Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Sanders for President

Senator Bernie Sanders announces bid for Democratic nomination

I live in Iowa. In this state, the political parade has been underway for months, at least since the November 2014 election and to some degree even before that as presidential hopefuls crisscrossed the state to "help" their candidates for congress, senate and governor.

I have, once or twice, spoken well of former senator H. Clinton in these pages. In my opinion, she did good work as secretary of state and in some of the other gigs on her resume (the United Nations, U.S. Senate, First Lady). And there was a time when I really liked her husband. I voted for him twice, with enthusiasm.

But since those days, in my opinion Bill and Hillary have sold out to the Wall Street bankers. There is probably not a better political mind on this earth than Bill C.'s, and perhaps the two of them recognize that H. cannot be elected without large piles of corporate money.

Since announcing her candidacy, Hillary has sounded like a progressive. In my humble opinion, she is lying. As president, she will be no more progressive than President Obama. For all his talk of "hope" and "change," he likewise has been a subservient tool of Wall Street.

But Bernie Sanders? He is the real thing.

Mind you, he has absolutely no chance of being elected. None. Zero.
And were he to win, he would be unable to do anything, not with the Congress firmly in Republican hands.

In the fall of 2007, I spent far too much time and energy supporting someone whom I thought was a good candidate (most decidedly not Barack Obama). And before that, I put a lot of energy into supporting John Kerry, whom I thought (and still consider) a decent human being, and whom I honor for his courageous opposition to the Vietnam War (see, for example, the Winter Soldier investigation).

I do not think that I have the time or energy to do this sort of thing for Sanders, as much as I would like to.

But on caucus night, I am going to be standing in his corner, even if I am standing there all by myself.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Overtures, an Artist, and the Good Shepherd

This week, all three of the hymns that we sang were magnificent tunes and I would have been happy to improvise on any one of them. So I decided to include all three, one after the other, followed by a bit of development and a recapitulation of sorts.

One of the best models for a church prelude improvisation is the Overture. Often, such a work quotes several tunes from what is to come, one after another. Such overtures have been cranked out by the hundreds, from the earliest days of Italian opera right up to modern Broadway musicals and Hollywood motion pictures. Many of them are hackwork.

But it is possible to do this sort of thing extremely well:
Rossini: Overture to “William Tell”

Or from a later composer: Beethoven: Overture to “Fidelio”

Most would acknowledge Wagner to be the master of this form: Overture to “Tannhauser”

That gives us some worthy models to emulate on Sunday mornings....
This is as impossible as trying to imitate Bach!

Gerre Hancock used to say something like this: “When you improvise, there are no wrong notes.” He is right; whatever you play is the definitive version of the piece. That does not mean that the choice to go in one direction rather than another results in a better composition, for of course the possibility is present for Good Music or Bad Music whenever one plays – whether it is a piece from the repertoire by a Real Composer, or music of one's own.

Still, “there are no wrong notes.” Part of what Hancock meant is that very often an “unexpected” note, one that you did not intend to play, leads in a direction that is more interesting than what you had in mind. This happens every time I play and I think it is true of everyone who improvises.

This week's improvisation provides an example. At 2'24” into the file, I have completed the first section: St. Columba (“My Shepherd will supply my need”) in B flat. I am ready to move into the second section: Land of Rest (“I come with joy to meet my Lord”) in F. I make a transition, which is not especially well done but it gets me there. But at 2'44” I play an E flat in the accompaniment (at the top of the texture) which throws it right back toward B flat major – by 2'47” I have lost control of the tune and landed very firmly in B flat. I must then stay with it on through the tune (to 3'7”) where I then yank it kicking and screaming into F with a V-I cadence (finally!) at 3'26.

A full minute, out of a ten minute piece, doing something I had not intended. I wish it had not happened and I think upon repeated listening that it weakens the form. At the time, I considered it a disaster.

But the important part is where the player then takes it. Because of this little excursion, I make some other excursions out of the key during the course of the tunes. The first is at the transition between Land of Rest and the third section: Old Hundredth (“All people that on earth do dwell”) at 4'26”. I sequence through a couple of keys to get to my goal of G major (4'47”), and I probably would not have done it that way had I not played that E flat at 2'44”.

After some time with Old Hundredth, I had intended a development section based on St. Columba in Mode III (Phrygian, the mode whose keynote is “Mi”). In my preparations, I started by playing around with the tune in minor, but found Mode III (which differs only by one note, the second scale degree) more unstable and very interesting. I intentionally let it slip out of the key halfway through the tune (5'57”) on its way to the parallel major (E major, that is: 6'30”) and using the relationship of a third, to C major (6'40”). The key of E Phrygian is about as far from B flat Major as possible; we are on our way home, and we get there at 6'48” with yet another jump out of the key in the middle of the tune – again, I would not have done it this way without that E flat at 2'44”.

At 7'14” begins the transition into Old Hundredth for what amounts to a recapitulation, in the home key of B flat, to which we arrive at 7'34”. But right away, another mistake; I lose the tune at 7'40”. This one is repaired more gracefully than 2'44”; I simply stop and begin the tune anew, staying safely home in B flat. Once through the tune, and it is time for a coda (8'35”), mostly based on the final phrase of the tune and lots of IV-I cadential activity, one and a half minutes of it. This was entirely unplanned and would not have been needed but for the harmonic instability earlier – and I think it proved to be a good ending, much better than what I had intended.

