Organist/Composer Diane Bish

A year and a half ago I purchased her organ piece,  "Introduction, Theme & Variations on ALL CREATURES OF OUR GOD AND KING".  I did not learn the whole thing, just chose some of the quieter variations to play for prelude music. Now I find myself learning the organ accompaniment to her choral arrangement of "Lead on O King Eternal." It is not for the faint hearted. In typical Bish style, it is filled with countless running sixteenth notes in various permutations, including quintuplets, and some fancy foot work at the end. The main difficulty I see is that that the tempo is quarter note =100, which is fine for a virtuoso organist like Diane Bish. For the rest of us she offers no slower tempo (we can only hope that our choir directors have mercy on us). She does however offer us a life-boat on page 9 where she has sixteeth note scales going up and down with the left hand, with various different tuplets: 14, 12, 11, 13, 10, and 9 to be played against the right hand dotted rhythm. After trying it a few times: it was more irritating than impossible, I chose her alternative at the bottom of the page where she writes, "For faint hearted organists R.H. may be doubled octave lower in L.H."

Here is Diane Bish playing this. Watch her fingers fly! 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ron3Vp_NHhw







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