Human gestures
The 2007 documentary film Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037, provides a rare glimpse into the art of building pianos. The cameras travel through the factory from one work area to another, interviewing the craftsmen and women, and showing each step of the process. It’s fascinating to see a team of men making the laminated body of an instrument by running the twenty-foot-long layers through a machine that applies glue, bending them around a heavy form, and tightening dozens of powerful clamps to hold the thing together. We see the fitting of the iron plates, the forming of soundboard and bridge, painting, stringing, and tuning. Individual workers explain what they’re doing and share their pleasure in participating in the art, and a roster of well-known pianists, from Lang Lang to Hank Jones, and Hélène Grimaud to Harry Connick, Jr., discuss their relationships with the instrument—how an individual piano affects their art, and their playing serves as background to many of the factory scenes.
It’s easy to find the film online (I bought it from Amazon), and I recommend that anyone interested in the art of musical performance and instrument building should see it. Steinway’s emphasis on hand craftsmanship is central to the film including the fitting of the iron plate, the making and fitting of the soundboard and bridge, stringing, and Steinway’s insistence that all tuning, from the first “chipping in” to the final fine tunings, be done by ear.
French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard is featured throughout, working with Steinway concert technicians as he compares and selects pianos for particular concerts and recording projects, and he comments on the differences between instruments and how different artists approach their instrument. When commenting on hand craftsmanship, he stresses the importance of the “human gesture.”
I’ve watched the movie several times, both alone and with friends, and each time I’m moved by Aimard’s use of that phrase. It’s a reflection on his sensitivity as an artist, and his understanding of the importance of art to the human condition.
A stroke of the pen
One of organ building’s lovely traditions is the ceremony of signing a contract for a new instrument. The organbuilder and the appropriate officer of the purchasing institution sit at a table, surrounded by friends, colleagues, and often donors. Copies of the document are spread out in front of them, and photos are taken as ink and champagne flow.
The light-speed pace of technological developments has given us the widespread acceptance of “electronic signatures.” We can sign contracts, insurance documents, even birthday cards by following instructions on our screens. We click a box to accept the terms, and the deed is done. You don’t have to show up at the attorney’s office, but the personal touch is gone. The way the nib of the pen indents a piece of paper—the human gesture—somehow makes the agreement more official.
Stand close to a painting by Rembrandt or Monet, and look across the surface from different angles (remember that the gallery guard has his eyes on you), and you can see the ridges and valleys, the start and stop of each stroke, even the motion of the bristles as the artist twists the brush between his fingers to create a special texture. You can almost smell the linseed oil as the master moves his brush—the human gesture. Tiziano Vicelli (Titian) died in 1576 at the age of 99. I wonder if he knew that the paint he was mixing would still be vivid 440 years later? It’s nice to have a print of a wonderful painting, but it’s the three-dimensionality of the original piece that makes a personal encounter so special.
Beethoven’s autograph manuscripts are rife with notes, riffs, and passages that have been scribbled out. You can feel his irascibility from the vigor of the strokes. What a thrill to be allowed a peek at the creative process of that innovative genius. To touch a piece of paper that was touched by Bach or Leonardo da Vince is to bridge centuries.
I’ve had the privilege several times of playing the first performance of a piece of music from a hand-written manuscript, and the immediate presence of the composer is unmistakable. I admit that can be tricky. Poor penmanship is not limited to words on paper, and a couple times I’ve had to ask the composer what note was what. But while music notation programs like Finale or Sibelius produce precisely legible scores, the human gesture is missing.
Twenty years ago, I restored an organ built in 1868 by E. & G. G. Hook. At that time, the organ was 138 years old, and as I passed its bits and pieces across my workbench, I admired the pencil marks of the craftsmen who built it. I guessed that their pencil leads were harder than what I’m used to because the marks were so precise, and their techniques for the simple task of sharpening a pencil outstrip any machine you can buy at Staples. Those marks gave me the feeling that the craftsmen in Boston so long ago were my colleagues and mentors. By comparison, the pencils around my workbench seem like crayons that had been left in the sun.
