This morning’s Gospel at the Eucharist was about the Woman of Samaria, and He who is the Living Water. “The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of living water springing up into everlasting life” (St. John 4:14). The form this takes in me is the Music that I play. For all musicians and artists and writers, this is how it is. There are many other life-giving forms it can take as well, such as parenting, acts of mercy and kindness, teaching, caring for the elderly, sick, or mentally deranged, careful administration, making things of value and beauty, but I cannot here speak of these directly.
Bach is a monumental example of this in the realm of Music; he worked all his life long, right up to his final day. Hundreds of cantatas, Passions, Brandenburg Concerti, music for solo violin, solo violoncello, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Clavierübung with its Goldberg Variations, the B Minor Mass, the organ preludes and fugues, the Musical Offering and Art of Fugue, the hundreds of chorale preludes and harmonizations... there is no better way to describe this than to term it a “well of living water springing up into everlasting life.”
There is only one Bach. What about the rest of us? Well, there are springs and wells large and small. He is one of the largest and best, but there is ample room -- and need -- for the rest of us. Not least, his music and that of the other masters cannot now exist unless we play it, as I tried to do this morning with the B minor prelude and fugue (and yesterday, at a funeral, with several Bach chorale preludes and the St. Anne fugue and some of the Brahms chorales). As a performer, we strive to be like a spring, allowing the water that is not of our making to flow through us into the world. Some times it goes better than others, and as Paul Westermeyer wrote somewhere, when it goes well, it is always a Gift, not of our doing.
On our little hill country farm back in West Virginia, there is a spring. It is one of the most significant features of the place, in my opinion. Its water is hard with iron and sulfur (though perhaps healthy because of that; people once thought it so). It is just a little spring, but it has never run dry -- not in the one hundred years or so that my people were on that land, nor for all the years before, clear back to the Shawnee and others who used to camp there before the white men came.
And there was a little mountain spring that I loved. It was on the side of U.S. 19 near the state line between Tennessee and North Carolina -- sweet and good and beautiful, giving of itself freely to all. The builders of the old highway in the 1940’s recognized its value and made a pull-off area, and cleaned it up so that people could stop and fill their water jugs there and perhaps their radiators, for it was near the top of a long steep switchback climb to the ridgetop and the state line. The modern engineers who made the road into a four-lane in the 1990’s could not be bothered with such a quaint notion as a roadside pull-off for a spring; to them it was a nuisance to be piped away into a drainage ditch.
And there is Red Clay. In the uttermost southeast corner of Tennessee can be found so noble a spring that it became one of the chief Holy Places of the Cherokees, and remains so today. Nowadays, there is a little state park that protects the Blue Hole Spring and the council grounds around it, the last seat of government of the Cherokee Nation before they walked the Trail of Tears. The day my wife and I were there, several Indian families were there as well. From the license plates on their rusted out pickup trucks and beat-up old cars, they had come there all the way from Oklahoma to stand there in silence and Remember, and to let their children drink of that water and run and play in the little park. It is to such a spring that Bach might be compared. We too come to his music to Remember, to encounter the Holy, and to let our children drink of it.
A spring does not get to choose what sort of spring it is, nor the place where it is. But it is there in that place as a blessing upon all who pass by, and as a source of life. So it is with all of us, or so it could be, were we to drink from the Living Water ourselves and allow it to flow through us to others.
In other passages, Our Lord describes the concept in other ways: the branch which abides in the Vine and bears fruit, and is pruned by the Father to bear more abundantly; the good soil that brings forth thirty-fold, sixty-fold, and an hundred-fold (and the many ways that we can fail to bring forth any fruit), the steward who is told “Occupy till I return” and with the one pound he is given makes five, or ten. These likenesses remind us that the Music does not simply flow from us without discipline. We practice, and learn new skills, and listen, and study scores, and wrestle with the notes. One thinks of Beethoven in this, but one thinks also of Bach in the period when he was writing a new cantata every week -- writing it, teaching it to the choirboys, rehearsing it, performing it on Sunday. Or Haydn on his knees in prayer, not knowing where to take the idea with which he was struggling.
