Some thoughts from C. S. Lewis

At the suggestion of Fr. Tim, I have been reading a battered little paperback from the public library, “The Weight of Glory” by C. S. Lewis, which is a collection of nine addresses that he made during the years of World War II.

Two quotations and an observation: The first is from “The Inner Ring”

The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public... But it will do those things which the profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. (p. 156)

The pursuit of the Inner Ring is a precise description of much of the activity I have observed among the Important People in the American Guild of Organists over the years, and (from a greater distance) the activities of clergy in our diocese and the larger Episcopal Church. I am confident that it is equally true in other areas of endeavor, especially those which by their nature are relatively small groups of people.

I have known some of the “sound craftsmen,” people such as my teacher Dr. McDonald, my friend Del Disselhorst, and too many others to name. I would love to be such a craftsman myself. But that desire is dangerous. So soon as any of us wish for such a thing, we are at risk of making that wish our motivation. The only answer is to “keep yo' han' on-a the plow” as the old Spiritual says – to attend faithfully to the work at hand with total disregard as to what others think of it.

That is hard to do. Pride readily creeps into even the best work, and so soon as it does, the work is flawed, as is the workman. In the following, from the address “Learning in War-Time,” one can readily subistute “the musical life” for “the intellectual life,” for the point is the same. The additions in brackets are mine.

The intellectual life is not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be the appointed road for us. Of course, it will be so only so long as we keep the impulse pure and disinterested. That is the great difficulty. As the author of the Theologia Germanica says, we may come to love knowledge [or Music] – our knowing – more than the thing known: to delight not in the exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in the reputation they bring us. Every success in the scholar's [or musician's] life increases this danger. If it becomes irresistible, he must give up his scholarly [or musical] work. The time for plucking out the right eye has arrived. (page 57)

The observation: For a brief period of my life, I was in weekly attendance at the Chapel of Westminster Choir College, with Erik Routley as Chaplain and Preacher. Dr. Routley knew Professor Lewis, and when I read Lewis, it always reminds me of Routley's sermons. So far as I know, they were never published, and that is a loss. I owe Lewis a lot, and I owe Routley even more. May both of these men rest in peace.

Be thou our guide while life shall last

Our God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come,
be thou our guide while life shall last,
and our eternal home.

Today is the spiritual birthday of Dr. Isaac Watts, who passed from this life on November 25, 1748. We owe him much, but I am not going to write about that today.

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. (Revelation 2:29)

Advent is crazy. All who work for a church find it so; too much to do, too many demands. Observing signs of stress in a colleague after this morning's staff meeting, we prayed a few moments ago, seeking that God would prompt us to do what He considers important.

And that set me to thinking of the first three chapters of the Revelation of St. John the Divine. I consider these Letters to the Seven Churches to be essential in the understanding of the church in the world. He sees what is going on. “I know thy works” he says repeatedly: some good, some faulty, some that he would prefer to spue out of his mouth (3:16). He “walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks” (2:1), which we were told in the previous verse are the Seven Churches, and by extension all of the congregations committed to His care. It might be one of the great cathedrals. It might be a little mission church on a reservation with three old ladies all that is left of the congregation. It might be a “street church” community with no building at all. And it might be us, respectable downtown Episcopal congregation in a college town. He walks among us, He knows our works.

That frightens me when I consider all that we have left undone. But it is a comfort as well, indeed our only comfort. As C. S. Lewis wrote in his lecture “The Weight of Glory”:

A cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of the world, and we are invited to follow our great Captain inside.

These chapters of Revelation conclude with a promise sufficient to sustain us through anything, a promise addressed to any person in any of the congregations throughout the world, whether bishop or vicar or sexton or choirmaster or altar guild lady or baker-of-cookies or church school teacher or child or old person or secretary or senior warden or barely-hanging-on occasional visitor:

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

We could be in the most dysfunctional of parishes, or places far worse (and there are many of them, I remind myself: prisons, hospital wards, parts of northern Iraq and Syria) and if He is with us, all is well. “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me.”

May you hear the soft but persistent knock at your door, open to Him, and sup with Him this Advent.

A bit more of Dr. Watts, from number 100 in the Hymnal 1982:

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;
he comes to make his blessings flow
far as the curse is found.