The important thing is that most of these decisions were by instinct, by feel. In the middle of an improvisation, one cannot reason through it logically. But one can – and must – go where the music has led, mistakes and all. Sometimes it does not work so well; sometimes it is, by grace, much better than it would have been.

This is one reason why we must Know the Tune and be able to play it in pretty much any key. You might plan on a certain sequence of keys, as I did, but a “wrong” note or two might lead you into areas you had not intended to visit. You had best be able to play the tune once you get there.

And this is an important way in which improvisation differs from Real Composition. When you are writing it down, you can (and should) throw out things that don't work, and stay with the compositional process until the result is as perfect as you can make it. When you improvise, you cannot throw anything out; you must go on as best you can with the song as you have played it so far. In this, improvisation imitates Real Life.

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In order to post these clips to YouTube, I must convert my sound file into a MP4 file, with video. That caused me to discover www.WikiArt.org which has become one of my favorite sites on the Net.

Today's clip introduced me to a new (for me) artist: Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937). He was the first African-American artist to achieve a degree of international fame; you can read about him in Wikipedia here. The only black student at the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts, he was a victim of racism. He wrote:
I was extremely timid, and to be made to feel that I was not wanted, although in a place where I had every right to be, even months afterwards caused me sometimes weeks of pain. Every time any one of these disagreeable incidents came into my mind, my heart sank, and I was anew tortured by the thought of what I had endured, almost as much as the incident itself.
After his studies, he left the United States to escape the racism, ending up in France. There, he was accepted into the artistic community without regard to his race.

Many of his paintings are religious, such as the impressionistic one that I have used for the YouTube clip, “The Good Shepherd.” I love the moonlit night into whose shadowy darkness the Shepherd goes, seeking a lost sheep.

One of his other paintings that I discovered today and to which I will return is “The Banjo Lesson,” in which an old man teaches his grandson to play the banjo. It captures a moment that has been repeated countless times throughout the history of folk music. We pass what is precious to us on to the next generations, and so the Song continues.

While in Philadelphia at the school, Tanner became close friends with Robert Henri, who is another artist who has become important to me, mostly through his book “The Art Spirit.” I learned of this book from a novel: “My Name is Asher Lev” by Chaim Potok, and I must write about it sometime. In the meantime, I recommend both books to you.
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I would like to say more, but it is almost 11:30 at night, and it has been a long day.
May God's blessings be with you this night and always.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

some thoughts on Congregational Song

I am presenting a workshop on Leading Congregational Song for our local AGO chapter this Saturday (for those who live nearby, it is at 10 am, Trinity Episcopal Church, Iowa City). For me, this is a Big Deal; what can I say to these my friends? I have been struggling with it for about a week, and still do not have it firmly in place. But here are some ideas. I acknowledge my debt of gratitude to John Ferguson, formerly of St. Olaf College; I learned much of what little I know from his “Mini-Course on Creative Hymn Playing,” an audio CD and workbook available from the AGO website, and some of these ideas are explicitly his.

Know the Tune.
I wrote of this elsewhere. In this context, be able to play the tune with either hand, or in the pedals, without giving it a lot of thought – your mind will need the freedom to consider other aspects of your playing, not just the tune. It is good to take it through several different keys to improve independence. And I find it essential when learning a tune to sing along with solfas as I play. Singing it (with solfas) away from the organ is good, too.

Immerse yourself in the spirit of the Tune. Is is cheerful? Solemn? Dancelike? Is it a medieval Chant, or a Psalter tune, or Chorale, or folk melody, or nineteenth century “parlor song,” or big English “public school” tune? Or something else entirely?

Know the Text.
Know also where this Text and Tune fall in the overall Story, the mighty Acts of God which we remember in the liturgical year. If it is a good hymn and well-chosen for the liturgy, it says something unique that must be said at this precise point in the Story. How can the organist communicate the text so that it will connect with people?

Decisions about tempo, articulation, registration, and much more depend on what the Tune and Text are telling you.

Breathe.
If you don't, neither will they. Give them a reliable tactus, with a breath between phrases and especially between stanzas. Do it the same between every stanza – not one way after stanza one, another after stanza two. Within the stanza, how does a comma differ from a semicolon or period? Where will they want to breathe in spite of the need to carry over the line break for the idea? How can you play to help them across the gap?

Listen.
It is tempting, sometimes, to sing while you are accompanying the hymn. It is usually a bad idea, but you might have to do it – I am expected to sing as I play piano at the middle service, so I do. Whether you are singing or not, listen. Are they “getting it?” Are they dragging the tempo, or sounding weak and confused? How can you react? Sometimes I play too softly, hoping to encourage them to sing softly. If instead it is weak, maybe all it needs is another stop or two, especially 8' foundation tone. And sometimes I have prepared to play on full organ, but the congregation is smaller than expected; am I “blowing them away?” Too much sound discourages them just as much as too little; back it off a few stops. But if the singing is strong and confident, that frees you to expand the texture perhaps more than you had planned, or drop out for an unaccompanied stanza.

And that leads to the next:

Love your people, and their Voice.
Over time (if you pay attention) you will know very well how they sing, and how they will sing under different conditions. Most importantly, congregational song is what it is – it is not a polished performance (and if it is, such as in the BBC “Songs of Praise,” it is artificially so). In most cases, it is not what you would wish it could be – some people sing too loud and perhaps off-key; others aren't singing at all; almost no one has a Good Voice.

