Some inspiration from Howells

Saturday afternoon arrived, and in the press of the week's duties I had done nothing about Sunday's prelude improvisation. In the half-hour remaining before my bus, I learned the Tune (Langham, number 573 in the H-82, “Father eternal, ruler of creation”). It is a big sprawling tune in C minor. I chose a key for the improvisation: E minor, to relate well with the tune when it is sung as the opening hymn. I played around with it for the few minutes that were available and went home.

Today's Eucharist was not in the morning because of a city event that closed the streets near the church, so I had the day ahead – but a lot of office work to fill it. I was becoming a little panicky about it. Still, I wanted to stay with the morning routines that I seek to make habitual – Matins, some brief study of the book “Group Vocal Technique,” sight-singing – and the Anthem Box.

My predecessor left me five large fileboxes of single copies of choral music. Fourteen years later, I am down to one. There has been enough good music in these boxes, which he collected over his career in church music, to keep me from tossing this final box in the recycling bin. I seek to nibble at the box every working day, and today it paid off handsomely.

The piece that was on top was the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis from the Howells Collegium Regale service. Here is a live performance from Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. It is already in my personal single-copy library, but I read through it anyway, thinking in part of the Te Deum and Jubilate from the same Service that we are to sing next Sunday.

In recent years as I have sought to learn how to improvise, I have tried to consider how a composer achieves his purposes, and Howells is someone whom I most fervently would like to emulate. In the Magnificat, I noted the the scale, which is G natural minor with much borrowing of G major triads at cadences, and use of the F major triad rather than the F sharp leading tone of harmonic minor. He also uses the D major dominant chord (with its F sharp), and frequently naturals the E to make it lean towards G Dorian rather than minor.

I took it to the piano and tried some of the progressions in “my” key of the day, E minor. This provided the spark; I rushed upstairs to the organ and worked, spending about an hour developing a Plan and a registration scheme.

And that was all. I had hoped for more time in the afternoon, but I was bogged down with next Sunday's bulletins and other duties, including the warmup at the organ for the hymns and service music that I normally do on Sunday morning.

Here is the improvisation, with the opening hymn on which it was based. There is not so much Howells in here as I had hoped, but some of the progressions near the end perhaps echo his style a little.

My point: it is very instructive to work in this manner. Take a passage of music that you find effective, preferably just a phrase or a cadence or a short pattern, consider how the composer made it so, and see if you can do something similar. As a first step, it helps to take the material out of the composer's key. That seems to help me make it my own. A similar approach can be used with any aspect of a composition: form, harmonic language, contrapuntal work, tone color.

I don't do this type of work as often as I should.

Sunday Scorecard: Rejoice in the Lord alway

Pardon, O Lord, all the faults of our prayers and praises: and help us to worship thee more worthily, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

6:30 am: I am late arriving at church because I overslept, and I still have some setup to do before the youth choir arrives. It is 6:45 when I get on the organ bench. The prelude and postlude are easy, but they are not where they should be, because I did not practice either Tuesday or Wednesday – those days were consumed with meetings and preparations for choral rehearsals. They got good work on Friday and Saturday, but I wish for one more day. The opening hymn, written for our parish, has a through-composed accompaniment and is more difficult than either of the voluntaries; it has consumed the bulk of this week's practice, along with the accompaniment for the youth choir's anthem. I do what I can in thirty minutes, and it is off to Matins in the upstairs chapel.

7:15 am: Matins. On Sundays, there are typically two of us: me, and Fr. H., a retired priest. It is good to have company for the Office, which by unanimous consent is always in the Rite One form (the traditional language), with the Scriptures from the Authorized/King James Version. We read from Micah 6:

… what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

and from St. Matthew 15:

And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table.

I choke up over this phrase as I try to read it, because of its connection with the Holy Eucharist:

We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.

Many in our parish and beyond scorn the theology behind this, the Prayer of Humble Access (BCP p. 337). It was discarded when the Rite Two liturgy was crafted in the 1970's because the clergy and liturgists did indeed trust in their own righteousness, as they still do. “I'm OK, you're OK,” as they said in those days. None of this makes it any less true that we have no place at the Table but by the gracious mercy of our God and Savior.

