New Hymnal: Organs and Pianos
In the wake of my rant on the new hymnal, one of my friends asked me to clarify the difference between hymns written for the piano vs being written for the organ.
Our two examples for this explanation are going to be "Holding Hands Around The World," and "This Is The Christ." Both of these are not written for being played on the organ, but in different ways.
There a couple elements I want to highlight: bass lines and accompaniment flourishes. I'm assuming some level of experience with musical terms for this explanation.
1. Bass Lines
Organs are distinct from pianos in that while you're playing a note, it never fades. Pedal notes are longer notes (usually at least a half note, but typically a whole note or longer) that essentially ground the chord while other shorter notes are being played. You don't have to have a pedal note for it to be written for the organ, but it certainly helps. For a piece like "Holding Hands," there are no pedal notes in the bass line. It's evident that the sustain pedal is meant to carry the sound of the chord through the measures, and so playing it on organ without modifications can make the piece sound choppy and disconnected.
Another element of organs is that you typically play the lowest note of the piece on the pedals with your feet, while playing the other notes with your hands on the keyboard(s). For many inexperienced organists, playing anything shorter than a quarter note — especially at faster tempos — can be very difficult. Organists can use a shortcut: there's a button called a "bass coupler" that essentially fakes the use of pedals, but the cutoff point for when that pedal sound applies can be noticeable and hard to work with. Looking at the example from "Holding Hands" again, you can see the abundance of eighth notes that I personally would want to run through before performing it, just to be sure.
Finally, most pieces for congregational singing (and pieces written for organ pedals and keyboard) have two different notes in the bass line: one for bass, and one for tenor. On organs, the bass is typically played in the pedals, while the tenor is played on the keyboards. If there's only one bass line (like the above example), an organist will probably just end up playing the whole thing in the pedals, except for when there's a second note, which they'll play on the keyboard. "This is The Christ" is slightly better at supplying two notes than "Holding Hands," as you can see in the example below.
Most measures include a half note that can be played in the pedals, while the eighth notes are played with the left hand on the keyboard. This is much easier for an organist to play (fewer on the spot decisions about which limb is playing which note), provides us with pedal notes to carry the chord, and gives the hand on the keyboard more of the eighth notes.
Except, no one is singing those notes because this is supposed to be sung in unison (two-part harmony at most). Which brings me to my next point:
2. Accompaniment vs. Melody
Another distinction between the piano and the organ is that individual notes on the organ cannot be softer than other notes. Any note you play on a given keyboard is going to be the same volume no matter how hard or soft you play it as any other note on the same keyboard.
The biggest way to play with having loud and soft (or louder and softer) sounds at the same time is by adjusting the registration. Organ registrations are essentially a set of sounds that apply to a specific keyboard (or keyboards). If I set up a flute and violin sound on one keyboard, and a trumpet plus french horn sound on another keyboard, Keyboard 1 is going to sound much softer than Keyboard 2.
The reason for doing this in congregational singing is often to highlight a melody line. However, if you're going to do this, then you need to only be playing the melody line on the louder keyboard and all of the accompaniment notes on the softer keyboard. If the music isn't written for this, you have to recombine notes into different hands on the fly, which is extremely difficult if you aren't naturally skilled at it or have a lot of practice doing so. You can tell that both "Holding Hands" and "This Is The Christ" are not written for the organ because they don't separate the melody line entirely from accompaniment notes.
An organ-written version of the above music would combine the alto line and the tenor lines together, while leaving the soprano (melody) line on its own. (The bass line would also actually be on its own line apart from the alto/tenor notes, but we don't have to complicate this more.)
I will grant that the TabCATS did perform "This Is The Christ" with an organ accompaniment back in 2023, but I want to note two things.
First, the TabCATS are not your average Mormon congregation. (Your average Mormon congregation often struggles to sing at tempo even when given a competent organist.) They are not relying on the organist for their parts nearly as much as the average ward member is doing.
Second, they did actually have a lot of registration variation on the organ. (Not to mention that they probably had a custom score for organ!) Registration changes aren't natural to most amateur organists. Often times, a new organist will be shown "these are the buttons I use for sacrament hymns; these four buttons get increasingly louder," and then just use those options. Ward organists almost never change registrations in the middle of a hymn, and most of these setups don't have an intentionally louder keyboard vs intentionally softer keyboard because the organists will often only ever play on one keyboard (plus possibly the pedals).
In Conclusion
Playing the organ is a skill, and there are things you have to adjust if you want to play it skillfully and not everyone has time to learn those additional things. These pieces are adaptable for organ, but they are not written for organ, which is so much harder for the overwhelmingly amateur organists of the church. Most members and leaders think that playing the organ is just like playing the piano, and it really isn't. A pianist can play the organ, but it will not be the same experience as an organist playing the organ.
I've talked to a few different organists, and many of them have bemoaned the piano accompaniments they're being asked to play on the organ. Mike Carson is a musician who's rewritten the newly released hymns to work for organists, and I'm so glad that he offers them freely on his website. (A lot of his alternate harmonizations are also very good and I highly recommend them.) However, I don't think this should have had to have been a project taken on by an individual.
Organists are an overlooked and yet vital calling in the church. On one hand, they're asked to play all of the hymns on the organ (despite the fact that some would be better suited for the piano), but given very little support to learn how to do so. It's also clear that the church recognizes that people are less likely to experience the hymns through congregational singing with an organist, so they're prioritizing things that are not suited for organs. But if the church is going to fully transition away from organs, (or, honestly, even if they're going to be forever stuck in a limbo supporting both organs and non-organ accompaniments) the church needs to provide additional support to their remaining organists.
Honestly, I'd really love it if the church released (even just digitally!) an organist's hymnal that had three versions of the hymns where applicable: congregational singing in 4-part harmony; 4 part harmony, but with the bass line in a separate line from the tenor line (and possibly reworked to be slightly more organ friendly); and bass line, tenor/alto combined, with a melody line.
In the meantime, be kind to your organists, and if you're a leader, maybe consider offering to pay for your organists to take the BYU organ courses (see the links for Off-Campus Students).