All of this is very much like the wrinkles on the face and hands of your beloved. There are reasons for all those wrinkles, for all the imperfections (musical and otherwise) of the people who gather in your congregation on Sundays.

[I must here insert a link to the song “Lies” by the Canadian artist Stan Rogers, with grateful thanks to Fr. Tim, who introduced me to his music. Take the time to listen to it. Read the lyrics.]
Sure was a bitter winter but Friday will be fine,
and maybe last Easter's dress will serve her one more time.
She'd pass for twenty-nine but for her eyes.
But winter lines are telling bitter lies...
Get to know your congregation's Voice, which is like no other in all of Christendom. Be a partner with it in the eternal Song.

Know (and love?) your instrument.
It is much the same. You are probably not playing the finest pipe organ in the world – not that there is such a thing, for no organ can play everything well – It might be a little hundred-year old Lady such as our Pilcher, with plenty of wrinkles in its face. It might be a brand-new fifty rank Randall Dyer in a fine acoustic, such as I played for many years. It might even be a 1970's Baldwin electronic, which I played for a while. Or a Hammond; I played one of those, too.

Whatever it is, get to know it. Know every sound on it, alone and in combination – every one of them has a potential use, somewhere and sometime. Know how it relates to the room, to the congregation's sound. Most of all, know how to use it to bring forth the spiritual gifts that are essential for the songs that you will all sing together.

That is enough for now. I still have some thinking to do between now and Saturday.


Here is a piano improvisation from last Sunday, mostly on the chorale “Christ ist erstanden,” with a bit of the opening song at the end (“Gather us in,” by Marty Haugen)

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Cookies and Coffee Hours

“Hospitality,” they call it. Cookies and coffee. “A little something.” Wine and cheese and a few crackers. Snacks for youth choir rehearsal. Or sometimes it is more substantial: a sit-down luncheon after a funeral, a church dinner for Maundy Thursday, a picnic.

The ideal that I think lurks in people's minds: smiling grandmotherly ladies baking tens of dozens of scrumptious homemade cookies and pastries and pies, bringing them to the church, serving them to the congregation at coffee hour in their smiling grandmotherly way, then cleaning up, washing all the dishes, putting everything away. Week after week, year after year, all for free.

This may have been possible sixty years ago, when there were a lot of women who did not work outside of the home and who took Church Work very seriously. My aunt Geneva was one of them; as a volunteer, she and one other lady cleaned her little country church every Saturday from top to bottom. And whenever they needed cookies, or baked goods, or something more substantial, she would pitch in. And stay with the task until the last person had departed, the kitchen was spotless, and the floors swept and vacuumed. All for free, because she loved the Lord – and, if one were to scratch the surface a little, she did have some pride in a job well done, and enjoyed having a chance to show off her cooking.

The modern Aunt Geneva works two part-time jobs and can barely cook for her own family, much less for church events.


It has become fashionable to disdain “inward-focused” activities in a church. Everything is supposed to be geared toward Mission, whether that be social service activities, or (around here) political activism on behalf of the environment or any number of other Liberal Causes. Baking cookies for coffee hour is not part of this. Nor is anything else that pertains to the ongoing maintenance and nurture of the congregation. Last Sunday, one of our young men put out a plea for people to help him mow the lawn this summer. The results: Zilch. Not a single person volunteered.

Sometimes it devolves on the church staff. On Maundy Thursday, our director of Christian Formation and her eldest daughter prepared a soup-and-bread supper for about forty people, with linen tablecloths, the church's good china, candlelight. It was splendid. But she did all of this because no one else would.

To be fair, several of the older women saw the situation and pitched in to help the two of them wash dishes and clean up afterwards (I did, too). Otherwise, I don't know how they could have gotten it done – and that was at the front end of four very busy work days for all of us – including the older women who helped, for all of them are on the Altar Guild – another “inward-focused” activity that struggles to find enough people to carry it forward. Pretty much all of them here are elderly, in their seventies and eighties and beyond; I suspect it is that way everywhere.

Times have changed. But one thing remains: these “inward-focused” maintenance activities that are essential to healthy congregational life, these activities that are humble, mostly out of the spotlight, and very often involve hard work and long hours – they are, every one of them, the work of a Servant. A slave, if you will. Just like the one whom we call Master and Lord.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord, neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. (St. John 13:16-17)

I cannot leave this without saluting those people who DO follow their Master in this; in our congregation, we have several ladies (and a few men, such as C.C. who does most of the Shrove Tuesday pancake supper every year) who do all that they can.

It is worth noting that while Mary sat at His feet and this “good part” is not to be taken away from her (St. Luke 10:38-42), it was Martha whom Jesus loved the most (St. John 11:5). And he said that on the last day, “he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.” (St. Luke 12:37).



Music for the Week:
Improvisation on O filii et filiae (O sons and daughters, let us sing)

“My pierced side, O Thomas, see:
My hands, my feet, I show to thee;
Not faithless, but believing be.”
Alleluia.
(Jean Tisserand, tr. John Mason Neale)

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Bach and Basketball

I thought about it, and decided that YouTube can survive one more playing of the Pièce d'Orgue, and that a few people who read these pages might enjoy hearing it, so here is the link.

Bach was of course German. As was customary, he normally gave tempo indications (when he did, which was rarely) in the international musical language of Italian. But here, he not only provides a French title, but French tempo indications: Très vitement, then gravement, then Lentement.