We pray for M., who died on Friday; and for Jix, who died a week ago. Both were dear friends to Fr. H., and to me insofar as I knew them. Jix was active in the parish until just a few weeks ago; I shall likely never again hear anyone read the Old Testament lessons like he did. With M., it is different: I remember her from years ago, but she has been in a nursing home with dementia for a long time. That is now all behind her. We will miss them both.

From Matins, it is down to the choir room: I eat a snack bar and a spoonful of peanut butter, and catch my breath for a moment. Youth Choir is coming.

8:00 am: The first choristers arrive. Rehearsal begins at 8:15. Even with three absent, we shall fill the choir loft; twenty singers. They are sleepy-eyed and it takes some doing to get them awake and ready to sing: our “Sunshine and Raisins” warmup, making imaginary snow-angels with our vestments, and as much silliness as I can muster. We number off for the procession and I have them all shout their number at once so they will remember; they giggle. With that, we are ready to sing.

8:45 am: Upstairs, ready for the 9:00 liturgy. I have not prepared a prelude improvisation because I did not expect time to play it, but there is time after all – five minutes. I launch into our opening song, “Sing hey for the carpenter” from the Iona Community. It is not a good improvisation; too fast, frantic, uncontrolled. A charitable critic might say “Well... it was energetic.” I am still too much in “Sunshine and Raisins” mode, and most of all, I am unprepared. I should have remained silent. “If you have nothing to say, don't say it.”

The liturgy goes well. The rector and assisting priest tell me afterwards that the choristers were outside the door at the end critiquing themselves about the procession and other details; I am glad that they want to improve, but I must tell them on Wednesday that they were pretty good, both in their singing and in the Service Drill (processions, keeping up with the spoken parts, etc.). We are making progress.

9:55 am: I have twenty minutes to re-set the choir loft, close and cover the piano, set up the organ for the next liturgy. I breeze into the choir room just in time for the 10:15 adult choir warmup. It does not go well; the sopranos have trouble with our anthem, the anonymous Tudor setting of “Rejoice in the Lord alway” which is today's Epistle. They are making the vowel too broad on “And again I say rejoice” and it is out of tune. The choir knows this piece very well but today does not seem to be the day for it. But the Psalm is good – a John Fenstermaker setting of Psalm 23. The diction is good, the blend, the tone. We decide that I will give a pitch at the organ and let it go unaccompanied, and without a conductor.

11:00 am: The liturgy begins. There are hardly a score of people in the church (aside from the choir and the altar party, who are outside lining up for the procession, another score of people all told). I begin the hymn, “Come to the Feast,” with its through-composed introduction. When the time comes, no one sings. I jump in and sing as I play. Again, I would have probably have been better to just play and keep my mouth shut; I am singing too loudly, and out of frustration. I think of the motto from St. Augustine on my office door: Cantare amantis est, and shut up. By then, the choir is coming into the room, and they bring the song back into focus.

The psalm goes well. The anthem? The sopranos are more solid because N. arrived just in time – her family is here from far away, and she was getting them settled in the church before coming to rehearsal; her mother, a charming little sister and brother. But the tenors get off on the wrong foot; they come in for their first entrance a beat early. I hope they will right themselves at the first time everyone breathes together, about eight bars in; they are glued to their scores and press right on, still a beat ahead of the rest of us. I wave the choir to a stop and tell them (and the congregation) “We have to start over.”

We do. And this time it is fine. J. tells me later that from the back it sounded very well.

The overall feel of the congregation is quiet, somewhat dispirited. Some of them are missing Jix; his widow is back in church for the first time without him. But there is a Word from the Lord for her, and for all of us, the very text that we sing in the Anthem:

Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say, rejoice. Let your softness be known unto all me: the Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing: but in all prayer and supplication let your petitions be manifest unto God with giving of thanks. And the peace of God which passeth all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesu.