God has work for us to do

The Lord's Day: Solemnity of Christ the King

Almighty and everlasting God, we yield unto thee most high praise and hearty thanks for the wonderful grace and virtue declared in all thy saints, who have been the choice vessels of thy grace, and lights of the world in their several generations; most humbly beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow the example of their steadfastness in thy faith, and obedience to thy holy commandments, that at the day of the general resurrection, we, with all those who are of the mystical body of thy Son, may be set on his right hand, and hear that his most joyful voice: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Grant this, O Father, for the sake of the same thy Son Jesus Christ, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen. (BCP p. 487)

I once thought of this Sunday in terms of the Second Coming of Christ when all shall be made right, and I thought of that Day in a manner akin to the arrival of Aragorn and his friends at the Field of Pelennor, the King's banner flying from the ships, the sword Anduril in his hand, the orcs and goblins and all the forces of evil scattered and destroyed, and all that is wrong with the world made right.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
(J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring)

There is Scriptural support for such a view: Revelation 19:11-21, for example, as well as the Old Testament Lesson from today's Office: Zechariah 9:9-16, especially verses fourteen through sixteen.

As it says in one of the Psalms for the Twenty-Third morning, which we read at Matins:

He will heap high the corpses;
he will smash heads over the wide earth.
(Psalm 110:6)

Scripture suggests that there may be an element of that somewhere in what is to come, but today's Gospel (St. Matthew 25:31-46) is the only one of the three for this day in the RCL Eucharistic cycle that even remotely leans in this direction. The other two emphasize that His crown is of thorns, His throne a tree:

Fulfilled is all that David told
in true prophetic song of old;
how God the nations' King should be,
for God is reigning from a tree.
(Vexilla Regis – number 162 in Hymnal 1982)

The working-out of these things remains a Mystery, which we must leave in the hands of God. But when we see it with our own eyes, “as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west” (St. Matthew 24:27), we shall know that His judgments are righteous (cf Psalm 119:137-8).

Here is my recording of the Toccata and Fugue. You will hear a lot of clatter in the pedal solos; that is the nature of an old tracker instrument, and the microphone is close to the console.

On the whole, I am pleased with it; I hope my Teacher is. He knows that this week has been instructive, and not just in terms of playing the organ. I take from this two lessons and a question:

1. The places I missed were all well-prepared. I knew they were hard, gave them extra practice, felt prepared – and still missed them, all in ways that I had not done before. These were not “old” mistakes creeping back in; they were brand new, though in passages of sufficient difficulty that mistakes of all sorts are possible. The place where I fell apart yesterday and expected a Train Wreck went perfectly well today.

2. All of these places felt at the time like horrible glaring failures. Yet, when I listen to the piece, the mistakes are there, but they do not destroy the effect to the degree that it seemed at the time. Any of my young musical friends who are still reading these pages, take note; your playing is often much better than it seems to you at the time. At least it is if you can keep going.

The question: How can I improve my accuracy? I have done everything I know to do at this point, and I have improved my playing a lot over the past two or three years. It could be that my proposed New Habit of adding technical exercises to my daily practice might help. But I am not sure my errors today were technical in nature; they were probably more like St. Peter looking about at the wind and waves (St. Matthew 14:29-30). I ask my Teacher “What must I do?”

A musician whose opinion I trust said that it was terrific. I take comfort in that.


I took a chance with today's hymnody, for all of the songs were unfamiliar. Here are the three that were brand-new to both of our singing congregations.

“What kind of shepherd seeks the sheep” by the young Mennonite pastor Adam Tice, written in 2013

“Stranger, standing at my door” by the distinguished New Zealand author Shirley Erena Murray, text 1997 with tune by Jane Marshall written in 2008

“Till all the jails are empty” by the equally distinguished American author and Episcopal priest Carl P. Daw, Jr. with tune by John Bell and the Iona Community, text and tune both from 1995. That is almost twenty years ago, but it still seems like a “new” hymn. I heard it for the first time at the Hymn Society convention in Richmond a couple of years ago.

One parishioner took me to task for these songs: “Love your neighbor. I get it. You don't need to beat us over the head.” Perhaps I overdid it, though I would offer the defense that these songs are faithful to the Gospel, and echo today's excellent sermon by Rev'd R. And behind that, they express a message that is of sufficient importance to repeat until everyone hears it...

Till all the jails are empty,
and all the bellies filled;
till no one hurts or steals or lies,
and no more blood is spilled....
God has work for us to do.
(Carl P. Daw, Jr., copyright Hope Publishing Co.)

I leave you with the piano improvisation for the middle service prelude. In this, I mostly sought to introduce the tune for “Stranger, standing at my door,” and finished (somewhat to my surprise) with a bit of Forest Green in C major, the tune for the opening hymn “What kind of shepherd.” I had worked with Forest Green in my preparations, intending to cast it in minor – but in the event, it insisted on being in major, and I think rightly. Form is of utmost importance for an improvisation, and preparation is essential, but sometimes the piece goes in a different direction than expected. I think that the subconscious is at work here, or perhaps the Spirit, and one must not be deaf to these whispers.

