Apparition of the Eternal Church

I am playing this on Sunday.

I am nervous about it – not so much about getting through it, as about how people will respond to it. I have played it before, and no one has killed me yet. But this is a piece that elicits strong reactions. I love it. But I must remember that many will not.

Is it appropriate to inflict something like this on a congregation? They have come to worship, to pray, not to listen to loud spiky music. I do not have a proper answer to this, whether for this piece or any of the other strange things that I play. This morning after I practiced it, I considered moving it from its place as the prelude to postlude, which would mean moving the Craig Phillips setting of Sine Nomine to prelude. It is a more comfortable piece, but it is long and virtuosic. I do not like playing such a piece as a prelude, especially when it ends with a big loud toccata-like flourish that, in the context of a church prelude, is the wrong way to begin the Eucharistic service. It would be better as a postlude, and there is nothing virtuosic about the Messiaen. Power, yes; virtuosity, no.

(Having said that, I plan to play the Bach Toccata in F as the prelude a fortnight from now. How is that different from the Phillips?)

A few years ago, a gentleman by the name of Paul Festa made a video about the Messiaen piece (the Apparition of the Eternal Church). The body of the 50-plus minute documentary consists of watching thirty-one people listen to this piece with headphones, without being told what it is or what to expect. Their reactions are amazing.

I will not link to the video's website, because some of the content of the website (and the video) is graphically sexual and laced with lots of profanity – but that is how some of the people reacted to the music.

“That‘s a piece of music that just rips right through you. It just feels like my whole body was vibrating, it kind of started in my head and then it moved through into my chest and I even felt it in my legs … Which makes sense for an organ player, right? Because it’s so hyper-embodied. And the tension of the piece must be felt in just every fiber of your being … He clearly did not care what people thought. I mean, what is that? It’s literally assaultive …

Paradoxically, for a musician so associated with theology he’s one of the most sensual and physical and I think corporeal of musicians.” (comments from the transcript of the video, available on the website. The last comment is after the listener(s) have been told the title and composer of the piece)

Is it fair to do something like this to a church congregation?

Is it fair not to do something like this, that does everything possible within the musical art to bring the spiritual vision into visceral reality? Too many times, church musicians back off from the edge and play it safe. We stay in nice cozy major keys, Andante religioso from beginning to end.

But Christianity is not safe.

Here is a YouTube performance of the music:
Link

“A crescendo in granite... the pedal marks the blows of the hammer of grace … chisel, hammer, suffering, and trials cut and polish the elect, living stones of the spiritual edifice.” (from Messiaen's program notes: cf. I Peter 2:5, Revelation 21:2-3)