It seems to me that this Pièce is a shining example of a principle that I wrote about here, the use of pre-existing models as a guide to improvisation and composition. There were few more assiduous students of the best in contemporary music than Bach, from his childhood nights of slipping his uncle's musical scores out so that he could copy them out by candlelight on through to the end of his life. He knew the work of other German composers; he also knew the Italians such as Frescobaldi and Vivaldi – and the French masters such as Louis and François Couperin.

“But if I copy [insert name]'s music, I will sound like him!” No, you won't. No matter how hard you try, you will eventually sound like yourself, but yourself having learned from others. And this Pièce d'Orgue demonstrates it. No one would confuse this work with Couperin; it is clearly Bach – but he has entirely mastered the French style. For example, the gravement which forms the magnificent heart of the Pièce is much like a Couperin Plein Jeu, and that offers an interpretative entry for the modern performer that I do not think most people have noticed. I sought to have just a little bit of the flexibility that one would find in Couperin (I experimented with more, even playing around with adding French ornamentation!), but mostly strove for the immense grandeur of this aspect of the French organists, in its way superior to anything else in the organ repertoire.

As he did so often, Bach showed us how it could be done, but set such a high standard that it continues to be daunting. I can (to some degree) imitate Howells (as I described in the essay linked above), but Bach? Absolutely not. And he would have expected even the least of his students to do so, to be able to improvise on a chorale in the manner of the Orgelbüchlein, or “preludize” or improvise fugues in the manner of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Me? Not even close.

Perhaps if I keep playing his music, some of it might rub off.

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I wrote at the end of Sunday's essay:
… tomorrow Duke is in the national championship game. For old times' sake, I might stay up late and listen to it on the radio. That will indeed be like old times, when I was in junior high and high school, upstairs in my bedroom listening to ACC Basketball on my transistor radio.
Well... not quite like old times. I found that big-time sports broadcasting has changed in the years I have been away from it. As I searched the AM radio dial for the game (and did not find it!) I recalled that the last time I listened to a Duke game on the radio was the year that Nolan Smith graduated, I think it was 2011 or 2012, when they lost in the tournament, with Smith playing a magnificent game (as always) but not getting much help from his teammates. That was just three or four years ago.

And in 2010, I was able to watch the Duke vs. Butler national title game on computer the following day at the public library, with “March Madness on Demand” (TM), which was free.

That was the last time I actually saw the Blue Devils.

I think that MMOD (TM) is no longer free – though in truth, I didn't bother to even check on it this year. I know it went to “cable verification” in about 2011 or 2012 – you had to prove that you were a registered user of a cable TV service that was broadcasting the games, or pay a fee of about $4 per game. If one scratched the surface, it wasn't free even in 2010, for one had to give CBS Sportsline.com a large amount of personal information to access it. For any major sporting event such as the NCAA championship game, it appears that there is no longer free access. We do not have a television, but if we did, we would have needed a cable package (for a monthly fee). Or I could have gone to a sports bar – and paid $5 or $6 for a glass of cranberry juice or a soft drink.

We don't have internet service at home, or I could have (for free) followed a “game-tracker” which gives a written play-by-play account of the game and statistics. Even that includes the inevitable Commercial Messages, and it is a poor substitute.

So... the best I could do was to listen to a Fox sports talk show, where two broadcasters imitating the loudest and most obnoxious guys in the bar bantered about Sports, occasionally mentioning the Game. “We're watching the Duke-Wisconsin game to keep you up to date – Oh look at that dunk!!!! Frank the Tank!!!! [a Wisconsin player].” I note in retrospect that they talked quite a bit about the Game during the middle of it, but less and less as it drew down to the final minutes. In the final half-hour of the game, there was probably a total of two minutes of Game-time, mostly in the form “1:23 left, Duke on top by 4” and then back to an interminable discussion of the relative merits of the Yankees and Mets, and the fan's reactions to someone named “A-Rod” – why that would matter is something that of course “everyone” knows. And after every five minutes or so of “broadcast,” five minutes or more of Commercial Messages.

Next time – if there is a next time – I will wait until the next day and read about it.

And it is worth my adding the “if.” I remember the last time that UCLA won the title, the last of a long string of them under John Wooden (and this one with his successor), as the fans celebrated at the end, the broadcaster Al McGuire commented “They had better enjoy this one. It is going to be a long time before there is another.” At Duke, Coach K is getting old. After he retires, I expect it will be a long, long time before they make it to another Final Four.

Sunday, April 5, 2015

The Sunday of the Resurrection


5:00 am – I begin this Sunday of the Resurrection with words of affectionate regard for my friend John, the Sexton of this parish. Before he left last night after the Vigil (about 12:30 am), he made a point of coming downstairs to my office, where I was breaking my Lenten fast with a bit of Midnight Snack, notably including Matt's Chocolate Chip Cookies (two of them), in order to shake my hand and wish me a good-night (for I was sleeping in my office, as is my custom on this Night, short as it is).

John was here all night at the Vigil of the Blessed Sacrament on Thursday to provide security for the people who were keeping vigil – and on that night, it was necessary, as I wrote earlier; a deranged drifter wandered in about 5 am, when (I think) a young woman would have been alone in the darkened church. He had intended to go home and sleep for a while on Friday, but ended up staying all morning to deal with the drifter, as I described in Friday's essay. By this time, it was almost noon, so he assisted at the 12:15 Liturgy – as he often does, and as he did last night (Thurifer, filling the church with the holy Incense, the prayers of the saints, as it has never been filled before – we have a new thurible that can be swung more vigorously, and with the Rector's enthusiastic support, John was putting it to good use). And then he was back for the evening's choral Liturgy, where (again) he had to deal with the deranged man, who shouted curses at him as John evicted him.

