———
It would have been around half past eleven. I was sitting on a piano stool at the far side of the church hall, having slipped quietly back there from my high-backed cushioned seat after the morning’s sermon. Being able to surreptitiously glide from one to the other without bringing too much attention to yourself is something of an art form: you have to know in advance where you’re going, anticipate how long you’ll be able to spend on the proper chair, calculate whether it’s worth the effort of moving in the first place (it is in my case – listening to a half-hour sermon from the discomfort of a piano stool gives me backache), and then choose an appropriate moment to make your move, preferably when there is some sort of communal activity going on so as to minimise the attention you’ll draw to yourself, and making sure that you don’t trip over microphone stands, sloppily strewn stacks of sheet music or abandoned plastic cars on your way.
It may sound melodramatic, but I have my reasons. The accompanist needs to be present but discreet, playing his part when needed and then fading into the background when not. This means keeping your fingers clear of the keyboard in between hymns, anticipating when the pastor will want mood music over an evangelical prayer, and choosing an appropriate voluntary with which to close the service. Above all, you need to know your hymns: feasible key signatures, apposite tempos and consistent gaps between verses. If there is more than one choice of melody, you need to know which one the preacher will select and which one the congregation will expect, and hope that they’re the same.
It’s like assembling a mix tape: there are a lot of rules. The biggest problem you find when accompanying church singing is that the congregation will slow you up if you let them. This does not mean that the best approach to playing is to plough through the introductions to hymns at breakneck speed, hoping that the congregational lag will automatically adjust your given tempo to one that is more suitable. This is a mistake many beginners make, and it leads to confusion on all sides. The congregation expects the organist to set the tempo, so the best thing to do is to find one that works and then stick to it: they will have to keep up with you, and deep down they know it.
There was an elderly musician in my church in Reading who meant well, but who struggled intently on Sunday mornings. Curiously, her piano playing – and accompanying – was flawless, and it was only on the organ that she found herself unable to control proceedings. We would thus be singing ‘Meekness and Majesty’ at half speed, as Beryl started slowly and, thanks to an inevitable lag that she had failed to control, became slower still, with lengthy, almost unbearably plodding choruses that seemed to go on for an eternity. I can remember nearly passing out during one held note that lasted for a full twenty seconds during the second chorus. Meanwhile, in one of the back rooms where the sound carries, my brother and the other members of the Junior Church were singing along, trying to keep their own pace. It was only halfway through the second verse that Mark stopped and said “Hang on, shall we see if we can lap them?”
I started playing at our church about eighteen months ago, filling in the gap left by a departing pianist. The rotational system means I’m only on once every four or five weeks or so, which means monthly Friday night rehearsals where we will run through the order of service for that Sunday, talk in advance about any changes we might want to make, and crack bad jokes. The worship group have power of veto over any hymn choices, but I have yet to actually exercise this in practice, although we came perilously close when the Children & Families Specialist picked ‘One More Step Along The World I Go’ for an all-age service. It’s a song I’ve hated for years, for various reasons that are too dull to include here, but we did it anyway. Sometimes you just have to compromise.
It’s nice accompanying a congregation that means what they’re singing, even if you have to deal with occasional arm-waving and gestures of fierce concentration during the more spirited choruses. It beats the hell out of having to play for people who are simply going through the motions and who seem almost afraid to put any emotion into their singing for fear of what it might do to them: I’ve had this plenty of times, and thankfully the occasions where I have to deal with it at our current church are few and far between. There’s a difference between approaching worship with quiet reverence – I have absolutely no problem with that – and making it quite obvious that you’re thinking about last night’s Doctor Who, or whether you set the timer for the oven. I refer to these people as Mrs Beamishes, after a song by Peter Skellern and Richard Stilgoe about a middle-aged conservative who is outwardly respectable but utterly devoid of love. The song is drenched in acidic humour, but makes a serious point.
At the opposite end of the worship spectrum are the charismatics, and while I welcome signs of genuine enthusiasm (there’s nothing quite so gratifying as watching someone get swept up in the moment when you’re playing for them), they do get a bit carried away. I can remember being at Emily’s church in Cambridge for the first time: I’d grown up in a well-meant but restrained Methodist environment where the closest we got to getting swept up in the moment was a frenzy of off-the-beat clapping in ‘Shine Jesus Shine’. It wasn’t particularly dynamic, but it was what I was used to. I’d witnessed emotional responses to worship before, but nothing prepared me for what happened during one particular chorus, when, all of a sudden, a middle-aged woman in a house dress jumped up from her seat and left the pew, lolloping down the aisle to the front of the building. There was a large brown flag lying on the carpet next to the fire doors, and the next thing I knew she’d picked it up and begun to wave it around, moving as if caught in a breeze, an expression of utter sincerity on her face. She looked like an extra from Cirque du Soleil. Perhaps it would have helped if the chorus itself had been one of profound beauty, where such an intense emotional reaction was entirely expected, but in truth it was one of those dull and meandering worship songs with no real melody, depth or lyrical content, much like ninety-five per cent of the stuff in the books.
