Lift every voice and sing

Lift every voice and sing

We sang this at two of our services this morning. After the first one, a gentleman asked me why we had sung it; he did not think it was appropriate to sing such an “imperial, triumphalistic” hymn.

Well, if you look at the words and don't know the background, it could seem that way. And it could seem strange to sing it.

So, I told him. And I told the congregation at the later service, because those days of segregation and Jim Crow and the civil rights marches and sit-down strikes that brought change are just something in the history books for a lot of people; it was a long time ago....


“It's about time they shot that ni____ .”
That was the first comment I heard when the news reports told us that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot and killed in Memphis, back in that April of 1968. It was a sentiment widely shared among white people in the South.

It was how I felt about it.

I was a teenager. Our schools were still segregated, and we wanted them to stay that way. It was how it was, how it had always been. It was right. Wasn't it?

The black children in our county (there were not many of them, and they were largely invisible to us white people) all had to get on buses (the cast-offs from the Board of Education, after they were too worn out for the white children) and ride to the one “Negro School” in the county. A school that didn't have much in the way of books and supplies. Or food for the lunch room. Or salaries for the teachers, who did their work for the love of the community and the hope for a better day.

But I knew little of that. It was more convenient for us white people to not see how things were. “Separate but equal.” That was good enough, wasn't it? And here was this Mr. King trying to change things. All the northern liberal news media loved him; they made him out to be some kind of saint.

Well, it turns out they were right about that part.

I am not the right person to speak about Dr. King. I am not even the right person to get on the organ bench and play “Lift every voice and sing” as I did this morning. I wish it were otherwise, but racism is still written in my soul. It comes out when I least expect it, and I am afraid that it will be so to my dying day.

But I see the younger generation, where black children and white children can play together, where all the prejudice of the bad old days is gone. Gone. Not a part of them at all. And I rejoice in the Lord.

What I can say is this: Dr. King did as much for us white people in the South as he did for the African-Americans. We were as crippled in our way by Jim Crow and segregation as the black people of our community, and worse, we did not know it. Any time we hate, we are slaves to that hatred, to the devil who thrives on that hatred and feeds it. Any time we choose violence, any time when we use the force available to us to oppress someone else, we are serving the devil, and captive to him. Dr. King did what he could to liberate us white people as well as the black people of this land from what held us in bondage. And, by the grace of God, we have come far.

Another time, I should write about President Lyndon B. Johnson, who also played a large role in these matters, using all of his political clout (and it was considerable) to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 enacted as the law of the land. I could write also of Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" which fueled the fires of racism and made the South a Republican bastion to this day.

There is much still to do.


In the year 1900, “Lift every voice and sing” was read as a poem for the first time at a school assembly in Jacksonville, Florida. The young men of the all-black segregated school had contacted James Weldon Johnson, one of the leading African-American poets of his time, and asked him to write something for them on the occasion when the school was hosting Booker T. Washington for the annual Lincoln's Birthday commemoration. Mr. Johnson wrote the poem, and the music was written a few years later by his brother Rosamond Johnson.

It was a good song, and young people soon were singing it at schools elsewhere in Florida, and eventually throughout the South and beyond. At school assemblies, they often would sing the “Star-spangled banner,” and then they would sing this song, which became known as the Negro National Anthem.

I want to do my part to see that this song, and what it represents, is not forgotten.

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Tu es Petrus

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (St. Matthew 16:18)

For all of my Christian life, the Church has been in decline. Or so it has seemed, to all the evidence of my senses. In the branch of which I am now part (the Episcopal Church), there were about 3.6 million baptized members in 1965. As of 2010, there were 2.1 million. In recent years, this decline has increasingly pinched the denomination's finances, staff, and programming at all levels, from parishes to the national church.

The music of the Episcopal Church has declined in quality. There are fewer choristers, fewer churches that even have a choir, fewer organs and organists, less support for such things from clergy and vestries. Many congregations no longer even use a printed Hymnal or Book of Common Prayer, with predictable results.

“Upon this rock I will build my church...”

I try not to worry about such things. There are places in the world where Christianity is strong. It may simply be that the forms in which I know Christianity may be dying, but not the thing itself. This will be hard, and may not be inevitable.

“... and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

When I despair of the Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican tradition, the current Successor of Peter has repeatedly encouraged me through his writings and his steadfast witness to the faith. The Roman Catholic Church is one of the places where Christianity remains strong and is growing: membership in 2011 was around 1.2 billion, an increase of 11% from 2001, with much of the growth in Africa and Asia.

In honor of Benedict XVI and of this day's Feast of the Confession of St. Peter, here is a motet by Anton Bruckner:

Ecce sacerdos magnus (a performance from Montreal)

Ecce sacerdos magnus, qui in diebus suis placuit Deo...
(Behold, a great priest who in his days pleased God...)

Worthy is the Lamb

The Mozart “Inter natos” went well on Sunday. It was a delight for me to be in the midst of the musicians, for in our setup, the choir and organ were on my left, the string players on my right. I think that it gave choristers and instrumentalists more of a sense of mutuality to face one another than is the case in the more usual concert setup, with choir in back, instrumentalists in front.