For a musician, this is the “pruning” that brings forth more fruit. Or the cleaning up of the spring so that it can be of more benefit to travellers. But the fruit, the living water, the increase of the harvest -- none of this is ours in any ultimate way. We strive only to become transparent, to “abide,” to let go.
Soli Deo gloria.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
C clefs
The AGO professional examinations are often criticized because they test musical skills that seem old-fashioned and of little relevance to a modern working musician.
My voluntaries a couple of weeks ago included one of the most arcane of these skills: C clefs. I played Contrapunctus I from Bach’s Art of Fugue, and one of the Eighteen Chorales, Komm, heiliger Geist (BWV 652), in an edition that put the left hand part in alto clef.
Why did I do this? Both pieces are available in more modern editions that use only treble and bass clef. Partly, I used these versions to stay in practice with the clefs, a circular argument. But partly, it was because these versions were easier to play, and closer to the way that Bach wrote them.
The Contrapunctus was the clearest example. I started with the Kalmus miniature score of the Art of Fugue, using a copy machine to enlarge the pages so that my old eyes could read them more easily. The piece is laid out in four parts, open score (another arcane AGO examination skill): soprano clef, alto clef, tenor clef, bass clef. The parts cross so frequently that the editions which put the four parts in “closed” score (two staffs, treble and bass clef, like most keyboard music) are harder to read than the open score. The open score has the further advantage of clearly delineating the four contrapuntal voices, so that the organist will think linearly (in the four voices) and not vertically (from one vertical sonority to the next).
Even with open score, the piece could be recast into modern clefs: the two upper voices in treble clef, the tenor in transposing treble clef, the lowest voice remaining in bass clef. But the C clefs fit the tessiatura more closely, so that there are few leger lines. This was the principal advantage for the other piece that I played, the Komm, heiliger Geist: the two accompaniment voices in the left hand fall nicely into alto clef, but would require an awkward amount of leger lines in either bass or treble clef.
There is a deeper motive for learning the C clefs, a reason that is rarely mentioned: all of these seemingly arcane skills required for the examinations work together. No single skill in itself is of any great importance; all of them together make one a better musician.
For example, the C clefs are a gateway into transposition, and thereby into the reading of orchestral scores. Most obviously, the alto and tenor clefs are needed in order to read viola parts and some passages in violoncello and trombone parts. Tenor clef can be considered the equivalent of the B flat transposition (the instrumentalist sees written C, the third space in the treble clef, the sound produced is concert B flat. Or she sees what would be a written D in treble clef, the fourth line, and the sound produced is concert C. And with tenor clef, the fourth line is in fact C) – the B flat transposition is essential for most of the wind instruments. Alto clef is the equivalent of the D transposition. Soprano clef (C clef on the bottom line of the staff), never explicitly used in modern music and seemingly the least useful, is the E flat transposition, bread-and-butter for saxophones and thus for jazz charts.
Transposition (likewise tested in the AGO exams at all levels) is in turn an essential element of improvisation, as I described recently. Improvisation is, I think, the most liberating of musical skills, allowing the player to make her own music, customized to the occasion at hand. Besides this, it frees the organist from the printed page when accompanying congregational hymns, it improves one’s understanding of the “written” music composed by others, and it is a doorway into writing one’s own compositions.
A question remains: how does one learn to read the clefs? When I learned the clefs for the AGO exams, I did a lot of sight-reading at slow tempi. I now think that it would have been better to take one piece at a time and learn it thoroughly. This is how we all learned to read treble and bass clef: we played pieces that were written in these clefs, practicing them until they were ready for performance.
Thus, when I play the Komm, heiliger Geist, I solidify my facility with alto clef. For this reason, I play this and many other of the Bach chorales from the Dover edition entitled “Bach Organ Music,” which contains the Schübler Chorales, the Orgelbüchlein, the Third Part of the Clavierübung, the Eighteen Leipzig Chorales (and the Trio Sonatas, which use only treble and bass clef). There is a good bit of alto clef in these chorales, and occasional tenor clef -- an important example of the latter is the “Wachet auf” from the Schübler Chorales. The Kalmus editions of the Brahms and Buxtehude organ works are also useful for the clefs.
