At the furthest reach of my plans: Oct. 23, 2011 - "Lord, thou hast been our refuge" (RVW), with the Youth Choir doing the semichorus part. This will be unorthodox, but I believe that RVW, practical musician that he was, would approve. The young people will sing the lines "The years of our life are threescore years and ten..." to the adults; I get chills imagining it, and contemplating a whole semester of living with Psalm 90 and this magnificent music alongside the young people. Singing it will teach them the Psalm more thoroughly than any words could do. (from the Music Box, June 9, 2010)
The Old Testament lesson for today was the last chapter of Deuteronomy, the ascent of Moses to the top of Pisgah, where the LORD showed him “all the land... unto the utmost sea.” The account says that “there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.”
In response, the Lectionary appointed a selection from Psalm 90, whose superscription reads: “A prayer of Moses the man of God.”
Lord, thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another ...
There are two settings of Psalm 90 that surpass all others: one is the setting by Charles Ives with its incomparable quiet ending, “as church bells, from a distance” (notation in the parts for orchestral bells, measure 93). The entire piece is over a C pedal point in the organ, and is “as evolution: quiet, unseen and unheeded, but strong fundamentally” (notation in choral parts, measure 14). Ives worked on this piece for over thirty years, and “Mrs. Ives recalled his saying that it was the only one of his works that he was satisfied with.”
Shortly before Ives brought this to completion in 1923-24, Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote his setting of the same text: “Lord, thou hast been our refuge.” It incorporates a stanza of St. Anne, “O God our help in ages past,” the metrical setting of Psalm 90 by Isaac Watts. At first this is pianississimo while the semichorus (the youth choir, in our rendition today) sings the first verses of the prose text. The hymn tune returns later, in other guise.
RVW wanted everyone to make music, and he gave options with this piece for performance by limited forces – the semichorus can be replaced by a solo baritone, and the trumpet is “ad lib,” and can be omitted – though with considerable loss to the effect. It seemed appropriate to me for our Youth Choir to sing the semichorus part, with the Adult Choir on the “full chorus,” and both choirs joining for the final pages. It works splendidly in the grandest of settings, but it also works in our little parish church, with our amateur choristers, young and old. Although our performance was far from perfect, I believe that RVW would be pleased with the way that we sang it. I certainly was.
I do not know if I can do this piece again; I barely made it through this day. After our one-and-only combined rehearsal with trumpet, organ, and both choirs, I was an emotional wreck. But I was saved by three things: the children, the congregation, and the trumpet.
After the rehearsal, one of the boys (Tom) complained about how loud it was: “I can't even hear myself.” “Yes. Isn't it grand?” I answered. One of the little girls (Elise) said pretty much the same thing, expressing her delight in it. They brought me back to earth with their reminder of the sheer practical childlike joy of making Real Music that is splendid and overwhelming. This is, I think, what Holy Scripture is expressing in passages such as II Chronicles 5:13-14 and Revelation 5:11-14.
It came even to pass, as the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the LORD; and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of musick, and praised the LORD, saying, For he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever: that then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the LORD; so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud: for the glory of the LORD had filled the house of God.
And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain...
Part way through the piece, I noticed the congregation. The youth choir filled the choir loft, relegating the adult choir to the front three pews. And behind them – the congregation, by this point listening intently. They too were part of the music, as was their inner response to it, a response that for some of them may echo for years to come. Dorothy Sayers explores this at length in “The Mind of the Maker,” to which I have referred in these pages. This is even more important when the audience/congregation and the musicians are one community, as we were today. The listeners enter into the music-making more fully, for they know the people from whom the music comes. Although the performance from Westminster Abbey linked above was from a much grander occasion, it too was “one community,” representing an entire nation on an important day of remembrance. This connects (again) with II Chronicles 5:13-14 and Revelation 5:11-14, where music serves this function on two of the most important occasions in history (past and future), and where, in the latter passage, the community encompasses “every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them.”
The trumpeter does not play until the hymn tune St. Anne returns on page twelve, more than five minutes into the piece. Her part appears to be simple, all of it in long notes, playing once through the hymn tune. But it is not; she needed careful and accurate cues from me, as did the trebles for their entrances, and the tenors for one key passage on page fourteen. And it was the hymn tune and my responsibility for it that carried me through the final pages.
Psallam spiritu et mente – I will sing with the spirit, and with the understanding also (I Cor. 14:15, the motto of the RSCM).
I become emotional at moments such as these, and the “understanding” must remain in control, else I would fail in my duty. A conductor has to do only one thing: give the ensemble what they need to get through the piece. The music-making comes from the singers and instrumentalists, not the conductor.
It was a Good Day. The choirs of this parish made this anthem their own, and sang it from the heart.
[When we sing,] we express ourselves and become vulnerable to God and to one another in our song in a unique way.... [There is] something intangible, something about health and healing that congregations and choirs experience in their innermost beings....
The point is that any music that bears repetition, music on which time and effort are worth being spent, will be fine art. The point is that music in worship, the highest activity of humankind, will of necessity invoke the finest craft and that, in turn, has the potential to issue in the finest art. Precisely because music serves a greater good than itself gives it the best chance to be the finest art. Gregorian chant, Palestrina motets, Bach cantatas, black spirituals, and innumerable hymns with their tunes are prime examples [as is this day's anthem] – amazing art and amazing gifts to the whole human race.
(Paul Westermeyer, “The Heart of the Matter,” p. 50-52)
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