On Saturday, John was among the four of us who observed Matins and the Liturgy of the Day, beginning a workday of sixteen hours – this I know, for it was my workday as well. At the end (after a well-deserved glass of champaigne at the reception), he and I struck the one hundred chairs in the Parish Hall (site of the Office of Readings, before the Eucharist in the Church) and made such other preparations as we could for today. And he will be here in a short while as Acolyte for the 7:45 Eucharist, and another busy morning.

There is probably not another Sexton in the entire Episcopal Church who would do all of these things, as well as being a man of uncommon Christian devotion and character. And through our work together, we have become friends. I am not sure that I have a closer friend these days, excepting Mrs. C. (who has been my Best Friend since we first became friends, almost forty years ago).

One of the memories I will cherish from this week was Friday afternoon, at the end of the Three Hours. Nora, John, and I broke our Good Friday fast together in the church kitchen around the little table, with a bowl of leftover soup and gentle friendly conversation, none of it about the church. I had intended to eat a small amount alone; their invitation to a much finer meal than I had planned was a Gift of Grace.

And so, on to the Day.

It occurred to me as I arose this morning that I could help my friend a little. The Rector desires that we set up the extra chairs that will be needed for the 9:00 during the fifteen minutes before it (and after the 7:45). As we struck the chairs last night, I could discern that John was worried about this – rightly so, for the chairs must be hauled upstairs by hand from below. I could see him attacking the job too vigorously – John is no longer young, and has had a heart attack – so I was worried, too. So “by chance” the thought came to me that I could pre-position the chairs at the top of the stairway, on the little porch beside the church door next to the Steinway. And so I did; a little twenty-minute bit of work that will ease John's day.

9:00 am – A snappish rebuke from someone moments before this service made me angry. I began the “Glory to God” (899 in Wonder, Love and Praise, the Black Gospel setting) in anger, harshly and too fast. And I realized that the young family of a former chorister was in the front row, their youngest daughter, who is likely to be in the choir in a couple of years and plays piano, right at my side, watching me very closely. I tried to settle down, and did so in time.

I must do better about this sort of thing, remembering the One who patiently bore a lot more than snappish rebukes and “never said a mumblin' word,” as the spiritual says. The Scriptures of this day said that I am dead to sin and alive in Christ. I must live this way, today and every day, if not for my own soul's salvation, then for the sake of these children and others who are watching.

10:00 am – Quick turnaround into the choral rehearsal with brass and continuo strings; John helps me set the chairs and music stands; the players arrive as the 9:00 congregation exits. The rehearsal goes well, the service goes well. Several people say kind words about the music, both today's and last night's – and one person commended the Good Friday anthem, which I did not think we did very well. The Piéce d'Orgue went well last night, and I repeated it as a prelude for both the 7:45 and 9:00 services. I recorded it, but I am not going to post it: a YouTube search turns up some 22,000 hits, and it does not need one more. But it means much to me that a couple of musicians whom I respect thanked me for playing it and said that it was good.

11:30 am – The highlight of the services for me was not anything musical; it was the Sacrament of Baptism for two of our young choristers, Lulu and Yaffa. At the console, I was at the opposite end of the church from the Font so I could not see them at all. But I could hear them; their child voices answering the questions, proclaiming that they renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness, and turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as their Savior. “Upon this rock I will build my church,” he said, “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” As St. Agnes and St. Lucy (and many others) proved, a little girl's faith can be stronger than all the legions of the Empire.

The Rutter goes very well. It was a delight to conduct this and have it turn out all right.

5:00 pm – The Roman Catholics calculate the Three Days, or Paschal Triduum, to begin after sundown on Maundy Thursday with the Mass of the Blessed Sacrament, continuing through the days of Friday and Saturday and ending with Evening Prayer on Easter Day. Thus, we scheduled it. I did not expect anyone to show up, but JF did. She had been a lector at the Vigil, but was unable to be at church on Sunday morning, and came for Evening Prayer. As it was a fine spring afternoon, we went into the courtyard for the liturgy, which centers on St. Luke 22 and the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

10:00 pm – And now we are done. I have worked in my office for several hours. I am depressed at the amount of work that lies ahead, with a large and complex funeral (involving two bishops) coming up on Saturday. I am tired; this was another sixteen hour day, and it was not enough. I did not even get everything put away from this morning, though I spent about four hours on that task. This evening, I would prefer to walk away from it all and not come back. But what about that little girl in the front row at the 9:00, or Lulu and Yaffa, whom I pledged this morning to support in their life in Christ?

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As I have occasionally mentioned, I once attended Duke University. In those days, I was in the bleachers for every home basketball game, excepting the semester that I was in Vienna. My keychain commemorates their 1991-92 back-to-back championships. I was much taken up with the players who after some disappointing years won the 2010 championship.