I recommend the book “Preparatory Exercises in Score Reading” by R. O. Morris and Howard Ferguson (Oxford University Press), for work in the clefs as well as the stated purpose of the book.
Learning to be a Musician involves a lifetime of effort. There may appear to be shortcuts, but there is no substitute for careful study, including the development of skills for which one cannot at first see any use.
My voluntaries a couple of weeks ago included one of the most arcane of these skills: C clefs. I played Contrapunctus I from Bach’s Art of Fugue, and one of the Eighteen Chorales, Komm, heiliger Geist (BWV 652), in an edition that put the left hand part in alto clef.
Why did I do this? Both pieces are available in more modern editions that use only treble and bass clef. Partly, I used these versions to stay in practice with the clefs, a circular argument. But partly, it was because these versions were easier to play, and closer to the way that Bach wrote them.
The Contrapunctus was the clearest example. I started with the Kalmus miniature score of the Art of Fugue, using a copy machine to enlarge the pages so that my old eyes could read them more easily. The piece is laid out in four parts, open score (another arcane AGO examination skill): soprano clef, alto clef, tenor clef, bass clef. The parts cross so frequently that the editions which put the four parts in “closed” score (two staffs, treble and bass clef, like most keyboard music) are harder to read than the open score. The open score has the further advantage of clearly delineating the four contrapuntal voices, so that the organist will think linearly (in the four voices) and not vertically (from one vertical sonority to the next).
Even with open score, the piece could be recast into modern clefs: the two upper voices in treble clef, the tenor in transposing treble clef, the lowest voice remaining in bass clef. But the C clefs fit the tessiatura more closely, so that there are few leger lines. This was the principal advantage for the other piece that I played, the Komm, heiliger Geist: the two accompaniment voices in the left hand fall nicely into alto clef, but would require an awkward amount of leger lines in either bass or treble clef.
There is a deeper motive for learning the C clefs, a reason that is rarely mentioned: all of these seemingly arcane skills required for the examinations work together. No single skill in itself is of any great importance; all of them together make one a better musician.
For example, the C clefs are a gateway into transposition, and thereby into the reading of orchestral scores. Most obviously, the alto and tenor clefs are needed in order to read viola parts and some passages in violoncello and trombone parts. Tenor clef can be considered the equivalent of the B flat transposition (the instrumentalist sees written C, the third space in the treble clef, the sound produced is concert B flat. Or she sees what would be a written D in treble clef, the fourth line, and the sound produced is concert C. And with tenor clef, the fourth line is in fact C) – the B flat transposition is essential for most of the wind instruments. Alto clef is the equivalent of the D transposition. Soprano clef (C clef on the bottom line of the staff), never explicitly used in modern music and seemingly the least useful, is the E flat transposition, bread-and-butter for saxophones and thus for jazz charts.
Transposition (likewise tested in the AGO exams at all levels) is in turn an essential element of improvisation, as I described recently. Improvisation is, I think, the most liberating of musical skills, allowing the player to make her own music, customized to the occasion at hand. Besides this, it frees the organist from the printed page when accompanying congregational hymns, it improves one’s understanding of the “written” music composed by others, and it is a doorway into writing one’s own compositions.
A question remains: how does one learn to read the clefs? When I learned the clefs for the AGO exams, I did a lot of sight-reading at slow tempi. I now think that it would have been better to take one piece at a time and learn it thoroughly. This is how we all learned to read treble and bass clef: we played pieces that were written in these clefs, practicing them until they were ready for performance.
Thus, when I play the Komm, heiliger Geist, I solidify my facility with alto clef. For this reason, I play this and many other of the Bach chorales from the Dover edition entitled “Bach Organ Music,” which contains the Schübler Chorales, the Orgelbüchlein, the Third Part of the Clavierübung, the Eighteen Leipzig Chorales (and the Trio Sonatas, which use only treble and bass clef). There is a good bit of alto clef in these chorales, and occasional tenor clef -- an important example of the latter is the “Wachet auf” from the Schübler Chorales. The Kalmus editions of the Brahms and Buxtehude organ works are also useful for the clefs.