Slightly bemused by this spectacle, and not really wanting to stare, I glanced across to the other side of the building, where the band were sitting – and saw a woman of roughly thirty who was skipping around in a manner that can best be described as a confused hybrid of ballet dancing and cheerleading. She had moved from her seat into the central aisle and – eyes closed – was prancing and hopping, limbs flailing, legs thrashing wildly, elbows threatening to poke out the eyes of the seemingly apathetic man who was standing next to her. Occasionally, she would lift her arms and raise them high above her head and press her hands together in a fashion that was evidently designed to evoke a praying gesture, but in truth she looked like she was trying out for an Olympic diving team. I turned my gaze back to the overhead projector screen and tried to ignore it. There was, I remain convinced, a lesson to be learned from all this, but some six and a half years later I’m still trying to figure it out.
Our current church falls somewhere in between the respectful decorum of the Methodist church and the emotional whirlpool of Emily’s Cambridge haunt. There are moments of abandonment, typically when our pastor decides to add an a capella chorus at the end of a song, and there’s a bit of arm-waving, typically from his wife. The posture adopted by the more outwardly earnest parishioners in our flock appears to be one of a single arm in the air, raised but not straightened, as if almost tentatively, eyes closed. Everyone else just sings, but they sing like they mean it. There is no flag waving and no diving. I never thought it was possible to have your cake and eat it, but there we go.
I was at this particular service alone, which was probably a good thing. It’s nice having the boys there, but they do tend to get in the way: Thomas, in particular, tends to suddenly become clingy at the most inopportune moments, electing to join me at the piano during or between hymns. The latter is less of a problem as I will just hit the off button on the electric piano and rest assured that his key-thumping will be met with a resounding silence. During hymns it’s more of a problem, and on more than one occasion I’ve had a good praise chorus ruined by enthusiastic improvisations down at the bass end of the keyboard. I actually gave up a regular playing commitment in a previous church on the grounds that the worship was being compromised by Joshua’s input. Besides, the singing was lacklustre and no longer any fun: to be honest I was glad of an excuse to stop.
People say they don’t mind, and in our church they truly don’t, but while it may not matter to them, it does to me. You feel that bad behaviour from your children, whatever their age, is a negative reflection on you as a parent, and no amount of well-meant reassurance from parents and non-parents alike changes any of that. It’s easy to forget that there are variables: the tiredness factor, any current anxieties that they may have and the fact that all children have an in-built radar that flags the times that they should be behaving themselves, so that they might do the exact opposite. This explains why Joshua always picks the prayers to start fighting with his brother, or why Thomas waits for the Gospel reading to mount the dais at the front of the church and veer alarmingly towards the advent candles. We’ve tried all possible seating combinations and all possible toy combinations, but at the end of the day there is only so much you can do: children are children and they will behave how they want to behave, irrespective of any parental input. So we just let them get on with it, and take them outside if we need to. Besides, pianos are there to be played. There’s a time and a place, but how is a two year old supposed to know about that?
The visiting preacher that morning was David Coffey, President of the Baptist World Alliance – a quiet, contemplative man and a thumping good speaker to boot. It was the final Sunday in Advent, and to be honest I can’t really remember what he discussed. It was one of those sermons that spoke to me, but on a quieter, almost subconscious level: I knew how I felt at the end of it, and I knew why, but the specifics of how we got there are hazy. That makes it sound like I was drunk. Perhaps the best sermons have that effect.
It was five days before Christmas, and I was drained: a succession of late nights and general fatigue had combined to leave me tired, stressed and – rather like this year’s Doctor Who – distinctly lacking in seasonal cheer. It wasn’t one particular thing, but a combination of financial concerns, a lengthening list of jobs that seemed to show no signs of abatement, concerns about Emily, and a state of despair about the state of the world. When I’d begun to use the Sun forums back in early 2008, I felt driven to help people – to guide them, to talk about my faith and its conflicts and lend some insight where I could. I am now so riddled with conflicts I have no idea how I feel about anything. I see an international obsession with the trivial, with the ridiculous and with the superficial and I despair. I see the current public infatuation with being offended – either on your own behalf or on the behalf of someone else who actually doesn’t mind at all – and it makes me nauseous. I read the moronic ramblings on internet forums and cannot understand how people could believe what the press tells them. I don’t believe I’m particularly special or insightful, so why should I be the one who has to point out how much they’ve misunderstood things? Why should I be the only one to see what they can’t?
I have no idea whether I’m a good husband, or a good father – there are days that I think I’m getting it right, and then there are others, like this one, where Thomas screams for half an hour and I wonder what on earth I did to deserve this. I feel like I have no real place in the world other than to push journals from one state to another, and even that’s something that could be done by other people. My wife loves me, and my children love me, but that doesn’t stop me feeling useless. I feel alone. I feel isolated. I feel abandoned.
