Here is the oldest item on my list of things to put on YouTube:
Lord, I want to be a Christian (Spiritual, arr. by Moses Hogan)
Choir of Trinity Episcopal Church, Iowa City: December 19, 2015
Artwork: Head of Christ (Rembrandt, 1652)
The choir sang this at the ordination of my friend Marcus H. in December.
And here is one from today: the Vater unser of Bach that occupied me so thoroughly the past couple of days; after all of my angst, it ended up going pretty well. The clip includes both the larger setting and the small, manuals-only setting. The latter is why I included the Joshua Reynolds painting as the last of the three. The Rembrandt in the middle of the three is my favorite, but the other two also have something important to say about Prayer and are worthy of pairing with the Bach.
J.S. Bach: Vater unser im Himmelreich (BWV 682 and 683)
Feb. 28, 2016
Artwork:
Prayer service at the farm in Ukraine (V. Makovsky, 1886)
Old Man in Prayer (Rembrandt)
The infant Samuel at prayer (Joshua Reynolds)
There are twelve more items on my list. Hopefully they will be forthcoming.
[Wow! That was quick. I posted the Vater unser only a few minutes ago, and I see that it has already drawn a [false] copyright infringement flag from the YouTube robots, before I could even finish writing this post.]
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Saturday, February 27, 2016
He comes to us as One unknown
When I neglect the Music Box as I have now for more than a month, it is hard to return. Where can I start? What shall I say? The blank page lies before me, and still (as it has been these weeks) there is so little time, just what I can spare this day over my lunch.
I played a noontime recital at the Congregational Church on Wednesday; the Liszt “Weinen, Klagen” (of which I wrote when I played it in 2012 – here and here), plus a last-minute addition, the Preludio “Sine nomine” by Howells, to stretch the program a little closer to its appointed half-hour. I have recordings of both, which I should post on YouTube. But that is part of what has paralyzed me; I have quite a few sound files ready to be posted, but no time to do it. Thinking that I would write a Music Box essay once I had a link or two to include, I have done neither.
There was no Blaue Blume for the Liszt this time, for I did not play it as well as I did in 2012: Too many note mistakes, especially in the first pages. But I hope that I communicated something of its spirit. [Edit, the next day: Upon listening to the recording a second time and allowing a few days' space, I see that it is not so bad after all. Yes, there were note mistakes, one of them (at a stop change) grievous, but I should be content with it on the whole.]
The work was complicated by a large funeral on Monday, the wife of our previous rector, herself a priest well-known and respected across the diocese and beyond. Expecting a big crowd and knowing that some would arrive early, I poked my head in the room at 10:10. Finding it already more than half full (for an 11:00 funeral), I sighed, and sat down to play. I had expected this, so I had enough music at hand, though some of it was sketchily prepared, most of all the opening piece, the Bach prelude O Lamm Gottes unschuldig, which I had played through once that morning to have more or less ready if needed.
I am pleased to say that it fulfilled its function. When I began, the crowd was in party spirit, jabbering away at full volume with plenty of laughter and high spirits. The Bach begins quietly; I played for several pages and was probably attended to by no one in the room. But it grows stronger as it goes, and gradually got their attention. By the end (nine minutes later), the mood of the room had changed. Bach (and I would say the Holy Ghost) had begun to gather them for worship.
Monday funeral; Wednesday recital, with choral rehearsals afterwards. With the Youth Choir, I again spent too long with Lent Madness. If you don’t know about this, you should visit their website: Lent Madness. It is a good-natured parody on the “March Madness” college basketball doings that often coincide with Lent, complete with brackets, daily “color commentary” and much more. I have been posting the coming week’s matchups on the board and (with Nora, our Christian Formation director) talking about them.
The adult choir later on was an excellent rehearsal, with the St. Simeon’s group (which joins us for the First Sunday Choral Evensongs) alongside the regular choir. We did good work on the Howells St. John’s Cambridge canticles and an anthem by Kenton Coe, “My heart is glad.” After the break, when the St. Simeon’s singers had been dismissed, we continued with our work, finishing with about ten minutes on the first part of Handel’s “Worthy is the Lamb/Blessing and Honor.” That is the Second Lesson for Easter III, April 10, and we hope to sing it that day, with the Youth Choir alongside the adults. In a final sing-through to the beginning of the Amen, there was some Real Music in the air.
Thursday was a day for grocering, errands, tax preparation (the work of many days, on which I must nibble away as possible).