As I mentioned last time, I have used the Mozart as material for practice in figured bass and score-reading. Today I moved to the next project: the Third Sunday of Easter, April 14, when we are scheduled to sing the final parts of Handel's Messiah – Worthy is the Lamb, Blessing and Honor, and the Amen, with our youth choir and adult choir combined and a yet-to-be-determined complement of instrumentalists (trumpets and organ at least, and I hope for continuo players and perhaps oboes doubling the sopranos and altos, as Handel wrote in the score). That passage from the Revelation of St. John is the Epistle for Easter III, so the choice of music is natural, though I worry that it is too large in scale to fit comfortably in the Sunday Eucharist. Then again, that which St. John described is equally too large to fit – well, anywhere. Not in this universe, but only in that time when all is made new. As is clear in the context from Revelation, and as the Lectionary gets right by placing this Lesson shortly after the Feast of the Resurrection, this is all about the Lamb in the center of the throne, who has done what no one else could do (Rev. 5:1-7), and in so doing has answered every prayer, the prayers of all the saints of every generation (v. 8).

Several years ago, J.M. (who might still be reading these pages) presented the church with the gift of the score and orchestral parts to the Messiah in the fine Watkins Shaw edition published by Novello. This morning was almost the first time I have looked inside the conductor's score – a large-format volume of 283 pages, very handsome. I was almost afraid to do so. If anything in this world is Real Music, partaking of that eternal Song before the throne, this is it. “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain...” How can I even sit down at the piano and play the first chord?

But I must, for more reasons than I can here describe.

Handel is less careful about noting the Figures (the numbers delineating the chords) than was Mozart in the little piece we did last Sunday. He was in a hurry (as can be seen in any account of the composition of this oratorio), and he was going to be playing the continuo, so he put down only the most essential figures. I must pencil in many more, obvious to the greatest continuo player of his age (except perhaps his contemporary over in Leipzig), but not so to a beginner such as I. But already I can see that, as it was with the Mozart, this manner of work is going to give me a much better sense of the score than the way I have previously approached it – for we did this part of Messiah once before, nine years ago when this set of lessons came around in the Lectionary.

We began work on this with the Youth Choir last Wednesday, just five minutes of speaking the text in rhythm for the first pages, up to where the “Blessing and honor and glory and power” fugue begins. There is much to be done. But this is why we are doing the piece, and doing it in this manner: I want to introduce our young choristers to this music. I can hardly imagine what it must be like to be eight or nine years old and sing this music – indeed, encounter it in any form, for I doubt that many of them, coming from homes where classical music is unknown, have ever heard a recording of Messiah.

My hesitation in approaching the Holy as I opened this score is appropriate, and I should feel such a strong sense of it as I did this morning every time I sit down at the keyboard. We cannot do any of this without God's help. Most musicians know that Bach wrote “Soli Deo Gloria” at the end of all of his scores; fewer take note of the “J.J.” at the beginning – “Jesu, juva,” “Jesus, help!” So must we begin such a work as lies before me, before us.

Figured Bass

Following a tip from one of my Old Books, I have been using the figured bass as my primary method of learning the score for the Mozart piece we are singing this Sunday, “Inter natos mulierum” (K. 72 – see here for more about it).

[a Figured Bass was used in the Baroque era to sketch the harmony much in the manner of a jazz "lead sheet," where the melody is given with chord symbols. Figured Bass works from the bottom up instead of down from the melody; the bass line is given, with numbers to indicate what chords are built on it. Here is the Wikipedia article on the subject.]

Score reading and figured bass are skills I am supposed to possess as a Musician. I am not terribly good at either. It is dawning on me that the latter is one of the keys to the former, at least for music from the Baroque up through early Beethoven (he includes figured bass in the Mass in C [1807], but not in the Missa Solemnis [1823]), and score study must start here in any event – something like a Bruckner symphonic score is not going to make much sense if one cannot deal with a Bach aria – or something like “Inter natos mulierum.”

“Keyboard Harmony [which included figured bass] and Sight-Singing” was a one-credit-hour required course for Freshmen in Music at my undergraduate college. It was taught by an adjunct instructor, the young wife of a faculty member in another field. She was a good musician, but had never taught such a thing and had little idea how to do it. I (and most other Freshmen in Music) lacked the background in music theory to make much of the subject, although if properly approached, the figured bass could have itself taught the music theory that I needed. Both teacher and students gave it their best effort, but it was an unfortunate combination, and one hour a week for one semester (with some outside practice squeezed in around many other duties) was far from adequate.

Looking back, I would have profited from laying all else aside for a year and learning the rudiments of Music. No piano lessons (aside perhaps from a regimen of scales and technical drill to avoid losing all facility), no music history, no general studies coursework. I would then have done better at all the other work, and been a much better Musician. But I could not have tolerated such harsh medicine, and it would obviously not fit with the four-year undergraduate curriculum.