This year, I have hardly paid attention at all, other than noting that three of the Duke starters are what many call “one and done” players – young men punching their ticket to the NBA by playing one year of college basketball. By most accounts, they are fine young people and I wish them well. But I do not much approve of this approach to winning at any cost, the way worthless sleazeball programs like Kentucky do, and I am unwilling to devote the time to following the team, not like I was with Singler and Scheyer and Smith and Zoubek and Thomas back in 2010. We no longer have a television, and I have not watched a single minute of any of their games this season. For one thing, I grew disgusted with NCAA basketball on television because it has become mostly a Commercial Message Delivery System.

But tomorrow Duke is in the national championship game. For old times' sake, I might stay up late and listen to it on the radio. That will indeed be like old times, when I was in junior high and high school, upstairs in my bedroom listening to ACC Basketball on my transistor radio.

But I am not sure who I will be rooting for. It might be Wisconsin.

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Holy Saturday: Waiting

6:45 pm - It was a busy morning and midday: Matins and the little Proper Liturgy for Holy Saturday, with four of us, followed by about six hour on the organ bench. I could do more, especially with the prelude for tomorrow's 7:45 and 9:00 services – for both of them, I plan to improvise on “Easter Hymn” (Jesus Christ is risen today), and this is the one thing that I have most neglected. And there is the prelude for 11:00, a trumpet/organ duo by Telemann that I did not see until Thursday – and was unable to practice on Friday. That accounted for about two of today's six hours.

But more practice would likely be counterproductive, and I had setup to do; moving stands and chairs upstairs for tomorrow's 11:00, carefully setting up the organ console and conductor's stand for tonight – I will have to dash into the church, turn on the organ, and jump right into the Bach “Christ lag ins Todesbanden” and the Mathias Gloria in excelsis, and everything must be in place.

Before that, I rested from about 3:00 to 5:00. That is as much a part of Holy Saturday as any of the work, and equally necessary. I have arranged my life along the lines suggested (but not followed) by B. Franklin: “early to bed, early to rise.” It was not always so, but it has been since I started work in this parish, where my Sunday morning practicing must be completed by 7:15 am and I must be at my best for 9:00 and 11:00 services – and where I am Officiant for Matins several times in the week, so that I must be on the 6:13 am bus.

The drawback is that by 11:00 or 11:30 tonight when we get to the Pièce d'Orgue as the postlude, it will be at my lowest energy level, an hour when I am normally asleep. I have often played very badly for the Vigil Postlude; I hope it is not so this time.

But with all this, Holy Saturday remains mostly about Waiting.
O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of thy dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen [Collect for Holy Saturday: BCP p. 170]
Or as it says in Lamentations:
It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD (3:26)
It occurred to me to read this as the Opening Sentence at Evensong, a little while ago. I had been setting things up in the Church as the shadows lengthened. The Church is especially lovely at this hour with the sun streaming through the west windows, and that reminded me that it was the Hour of Prayer. So I did, and it was uncanny how well the lessons fit my state of mind: Psalm 27, Romans 8.

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I have sought to post an essay each day this week, and now it is done. If you have made it this far with me, thank you for reading. May the grace and power of the Resurrection be with you this night and always.

Friday, April 3, 2015

Good Friday, and a Remembrance

7 am – The Mass of the Pre-Sanctified: Fr. Hulme was Officiant for this conclusion to the overnight Vigil, assisted by my friend John, who bore the processional cross, veiled in black. A handful of us came forward to the Altar and partook of the Body and Blood of our Lord, reserved from last night's service.

After that: Matins and Litany, for which I was Officiant. Psalm 22, Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22), and three verses from St. John's Gospel:
Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go , thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards. Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake. Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice. (13:36-38)
And after that: Loose Ends. I cleared the music from last night, which was still at my place in the Choir, set up the choir room for tonight, emptied the dishwasher and washed the crock pots which had been left to soak.

One other Loose End: John told me of the man who was asleep in the Healing Touch room; he had been to the church yesterday, again in the evening, and in the early hours of this day during the all-night vigil, from there finding a place to sleep. He would not leave when we asked him, so we called the police, who spoke to him sternly and escorted him out. He was in bad shape, with the looks of one emaciated by addiction. I was not feeling charitable toward him, not nearly so much as John and Nora were, but he too is among those for whom we prayed at Matins, and will again tonight:
Almighty God, we beseech thee graciously to behold this thy family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed, and given up into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost ever, one God, world without end. Amen. (BCP p. 169, the Collect for Good Friday)

The musical thought that has been uppermost in my mind all morning is the nightingale from the Messiaen that I played as last night's prelude. I did not record my playing of it; here is a better performance.

The calm music represents the Upper Room, with the Words of Institution as a series of slow descending chords – akin in its soft gentle way to the mighty descending figures of Dieu parmi nous from the Nativity Suite. I have little doubt that Messiaen intended the resemblance, for God comes to us in the Bread and Wine just as much as He came among us in the Nativity. And then, a nightingale sings outside the window. All of this is repeated and expanded.

It is the bird, in his own beautiful language so foreign to our slow awkward songs, who proclaims the gentle Grace of the Sacrament, God with us, Dieu parmi nous.

But we are without that Grace for now. Until tomorrow night, we must wait.