It was like this the other Sunday, and in the midst of this sense of general turmoil, I suddenly became aware that David was telling a story I’d heard before. It told of Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the Polish virtuoso, who had arranged a concert at Carnegie Hall. The venue was filling up and the audience chatter was alive with anticipation. All of a sudden, a small boy who was attending the concert with his mother wandered up to the stage, approached the piano and, oblivious to the stunned reaction of the audience, began to play ‘Chopsticks’. The attending patrons seethed in anger and annoyance at this graceless faux pas, while the boy’s mother squirmed in her seat, presumably wishing that the floor would open and swallow her (presumably while Reggie Dixon comes up the other way).
All of a sudden, who should emerge from the wings but Paderewski himself, who had overheard the commotion and was anxious to see what was going on. The audience watched in tense anticipation as he approached the piano from behind: they were waiting for him to deliver the boy a stern reprimand, and were instead shocked into silence as he sat down on the seat behind him, before delivering a whispered instruction into his ear: “Just keep playing”.
As the story goes, Paderewski then placed his hands either side of the boy’s, and played an apparently spontaneous concerto based around ‘Chopsticks’, turning the boy’s key-bashing into the most unlikely of duets. The admonishing glares of the audience gradually dissolved into smiles of delight, as their perception of the boy changed from that of unruly tearaway to future virtuoso in the making. And all the while, Paderewski never ceased his whisper: “Don’t stop. Just keep playing. You’re doing great.”
It’s a charming tale, and it would be even more charming if it were true, but it isn’t. There is, according to truthorfiction.com, “no evidence this ever happened”, although the story itself takes its inspiration from a benefit concert in Madison Square Garden in 1940, the souvenir programme of which features Paderewski encouraging a small boy who is seated at the piano. But it’s a moot point, because true or not the tale of Paderewski’s ‘Chopsticks’ concerto takes on a deep theological significance when you consider the possibility of an omniscient deity, placing metaphorical supporting arms around us and embellishing our own work with his own. Many of the internet versions of the story choose to include this in one form or another, generally in the form of mawkish sentiment like this:
“Perhaps that’s the way it is with God…the next time you set out to accomplish great feats, listen carefully. You may hear the voice of the Master, whispering in your ear, “Don’t quit! Keep playing!”. May you feel His arms around you and know that His hands are there, helping you turn your feeble attempts into true masterpieces.” Remember, God doesn’t seem to call the equipped – rather, he equips the called.”
Buckets are by the window. Please feel free to take a mint afterwards.
I was pondering all this as David wrapped up his sermon, and the pastor took the dais. Earlier in the sermon, David had mentioned in passing a carol that was familiar from his childhood: one that I’d never heard before, but which was nostalgically remembered by the older generation. As Keith now approached the lectern, he said “I think before we go any further we’ll sing that hymn”. I panicked. It wasn’t on the order of service, I had no idea of the title – just a few snatched lines – and what’s more, I’d never played it before. Before too long Keith gave out a hymn number; I thumbed through the book as quickly as I could but I’m not the world’s strongest sight reader and had no idea how the thing should go.
The other musicians crashed with me through an introduction, and mercifully, this was one of those occasions when the congregation knew the hymn much better than we did. My substitutions were all over the place and it wasn’t until the final verse that I managed to make the thing sound respectable – we did at least finish quite well. But while I’d had to think on my feet, as well as make a mental note to ask Keith not to do that again, my mind was racing with possibilities. Because it occurred to me that throughout the whole hymn, the voice in my head had been steadily chanting “Don’t stop….just keep playing. You’re doing great.”
There are days at the moment when I don’t even know if I believe in God, which arguably makes me a highly inappropriate choice to be leading worship even on a monthly basis, but that’s not something to contest now. Paderewski’s ‘Chopsticks’ may be an urban legend, but there’s a lesson to be learned here – there was for me, anyway. Because whether the voice I heard in my head was that of God himself or merely my own subconscious, the message was the same – even if there’s no God to embellish our one-handed melodies, our own willpower may be enough to make them something extraordinary. It’s very easy to reach the point where giving up is inevitable, or even sensible, simply because it’s the easier path to travel: where the realisation that you can’t really change the world is enough to grind you into the dirt. I’ve felt like that a lot lately – this sense of hopelessness and loss.
But you keep playing, and you don’t stop, because when you look at it, that’s the option that makes the most sense, even if it’s the harder road. So while the story in David’s sermon was entirely fictional, it was exactly what I needed to hear – and while Keith’s impromptu service alteration dropped me in at the deep end, it was the perfect example of applying the theory in a real-world context, which is something that Keith does very well. We fail, and we fail, and we fail again, but we don’t stop. We have no idea whether what we’re doing is making any difference, but we keep playing, because there’s nothing else. And so I will grind on, whatever it takes, as best as I can, because that’s what you do – as a parent, as a husband, as a musician, as a teacher and as a human being, because I will not give up and I will not back down. Perhaps I’ll even let Thomas near the keyboard next time.