Of all the music today, and much of it was very good, it was the song by Adam Tice that got to me. The text mostly covers ground well-worn by Psalm 23, and Ira Sankey with his old song “The ninety-and-nine,” which is a story told elsewhere in the Gospels, but it relates very well to the day's Old Testament Lesson (Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24), which is why I selected it. Near the end, Rev'd Tice writes:

Then with the wand'rers and the strays
that you have sought and found...

In the context of today's Gospel, it reminded me that should we be chosen to be at His right hand, it is by grace alone. We are, all of us, a company of “wand'rers and strays.”

From Harmony, from heavenly Harmony...

But oh! what art can teach
What human voice can reach
The sacred organ's praise?
Notes inspiring holy love,
Notes that wing their Heav'nly ways
To mend the choirs above.

Orpheus could lead the savage race;
And trees unrooted left their place;
Sequacious of the lyre:
But bright Cecilia rais'd the wonder high'r;
When to her organ, vocal breath was giv'n,
An angel heard, and straight appear'd
Mistaking earth for Heav'n.

(John Dryden, “A Song for St. Cecilia's Day”)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173449

Thursday, November 20: St. Edmund

As a church musician, I find that I cannot keep the Real Sabbath, not if I am to play on the following day. And the Lord's Day is most decidedly not a day of rest. So, I do what I can by observing Thursday as a day of rest, set apart from the others.

I have recently read a fine little book: “The Sabbath,” by Abraham Joshua Heschel. He introduced me to the concept of welcoming the Holy Day as a visiting Queen, or a Bride, and expanded on what I already knew of the sanctification of Time, which we Christians carry forward by means of the Daily Office. A quote:

Holiness in space, in nature, was known in other religions. New in the teaching of Judaism was that the idea of holiness was gradually shifted from space to time, from the realm of nature to the realm of history, from things to events.

And that brings us to St. Edmund. King of East Anglia in a time of darkness, he strove to keep his people and the holy Faith alive in the face of overwhelming odds. And, so the story goes, he did: not by sword or victory, but by martyrdom, setting an example that no infidels could erase from the hearts of the people.

For we sanctify Time not only by prayer, but by action.

Friday, November 21: Tallis, Byrd, Merbecke

Here are men that I should certainly emulate. I am not so certain of their sanctity as the framers of the Episcopal Calendar in “Holy Men, Holy Women” seem, but they, and the other great composers, remind us that this work is not easy:

The Song does not come without cost; to do it well, it requires all that you are, every part of your being.... It is, in short, a little “martyrdom.” We give ourselves over to the Song, without regard for where it will lead us.

Friday is normally a good working day: the Rector has the day off, the office is usually quiet – and by this time in the week, I am most often desperately scrambling to prepare for Sunday. Top of the list: a full workout of the Bach, beginning to end.

But first... After Matins, I go to the kitchen. We had a dinner on Wednesday evening, and the youth group is selling Thanksgiving pies, delivering them this Sunday. They need refrigerator storage space, and the church refrigerator is packed. I begin pulling things out – almost-empty juice bottles, an uncovered pitcher of iced tea that has been in the back corner long enough to grow a layer of mold, bags of grapes many months old, salad dressings and milk and coffee cream (“half and half”) well beyond their “best by” date, much more. I end up with two trash bags full. I empty the dishwasher and dish drainer, I wash the cups and glasses left in the sink. I appropriate some of the Wednesday leftovers for my dinner. I try to think holy thoughts. This is important work: it is the Lord's House, and this is His kitchen. These cups and plates, this refrigerator, are as holy as the vessels of the Altar (as I think St. Benedict says, more or less). As children of the household, if we neglect to do our chores now, what will happen when we are There?

It is now 10:45, and I have not done any of my Good Habits (except Matins, and on this day the Great Litany). They are not going to happen today; Bach awaits.

I get my Full Workout, beginning to end, starting with the Fugue. It is solid, but the Toccata, untouched since Sunday evening, is not. I must “brush off the cobwebs” as I often tell the choir. It is enough; there is now the possibility of being ready to play the piece on Sunday.

The Toccata begins with a long tonic pedal point, fifty-four measures. Then (after a pedal solo) there is a dominant pedal point, another fifty-four measures. At the end of the Toccata, there is a majestic descent down the scale in the pedals to the low C, the dominant, and another pedal point, this one thirty measures (counting the octave leaps on C with which it ends), and Bach takes us toward the final cadence. With all this preparation, we need a thoroughgoing resolution, perhaps another pedal point on the tonic. We do not get it; all we have is one chord. At least it has a fermata.