Later on, figured bass was one of the skills required for the Associate's Certificate in the organist's guild, the A.A.G.O., where the test was the accompaniment of a recitative at sight [such as the one from Dido and Aeneas given as an example in the Wikipedia article linked above], reading from figured bass with vocal line. I passed, but still did not have a lot of facility with the art. One of the benefits of the Guild's programme of examinations is their old-fashioned emphasis on what should be rudimentary musical skills – rudimentary, but often unknown to working professional organists, pianists, and choral conductors. Figured bass is one: reading the C clefs is another. Harmony, Counterpoint, Fugue, Transposition, Improvisation... the list is long. I am a Fellow of the Guild, and passed tests in these areas, but am hardly more than a beginner in many of them. I hope to do better, in the residue of days granted to me.

Redeem thy misspent time that's past
And live this day as if thy last;
Improve thy talent with due care,
For the great day thyself prepare. (Thomas Ken)

I (and others) would have done better as Freshmen in Music had we been presented as soon as possible with Real Music (for example, the score of “Inter natos mulierum”) and been cajoled into using the figured bass to gain a sense of the piece, harmonically and otherwise. I am finding that no other approach I have used on choral/instrumental scores has led to as thorough an understanding of the piece – and my figured bass skill itself has improved a lot, just from a month or so of work on this one piece. That is important too – rather than reading a lot of different things, stay with one or two representative pieces until they are thoroughly mastered, right up to performance-level.

The best book on the subject is one that I have mentioned repeatedly: “Essay on the true art of playing keyboard instruments” by C. P. E. Bach (1753). A more modern text, which (despite the virtues of Bach's Essay) is needed, is R. O. Morris, “Figured Harmony at the Keyboard” (Oxford Univ. Press, 1933).

Figured bass is also one of the keys to Improvisation, but that is for another essay.

The International Space Station

The commander of the ISS Mission 32, Sunita Williams, conducts a 25-minute tour of the ISS in November 2012.
LINK

Just seeing her and the other astronauts gliding through the passageways as if they were swimming is astonishing to an old science fiction fan such as I am. For all its faults, it is a Real Space Station. In orbit. Out there in Space.

Back in the old days, I was a Star Trek fan. I was a teenager when the original television series aired, with Captain Kirk, Scottie, Bones, Spock, and all the rest. My parents gave my sister and me special permission to stay up late this one night of the week to watch it with them on our black and white TV. Later on, I watched the Star Trek Next Generation series, and was a big fan of Deep Space Nine – for one thing, DS-9 included a character who took Religion seriously, something notably absent from the other incarnations of Star Trek, and from much of print science fiction.

For I devoured the books. I was a subscriber to the Science Fiction Book Club for decades, and likewise to the Analog science fiction magazine. Heinlein, Asimov, Poul Anderson, James White... later on Anne McCaffrey and the Pern novels (ah, Masterharper Robinton!!! And Menolly. And all the other harpers and musicians in those books... And the Dragons!!!). These days I read much less of the genre, indeed very little of it beyond the works of Carol Cherryh and Lois McMaster Bujold.

Among Bujold's early books was “Falling Free,” which I read in a four-part serialization in Analog with fabulous cover art based on the story by Michael Whelan (not, be it noted, the art from the later reprint that appears in the linked Wikipedia article, but rather this). Part of Bujold's point in this book was to explore what it would mean in a world of genetic engineering for one's engineering projects – living beings, in this case sentient beings – to become obsolete, a moral question that remains open. The characters who populate this story are the Quaddies – genetically engineered from Homo sapiens to be better suited for zero-gravity and life in space. Most easily noticed are their four arms (two of them in place of our legs). About the time that they are fully developed and there is a good-sized population ready to be sold and leased (for, being genetically-engineered corporate property, they are not “people” and thus have no rights), artificial gravity is invented, and the corporation is pulling the plug on the project, including killing all of the now-useless quaddies. It is a great story, and turns out well (the quaddies reappear in some of her later stories, including a character who is a four-handed keyboard musician, and most of all in the 2002 novel "Diplomatic Immunity," which takes place some two centuries later), but my point for today is that the ISS video puts me in mind of them. We humans are not well-suited for living in space. But oh, how splendid it is to go there!!!

At one point, Commander Williams takes us to the Cupola, where one can watch the Earth go by underneath. Words fail me.

The NASA program costs a lot of money (though an order of magnitude less than, say, bailing out the TBTF banks). No doubt the day will come when some penny-pinching Congress shuts it down. In 2009, NASA announced plans to end the ISS program in early 2016 (just three years from now!); the current President has said he would like to extend it to 2020. The Russians have plans to re-use their modules for a possible new station, but it may be that they will go it alone, without international cooperation. The European Space Agency, especially, has had a hard time coming up with funding for their part of the ISS, and the US is not in much better shape.

It will be hard to watch the dream die; a part of me will die with it.
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Here is the website for further information about the International Space Station. There are a variety of other videos, and lots of pictures. There is even a live video/audio stream where you can follow the day-to-day activity.