Practice Journal – First Journey with Early Organ Music Recercar con obligo

With limited practice time, the challenge is not just learning the notes, but learning efficiently. I have about two weeks to prepare Recercar con obligo by Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643) for the Bach's Birthday organ concert. This time the performance will be on a continuo organ, a small “box” organ.

Some pieces look simple on the page, but their sight-reading can be surprisingly difficult. Early organ music often falls into this category.

So far I’ve had three sight-reading sessions with Recercar con obligo.

First practice session for this early organ music.

The first reading was mainly exploratory. I played through the piece fairly quickly just to understand the voices and get a sense of the structure.

To achieve the proper articulation and play the correct note values in this style, I realized I couldn’t fully rely on any pre set fingerings that my teacher marked as suggested fingerings. I had to define my own approach, experimenting carefully to find fingering solutions that allow the voices to flow naturally and maintain clarity throughout the phrases.

Close-up view of the manuscript displaying the opening three lines of the piece, with notes and first attempted annotations arranged on the staff.

Adding to the challenge, the manuscript doesn’t separate hands in an easy way. Notes for the left and right hands often jump between registrations, making it difficult to practice hands separately. This means I can’t just isolate one hand; I have to think about the coordination of both hands together from the start, which makes learning slower and more demanding.

Even though the first reading was rough, it was still useful. It helped me become familiar with the notes and the overall structure. I also realized quite quickly that practicing bar by bar doesn’t really work for this kind of music. A single measure rarely makes musical sense on its own; the line only becomes clear across a longer phrase.

So instead, I started thinking phrase by phrase. But reading longer phrases requires a lot of concentration. After about thirty minutes, my brain felt completely fried.

I went through the first page. At that point I had to remind myself: calm down and take it bit by bit.