The balance is not restored until the end of the Fugue, which (in the context of Sunday's liturgy) will be over an hour later, as the postlude. The final entry of the main fugal subject in the pedal is sufficient. When that pedal comes in on the low F with full organ, we have Arrived. It is a place where the organist always wishes there were one more stop, perhaps a 32' Montre like they have at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City: they are the large pipes you can see in this photo.

For we have not in truth Arrived: that will happen only on the Last Day, when the sanctification of Time is complete: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” (Revelation 22:13)

Saturday, November 22: St. Cecilia

Sing for the morning's joy, Cecilia, sing,
In words of youth and phrases of the Spring;
Walk the bright colonnades by fountains' spray,
And sing as sunlight fills the waking day;
Till angels, voyaging in upper air
Pause on a wing and gather the clear sound
Into celestial joy, wound and unwound,
A silver chain, or golden as your hair.
(from "A Hymn to St. Cecilia" by Herbert Howells: text by Ursula Vaughan Williams)

I keep a Holy Card of this great Lady on the organ console to remind me of her every day when I climb onto the bench. This day especially, I seek her intercessions; there is Work to Do. But I open the day with what proves a grievous error: not only do I skip my Good Habits for yet another day, but I skip Matins in my haste to get on the bench.

The Toccata does not go well. I work on it for three hours. In the final slow playthrough, which is supposed to settle me down, I cannot play one passage at all (measures 223-4). Not even at half tempo. I am forced to stop and work on it with the rhythms and try to patch things up. The place may well be a Train Wreck tomorrow, a place where the piece comes apart and I am forced to stop. Shortly after, still in the playthrough, D. comes in the church. When I realize that he is there, I stop, though I do not want to, not in the middle.

In my evaluation on Tuesday, my lowest score was for displaying Poor Judgment, mostly in regard to these men from the street that I have helped. The Rector correctly observed that many of them are not genuine in their requests for help, and that they have caused me considerable emotional distress. And my friend N., who has helped me much in going Cold Turkey on helping these people financially, pointed out to me that the Diocesan Policy on sexual boundaries that we studied this Tuesday says that we are not to give money to anyone with whom we are in a ministry relationship. That includes D.

Lately, he has mostly come for prayer, not money: his mother died of cancer about a week ago, and he has other problems, such as an uncertain roof over his head and his constant struggle with drug addiction (he is doing fairly well these days, but “Every day is hard,” he says. I believe him. I think that his bereavement has been a strong push back toward the drugs, for they would ease the pain. So far, I think he has resisted.) Today he wanted money: I said no, telling him of the reasons above.

But I thought of tomorrow's Gospel, and St. Elizabeth, and St. James, whose Epistle we read this past week in the Office (chapter 2, verse 17: Faith without works is dead.)

I finish the Toccata's playthrough, exhausted in mind, body, and spirit.

Elizabeth, pray for us, that we may be Generous.
Edmond, pray for us, that we may be Brave.
Cecilia, pray for us, that we may Sing.

After some food and a cup of tea, I am back on the bench for the Fugue. It goes well; about an hour's work and it is done.

I see that this is my three hundredth post in the Music Box. Thank you all for reading it.

(to be continued)

We feebly struggle: they in glory shine

Monday, November 17: St. Hugh of Lincoln

This is Grocery Day, and a cold one; twenty-plus degrees below normal, blustery, snow flurries. No practice, no church work. I would love to be more like St. Hugh: cheerful, disciplined, fearless, a champion of the poor.

Tuesday, November 18: St. Hilda of Whitby

I would love to be more like St. Hilda, too. Few people have been as sensible and wise as this woman, “endowed with gifts of justice, prudence and strength” as her Collect says.

This is a work day, dominated by five hours of meetings: staff meeting, then mandatory child protection training. I was glad to do the latter in the company of my friends and colleagues instead of alone in front of a computer, as the training modules are intended to be used.

But no practicing. Not so much as a note.

Wednesday, November 19: St. Elizabeth of Hungary

I could see, barely, the possibility of becoming more like Hugh or Hilda. Elizabeth is so far beyond any possibility of emulation that I can only look on with what amounts to a schoolboy crush. I wrote of this on her Feast Day in 2008:

I must confess to having a bit of a crush on Elizabeth of Hungary, whose feast is today, and on certain other female saints. The feeling is very much akin to what I recall as a teenager, gazing with starry eyes at some of the older girls who seemed impossibly far above me, dwelling on some higher plane. As the years passed, I eventually realized that these girls of my youth were not on some higher plane – some of them just liked to act as if they were. But Elizabeth of Hungary? Dame Julian? Dorothy Day? Cecilia? Agnes? Joan of Arc? Mary Magdalene? Martha of Bethany? And, most of all, Mary the Mother of God?