And so: Friday. With the Bach Vater unser for Sunday’s voluntaries, the large setting as prelude and the small as postlude. I have played it before (see here, when I played it six years ago on this same Sunday, the Third in Lent), but it is one of the most challenging pieces in the organ works of Bach. It needs more than the two days’ preparation available for it.
I gave the large setting about six hours; slow, frustrating work. The frustration was solely because of the short window for preparation, and stands as a warning. I should allow myself more time for such things. Keeping what at times are five contrapuntal lines going through thickets of accidentals is a considerable mental challenge – I constantly lose track of where I am, what clef my left hand is in, what key I am in, which notes are sharped, which are naturaled, the two-against-three that is one of the glories of this work. I worked steadily until I had to leave for an evening choir dinner; I worked longer than I should, making me about twenty minutes late.
Saturday. I overslept, worn out from the week’s work. After Matins, I did the choir room setup, and saw that I needed to update the Lent Madness bracket for the youth choir bulletin board, since they are singing tomorrow and will see it. We are almost through the first round, headed for the Saintly Sixteen. I noted that four of the remaining contenders for the Golden Halo are (among other things) writers, so I thought to post some quotations on my door: Julian of Norwich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John Mason Neale, Albert Schweitzer. I did this, and on my way upstairs to practice, thought that I should add pictures; that would give a better chance of drawing the children’s attention. So, I did: an icon of Julian, her book in hand and cat at her side, photographs of the others. For Schweitzer, I needed two: one of him at his African hospital, holding a baby, and another at the organ.
About that time, one of the street guys came in. Our discussion tended in a direction for which the Bonhoeffer quote was ideal, so I read it to him. He asked for two copies to share with his friends. Here is the quote:
And the thought came to me of Schweitzer sitting at the organ, in that photo on my door. I thought of him playing the Vater unser, which he certainly did, for he played the complete organ works of Bach in concert from memory (“from heart” might be the better term), having learned some of them in a WW I prison camp in Africa (where he was a missionary of German descent in French territory, and thus rounded up), “playing” on a tabletop with paper drawings of a keyboard and organ pedals
And I knew that he would approve of the way that I had spent the morning. I asked him to intercede for me.
It is now 3:00. My dinner is finished, I have lingered beyond it to finish this essay, and I must attend to my work. I hope for one more playthrough of the Vater unser, but I must also run the hymns, set the hymn boards – and not neglect the youth choir’s anthem: the choral song “He that is down need fear no fall” by Vaughan Williams. It has the potential to be Real Music, if they (and I) get it right.
As we discussed at the youth choir rehearsal, among his other works, Schweitzer was a bit of a theologian, most noted for his book “The Quest for the Historical Jesus.” In my opinion, the book opened a can of worms, leading to such abominations as the so-called “Jesus Seminar.” Some of the young people had heard bits and pieces of such discussions at home and in sermons, about how (so the scholars say, some of them) much of the Gospel accounts were written down so long after the fact that the things they describe are not true, not in a historical sense. So how can we know the “Real” Jesus?
That was Schweitzer’s question, too. One of the reasons I respect him is that he did not need this question to be answered in order to follow and serve Jesus as his Lord. I posted this quotation, mostly for the twelve-year-old who went on at length about these things, for it is the only real answer to it: Schweitzer puts this as the final paragraph of his book.
I played a noontime recital at the Congregational Church on Wednesday; the Liszt “Weinen, Klagen” (of which I wrote when I played it in 2012 – here and here), plus a last-minute addition, the Preludio “Sine nomine” by Howells, to stretch the program a little closer to its appointed half-hour. I have recordings of both, which I should post on YouTube. But that is part of what has paralyzed me; I have quite a few sound files ready to be posted, but no time to do it. Thinking that I would write a Music Box essay once I had a link or two to include, I have done neither.
There was no Blaue Blume for the Liszt this time, for I did not play it as well as I did in 2012: Too many note mistakes, especially in the first pages. But I hope that I communicated something of its spirit. [Edit, the next day: Upon listening to the recording a second time and allowing a few days' space, I see that it is not so bad after all. Yes, there were note mistakes, one of them (at a stop change) grievous, but I should be content with it on the whole.]
The work was complicated by a large funeral on Monday, the wife of our previous rector, herself a priest well-known and respected across the diocese and beyond. Expecting a big crowd and knowing that some would arrive early, I poked my head in the room at 10:10. Finding it already more than half full (for an 11:00 funeral), I sighed, and sat down to play. I had expected this, so I had enough music at hand, though some of it was sketchily prepared, most of all the opening piece, the Bach prelude O Lamm Gottes unschuldig, which I had played through once that morning to have more or less ready if needed.