Live and in person
Where we live in lower Manhattan, there are several movie theaters, lots of small performance venues, and a great theater company within a few blocks, and Wendy and I take advantage of the easy accessibility as often as we can. Cinema is dazzling. Beautiful photography and high-tech projection and sound systems drive the action right through you. A crystal-clear close-up of a human face might be twenty feet tall on the screen, showing every pore and blemish as if through a microscope. The storytelling is often as spectacular as the visual effects.
But there’s something about the live theater, where living, breathing humans are before you portraying a story, a thought, a series of emotions. You hear the stomp and shuffle of their feet, the rustling of clothing as they embrace, and the urgency in their voices as spittle flies. Sadness is sadder, happiness is happier, and jokes are funnier when delivered in real time through human gestures.
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I recently celebrated a birthday that ends with zero, and one of the gifts I received was an afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with our son-in-law, taking a culinary tour of various artworks. I’ve always supported my love of eating with an equal love of cooking and the lore and history of cuisine (Wendy says I have a lot to show for it), so this was a welcome and thoughtful gift. (It turned out also to be Wendy’s ruse to get me out of the house as family and friends gathered for a stupendous surprise party!) The tour guide was charismatic, entertaining, and full of wonderful information, and he provided a well-prepared, fascinating tour of a wide variety of art based on and inspired by food.
One of the artifacts was a four-by-six scrap of papyrus dating from the third century A.D., on which the Greek philosopher Heraclides of Pontus had written a letter that included a shopping list to his brother who was about to visit. No doubt the poultry, bread, chickpeas, kidney beans, and fenugreek would be transformed into a wonderful welcoming meal. And our guide showed us a photograph of another grocery list, this one written by Michelangelo. The great artist had lovely penmanship, so assuming you can read Italian, the list is easy to read—two loaves of bread, herring, two servings of fennel soup, anchovies, and red wine. Beside the written list, Michelangelo provided a drawing of each item because his assistant was illiterate—such an elegant and caring human gesture.
More than 450 years after his death, we celebrate and revere Michelangelo’s art—the depth of expression of the five-and-a-half ton marble David, the tragic Pietà, and the rollicking frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But witnessing his workingman’s lunch adds the human gesture to our awe, reminding us that whatever the reach of his genius, Michelangelo was a living person who passed through daily life just like the rest of us. I wonder if the cost of the meal was billed to the Pope or the Medicis—whoever was the patron of the moment—or if he was responsible for expenses as part of a contract price. Science tells us that the earth is supplied with a finite amount of air and water. That must mean that we all ingest and inspire molecules that passed through Michelangelo’s body. Doesn’t that make you feel clever? Give me a chisel and a hunk of marble. You haven’t seen anything yet.
You can see images of both these lists at the website traveltoeat.com:
https://traveltoeat.com/michelangelos-shopping-list-and-origins-of-writ….
And what a gesture
The organ—its heritage and history, its repertoire and repartee, its majesty and monumentality—is an integral part of the world of arts and humanities. Because it was the most complex machine assembled by humans hundreds of years before the invention of most mechanical devices, I’ve always regarded the organ as one of the greatest human gestures, and I believe that connecting my love of the organ to the wide world of human gestures is essential.
Imagine yourself as a German churchgoer in 1457, showing up on a Sunday and hearing the new organ play. There’s an organ in the village church in Rysum built in that year. Take a look at this video clip to see and hear the instrument in action—Gwendolyn Toth playing Scheidemann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46b25dTcdjg.
This video proves to us that 559 years ago, people—human gestures—built pipe organs that are relevant to us today. You don’t have to have arcane training, you can simply sit down to play. Michelangelo was born eighteen years after that organ was built. What does village life at that time look like in your mind’s eye? What was the public water supply like? How about sanitation? I think it’s a miracle that a musical instrument so intricate, so refined, so sprightly, and so current was built that long ago.