“We feebly struggle: they in glory shine....”

At last, a day for practice. But not so fast... first, there is Matins. This being Wednesday, I then reset the chairs in the choir room for Youth Choir.

On the bus this morning, I completed “The Technique and Art of Playing the Organ” by Clarence Dickinson, which I recommend as the finest organ instruction book that I have encountered. And it is free.

It was published in 1922, so some of his recommendations must be taken with a grain of salt, especially on the playing of hymns. Even here, it is good to recall how it was done in those days. I can remember some of the most distinguished Old Timers in the 1970's who still played in the manner he describes, considerably more straight-laced than what one would hear from the best modern players, such as John Ferguson or David Cherwien.

There is one chapter that is a Must Read for those working toward the AGO exams: the chapter on Choral Accompaniments. Dickinson clearly and logically describes the procedures of adapting a piano accompaniment (which was probably a reduction from orchestral score) to the organ.

Another strength lies in his musical examples, which form the bulk of the volume. He prints short passages from the standard repertoire – some of it things that are no longer played, but much of it from Bach and Mendelssohn – passages isolated for their technical challenges and in this context, the finest of etudes for skill development.

I determined to spend some time with this book at the organ, for I have neglected my technical equipment. It has been years since I have systematically played pedal scales, or pedal arpeggios (such as one finds in the Bach Toccata).

And that gave me impetus to return to the neglected Good Habit of daily work on sight-singing and vocal technique, and the box of anthems. Almost as soon as I wrote about it here, the habit fell aside. I was too busy, I thought, with the preparations for the Howells canticles and the Victoria Requiem and the Phillips “Sine Nomine.” And, always, the Bulletins.

No time like the present: after resetting the choir room, I spent a few minutes on these things, with the intent of heading for the organ bench as soon as I checked e-mail and the Net.

That went smoothly enough until I felt moved to write an extended comment on Father Tim's blog. I am glad that I did, not least because it helped in my mental preparations for today's Annual Performance Review, my first with the current Rector, but the writing took about a half-hour.

Finally, Bach in hand, I made it to the bench, with about ninety minutes before the aforementioned Review. But first, the Dickenson: “If I don't do it now, when will I do it? Next week will be just as busy, and after that we are in Advent.” Five minutes on a page of finger-substitution exercises... and then, at last, the Bach Fugue. As with the Toccata, I started with the hard part, the final pages where the pedal returns and the two subjects are combined. It came together with remarkable ease. Rev'd R. came through, and I sought her intercessions for my Review; I was very nervous about it. Thanks be to God, it went well: the Rector treated me like a professional and a colleague rather than a recalcitrant child.

In the afternoon, I made it back to the bench and made it most of the way through a First Workout on the Fugue, plus review of anthem accompaniments for tonight's adult rehearsal. It was a Good Day's work as Organist.

Then, it was time to put on my other hat: Choirmaster. We had good rehearsals today. Time is short so I will say no more – but I must mention Evening Prayer. I went upstairs for the service, normally led by others, and found a group of four college students putting on their coats and leaving. It was the same group that had come for the morning Eucharist the day that we did not have it, and here they were for Evening Prayer, a regularly scheduled service on our website and our calendar – and no one was there. “A man came through and turned out the lights, and told us there was no service.” I led them back in the church, turned on the lights, and we had the Office. I told them that this was an essential aspect of the Anglican Way; I am not sure they believed me, not seeing anyone there for this service that I claimed was important.

(to be continued)

Toccata in F: a beginning

Friday, November 14

Last weekend after the problem with the pedal couplers on All Saints' Day, I told Jean that I would have to cancel the F Major Toccata (BWV 540) that was on my schedule for the Sunday of Christ the King, November 23. I had wanted to play it for the reasons I described three years ago:

The Bach Toccata in F, with its Fugue, is the best response to [the Lessons for the Day] that I can make with the music available to me. The Toccata is boundless joy, the serious and all-consuming joy that is characteristic of the praise of God, the working out of one of the grandest ideas in all of Bach's music. The Fugue is more solemn. In the context of this service, I hope that it can be an expression (insofar as humanly possible) of the majesty of our Lord Jesus Christ at the right hand of God, sitting as righteous Judge of all the earth. When the two subjects combine in the final pages of the fugue, it is inexpressibly majestic, and causes me to consider the completion of the purposes of God, determined before the foundation of the earth.

