different people try the organ. It's great to raise interest and exposure, also giving hope and another thing to do for parishioners in those churches ... It's especially helpful for those who don't normally have access to any pipe organs like myself.

[@richietwoshoes9531]

You’re an amazing inspiration for people who love organs , pipe organs, I feel it is the king of all instruments, when I pass I have it in my last wishes , to have a pipe organ for my funeral, I played the organ when I was a child, I kept it till I bought my own home I had to donate it to my church, I think your great , thank you so much , I love Australia , I live in New York 🇺🇸for me it would be a dream to visit your beautiful country ❤

[@peporgan]

Thank you!

[@michaelpfaff6009]

You are a great ambassador for the organ. Your words were well-spoken. Thank you for your encouraging words. Keep up your excellent work!

[@peporgan]

Thank you so much!

[@organmusicVI]

I already know a lot like some playing and other stuff

[@Modeltnick]

Hi Titus! Very good information expressed! There is a school in Philadelphia that has a wonderful organ program and the students are assigned internships at the many churches around the city playing their instruments. It seems to work out quite well. It’s Curtis Institute which is hard to get into and quite expensive. Thanks, Titus!

[@peporgan]

That sounds excellent. The US has some great systems in place to get students into churches.

[@joserivera-yc5rr]

Great video, thanks for sharing

[@ldvl1875]

The Anglican Cathedrals are not doing themselves any favours with their exclusive and regimented pipe organ requirements. In Melbourne one must provide their resume to the Director of Music to access the instrument; similar situation in Perth. And in Adelaide, one must make a booking weeks in advance along with making a payment for the use of the instrument; Trinity College Chapel in Parkville also charges for the use of the pipe organ which are largely university students. So much for the generosity and hospitality of the church.

[@peporgan]

Unfortunate.

[@winneryeahmate]

To your comment and mine. In Sydney, it's principally the liberal denominations (i.e. not Anglicans) which the Sydney Organs initiative has been able to engage and visit to increase interest in the organ. I'd say about 80% of the churches they visit are Uniting Churches. This is coming from someone who is not Uniting at all, just noticing that.

[@RobertJohnsonmusic]

Titus, I play pipe organ for services at three separate churches each weekend. Unfortunately, there are no young people at any location. In a desperate attempt to garner some interest, I am doing a tour and recital at one church for summer-school students, grades K-5 this week.

[@peporgan]

That's a very good idea. Engaging schools is important.

[@ldvl1875]

Pipe organs are very expensive and valuable instruments that you cannot allow 'any Tom Dick & Harry' on unsupervised. For a time I presided over a 140 year old tracker action instrument which gave great reliability over a quarter of a century in my sole care. Then a new incumbent came along (who also broke a pedal pulldown on her first practice from standing with their entire weight on the pedalboard) who made it a free for all. This other man-child also left the organ blower motor on for 4 days straight (which could have resulted in an electrical fire); left stops and couplers out regularly; would always leave the swell box closed so the instrument was half out of tune for the next player for the first hour; and a myriad of other damage and wanton vandalism. I could foresee the pipe organ becoming a total wreck so ceased playing over a year ago now. I miss it but did not wish to be held liable for the abuse the instrument was sustaining at the hands of amateurs. I keep my hand in now playing pipe organs all over Australia instead in environments where the clergy and parishioners are truly Christian and appreciate great pipe organ music.

[@TomTabaczynski]

There needs to be a revival of interest in traditional music and culture of all kinds. The problem in countries like Australia is that everything is about 'scholarships', 'classical music', and 'funding', it's all very academic and astroturf. I travelled to Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay and there you see traditional music like tango, bossa nova, etc. being played in local bars or at outdoor food markets, etc. and it's still maintain a grassroots support. Australian culture has become really corporatised and astroturf because of the American style suburban city (originally the Australia city was what is now called the 'inner city', which is the actual natural city) with shopping malls and it's a dead city full of dead spaces. Ie., it's the astroturf city. So then traditional music has no place to evolve because of lack of organic spaces that you still get in European and South American cities. I don't think that 'scholarships' or any astroturf culture schemes are the way to go. For example, tango music in Australia got govt funded and it remains a marginal and purely academic despite a push to promote it. Some academic musicians got funding, went to Argentina, came back, recorded a CD, and now it's a website where you can buy the CD, that's it. Gone. State funding kills culture by astroturfing because all that happens is that you get the musicians to pander to some cultural state apparatchik forking out the cash. Australians need to get out of the state funding mindset if you want your culture back! A better approach is like the traditional architecture channels that are promoting traditional building and are organising conferences around that. What is needed is a holistic approach to traditionalism because music needs to be taken out of the academia and state funding industrial complex and made local. There needs to be a large more all-encompassing movement for that, eg., starting on Facebook and KZbin otherwise your organ playing will remain marginalised and for old people who still attend churches or these sorts of things.