In our undergraduate music history courses, we learned to trace the easy route from Scheidemann to Buxtehude to Bruhns to Bach. We understand the growth of the particular style of organs and organ music in eighteenth-century France, when lots of Couperins worked for lots of Louis’s. We know of Father Willis, patriarch of the great British firm, who was central to the quintessential sound of English Cathedral music. We revere the amazing innovations of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, whose brilliant organs engendered the great mass of romantic French music, and we admire Ernest Skinner who transformed the American pipe organ.
In the second half of the twentieth century, the great renaissance of American organ building gave us the rebirth of mechanical-action instruments—reclaiming the human gesture in the building of pipe organs. Today, we celebrate the result of that debate—fabulous new organs of every description being built by American organbuilders.
With a heritage of five and a half centuries, you’d think that the organ’s place in the world is safe, but there are forces that can threaten the very core of the instrument we all love. There was a dramatic drop in the size of college and university organ departments in the 1980s. Important organ departments such as those at the New England Conservatory and Northwestern University have closed—departments that produced generations of brilliant musicians. Thankfully, the population of serious students of the organ is reviving, but we need to take note of that ominous dip.
The Christian Church has been at the heart of the development and sustenance of the pipe organ, from ancient instruments like that at Rysum, to the glorious French symphonic instruments, to the hundreds of organs built by the Hook Brothers, to our modern builders. And the Christian Church has been changing. Where I live in the northeastern United States, many congregations are struggling to maintain buildings and pipe organs built generations ago, when parish membership was ten times what it is today. I maintain a 60-stop organ for a church in suburban Boston with a congregation of about seventy-five. The building seats nearly a thousand, and there is embossed china service for 800 stored in glass-front cabinets in the pantry next to the kitchen.
The fact that hundreds of wonderful pipe organs are for sale today is a reflection on the state of the church, upon which the organ depends so heavily.
The electronic organ was developed fifty years ago, and has burgeoned to occupy a huge share of the church organ market. While the fancy sparkly consoles are beguiling, and many organists in smaller churches love sitting at monster three and four manual consoles, the tone of the digital organ, no matter how advanced the technology, is nothing like the real thing. But they’re easy to acquire, and relatively inexpensive on the short term. Someone on the Board of Trustees says, “It’s good enough for us.”
What’s next?
When the twentieth century renaissance was in full swing, we organists knew we were in the middle of something great. Hundreds of new instruments were being built, and it was common for church lay leaders to be swayed by their musicians to move with the times. Of course much of that was good and we have a lot to show for it, but at the same time, plenty of wonderful organs were sacrificed in favor of the tracker-action craze. We should be selective about when organs are replaced and when they are renovated. An organ should not be replaced because a local organist thinks it lacks a few voices.
The other day I had an inquiry from an organist who was seeking a proposal for the expansion of the organ in his church. He told me that many critical stops are missing, there is no space for additional pipes, and there is little money, so the additions would be digital voices. The existing stoplist shows a complete three-manual instrument. Given the size of the building, the 32-footers, solo Tuba, and Trumpet-en-chamade he wants to add would be superfluous, unnecessary, even intrusive. It’s a modest building and a fine organ. What’s the point of adding artifice to overblow the place?
The same goes for fully digital organs. A church that seats 200 people should have an organ matched to the cubic space and acoustics. “But I need to play Widor.” Big city music belongs in big city buildings. I don’t want to hear Widor or Vierne with blazing artificial 32-footers in a little country church. I just don’t. It’s like eating a two-pound T-bone as a snack.
In Richard Torrence’s “irreverent biography” of Virgil Fox, The Dish, Ted Alan Worth is quoted as saying, “The organ world is the worst world in the world.” A herd of historians, a lobby of librarians, or an eccentricity of engineers may love to talk shop, but there’s something about organists that takes the bell away. It’s as if there was nothing else.
Because the pipe organ is so expensive, because commissioning and creating an instrument is such a complex undertaking, we need to be sure that we’re connected to the real world. We need to communicate our love for our instrument effectively and joyfully. We need to be known outside our professional circles as creative, cooperative, stimulating colleagues. We need to create atmospheres in our work places that encourage others to appreciate the deep heritage of our instrument so that we don’t lose the pipe organ to expediency. We need the entire collection of human gestures to enrich our musicality and
our souls.
