When a church pays an organist a fee this is what they are getting. Trials and Tribulations occur when a church does not realise how long the list is.
- Many years of practice (ongoing)
- Years of experience
- Aural skills
- Alertness
- Sensitivity
- Investment in sheet music (or PDFs on an iPad, these days)
- Travel (vehicle maintnance)
- Time (A 9:30 service requires me ot leave home at 8:45 and get home at about 11:30
- Skill to deal with problems. So if an organ develops a fault - as happened to me last weekend, I made sure I could play the Wednesday funeral hymns in keys which avoided the intermittently sticking note. Unfortunately, another note was also apt to stick and so I had to revert to the keys in the hymn book or avoid both notes.
- The ability to lead a congregation by rhythmical playing
- Improvisation skills
- Sight-reading skills
- Advice (church wardens seem unaware that an organ need tuning or faults attending to. Tuning contracts are becoming a thing of the past so mosr visits are arranged by phone or email adn not by the tuner sending in and "I'm coming on..." card
I daresay I could think of more.
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