Noon - On this day, no organ practice. I need the work, but it would be a desecration. I locked the instrument last night when we were finished with it after the opening hymn, and locked it must remain until tomorrow. I have worked fitfully in the office, but on this day it is always difficult to concentrate, most of all during the Three Hours. But my work – selecting hymns and voluntaries for several weeks of the Easter Season, starting the bulletins for next Sunday – serves as a reminder that the Eucharistic Acclamation is three lines, not just one:
Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.
There are other reminders: the nightingale's song in my memory, the blue sky and sunshine outside the little windows in my office, the very opportunity to slow down, to lay aside the frantic work of these past days with bulletins and lesson printouts and setups and rehearsal plans, the words and friendship of those with whom I share this work – the wonderful and amazing members of the Adult Choir who sacrifice much to be here for these liturgies, the ladies in the kitchen last night as we washed dishes, my colleagues in the care of this parish. Yes, I am nibbling at the work of the days and weeks that are to come, but these Three Days are the culmination and we have now prepared for them as best we can. Now it remains only to live them, in our liturgies tonight and tomorrow and Sunday – and beyond.

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It is but a small thing, a historical detail by comparison, but I would be remiss without a remembrance of the events of this week 150 years ago in 1865. Today, April 3, was the day that the Union army entered Richmond.

In a series of actions on the three previous days, the Union forces had achieved a breakthrough at Five Forks and the Confederate lines south of Petersburg, forcing Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia to withdraw from the city. They were on the march this day, headed for the planned rendezvous at Amelia Court House where they were supposed to find a supply train of food and provisions. But no provisions were there, forcing a delay that allowed the Union forces to catch up. This led to the action at Saylor's Creek on April 6 where about a third of the Confederate force was cut off and forced to surrender; I wrote of these places here when I visited some of them a few years ago.

And on April 9 – Appomatox.

Whitman wrote of his memories of “ever-returning spring” in one of the great poems of the English language, in regard to the events that followed just a few days later at Ford Theater:
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
He is welcome to mourn for Mr. Lincoln. But for me, these first days of April will always be bound up with the fall of Richmond, the hungry and desperate march west, and the surrender. The example of these brave men, Mr. Lee most of all, continues to prompt me to greater faithfulness to my own duties.

Some years ago, I wrote:

The legacy of the Confederate States of America is a mixed bag. Yes, slavery was part of it. The racism of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan that followed the war must be counted as part of it. In this, the CSA was no better, and in my opinion no worse, than the USA, or any other nation of the earth. For every nation and people of the earth, history and culture amount to a mixed bag, with shameful deeds alongside moments of glory; men and women who would be better forgotten, and those whose names should live forever.

A certain indescribable freedom was lost when Old Dixie went down. I have felt the evanescent spirit of it lingering among gatherings of my older relatives, and in conversation with neighbors and co-workers “back home,” especially the more backward and uneducated among them. I have tasted it in the moonshine at my uncle's funeral, and in my mother's corn bread and beans, made just the way her mother, and her mother's mother, made it. Some of it can be heard in the old “hillbilly” songs, and to a lesser degree in the bluegrass and country music that descended from them, or in the “shape-note” singing that has survived mostly in the Old South.

On this Day, I find it worth revisiting another thought, as well:
Lamentations: the mystery of Providence


Thursday, April 2, 2015

Holy Week: Looking unto Jesus

Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)

Wednesday Report Card:
Youth Choir – B.
We did some work on the Three Days that was not in the direction I expected, but was good. Following up on a question, we spent more time on Holy Saturday's little one-page liturgy (BCP p. 283) than was fitting, but it satisfied one chorister's curiosity and perhaps opened the door a crack for others on this much-neglected service, and we talked about why there is no Eucharist that day, and no Reserved Sacrament between Wednesday night and the Great Vigil. This was good. We sang a lot, and with energy. Psalm 18 is making progress. The adult choir has a lot of trouble with this one; the manner in which God is portrayed is not very Episcopalian (e.g., “smoke rose from his nostrils and a consuming fire out of his mouth [v. 9]), and it is highly militaristic (“He trains my hands for battle and my arms for bending even a bow of bronze” [v. 35] and “I destroy those who hate me; they cry out, but there is none to help them” [v. 41]). The young people take all of this in stride without the slightest difficulty.

Adult Choir and Instruments – B plus?
I am comfortable with the manner in which we used our two hours for rehearsal. There was much that we did not get done – we did not so much as open the book for the Great Vigil Psalmody – but I think that we touched on all the things that most needed it. The Rutter piece went well. It is entirely too much fun to conduct such an ensemble and the sound of all those brass players and organ and choir in the room is spectacular. I remind myself that it is an expensive luxury; this one service will cost us near to $1,000. I must not become too enamored of such things. The two unaccompanied pieces that worried me? The one for tomorrow is in good shape; the one for Friday is shaky.

On to Thursday.

This day was not as frantic as Tuesday, but it was steady work all day long, most of it not properly my job, but necessary. All of a sudden, it was 5 pm with the choir warmup at 5:15 and the Divine Liturgy at 6:00. We sang well; the Liturgy was conducted with dignity, right down to the end, when the priests stripped the Sanctuary and the Holy Altar, washing it and marking the corners and center with the holy Chrism as we chanted Psalm 22. They departed, turning out the lights as they left, leaving only the two candles on the side altar with the Blessed Sacrament.

But it was not time for us lay folk to depart; a dinner had been part of the evening and there was cleanup to do. I did not stay to the end, but I did remain so long as I could be helpful.

It was a Good Day. I believe that today I helped my fellow-servants prepare for this night's heavenly Banquet, and I sensed its far-off glories at the end of the day as I partook of the Body and Blood of our Savior, and then sat with my friends at the dinner.

But we are just getting started; we must “run with patience.”