I sense that I should play something during communion, so I improvise on the hymn that is to follow, “O Jesus, joy of loving hearts,” Jesu dulcis memoria. This has been prepared no more thoroughly than what I played at 9:00 (that is, not at all), but it goes well. We finish with the great Wesley hymn “Rejoice, the Lord is King” to Gopsal, and I play the postlude, “Fanfare on Gopsal” by David Willcocks. A toccata-like section in the middle comes unglued. I reduce one hand to block chords rather than the sextuplet figuration called for in the notation, and it comes back together; I do it again in the corresponding place a few measures later so that it will be musically balanced, and I think that the piece comes out acceptably.

12:15 pm: I clear the choir loft, lock up the organ, and move the extra chairs back downstairs, for there is a wedding at 4:00. Downstairs in the choir room, I put things away. “Leave no trace” was our watchword in the Youth Choir, drawn from Scouting in regard to campsites. They did better in putting things away than the last time they sang – when they did not achieve a high standard – but we have work to do. I deal with the stray music folders, hymnals, and other leftovers, but am proud to say that they all hung up their vestments instead of dumping them over chairs or on the floor. We are making progress.

1:15 pm: I have the choir room clear; I finish preparing the Order of Rehearsal sheet for Wednesday's adult choir. I am seeking to get my day's work done before the wedding party arrives at 3:00. A saxophonist comes in to gather music stands – the university Saxophone Quartet often holds unannounced rehearsals in the undercroft on Sunday afternoons, and this is one. I tell the young man that they need to move to the choir room today because the bridesmaids will be doing whatever they do to prepare for the wedding in that space and they really don't want to be there. I go to the church library and apologize to the Education for Ministry group that is meeting there, because a lot of sound bleeds through the heating ducts from the choir room.

I hope we don't have any more Sunday weddings.

1:45 pm: I work on next Sunday's bulletin until the wedding party arrives. I am not playing this one, so I have planned to be Elsewhere for the duration. Around 3:30, I head over to the Taste of China restaurant for my Sunday dinner, a couple of hours later than usual: Bean Curd with Garlic Sauce, extra rice, a vegetable egg roll, with unlimited hot tea, all for $6.73. The establishment is what in parts of Asia would be considered a “Noodle Shop” - cheap, not at all clean, ugly beat-up tables and chairs, the proprietor at the counter who scowls at the customers and shouts the orders (in Chinese) back to the kitchen, much clatter of woks and utensils. Cash only; no credit cards. I have seen him go to the back and bring forward a wad of cash to pay hundreds of dollars to vendors for deliveries. And so far as I can tell, he and his wife are there at the restaurant twelve hours a day, seven days a week. I would scowl at the customers, too.

I am usually the only non-Asian in the place. I have heard from Chinese students that their Beef Noodle Soup is “amazing,” and it is clearly the most popular dish. But I prefer the Bean Curd – tofu deep fat fried to perfection, with mixed vegetables and a strong and hot garlic sauce.

4:30 pm: After a leisurely dinner, it is still too early to return to the church. I go to my car, parked on the top level of the parking ramp near the church. On sunny days in the spring and fall, I enjoy being up here, away from the church and from people. Today is chill and grey, with a light drizzle, but I go ahead and take an hour's nap in the car, then sing Evensong, still in the car. In the rain, I think of the similar day in 1870 when Mr. Lee had his stroke after walking home from a vestry meeting; he died on this day, October 12.

6:00 pm: Back to the church, and the bulletin. It is difficult, and takes me another hour and a half, including the time to write an explanatory e-mail to Nora and the clergy.

7:30 pm: I am dragging, out of energy. I lock the church doors, and work on items from my “in” box. Most notably, I prepare a songsheet for the choir: the Dies Irae, number 468 from the Hymnal 1940. We shall sing it as the sole congregational hymn for our All Souls' Requiem on Nov. 2.

I should practice, especially the accompaniment for the Howells Collegium Regale Te Deum and Jubilate, which we are to sing a fortnight from today. I get shaky thinking about how much work has to happen between now and then – and not just musical work: I have to submit a budget and a newsletter essay by Oct. 20, eight days from now. But the shakes are not enough to get me to the keyboard, not this late in the day.