I recommend the book “Preparatory Exercises in Score Reading” by R. O. Morris and Howard Ferguson (Oxford University Press), for work in the clefs as well as the stated purpose of the book.
Learning to be a Musician involves a lifetime of effort. There may appear to be shortcuts, but there is no substitute for careful study, including the development of skills for which one cannot at first see any use.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
"a poor man in vile raiment"
This morning, a scruffy old stranger wandered into the Eucharist during the first lesson. He noisily found a seat in the front row. After a few minutes, he came up to the Rector (during the second lesson), knelt before her and started talking loudly to her about something that was important to him. She got him to stand up and quiet down, and go sit back down.
Two of our young choristers and their families were sitting across the aisle from the man. It was obvious that the children were frightened, and they had no idea how they should react.
On the one hand, this fellow is a child of God. We are specifically enjoined by St. James to have no respect of persons:
This is not an isolated event. For about a month now, we have had another homeless man (one of the long-time regulars in our city) come to our church during the early service, sit himself down in one of the two red easy chairs in the narthex (which serves as the entry point to the worship space and the location of coffee hour), fall asleep and snore loudly, and stay all morning through the three services, until he is run out when it is time to lock up (about 1 pm). He is gross and disgusting, especially with the snoring. He smells. And he too is a child of God.
For several weeks, we had panhandlers on the public sidewalk in front of the church. Parishioners had to “run the gauntlet” past them to get into the building. This has passed, for the present. But I expect it to recur, as our city decays – as our nation decays, continuing its path toward Third World status.
The first time I visited the City of Detroit was about thirty years ago. I remember walking by the First Presbyterian Church, a historic landmark on Woodward Avenue. The fine old building was in disrepair, with drunks asleep on the sidewalk and in the doorways, windows boarded up where they had been broken, graffiti spray-painted on the walls. The stench of death was in the air for that congregation, so it seemed to me. Indeed, the congregation is no more: as the Wikipedia link describes, the building is now the home of the Ecumenical Theological Seminary, after the Presbytery of Detroit leased them the building in 1996 and gave it to them in 2002.
How many people are going to stop coming to our parish because they don't want to deal with smelly old men taking the best chair in the narthex and snoring away the morning, unstable homeless people wandering into the service and making a commotion, and panhandlers outside on the sidewalk?
If I were the father of a young family, I would think twice about bringing them here. Almost any other church in town – the ones that have moved out to the nice residential areas – would be free of these issues. No one there but nice well-dressed clean People Like Us.
But by going to one of the Nice Churches, I would be denying my children some important lessons. I think they may have observed one such lesson this morning by watching their parents and the other adults. At the Peace, many people greeted the old man. One of the young fathers, with his two elementary-age children with him, invited the man to come sit beside him and he did. As the service continued, he was less agitated. I heard him trying to sing the songs, and he carried on a conversation (during the Eucharistic Prayer) with the man that had befriended him, chuckling and having a good time, it seemed.
He wandered out before the distribution of the Sacrament. But in some manner, I think and hope that he received spiritual benefit from Going to Church today.
And the children? They got a demonstration of the Body of Christ, which has no respect of persons. Which does not fear or shun or despise someone because he is Not Like Us. I do not think that they will find such a spirit anywhere else in American society, anywhere other than the Church and its sister congregations of other faiths (e.g., synagogues, mosques).
I do not know where we go from here. I know that we are not alone in facing such issues and I expect them to get worse. I know that, if we are to be faithful to the Gospel, we have to figure out how to stay here and minister to this community.
Two of our young choristers and their families were sitting across the aisle from the man. It was obvious that the children were frightened, and they had no idea how they should react.
On the one hand, this fellow is a child of God. We are specifically enjoined by St. James to have no respect of persons:
My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment; and ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool: Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts? (2:1-4)On the other hand, the children are right to be cautious around strangers. There are a lot of unstable and sometimes dangerous people roaming the streets of our community.