[to be continued]

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Holy Week: Choir Day

Last evening was my final dinner with Mrs. C. until Easter Monday. Like as not, we will hardly see one another in waking hours for the rest of this week. We had a frugal and thoroughly delightful supper: macaroni and cheese from a box, leftover pinto beans, frozen peas.

One of the ways in which I love this woman is for her thriftiness. A chance remark at staff meeting yesterday reminded me that not all women are this way; many of them who are otherwise fine people live for Shopping – their credit cards at the limit, their closets bulging with new clothes, expectations of constant diversion and fun, most of it expensive. Mrs. C. has never been that way.

Men are guilty, too; I know men who have to have a brand-new Big Truck every two or three years, who have many thousands of dollars worth of Guns and Ammo, and the latest super-large screen TV in their den so they can watch sports and action movies. And the latest and fastest computers and iGadgets so they can play games and do Cool Stuff.

Last night was also the final time for a good night's sleep; I was in bed by 7 pm. But I did not sleep; I lay awake, worrying about the loose ends from yesterday and the rest of Holy Week, and most of all about tonight's choral rehearsals.

For today is mostly about the choirs. I began with about an hour of Setting Things Up for tonight – the choir room for the youth rehearsal, the upstairs for the adults. We have an instrumental ensemble of nine persons (ten, counting Jean L. at the organ); they need chairs, and every music stand that the church has.

The rest of the morning was on the Bench, much of it (again) with the Pièce d'Orgue, bringing it to a good level where I can now lay it aside until Saturday.

Years ago, my piano teacher Mr. Fishbaugh chided me when I contemplated repeating a Schubert sonata that I had played two years before. “You must not do that! You must always be learning new things, not replaying the old.” That was excellent advice for a callow youth of twenty-three years. But now, almost forty years later? I played the Pièce last year at the Vigil, and it was such a perfect fit to the occasion that I am repeating it, and may continue to play it in all of the years that remain to me. There are a few other compositions – all by Bach – that have earned their place on particular Sundays and Feasts – the “St. Anne” prelude and fugue at funerals and on Trinity Sunday, the “Komm, heiliger Geist” settings from the Clavierübung on the Day of Pentecost, the C major “9/8” prelude and fugue on the Sunday after the Ascension, “Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam” on the Baptism of Christ. I do believe that the Pièce d'Orgue has found a place at their side.

That work sufficiently done – enough for today, at any rate, for tomorrow's prelude, the “Institution of the Eucharist” from Messiaen's Livre du Saint-Sacrement, needs a lot of work, but hopefully not more than I can squeeze in – I spent the afternoon in score study and rehearsal preparation. I am nervous about having a Good Rehearsal with the instruments, for I do so little work with such ensembles or with reading from a Real Conductor's Score (oversized, with lots of parts to track, and in this case a lot of mixed meter). The piece: a setting of the Te Deum by John Rutter.

Years ago (again I say that, the language of an Old Man) I learned to deal with such a score from an article in Choral Journal by Margaret Hillis, the magnificent conductor of the Chicago Symphony Chorus in those days. I have marked the score by her system, especially the meter and tempo changes and cues. This helps a novice like me keep track of what is important. But I must put these skills to work tonight. The last time I worked with instrumentalists, the concertmaster (a fine high-school player) found it necessary to publicly chide me for my inability to keep a steady tempo, the most basic responsibility of a conductor. Tonight, I must do better.

Also, I worry about the multitude of bits-and-pieces for the liturgies of the Three Days, and getting the choir comfortable with them. There are two unaccompanied pieces that remains touch-and-go and will need lots of time tonight. And there is the Psalmody, mostly for the Great Vigil. We did not sing these things very well last year, largely because I neglected them in rehearsals. I have not neglected them this year, but it takes a good half-hour to simply sing through all of them. We cannot afford that much time on them tonight.

And finally, I must not neglect the Youth Choir. They have their normal afternoon rehearsal, and most of them could care less about Holy Week. Almost none of the children attend any of the liturgies (except for Easter Day). I cannot let the week go by without trying to teach them a little. Last week we had a good lesson about the Annunciation, and noted on BCP p. 17 that the Day is exempt from Lenten disciplines. This week, I hope to take them through the Proper Liturgies for Special Days (BCP p. 274 and following), looking for what I have taught them are the “Dearly Beloved” statements, which (in many Prayerbook liturgies) describe the reason for the liturgy. There is an especially fine one at the beginning of the Great Vigil:
Dear friends in Christ: On this most holy night, in which our Lord Jesus passed over from death to life,the Church invites her members, dispersed throughout the world, to gather in vigil and prayer. For this is the Passover of the Lord, in which, by hearing his Word and celebrating his Sacraments, we share in his victory over death. (BCP p. 285)
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday morning lack such an explicit statement – partly because they are all in essence part of one Liturgy, spread over the Three Days, and await the above statement to fully disclose their meaning. But much can be discerned from the Collects with which these services all begin (BCP p. 274, 276, 283).

However, I cannot do very much of this. The old conductor's saying “Sing, don't talk” applies with emphasis to youth and children's rehearsals. Their patience with a lot of BCP work and lecturing from me is very short. We must mostly sing – and not just for reasons of attention span; we have a lot of musical work to do. They must get a handle on all fifty verses of Psalm 18 in Anglican Chant, and much else, for choral evensong in May. There is far too much to squeeze into this day's rehearsal – so, again, I worry. Can I lead them in a good and productive rehearsal?

[To be continued]