These words are but a stammering and inadequate attempt to say what cannot be said. Yet, dust and ashes that we are, we must say something. No: we must sing something, and in this case, instrumental music has the advantage that it sings without words. And we cannot, for this occasion, play it safe; we must “sing... with all [our] skill.” This piece is right on the edge of my capabilities; that makes it just about right.

But without that top F in the pedal, the piece is impossible. Or so I thought.

This afternoon after working on this Sunday's voluntaries and hymns, I took another look. I had been thinking of the place in the second pedal solo where the top F is critical: two notes in measure 155, in the second pedal solo. But I had thought there were more places. No: that measure is the only time in the piece that the note appears. And my hands are free, more or less (I am hanging on to the cheekblocks as one does with pedal solos, to help pivot across the pedalboard). I tried it: Yes, I can free my left hand for those two notes and play them on the manual at the same time they are played in the pedal. Further, the two broken Great-to-Pedal stickers in the middle of the range do not irredeemably disfigure the fugue; I was worried about that, too.

So, to work!

One thing I have learned is that it is well to start with the hardest part of the piece. For me, that is measure 270 to 287 and 331 to 349, both passages in the Toccata. Having only about two hours left in the day, I did a First Workout on this section: measures 270 through 349. (The Toccata runs to 438 measures, about ten minutes of duration). It was hard, slow work, even with the rhythmic practice that I love. But it was a start.

Saturday, November 15

Even with Sunday in the wings, I start the day's practicing with the Toccata. Another lesson I have learned is that I should do the Second Workout on the previous day's work before moving on to other parts of the piece, so I did: just one hour this time, instead of yesterday's two.

Then I built around the bit that was now starting to be secure: I added new phrases at the end (starting with measure 350), and after each new section, I played the whole bit (measures 270 to where I had gotten). Then I added some more, finishing that section's work with another full playthrough.

Once I reached the end, I started adding sections in front of the part I had learned, still finishing each new section with a playthrough, now from the new section to the end of the toccata.

About five hours later, I made it to the beginning: the First Workout is done (with a second workout on the hardest part).

With this type of extended work, I must get off the bench every hour. I have a stretching routine that I use which takes three or four minutes, and that gets me ready for another hour. So long as I do this, I can play all day. If I don't, I collapse after three hours or so and earn a sore back, sore wrists and forearms, and have to be extra careful the next day.

I still had Sunday's preparations to complete, so that was enough of Bach. This was a night when I was staying at the church because of weather, so I was free to work on into the evening – indeed, I was glad to be at the bench, because a jazz drummer was practicing in the choir room, loudly.

Sunday, November 16

I made it back to the bench about 3:00: time for the Second Workout on the bulk of the Toccata. Because Saturday's work had mostly been backwards (adding on from the end, back to the front of the piece), today I started at the beginning. I worked in my usual manner: one phrase slowly, then in the rhythms, then in tempo: the next phrase in the same way: the two phrases together in tempo, and so on.

On the second and subsequent workout of a piece this long, it does not work to keep starting clear back at the beginning after adding each new phrase. The Toccata can be thought of as two smaller pieces: the initial two-voice counterpoint over pedal points with the two long pedal solos, up through measure 175 (where I make a manual change, going from Swell to Great), and the rest of the piece. So once I had worked the first “piece,” I considered measure 176 a fresh start and no longer returned to measure one.

Shortly after I began, a woman entered the church and sat in the back row, in the shadows, her head down, obviously praying or thinking. I kept playing. She stayed, sometimes sobbing loudly. Should I stop? Here she was, pouring her heart out to God, and she couldn't even have a quiet church to pray. And she wasn't even having good music – I was by the time she arrived deep into the first pedal solo, working it slowly, then with the rhythms, then longer chunks of it. But I had to do this work; the way the week is looking, I doubt that I will be on the bench at all until Wednesday, if then, and the Toccata had to have its second workout done so it wouldn't slip away from me.

As I played, I sought guidance from the Spirit, and the best I could tell, the word was “Play on.”

I prayed that the beautiful sane purity of the Bach, even as it lay before this woman in the workshop with the hood up and parts all over the place, might be a channel for grace. At the least I could join my music-as-prayer with hers: “Thy kingdom come,” the day when our Friend and Father wipes away every tear.

She stayed for more than two hours, and slipped out somewhere around measure 380. I made it to the end by about 6:30, but one step remained: the final play-through at half tempo. “Do I have to?” I whined. “That will take twenty minutes!” And it did. But as soon as I started the opening measures, I knew that this was right: I needed this play-through to settle the day's work, the weekend's work, into place.

