In these 16 days back in Hawaii, my plate has been full, not the least of which has been to play for church services, “subbing” for the regular organist. (By the way, in England this is called “depping”— being the deputy organist.)

On August 5, after being home from Europe for only nine hours, I played three services at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Matins with Holy Communion at 8:00 am, High Mass at 10:00 am, and Evensong and Benediction at 5:00 pm. I had the same schedule of services to play on Sunday, August 12.

Today I was scheduled to play the organ at Waiokeola Congregational Church and on Wednesday when I went to practice on the Heissler organ, everything was fine and normal.

I arrived about 8:10 am to warm up, and at first when I turned on the switch, I pushed in and turned the key to the right. For some reason, I couldn’t get the key to stay in the “on” position.

The church secretary, Joy, came over to greet me and I told her I was having trouble. Joy easily got the key to lock in place, and I thought I was all set. I hit a couple of general pistons and put my fingers on the keys—but there was no sound!

Hey! This is a tracker organ! This is not supposed to happen! I pressed the Cancel button and pulled out individual stops to try them out, but to no avail. I could hear the hum of the organ blower, and the lights of the general pistons lit up. But there was absolutely no sound from the pipes whatsoever.

We made a call to Gloria Faltstrom, the regular organist, but she could not recall anything like this happening before. The former choir director, Bud Klein, also tried with no luck. The secretary even put in a call to the Heissler representative in Florida, but could only leave a message.

What eventually happened was that I ended up playing the piano for the entire service. For the prelude and postlude, I played my organ music on the church’s grand piano. The prelude wasn’t too bad, since it was mostly for manuals only and very little pedal (“Ballade en mode Phrygien” by Jehan Alain). Unfortunately, because I’m going on a trip soon, I took out any spare organ music from my car, so I only had this morning’s selections with me.

But the postlude, “God of grace and God of glory” by Paul Manz was pretty challenging (and hairy!) played on the piano! All those running pedal eighth notes I had to play in my left hand, with the right hand taking everything else. And forget playing the melody in the tenor! I just played the chorale with the melody in the soprano.

Some people would beg to differ that playing running eighth notes would be easier if played with the left hand rather than with your feet! But I always maintain that playing with your feet is infinitely easier than your hands, because you only have two feet, but ten fingers!

Here is a recording of the composer himself, Paul Manz, playing this piece on the organ. I bet he never had to play it on the piano!

I was painfully aware that what I had chosen for the offertory, Couperin’s “Tierce en taille” from the Convents Mass, just was NOT going to work on the piano, with its melody in the tenor, so I looked around the church for something else to play.

Behind the organ I found a book of music arranged for choir and keyboard, and I quickly found an arrangement of César Franck’s “Panis Angelicus,” so that’s what the people got—played on the piano. Yes, I had to sightread it in front of the congregation, because so much time was spent before the service in trying (unsuccessfully!) to get the organ to sound.

All this goes to show that organists always have to have a “Plan B,” because you never know when you get to the church if there will be a dead note because some cockroach climbed into the pipe, or whether some other critter has messed up the works! Or when the entire organ doesn’t play!