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Views from the Choir Loft

Three Ways to Improvise at the Organ

Keven Smith · March 1, 2021

ITH MY CHOIR MOSTLY SHUT DOWN during the COVID pandemic, the organ has kept me busy. My parish now has 32 low Masses per week, which gives us organists many opportunities to serve the Church. For a relatively new organist like me who needs lots of practice, it’s hog heaven.

In my last article, I explained why I’m more comfortable improvising than playing repertoire and gave four reasons why organists shouldn’t hesitate to improvise at Mass. I also promised some practical tips on how to improvise. Here are those tips.

Don’t Just Play the Organ. Pray the Organ. 

Perhaps many organists are intimidated by the idea of improvising for the same reason that most people are intimidated by writing: when there’s a blank page in front of you, what on earth do you say? In writing, it’s helpful to develop a clear topic and then form an outline of how you’ll explain that topic or make your argument. And in improvisation, it’s beneficial to have an idea in mind as you start.

Yes, you’ll want to have a musical idea, but I say it’s even more important to have a spiritual idea. In other words, focus on a sacred text, whether it’s a proper of the Mass, a chant hymn, or a favorite prayer.

Our parish is blessed to have produced a seminarian for the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP), a young man who holds an organ degree from a prestigious conservatory. He is a professional-caliber performer. More importantly, he has a well-grounded sense of the liturgy and how to support it with organ music. When he’s home on breaks, he’s incredibly generous with his time and expertise. I’d say his name, but….did I mention he’s also genuinely humble?

In the course of the lessons and masterclasses I’ve had with my friend, he has taught me the concept of “praying the organ.” It’s just like it sounds: when you sit down to improvise, you keep a sacred text in mind and create music that matches that text. What the congregation then hears is your prayer actualized as sound.

Do this well, and you can’t help but create beautiful music that moves the heart to prayer. I’m not yet an accomplished enough organist to play the most challenging classics. But in my simple improvisations, I’ve had people tell me that my playing was “prayerful” or even “moving.” You can do the same, or better. In fact, if you’re already nailing the great organ works and you add improvisation to your mix, you’ll be unstoppable.

My Top Three Methods of Organ Improvisation

At this point, you may be thinking, “OK, this all sounds good, but….what do I actually play?”

There are many good guides to organ improvisation. Some of them walk you through all the rudiments of harmony and help you become a better overall musician. Others assume you know this stuff already and give you “tricks” to make your improvisations more interesting and less predictable.

I’m still working through these materials myself. In the meantime, I’ve been using three methods to improvise at the organ:

  • Harmonize a chant. I’ll generally use the chant that’s prescribed for each part of the Mass. If it’s a low Mass nobody will be singing them, so the organ can “sing” them instead. As the priest enters, I’ll improvise on the Introit. At the Offertory and Communion, I’ll use those propers. For a recessional, I’ll often use the Alleluia from that Mass, or the Marian antiphon of the season.
  • Use the chant as a starting point. This is similar to the above, except that I’ll let the melody go off in a new direction after playing a certain amount of the chant. Sometimes I’ll return to the chant as written, sometimes not.
  • Make up an original melody. Although I usually use the chant at least as a starting point, I’ll occasionally do something completely different. It could be that the prescribed chant doesn’t inspire me (perhaps it’s in a mode that I’ve seen too much lately). Or maybe I looked at the text and suddenly got a strong melodic idea that goes with it. Either way, I’ll bring the text to life by playing my own composition. I do a lot of this during the Canon of the Mass, especially after the Consecration. I might make up a melody for the Words of Institution, or for the phrase that follows: Hæc quotiescúmque fecéritis, in mei memóriam faciétis.

For each of these three methods, I’ll use one of two approaches: prepare in advance or compose on the spot. For an upcoming Sunday Mass, I’ll typically sit with the propers several times during the week, playing around with harmonic possibilities. Even if I plan on harmonizing a chant without deviating much from the given melody, I like to plan some harmonic “features,” such as unusual chords or a modulation. But if I’m planning on wandering off from the chant melody or even composing something from scratch, then I’ll put in significant practice. In the true spirit of improvisation, the results will be slightly different each time, but it’s a “predictable different,” one that I know will fit the timing of the liturgy (with slight modifications depending on the pacing of each of our parish’s four priests).

Even if I come up with a composition from scratch, I never write down more than a few notes. I find it easier to memorize. For harmonized chants, I’ll sometimes write down the names of the most important chord changes underneath the chant melody. This approach takes the pressure off of me to perform a composition. Still, it gives me a secure enough framework that even if I make a mistake or two, I know where my improvisation is going.

A few other considerations have come to mind in terms of adding color to improvisations. I’ll share those in my next article.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

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Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Improvisation, organ Last Updated: March 1, 2021

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About Keven Smith

Keven Smith, music director at St. Stephen the First Martyr, lives in Sacramento with his wife and five musical children.—(Read full biography).

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Corpus Christi Watershed

President’s Corner

    “Yahweh” in church songs?
    My pastor asked me to write a weekly column for our parish bulletin. The one scheduled to run on 22 June 2025 is called “Three Words in a Psalm” and speaks of translating the TETRAGRAMMATON. You can read the article at this column repository. All of them are quite brief because I was asked to keep within a certain word limit.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Music List” • Pentecost Sunday
    Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for Pentecost Sunday (8 June 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. Because our choir is on break this week, the music is relatively simple.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Truly Great Processional” • (Pipe Organ)
    I stumbled upon this live recording of a PROCESSIONAL I played on the pipe organ in 2002. It’s an excerpt from a much longer composition by Sebastian Bach. In those days, there weren’t sophisticated recording devices allowing one “fix” wrong notes. (Perhaps they existed, but we didn’t have machines like that.) So it was necessary to play the entire piece from beginning to end. If you’re a church organist, feel free to download the PDF score. I suppose it’s only a matter of time until some joker uses “artificial intelligence” to play music at church … but there’s something so satisfying about playing an organ in real life.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Quick Thoughts

    Antiphons Don’t Match?
    A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    When to Sit, Stand and Kneel like it’s 1962
    There are lots of different guides to postures for Mass, but I couldn’t find one which matched our local Latin Mass, so I made this one: sit-stand-kneel-crop
    —Veronica Brandt
    The Funeral Rites of the Graduale Romanum
    Lately I have been paging through the 1974 Graduale Romanum (see p. 678 ff.) and have been fascinated by the funeral rites found therein, especially the simply-beautiful Psalmody that is appointed for all the different occasions before and after the funeral Mass: at the vigil/wake, at the house of the deceased, processing to the church, at the church, processing to the cemetery, and at the cemetery. Would that this “stational Psalmody” of the Novus Ordo funeral rites saw wider usage! If you or anyone you know have ever used it, please do let me know.
    —Daniel Tucker

Random Quote

“The idea that the Roman basilica is the ideal design for a Christian church building because it made it possible for the priest and the people to face one another is complete nonsense. That would have been the last thing that the early Christians had in mind.”

— Father Louis Bouyer

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