The slow play-through is a lesson from Virgil Fox, who insisted on it with any piece that was technically challenging or fast. He was right, as usual. After hours of work on a piece like this, the nerves are jangly, the adrenaline is flowing. The slow playing settles the mind and body, a cooling-off time like walking around after running. As I play, I seek to focus on each note, seeking to fix it in my memory.

The Toccata feels solid. If I can get even one more solid workout on it next Saturday, I think it will be fine. Two workouts this week would be better. But there is still the Fugue.

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This was a day when the Youth Choir and Adult Choir combined, singing a setting of Psalm 124 written for our parish by the noted composer Samuel Adler – and Dr. Adler was here. He listened to our rehearsal and spoke briefly to the choir, especially the young choristers. We did not work much on the piece (today, that is: we started it in August for the Youth Choir!), because we spent most of our half-hour on the plainsong gradual, Psalm 90. It needed the work, and did not go well in the service – a few of the choristers did not watch me for the break at the asterisk, not even after they had missed the first one, coming in for the second half ahead of the choir. But overall, it was a good morning.

I leave you with another piano improvisation, the prelude for the middle service. Our opening hymn was the first one in the “green book,” the “Wonder, Love and Praise” supplement. I consider the text to be weak, but it fit the day and season. And the tune is anything but weak: it is the magnificent Welsh tune Ton-y-botel. In this context, it needed a quiet and dark setting, so I tried to provide it. The form is a set of variations, one or two of them straying rather far from the tune, and a bridge taking it into the dominant key for a couple of the variations.

Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme

“Sleepers, wake!” A voice astounds us,
the shout of rampart guards surrounds us:
“Awake, Jerusalem, arise!”

With this hymn (number 61 in the Hymnal 1982), we began today's Eucharist, and what the Rector is calling “Extended Advent.” We labelled this day the “Third Sunday before Advent.” The liturgical color was red; the Celebrant used the marvelous Proper Preface for Advent:

Because thou didst send thy beloved Son to redeem us from sin and death, and to make us heirs in him of everlasting life; that when he shall come again in power and great triumph to judge the world, we may without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing.

The Collect and Lessons for the Day already follow this train of thought, and look toward “that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). The Gospel, St. Matthew 25:1-13, most powerfully encourages us to “Watch... for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh” (v. 13).

It is unpopular in liberal circles to mention the Second Coming of Christ. But these three weeks declare it plainly in Scripture and thus in hymnody. I will say no more: the Second Coming is one of the Secrets of God, like the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection – secrets hidden from the seminary professors and scholars but clear to the simplest believer.

Instead, I will give you another improvisation.

This was the prelude to this morning's middle service. It is, perhaps, a demonstration that the Sonata First-Movement form is not so hard to use as one might think. Nor is it limited to fast tempi; the form is strong for slow movements as well as fast. “Wachet auf” lends itself to this form because of its length.

The plan:

Key of A flat major

Exposition:
First Theme: the A section of the tune, repeated, in the tonic key (A flat)
Second Theme: the B section, in the dominant (E flat)

Development – various keys

Recapitulation: the A section in the tonic (just once, not repeated), the B section also in the tonic.
Coda – continuing in the tonic.

It is possible for the Recapitulation to be an exact return of the Exposition. That is hard for the improvisor, at least this one – my memory is insufficient. But the musical result is often superior when the Recapitulation is varied somewhat from the version in the Exposition. That is fortunate.

What about the Development?
It turns out that this is the easiest part of all. One simply disassembles the tune and plays around with the motives with the freedom to combine them, move them around through various keys, and “develop” them in whatsoever way seems best. The danger: It is easy to get going on this and lose track of time, and of the form. The Development must remain in scale with the Exposition and it must not degenerate into formless wandering-around. The other challenge is to bring it back to the Recapitulation in a satisfying manner.

I leave you with the Collect of the Day, one of my favorites:

O God, whose blessed Son was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil and make us the children of God and heirs of eternal life: Grant us, we beseech thee, that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves even as he is pure; that, when he shall appear again with power and great glory, we may be made like unto him in his eternal and glorious kingdom; where with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Ghost, he liveth and reigneth ever, one God, world without end. Amen.

For the church musician, “extended Advent” is appropriate. By the time we have passed All Saints' Day, we are up to our eyebrows in rehearsal and preparation for Advent and Christmas. And it is, at least in part, through the discipline of practice and rehearsal and score study that “we may purify ourselves even as he is pure” during these weeks.

May it be so for all of you.

For all the saints

It has been a busy fortnight.

Last Sunday, we had Choral Matins for the first time in this parish for many years. For the occasion, we sang the Howells “Collegium Regale” morning canticles – the justly famous Te Deum, and the less-often performed Jubilate.