This is not an isolated event. For about a month now, we have had another homeless man (one of the long-time regulars in our city) come to our church during the early service, sit himself down in one of the two red easy chairs in the narthex (which serves as the entry point to the worship space and the location of coffee hour), fall asleep and snore loudly, and stay all morning through the three services, until he is run out when it is time to lock up (about 1 pm). He is gross and disgusting, especially with the snoring. He smells. And he too is a child of God.
For several weeks, we had panhandlers on the public sidewalk in front of the church. Parishioners had to “run the gauntlet” past them to get into the building. This has passed, for the present. But I expect it to recur, as our city decays – as our nation decays, continuing its path toward Third World status.
The first time I visited the City of Detroit was about thirty years ago. I remember walking by the First Presbyterian Church, a historic landmark on Woodward Avenue. The fine old building was in disrepair, with drunks asleep on the sidewalk and in the doorways, windows boarded up where they had been broken, graffiti spray-painted on the walls. The stench of death was in the air for that congregation, so it seemed to me. Indeed, the congregation is no more: as the Wikipedia link describes, the building is now the home of the Ecumenical Theological Seminary, after the Presbytery of Detroit leased them the building in 1996 and gave it to them in 2002.
How many people are going to stop coming to our parish because they don't want to deal with smelly old men taking the best chair in the narthex and snoring away the morning, unstable homeless people wandering into the service and making a commotion, and panhandlers outside on the sidewalk?
If I were the father of a young family, I would think twice about bringing them here. Almost any other church in town – the ones that have moved out to the nice residential areas – would be free of these issues. No one there but nice well-dressed clean People Like Us.
But by going to one of the Nice Churches, I would be denying my children some important lessons. I think they may have observed one such lesson this morning by watching their parents and the other adults. At the Peace, many people greeted the old man. One of the young fathers, with his two elementary-age children with him, invited the man to come sit beside him and he did. As the service continued, he was less agitated. I heard him trying to sing the songs, and he carried on a conversation (during the Eucharistic Prayer) with the man that had befriended him, chuckling and having a good time, it seemed.
He wandered out before the distribution of the Sacrament. But in some manner, I think and hope that he received spiritual benefit from Going to Church today.
And the children? They got a demonstration of the Body of Christ, which has no respect of persons. Which does not fear or shun or despise someone because he is Not Like Us. I do not think that they will find such a spirit anywhere else in American society, anywhere other than the Church and its sister congregations of other faiths (e.g., synagogues, mosques).
I do not know where we go from here. I know that we are not alone in facing such issues and I expect them to get worse. I know that, if we are to be faithful to the Gospel, we have to figure out how to stay here and minister to this community.
Friday, March 7, 2014
... and a followup
If you are one of the eight people who have already viewed the previous posting, this is for you:
I had second thoughts after I posted "Dust thou art..." I had written that the choir families do not attend the special non-Sunday services. Then I thought of some of our younger choristers and their families sitting in the Great Vigil service last year...
There were others at that service too, some of the teenagers and their families.
I thought of our Christian Formation director, who has repeatedly lobbied for an earlier service time. And who, for several years, had a choir supper between rehearsal and liturgy to entice families to stay.
And I thought of one parent (not a choir parent) who was there at the service. She always brings her infant child to church, and the little girl may well have been there and I didn't see her.
I realized that I had been awfully hard on these parents. They are amazing people, the most amazing group of choir parents I have encountered, and they are bringing their children up as Christians in a world that is unremittingly hostile to the faith.
I went back just now, over lunch, and revised the previous to try and reflect some of this. Raising children in this time and place is hard, and I have no answers.
I had second thoughts after I posted "Dust thou art..." I had written that the choir families do not attend the special non-Sunday services. Then I thought of some of our younger choristers and their families sitting in the Great Vigil service last year...
Watching a young family in the front row, it hit me how this service ought to work: their little girl was drifting off to sleep as one Story followed another, one Psalm after another. This is perhaps as it ought to be for a child, awakening later when all of a sudden it is Easter, all is alight, and the organ and congregation are roaring away as loud as they can go. If the child comes back the next year, and the next, these stories will eventually be woven into her soul. She will know in her bones that this is a night like no other.
There were others at that service too, some of the teenagers and their families.
