Lessons and Carols

Our annual Advent Service of Lessons and Carols was tonight. It is a Big Deal, at least for me, and I suspect for the choir. There are nine Lessons and a lot of music: this year there were eight congregational hymns and five choral pieces. It went well, some of it very well indeed.

One of the pieces was “Who is this?”, by John Ferguson. A performance by the composer and his choral ensemble, the St. Olaf Cantorei, is here. This was one of several moments during the service that I came unglued emotionally. We had a young undergraduate violist for the obbligato part, and I think she took it as seriously as I did.

Something that was more of a mixed result was the first movement of Cantata 140, “Wachet auf,” which we sang for Evensong a fortnight ago. Not having anything remotely approaching the funds needed to hire the orchestra for this, I tried an experiment, something I had wanted to do for years with an appropriate piece: we had the wind parts played on the organ, and I played the string parts on the piano. In our first piano-and-organ rehearsal, it became clear that we also needed the continuo line, so I engaged a cellist and bassist. The choir had sung this years ago under my predecessor, who taught them well; many of them still had it memorized.

At Evensong, I was pleased with how it turned out. But I received an e-mail indicating that two musicians in the congregation gave the opinion that the instruments were too loud, and the choral diction unintelligible. After bristling more than a little (I do not take criticism well, I wish I were better at it), I had the organist replace the Octave 4' with a softer Flute 4', I toned it down on the piano, and we worked on diction in rehearsal. In tonight's reading of the piece, most everything went well enough, but not my part of it; my playing was nowhere near an acceptable standard. Lesson: don't try this again. Or if we do, hire a pianist and limit my role to that of conductor. Second Lesson: if I am going to attempt ensemble playing, I had better work at it a lot more. I cannot say that my faulty playing was from sloth; I worked hard on this piece, harder than I have worked on anything that I have played this fall. But it was still crap. I was as much as one or two beats off from the ensemble at times, and there were several places where I completely missed some of my lines. Such an experience is unfortunately part of being a musician; when you play badly, you must simply let it go and move on to the next piece.

The school shooting in Connecticut on Friday put the Lesson from Isaiah 11 in a different light:

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.... They shall not hurt nor destroy on all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

It seemed appropriate to add an instrumental coda to the hymn that followed the lesson, “Lo, how a Rose e'er blooming,” in order to try and add some additional weight to this lesson in the service. More than appropriate: “inescapable” might be more accurate. On the bus yesterday morning, it came to me what to do. I wrote it out after Matins, and finished extracting the parts shortly before this afternoon's rehearsal. It was not much, just a little twenty-two measure coda for the instruments at hand: Flute, Viola, Violoncello, Contrabass. But I was very pleased with how it turned out; this was another moment where I came unglued. Our clergy responded well to the challenge of ministering to this congregation today in light of the shooting, which was much on people's minds. This little instrumental coda was my equivalent, such response as I could offer for the community. May all those little children, and the adults who sought to protect them, rest in peace.

Because I spent so much time on this, I hardly prepared the hymns at all. Several of them I did not play through even once. But they turned out well enough, by God's grace.

Near the end of the service, there comes the Collect for Advent:

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility, that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

We sang a fine choral setting of this by Craig Phillips for flute, organ, and choir – a setting commissioned by this parish. Last year I had the bad idea of laying the piece aside, for we had done it several years in a row. We all missed it, so the Phillips was back this year. It was a fine way to conclude the service, and was another moment when I came unglued.

May the music we have made this day be acceptable in the sight of the Lord, and beneficial for his people.