We had known of this service for less than a month, and prepared the music in three rehearsals, at the same time as we were working on the Victoria Requiem for a service tonight, November 2, and a challenging anthem for this morning's Eucharist. It was almost more than we could handle. The three rehearsals were tense, often discouraging. I was much aware that these choristers are all volunteers, free to walk away at any time, and I feared that some of them might. As it transpired, we were further hindered by illness and other circumstances; on the day of the Howells, our choir of fifteen singers numbered only ten. When we learned that morning that one of our strong sopranos had laryngitis, and another was out of town, one of the altos, Kay, graciously moved to soprano at the warmup rehearsal and sight-read the part. Without her, we could not have done it. Without the hard work of all ten of these choristers, we could not have done it.

It was not without flaws, but the choir sang from the heart and there were some fine moments.

And then, on to this Sunday's Requiem, the four-voice setting by Tomás Luis de Victoria. We sang it in place of our normal First Sunday Choral Evensong, with our rector, L.L., providing good leadership in the High Church manner. The Altar was moved to its proper position so that she could face liturgical East for the Eucharistic Prayer as is meet and right, assisted by Deacon and Subdeacon, with plenty of incense.

We do not normally have services like this in our parish.

The Victoria was, like the Howells, not without flaws. But it was pretty good; the liturgy as a whole was very good.

From the Organist's point of view, the Howells was challenging to play, and its preparation kept me from advance work on today's voluntaries: the Leo Sowerby setting of “Sine Nomine,” a setting of the same tune by Craig Phillips (of which more later), and tonight's postlude, the Messiaen “Apparition de l'eglise éternelle.” As of Friday morning, I had done first workouts of only the final six-page fugue of the Phillips, the last two pages of the Sowerby, and I had not touched the Messiaen. I have played all three pieces before, and they had good fingerings and registrations in place; otherwise, they would have been impossible. Even so, it was a lot of work for two days.

It came to a climax on Saturday. I spent the day on the bench, much of it on the first eleven pages of the Phillips (both a first and second workout that day, sandwiched around the Sowerby, and about fifteen minutes on a few measures of the Messiaen, and some work on the hymns and anthem accompaniment). Late in the day, the Swell to Pedal coupler malfunctioned; when engaged, it has been causing the middle F to “blip” momentarily. Now, the F was not blipping; it was sticking on, firm and immobile until the coupler was removed. I could not play any of this music without the pedal coupler.

So, the clock ticking away, I climbed into the organ. It was clear what was happening – the wooden sticker that engages the coupler for that note had come loose and was blocking the tail of the key up. I removed the offending sticker – easily done, but it meant that the note no longer had its coupler. The loose backfall looked like it might want to rub its neighbor, but it cannot be removed without much trouble, far more than I can handle, and the “repair,” such as it was, had to suffice. When I went back around to play the instrument, it seemed all right.

Sunday morning arrived, and the service went well. The Sowerby went well, the choir sang its anthem, “At the round earth's imagin'd corners” by Lee Hoiby, very well, the hymnody was good, and it came time for the Phillips.

As you will hear in the linked recording, there is a soft section about two-thirds of the way through where the pedal has the melody on a 4' stop, very exposed, with repeated use of the F. It chose this moment to lock up, as I had feared – when I played F, that loose backfall hung on its neighboring E and both pitches played. It took me most of the exposed passage to figure out that when I tapped the note a second time, it would clear.

I have nonetheless posted the recording on YouTube for several reasons. Partly, I think that I played it fairly well, despite the ugly “car horn” effect of those F/E double-notes. More to the point, I consider it a fine piece of music, and would recommend it to other organists. I do not know if it is published, but if it isn't, the composer would gladly sell you a copy, and would be pleased to hear of your interest.

Most of all, in playing it (and in posting it here) I sought to honor my friend D.D., for whom it was written upon his retirement a few years ago. I well remember the night when it was first performed, in a splendid reading by Brett Wolgast – a far better performance than what you hear in my video.

In my years at this parish, D.D. has been a constant support and encouragement. Without him and a few other friends, I would have thrown in the towel a few years ago.
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The Pilcher is starting to have a number of action problems, of which the adventure with the F is the latest. I do not know what to do; in sum, they are more than I can deal with myself. I have asked – twice – a young local technician to come and work on the instrument; he does not appear to be interested. There is a fine and experienced organ man in the community who used to work on the instrument, but is nowadays physically unable to contort himself into it. I could bring the fellows from Bedient back over, and pay milage from Nebraska for a service call. They would probably want to do thousands of dollars of work on the action.

For now, I will see if I can keep it patched up.