8:30 pm: Enough for today. The Al-Anon group finishes their meeting; I walk around and check the church for security. I brew some tea, and write this essay.

Sometimes I wonder whether I should keep writing. Only about a dozen people read these essays, aside from a spike in readership for the RSCM reports. I was reminded this week of the fragility of this medium; a financial blog that I follow was summarily deleted. Gone. Just like that.

But I hope that some of what I write may be of help to others. I think that the material on practicing the organ is valuable, and available nowhere else. I hope also that in sum, these writings give a picture of the life of a church musician. It is in that spirit that I submit today's essay. It has been a day where some things were not up to standard, but other things went well, and wherein we made some progress. One can wish for no more than that.

Here is a reading of the “Rejoice in the Lord” anthem by a Roman Catholic schola. To my surprise, there are few renditions of this on YouTube, and none that I could find from the great British cathedral or collegiate choirs. In truth, I think that we sang it as well as any of the versions here, in spite of taking two tries to get it done.

May God's blessings be with you, this night and always.

God of the sparrow

First Sundays are a lot of work, mostly because of Choral Evensong. This time, I scrambled to learn my evensong prelude, the Bach Trio on Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend from the Eighteen Leipzig Chorales. Learning it was one of my key projects for the year, but other work intervened and I found myself a week away from the evensong without having done a first workout. It was fingered, at least, a task that took many hours back in the summer.

I did not play it very well. It got all of the time I could give it this week, but that was not enough. I did not fall apart, which for a trio movement is a victory, but there were lots of missed notes. After the service, I pencilled it into the planning book for Easter VII in the spring to give myself another chance with it. All told, the Evensong mostly left me cold. We sang well enough; perhaps it was simply my disappointment in the prelude. The best work was with the psalmody (the Fifth Evening: Psalms 27, 28, 29). And one person commented afterwards that the service as a whole was “transcendent.” For that I am grateful.

The music that meant the most to me this day was one of the hymns at the 11:00 service: “God of the sparrow.” The layout of the hymn in the bulletin was difficult, so I decided to play a full stanza at the piano as introduction, rather than the simple two measures indicated by Mr. Schalk (the composer of the hymn tune). That seemed to help the congregation find the spiritual place from which to sing, and it was thoughtful and fine.

God of the sparrow
God of the whale
God of the swirling stars
How does the creature say Awe
How does the creature say Praise

I was an emotional wreck by the end; part of this was because of the little boy in the front row who watched carefully as I played, peering into the piano (as he could, from where he was standing). He is, I gather, very interested in Music. Part of it also was contemplation of the text in its context of the Lessons for the day, including the very dark passage from Hosea 13 that we had read at Matins, and would hear again at Evensong. We have failed so many times; we have given the Lord of the Vineyard no more than sour grapes for all his love, and on top of that, we took him outside of the city and killed him.

God of the rainbow
God of the cross
God of the empty grave
How does the creature say Grace
How does the creature say Thanks

For my introduction, I drew on ideas from my prelude at the earlier 9:00 service, which is here (complete with doggy sounds at the end: this was “blessing of the animals” day). It is typical of what I do for the 9:00 preludes. I was careful to Know the Tune, as I have described elsewhere, but did not put a lot of work into it beyond that; I determined to play a set of variations, with some movement between keys in the middle and a recapitulation to bring it back to the tonic, and played around with these materials some on Saturday and again on Sunday morning.

For those who may still be awake at this hour on Sunday evening, I hope that the music can be a gentle close to the day for you, as it is for me. The last thing I want to do after Evensong is work, and I have managed to stay with it for the three hours that were needed to do my part with next Sunday's bulletins and other tasks that must be completed tonight. And now it is all done.

God of the ages
God of the hand
God of the loving heart
How do your children say Joy
How do your children say Home

(text by Jaroslav J. Vajda, 1983, copyright by the author, administered by Concordia Publishing House)