I thought of our Christian Formation director, who has repeatedly lobbied for an earlier service time. And who, for several years, had a choir supper between rehearsal and liturgy to entice families to stay.
And I thought of one parent (not a choir parent) who was there at the service. She always brings her infant child to church, and the little girl may well have been there and I didn't see her.
I realized that I had been awfully hard on these parents. They are amazing people, the most amazing group of choir parents I have encountered, and they are bringing their children up as Christians in a world that is unremittingly hostile to the faith.
I went back just now, over lunch, and revised the previous to try and reflect some of this. Raising children in this time and place is hard, and I have no answers.
Dust thou art...
Our Youth Choir rehearsed on the afternoon of Ash Wednesday. On a whim, I had them get out the BCP and locate the Ash Wednesday service. Volunteers among the children read aloud the first two pages of it, down to the imposition of ashes, and we talked about it.
After the Lessons, the service has what I call a "Dearly Beloved" statement (the first words of the Marriage service, which begin an explanation of why we have gathered. Many Anglican services include such a statement, and Ash Wednesday is one). In this case it is "Dear people of God..." but the intent is the same: it is an explanation of why we observe Lent, and why we begin with this liturgy:
My whim arose from a sense that children do not attend this service. I asked: only one of the choristers had ever been to an Ash Wednesday service. And when we had it later on, there were no children that I saw. There were several college-age young adults, but no one younger. And there was a parent who always brings her infant child to church, who may well have been there with her.
One of the results of this was apparent as we talked in the rehearsal: they were appalled at the concept that "you are dust, and to dust you will return" -- that is, that we are all going to die. My impression is that no one had ever suggested the idea to them. One of the girls in particular was very upset. "I don't want to think about death. It is horrible."
Yes, it is.
And our culture does not want to think of it. And that brings me to my point:
These children, all of them from active church families, do not usually attend anything beyond Sunday Eucharist, Christian Formation class, and our once-a-year choral evensong. With a few exceptions, they are not at the Great Vigil of Easter, nor the services on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, nor Ash Wednesday.
Yes, Wednesday is a school night. If the children come to choir in the afternoon and then the liturgy shortly after, it will be maybe 8:30 by the time they get home, with homework still on the agenda. Many of them also have other activities: dance class, volleyball practice, show choir to name three.
I am not a parent, so I cannot fully understand. But it seems to me that it would send a message for a parent to say: "Ash Wednesday is more important than homework." Or if she said to the coach, "My daughter is not going to be at practice tonight. She has a special church service she must attend."
That would be incredibly counter-cultural.
Perhaps the issue is that our parents, deep down, consider their child's progress in school and their socialization and development in after-school activities more important than their spiritual growth.
And that is a challenge for us all.
But it is hard, precisely because Ash Wednesday is countercultural. These choir parents are amazing people, the best group of parents I have ever worked with. Our director of Christian Formation, herself a choir parent, has tried to address this problem. For several years, she sponsored a dinner between choir rehearsal and the Ash Wednesday liturgy to encourage families to stay. Many did -- for the dinner, but not for the service.
Perhaps there is something to this that I do not understand at all.
----
Partly because of the girl who rightly appreciated the enormity of the statement "You are dust and to dust you shall return," I did talk about the rest of the story: Yes, we will die. But Jesus died too. He overcame death, and because of him, we will live forever.
From the prayer consecrating the ashes (BCP p. 265):
[Edit: see the next posting in this blog for some second thoughts]
After the Lessons, the service has what I call a "Dearly Beloved" statement (the first words of the Marriage service, which begin an explanation of why we have gathered. Many Anglican services include such a statement, and Ash Wednesday is one). In this case it is "Dear people of God..." but the intent is the same: it is an explanation of why we observe Lent, and why we begin with this liturgy:
I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word. (BCP p. 265)
My whim arose from a sense that children do not attend this service. I asked: only one of the choristers had ever been to an Ash Wednesday service. And when we had it later on, there were no children that I saw. There were several college-age young adults, but no one younger. And there was a parent who always brings her infant child to church, who may well have been there with her.
