Royce Hall is a staple image of UCLA. Though Bruins walk by the building’s arches nearly every day, it is unlikely that many know of the power that lies within the concert hall ““ a massive 6,600-plus pipe organ. On Sunday, 24-year-old organist Felix Hell will bring that power to rise in concert.
Hell, who gave his first organ performance at the age of nine, has performed more than 650 concerts in his home country of Germany, as well as more than 450 in the United States. Though at first he strongly disliked the idea of organ music, attending an organ recital for the first time changed that for him.
“I associated the organ with church and services, and I was convinced the organ was going to be boring. And (my father) finally dragged me to the concert and I had no choice. I was sitting in the pew in the church, and I was very upset, but as soon as the organ started playing I was just mesmerized, so very impressed with the sound of the instrument,” Hell said.
Though it appears similar to a piano because of the keyboard, it is the differences it has that allow the organ to have such a striking voice. For starters, the organ has a pedal board, which allows the performer to sustain chords with his or her feet. Also, the organ has different “stops” that can be pulled, allowing it to emulate the sounds of other instruments, from flute to strings. These stops allow the organ to be one of the most versatile forms of musical expression.
“It’s an instrument that can have so many different characters,” said Anna Heat, a graduate student in organ performance. “Organ has so many faces, one very different from another.”
For Hell, utilizing the stops to their utmost requires him to arrive at UCLA two days prior to his performance in order to “register” the organ, or to program the sounds he wants to use. Even though this is more work, it also allows him greater liberties with the music he plays.
“We have a lot of freedom as organists to really orchestrate the piece. When we have the composition in front of us, in most cases the composer will not tell us which sounds to use or which stops to use. When we come to an instrument, we have to see what is available to us and see how we can make this organ sound the very best it can,” Hell said. “There may be the same piece played by 10 different organists, and every time it can sound very different.”
The unique registrations done by each artist strongly affect the way the music comes across.
“Sometimes when you have a piece of music the sounds will change as many as 20 times during a piece of music, so the organist has to spend much more time than any other player to program those,” said organ professor Christoph Bull. “That’s really going to influence what people are going to hear.”
Another difference is that unlike a piano, which uses a hammer hitting a string to produce sound, the organ uses air. Because of the sheer power of the never-exhausted air going through the pipes, an organ is considered by some to be more of a medium for rock symphonies. The use of wind circulation allows for a much bigger, bolder sound than a piano.
“I look at the organ as a rock instrument that has to be played badass, not too polite, and you can do it with that instrument because you have huge sonic room,” Bull said.
Heat first became interested in playing the organ due to the jazz-rock organist in the band Emerson, Lake and Palmer. For her, the instrument allowed her to open up to her own more powerful side.
“You can have the dynamic level (of the organ) go from really soft to really dramatic loud. … Usually I am such a quiet person. Even when I played the piano, I would put the soft pedals on so nobody could hear me. But with organ, no. It’s just so much fun to blast out all that sound,” Heat said.
If there’s any age group that likes a lot of sound when it comes to music, it’s college students. As a college-aged student himself, Hell finds collegiate audiences exhilarating even when the organ may not be the most popular instrument for people that age.
“It’s a very thrilling experience because I’m surrounded by so many young people and people my age, so I look at it as an opportunity, and I hope that students will give the organ a chance,” Hell said. “A lot of young people are just like me before I heard the organ. They are somewhat prejudiced about the instrument. But the truth is that it has instrumentally infinite possibilities and it can be extremely expressive, so I tried to display the organ not so much as a church instrument, but as a concert.”