last updated:
28 Nov 1998
Perils and Pleasures of Page-Turning
As one of the privileged few who have spent ten years of weekends in a cathedral organ loft, turning pages for a succession of organists, I thought readers would welcome a few insights which this rich experience gave me.
As I do not have their permission, I shall deliberately not identify the cathedral or organists.
Second only to the terror of actually playing the beast, pageturning is occasionally a heartstopping experience! Having just watched Rochester’s live broadcast on Easter Day, I am reminded of the first use of Langlais’ Messe Solenelle at my cathedral, which induced in the organist the most impressive attack of panic ever seen.
The piece requires amazing dexterity with instantaneous leaps from pp on Choir to ffff on Solo, so the player has to be pretty familiar with the music. Even a thorough knowledge of the work could not compensate for not being able to find the copy for the Sanctus as the precentor intoned "With angels and archangels and all the company ...".
Had the Master of the Choristers picked up the Organist’s copy as he returned to his seat in the stalls after the sermon?
How could anyone possible remember the complexities of Langlais in the first performance?
"....we praise and magnify His Holy ...." , the Precentor continued relentlessly as, with literally a couple of words to spare, the copy was found on the floor behind the heating pipes. Thank goodness for general pistons!
While at the top of the adrenalin scale, I recall too the live broadcast of Choral Evensong which, timed to perfection, was running late before it started. The polished improvisation was drawing to a close at exactly 4pm, but as the seconds ticked by and the "on air" red light failed to illuminate, the organist was forced to develop his theme further, and further ... By 2 minutes past, feeling a little more uncomfortable, I looked out over the silent choirstalls to see wild cut-throat gesticulations indicating a requirement for a prompt end to the elegant theme and variations. It was later revealed that a one in a million failure of both bulbs in the signalling panel was to blame for the enforced delay.
Few people who have not performed the task will even have considered the problems of the page-turner. Consider for example, the seemingly trivial issues such as from which side of the organist to turn, which corner of the copy to grab, whether to wait for a nod or to take a gamble and turn when you think the player should know the rest of the page.... After many months one builds up a rapport and trust with the player, and the turner knows when the organist is very familiar with the music or is sight-reading. Every new bottom on the organ seat brings a new challenge of sychronisation, and a new tingle of anticipation.
The turner's greatest fear is turning two pages together (or returning to the wrong spot after a Da Capo). The organist is helpless; entirely in your hands. One has merely to hope that his musicianship and experience is up to the task of composing a couple of bars of accompaniment while you fumble with the sheets!.
Organ loft copies are generally in a well-worn condition (to put it politely). The experienced page-turner will know that such copies need to be checked meticulously, so that (a) the pages are in the correct order, (b) they will not fly apart when subjected to a vigorous turn. When neither is true, then the previous paragraph applies. For a particularly spectacular effect, then the turned page comes away in your hand, and other pages flutter onto the pedals, leaving the turner a difficult decision of providing the normal service, or retrieving the errant pages without getting stamped on.
Copies that have been repaired are also a challenge. Inappropriate application of sellotape causes the copy to adopt an auto-closing mechanism. It then falls to the turner to keep the music open, and if particularly-badly repaired, to keep it on the music desk, as well as turn pages without sending the whole lot into orbit.
Music is not the only thing that comes apart during a service (read as many meanings into that as you like!). One organist with a reputation for minor eccentricity had an endearing habit of completing English works with beefy accompaniments (Stanford, Brewer, Bairstow, Parry, Elgar - you know the sort of stuff) with a twirl of an imaginary moustache to complete the swagger invoked by the recent pulling of the Contra Bombarde, Tuba or Trompette en Chamade. One would often find a small face drawn on the last page of such works, with a very large, military moustache! One day, a particularly flamboyant drawing of the Contra Bombarde resulted in the stop being pulled right out of the console and descending to the pedal board midst a fair bit of clattering. During the second lesson, the choir was treated to a waving of the offending stop through the curtains of the loft, resulting in muffled hysteria in the loft and several bitten tongues and a lot of coughing in the stalls.
Turners will sympathise with the fear instilled by a fast, modern piece (like Walton's The Twelve) where there is almost nothing but confusion to follow and counting is impossible. Add to this the requirement to participate by pulling stops, pressing pistons and playing occasional descant line on the loudest stop, then the reader will begin to accept the partnership twixt player and turner.
So far I have dwelt on the difficulties, but there are many, many joys in the task.
The memory of assisting during the making of an organ CD lives on after ten years. One could share the tension increasing as the last (difficult) page of 8 was reached for the 5th time that session, and hoped that the rare splash of a wrong note wouldn't happen here, at 11pm! The onus on the turner to "get it right" (and do it quietly!) becomes that much greater as the take number increases, but the secret recipe is not to convey any of your nervousness to the player.
Visiting or deputising organists, or new organ scholars sometimes had the opposite effect. Instead of the normal confidence exuding from the regulars, one could marvel how a newcomer's hands that were shaking so badly with fear could possibly hit any right notes. But they always did.
Some annual services were very special, particularly those by candlelight. Although the effect is remarkable for the congregation on the ground, it is magical when viewed from 30 feet above the proceedings. Processions were also spectacular, as was the feat of following the crucifer with the organist's camera, perched 3 feet out from the loft, to facilitate the decision to improvise or not!
Broadcasts of Choral Evensong
How sad that the BBC has seen fit to abandon the twice-weekly broadcast - perhaps we should be grateful that still get it once a week, as I believe there was a time when it was reduced to monthly. In the Seventies, cathedrals had the difficult task of squeezing their services into the 45 minutes allowed, and invariably the programme was cut off during, or sometimes before, the final voluntary. For the past few years, we have had the luxury of a full hour which, if the psalms, canticles and anthem are relatively short, allows us to hear a voluntary of greater length.
One such occasion led to an unusual sequence of correspondence in the Times a few years ago.
Visitors' Stories
Adrian Oehm, Wollongong NSW Australia, writes:
I have a story that relates to the horrors of turning two or more pages. I was turning for an organist who was playing for an afternoon recital. The piece in question was The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. Having just turned the page the organist whispered hurridly that I had turned two pages. I was pretty sure I hadn't and checked with the page numbers. Sure enough I had only turned one page, but the organist had forgotten the manual change at the top of the page I had just turned, and so thought he was further through than he was. That didn't stop a whispered argument through the rest of the piece as to who was right!
Greg Oehm, Wollongong NSW Australia, writes:
I'm an organist (of sorts), and I get my brother, Adrian, to page-turn for me. We've certainly been in similar situations ourselves!
Your anecdotes did remind me of one time my brother was turning for me, when - during the last verse of the hymn - he pulled out a stop, and turned off the blower, all in one manouvre. I soldiered on, yelling (sotto voce) "Turn the organ back on - QUICK!!!". I had the horrors of running out of air in the bellows and hearing the organ slowly dropping in pitch as the air ran out. Fortunately, my brother turned in back on in time. As my brother tells it, he thought it odd that the bulb in music desk light went out just as he pulled the stop, and was marvelling at the coincidence. He didn't realise that he'd bumped the switch for the blower which nestled just beside the stop he'd just pulled out!
You also reminded me of something that Gordon Reynolds once wrote in one of his books (Full Swell, or was it Organo Pleno?) in a list of definitions that "Turn, Turn, Turn" was preceded by a furious bout of head-nodding, which (if ignored) meant that the organist was about to become an unwilling composer!