One of the results of this was apparent as we talked in the rehearsal: they were appalled at the concept that "you are dust, and to dust you will return" -- that is, that we are all going to die. My impression is that no one had ever suggested the idea to them. One of the girls in particular was very upset. "I don't want to think about death. It is horrible."
Yes, it is.
And our culture does not want to think of it. And that brings me to my point:
These children, all of them from active church families, do not usually attend anything beyond Sunday Eucharist, Christian Formation class, and our once-a-year choral evensong. With a few exceptions, they are not at the Great Vigil of Easter, nor the services on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, nor Ash Wednesday.
Yes, Wednesday is a school night. If the children come to choir in the afternoon and then the liturgy shortly after, it will be maybe 8:30 by the time they get home, with homework still on the agenda. Many of them also have other activities: dance class, volleyball practice, show choir to name three.
I am not a parent, so I cannot fully understand. But it seems to me that it would send a message for a parent to say: "Ash Wednesday is more important than homework." Or if she said to the coach, "My daughter is not going to be at practice tonight. She has a special church service she must attend."
That would be incredibly counter-cultural.
Perhaps the issue is that our parents, deep down, consider their child's progress in school and their socialization and development in after-school activities more important than their spiritual growth.
And that is a challenge for us all.
But it is hard, precisely because Ash Wednesday is countercultural. These choir parents are amazing people, the best group of parents I have ever worked with. Our director of Christian Formation, herself a choir parent, has tried to address this problem. For several years, she sponsored a dinner between choir rehearsal and the Ash Wednesday liturgy to encourage families to stay. Many did -- for the dinner, but not for the service.
Perhaps there is something to this that I do not understand at all.
----
Partly because of the girl who rightly appreciated the enormity of the statement "You are dust and to dust you shall return," I did talk about the rest of the story: Yes, we will die. But Jesus died too. He overcame death, and because of him, we will live forever.
From the prayer consecrating the ashes (BCP p. 265):
... that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
[Edit: see the next posting in this blog for some second thoughts]
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Now the day is over
Now the day is over,Once a year, we combine the Youth Choir and Adult Choir for Choral Evensong. Today was the day, the Last Sunday after the Epiphany.
night is drawing nigh,
Shadows of the evening
steal across the sky
(Sabine Baring-Gould)
The music list:
Smith Preces and Responses
“Hail, gladdening light” (C. Lang)
Psalms for the Second Evening (12, 13, 14, to Anglican chant)
Stanford in A
“O nata lux” (Tallis)
Hymn: “Now the day is over”
Some of our choristers know some of this music from RSCM courses, especially the Smith. That helped. And the youth choir has been working hard on this music since the first of January, especially the Stanford – the Magnificat is a handful.
Not least for the Organist. Jean L., who is a member of our parish, choir mother, and top-notch organist, played the Stanford and directed the Lang. With her at the organ, I was able to conduct, and that helped the younger choristers sing with more confidence.
The Lessons:
Ecclesiasticus 48:1-11
II Corinthians 3:7-18
… and all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit (v. 17-18)
We set up with the adults in the Choir (padded red chairs on the Cantoris side, by the organ) and the youth across from them on the Decani side in black plastic Wenger chairs from the choir room, forming a divided choir. As we rehearsed before the evensong, the afternoon sun shone through the stained glass onto the trebles. Looking at them, it seemed as if they were blazing with glory. As I directed them, my eyes blurry with tears, I felt as though this was as much of the “glory of the Lord” as can be borne in this mortal life. John of the Cross would warn “Do not be attached to this. Shut your eyes and ears to it, for it is nothing,” and he is, in a sense, right, for the Lord is not in the music, nor in these children, nor in the sunlight, nor even in the Scripture and liturgy. But I would submit that all these things are nonetheless windows into the “bright cloud” of glory and I am going to pay attention to them.
Old friends, old scenes will lovelier beThere was no conductor for the Psalms. I told them to watch each other and listen, and that sufficed. I directed the Smith, the Stanford, and the Tallis; Jean directed the Lang. As is usual for Evensong rehearsals, there was barely enough time to touch on everything. We did not go all the way through the Psalmody, and did little more than a single run-through on the other music, except the Tallis (which got a second sing-through and could have used more. Some of the cross-relations in the inner parts are tricky). And even so, we ran overtime, which meant starting the service late. I had a twelve-minute prelude (“Fugue, Chorale, and Epilogue” by Howells), and did not begin it until almost 5:00, the stated hour for the service.