[@peporgan]

Hi there, you have some great suggestions. I do think a grassroots approach can do wonders. However, the organ culture in Australia is tiny. We don't even have a real 'grassroots', so to speak. If grassroots in this instance simply means local organists giving free lessons to local students, then that's not sustainable and it's not practical. We need to give students opportunities to learn the organ. Scholarships are the way to remove financial barriers. I don't think many exceptional musicians have been created without institutional support. Sure, you can have a grassroots approach for tango music etc, but they are not as rigorous and difficult as learning the organ, objectively.

[@TomTabaczynski]

@@peporgan First, you didn't read my post to the end. Please reflect on the final two sentences. You cannot make any progress if you have all these different things in isolation and so you will always be a slave to the corporate state which will ask you to put a bunch of virtue signalling things in your funding application and will evaluate that against all the other stuff. So you see in tango it's increasingly LGBT because that's what 'community' means to the govt bureaucrats. Tango is actually played on the bandoneon which was designed as a portable church organ. My point is that you won't make any progress unless you thing bigger and join forces with traditionalists in other disciplines, and so you will fail, because the only way to recover traditionalism is by opposing it to modernism. Other than that you will get some funding but it won't go anywhere.

[@peporgan]

​@@TomTabaczynski Look, I don't really have a stake in the game. Traditional, modern, what does any of that mean? I don't really care. What I do care about is results. Before I established scholarships and my music program, our church had 0 trained organists. Now we have 6. The system works. And I don't see how this is the 'corporate state', this is supported by the church, not government. Is my system perfect? No. There's more to be done.

[@TomTabaczynski]

@@peporgan "Supported by the church"? I'd like to know more where the money's coming from. Churches nowadays are getting state money in all sort of ways. If the money is private then I'm for that, but I still think that the corporatisation of Australia will eventually take over everything and your church will probably be turned into a library teh way that the churches around my area have been, or worse. So yeah, you can have your little WASP enclave and that's what I'm seeing, white flight. Given this people like myself are packing up and leaving this continent permanently because it has no future given that people like yourself believe that you can keep going on boomer $$, which will soon run out.

[@NathanCole-x5r]

Thank you so much for your wonderful efforts to showcase the organ. I’m an Organist too, it may interest you to know that the organ features throughout Freemasonry too. I’ll teach or inspire anyone that’s wanting to give it a go. No $ needed. It’s a wonderful and dynamic instrument and always an experience to play. I am in completely in support of your thoughts.

[@ldvl1875]

The danger with some scholarships is that it creates a toxic culture of servitude. Some clergy, lay canons and such gate keepers start to be too controlling with contracts, binding documents and even interfering with the personal lives of church workers. I am aware of a certain incumbent that has put forward a totally inadequate scholarship fund for young church musicians to the value of $1500. It is essentially peanuts. A church should pay for all tuition fees as they are the benefactor of the skills and training.

[@peporgan]

Ideally yes, scholarships should not be a tiny amount. I have made sure the scholarships we offer are on par with wages.

[@James_Bowie]

Seems to me that the key problem is the creeping replacement of traditional services with the so-called happy clappy 'contemporary' service wherein guitars, drums and sometimes electronic keyboards prevail. These services are usually ministered by clergy who themselves are unfamiliar with -- if not also uninterested in -- the organ. In those churches which still have traditional services with hymns accompanied by organ, the congregations are often principally grey/white haired and it's not difficult to predict the likely future of those services and their associated organs. @Titus: as a reasonably well-known local ambassador for the organ, and the current Sydney City Organist, it would make sense for you to help arrange Meet the Organ events for young people, especially those who have attained (say) Grade 5 piano. Familiarity with the organ is the first step towards igniting an interest in it.

[@ldvl1875]

No constraints should be placed on introduction programs. It angers me when people carry on about 'you must have this grade in piano' and 'you must have studied piano for 3 years' etc. It just puts up unnecessary barriers.

[@James_Bowie]

'Must' is _your_ term, not mine, so save your anger for something else. In my experience, kids with a good grip on piano and theory are excellent candidates for having a go and then actually sticking with the organ.

[@ldvl1875]

With the amount of spiritual abuse, mental abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse and other evils still taking place in churches and cathedrals across Australia, at this point in time I would discourage a young person from taking up the pipe organ. Yes, I am a victim of the above and it is currently being investigated on my behalf.

[@ldvl1875]

Until organists are paid a respectable or professional fee for playing the pipe organ in a church or cathedral business, there is very little incentive. It seems to be only the inner city churches and cathedrals that are paying musicians the market standard and accepted rates. Those in the regional areas are lucky to receive 50% of what those in the suburbs receive; the balance unfortunately seem to be doing it for free. But realistically, why should one roll out of bed at 7am on a Sunday morning, play for an 8am then 10am service and thus loss half of one's day of rest for a measly $110 when our capital city organists are receiving $500 for doing exactly the same thing. The playing field needs to be levelled and the professional skills of competent players recognised - letters after one's name is not everything either.