Let’s talk about Organ improvisation: A meeting with Thomas Ospital, titular organist of Saint Eustache in Paris
Aurelio Porfiri
I met the titular organist of the beautiful Saint-Eustache church in a Parisian café on a sunny day. Although still young, Thomas Ospital has already established himself as one of the most distinguished organists and improvisers of his generation. A native of the Basque Country, he divides his professional life among his work as a liturgical organist, teacher, and concert performer.
His predecessor at Saint-Eustache was Jean Guillou, one of the most influential figures in the contemporary organ world.
With Thomas Ospital I discussed the art of improvisation, a fascinating subject to which he has devoted considerable attention. It is a topic that every organist should take seriously, since improvisation remains one of the most valuable and indispensable skills in the organist’s profession.
I would like to begin by asking you: what is the first thing that comes to your mind when someone talks to you about improvisation?
“Actually, my first public experience with improvisation is very clear in my memory. But I have to say that I also remember very clearly that, when I was a child, I had a little keyboard at home, and I was always trying to combine different intervals and build chords. So, from the very beginning, I loved exploring the keyboard by myself, not only playing written music. I really enjoyed that experience. My first public experience of improvising happened during Mass. I started playing for the liturgy when I was eleven years old. I remember that, just a few weeks after I had begun, during Communion in my little village in the Basque Country, in the south of France, I was accompanying the Communion chant. The organ was a small house organ placed right next to the altar. In the Basque Country we have a wonderful tradition of singing; there are many beautiful songs and people sing a great deal. At one point, the Communion hymn ended, but Communion itself was still continuing. I remember the priest turning toward me and saying, “Continue playing! Keep playing!”
I answered, “But the song is finished.”
He insisted, “Continue, continue!”
So I began again, taking the melody and trying to modulate it, changing the harmony a little. That was truly my very first step into improvisation. You know, I think improvisation begins with many small things like this. Improvisation is not one single subject; it is made up of many different elements that together build the improviser. For example, harmonizing a melody, creating an accompaniment, modifying a melodic line, or finding different harmonic solutions—these are already exercises that prepare you for free improvisation. So I would say that this was really the first time I could honestly say that I improvised”.
We know that, in the past, both in classical music and in the Catholic Church, there was a great tradition of improvisation. Great composers were also great improvisers: Bach, Handel, Beethoven—all of them were extraordinary improvisers. Today, however, this skill seems to have been largely lost. We have many excellent music students, but when they are asked to improvise, they almost freeze. In your opinion, what is the problem?
“First of all, you mention the great figures of the past—Bach, Beethoven, Mozart—and we know that they improvised. But we actually know very little about the musicians around them. History has not remembered all of Beethoven’s or Mozart’s students. Perhaps many of them were poor improvisers and were only able to play what was written. So I don’t think that something has been completely lost since then. What has changed is the way we teach music today. We approach subjects such as basso continuo, harmonization and harmony much too late in the educational process. In my opinion, these subjects should be introduced from the very beginning. If students learned music by first understanding what a chord is, how harmony works, and how a melody is constructed, things would be much easier. Children learn to write sentences when they are seven or eight years old. Why shouldn’t they also be able to understand how to construct a melodic sentence at that age?”
You say that we don’t know whether the students of those great composers were improvisers. But you have just mentioned basso continuo, and basso continuo is, by its very nature, something that requires improvisation.
“Exactly, exactly. Actually, even more important than basso continuo is the partimenti. Partimenti are extremely important because they teach you the structure of music. In many ways, I think it is even more important than continuo, because historically it came at the very beginning of musical training. It made the understanding of music much more natural. Of course, this is only my personal point of view, and I don’t know whether I am entirely right. But I truly believe that studying these subjects from the beginning is essential. I was fortunate enough to begin studying harmony very early. When I was fourteen years old, I started learning harmony. Before that, I was already improvising on my own. I didn’t actually have a harmony teacher until I entered the Conservatoire, but I was fascinated by theory and became almost obsessed with studying it. Having the opportunity to study harmony at such a young age helped shape my mind and prepared me for improvisation. At the same time, I find today’s approach a little dangerous. Nowadays improvisation is fashionable. In many conservatories people say, “It’s wonderful to be free with your instrument. Students should improvise.” So they organize improvisation classes taught by people who often do not really understand improvisation or are not particularly skilled at it. They simply tell the students, “Now improvise,” and the students become completely blocked. But that is because all the necessary intermediate steps have been skipped. Improvisation cannot exist without those foundations”.