As more of Thee in each we see...
(John Keble, “New every morning is the love”)
Jesus, give the wearyMusic is important. Liturgy is important. But there is a sense in which the most important role of the evening was played by Charles C., who was appointed to “Meet the Pizza.” He had to leave the service early to wait for the Pizza Guy, who delivered seven large ones. After the service, the Youth Choir and their parents devoured every one; not so much as a crumb remained. Meanwhile, the Adult Choir and the small congregation had their usual after-Evensong wine-and-cheese reception upstairs. I shuttled between both locations. Both upstairs and down (with the pizza), people were saying “I wish we could do this more often. Can't the children sing every month for evensong?”
calm and sweet repose;
With thy tenderest blessing
may our eyelids close.
Claire L. (a first-year chorister) had the most perceptive comment to this: “We could, if we had two rehearsals a week. Otherwise, no. It is too much music to learn.” Well, yes. And if we rehearsed every day, we could sing evensong several times a week. And if we were selective and had auditions and a probationer's choir and a choir school, we could sing evensong six nights a week and the Eucharist on Sunday.
But that is not where we are. I most fervently wish we could have two rehearsals a week, and perhaps I sell these choristers short by not demanding it of them. Their school choirs and their athletic teams demand much more than this. Why not the church choir?
My hunch is that we are better to cast the net more widely, even if by so doing we cannot give the choristers as deep and full of an experience as I would wish. There are many children who have gone through the choral program here, and (at least in recent years) they have had a little taste of Evensong, and of other quality choral music. Some will forget all about it. But for some, it will be an abiding memory, perhaps even a hunger. There have been many long years when I hungered for Evensong and could come no closer than listening to the BBC Choral Evensong broadcasts and singing for a week at an RSCM course. It would not have happened in our parish without the confluence of Fr. S., interim priest and firm believer in the Daily Offices and Evensong, and me, a director willing to cooperate with him. His successor was lukewarm at best to the Choral Offices, and mused out loud on many occasions that Choral Evensong was “poor stewardship of our resources.”
Grant to little children“I hope you know how special this is,” I told the choristers as we finished our rehearsal. When they leave this community (as most of them will), they are not likely to find another choir that sings regular evensongs, especially with combined children, youth, and adults. I think of Meg W., who was Officiant and Preacher tonight. She is on her way toward priesthood, and when she gets there, she will see how difficult it is to make something like tonight come to pass. “Remember this day,” I told her as we sat at pizza, watching the children play across the room. I am sure that she will.
visions bright of thee;
Guard the sailors tossing
on the deep blue sea.
Choral Evensong is disappearing, or so one might think. But in this place, and in a few other places (notably, the RSCM courses), we continue to cast the seed. For a long time, there will be a few people who remember how glorious it was. And some of them may find opportunity to give it a fresh start.
Comfort every suffererAfter the reception, after the pizza dinner, I puttered around, carrying chairs back to the choir room, setting the church up for the Tuesday morning Eucharist. And tackling yet another bulletin. “Remember this day.” I will long remember those children blazing in glory as they sang the Stanford. And the energy of the Smith preces – “O Lord, open thou our lips: And our mouth shall shew forth thy praise.” And the careful intensity of the Psalmody. They came together, these two groups who do not normally rehearse together, and sang the psalms as if they do it every evening. And, maybe most of all, the closing hymn. I scheduled it because I am sure that none of our children have ever encountered it. And they should have the chance to sing it, at least this once. After a couple of stanzas, when it was properly established, I let them sing unaccompanied.
watching late in pain;
Those who plan some evil
from their sin restrain.
Through the long night watchesMaybe it is too old-fashioned for modern children. Maybe it deserves to disappear.
may thine angels spread
Their white wings above me,
watching round my bed.
But not just yet. This night and in this place, at least, it continued to live.
When the morning wakens,
then may I arise
Pure and fresh and sinless
in thy holy eyes.
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