I am pleased to say that it fulfilled its function. When I began, the crowd was in party spirit, jabbering away at full volume with plenty of laughter and high spirits. The Bach begins quietly; I played for several pages and was probably attended to by no one in the room. But it grows stronger as it goes, and gradually got their attention. By the end (nine minutes later), the mood of the room had changed. Bach (and I would say the Holy Ghost) had begun to gather them for worship.
Monday funeral; Wednesday recital, with choral rehearsals afterwards. With the Youth Choir, I again spent too long with Lent Madness. If you don’t know about this, you should visit their website: Lent Madness. It is a good-natured parody on the “March Madness” college basketball doings that often coincide with Lent, complete with brackets, daily “color commentary” and much more. I have been posting the coming week’s matchups on the board and (with Nora, our Christian Formation director) talking about them.
The adult choir later on was an excellent rehearsal, with the St. Simeon’s group (which joins us for the First Sunday Choral Evensongs) alongside the regular choir. We did good work on the Howells St. John’s Cambridge canticles and an anthem by Kenton Coe, “My heart is glad.” After the break, when the St. Simeon’s singers had been dismissed, we continued with our work, finishing with about ten minutes on the first part of Handel’s “Worthy is the Lamb/Blessing and Honor.” That is the Second Lesson for Easter III, April 10, and we hope to sing it that day, with the Youth Choir alongside the adults. In a final sing-through to the beginning of the Amen, there was some Real Music in the air.
Thursday was a day for grocering, errands, tax preparation (the work of many days, on which I must nibble away as possible).
And so: Friday. With the Bach Vater unser for Sunday’s voluntaries, the large setting as prelude and the small as postlude. I have played it before (see here, when I played it six years ago on this same Sunday, the Third in Lent), but it is one of the most challenging pieces in the organ works of Bach. It needs more than the two days’ preparation available for it.
I gave the large setting about six hours; slow, frustrating work. The frustration was solely because of the short window for preparation, and stands as a warning. I should allow myself more time for such things. Keeping what at times are five contrapuntal lines going through thickets of accidentals is a considerable mental challenge – I constantly lose track of where I am, what clef my left hand is in, what key I am in, which notes are sharped, which are naturaled, the two-against-three that is one of the glories of this work. I worked steadily until I had to leave for an evening choir dinner; I worked longer than I should, making me about twenty minutes late.
Saturday. I overslept, worn out from the week’s work. After Matins, I did the choir room setup, and saw that I needed to update the Lent Madness bracket for the youth choir bulletin board, since they are singing tomorrow and will see it. We are almost through the first round, headed for the Saintly Sixteen. I noted that four of the remaining contenders for the Golden Halo are (among other things) writers, so I thought to post some quotations on my door: Julian of Norwich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John Mason Neale, Albert Schweitzer. I did this, and on my way upstairs to practice, thought that I should add pictures; that would give a better chance of drawing the children’s attention. So, I did: an icon of Julian, her book in hand and cat at her side, photographs of the others. For Schweitzer, I needed two: one of him at his African hospital, holding a baby, and another at the organ.
About that time, one of the street guys came in. Our discussion tended in a direction for which the Bonhoeffer quote was ideal, so I read it to him. He asked for two copies to share with his friends. Here is the quote:
To be called to a life of extraordinary quality, to live up to it, and yet to be unconscious of it is indeed a narrow way.By now, it was 11:45. On Saturday. With the Vater unser nowhere near ready. I changed my shoes, sat at the console, said my prayer (“Jesu, juva,” just like Bach used to write on his scores) and looked at the score, bristling with its cross-rhythms and accidentals.
To confess and testify to the truth as it is in Jesus, and at the same time to love the enemies of that truth, his enemies and ours, and to love them with the infinite love of Jesus Christ, is indeed a narrow way.
To believe the promise of Jesus that his followers shall possess the earth, and at the same time to face our enemies unarmed and defenceless, preferring to incur injustice rather than to do wrong ourselves, is indeed a narrow way.
To see the weakness and wrong in others, and at the same time refrain from judging them; to deliver the gospel message without casting pearls before swine, is indeed a narrow way.
The way is unutterably hard, and at every moment we are in danger of straying from it. If we regard this way as one we follow in obedience to an external command, if we are afraid of ourselves all the time, it is indeed an impossible way.
But if we behold Jesus Christ going on before step by step, we shall not go astray.
And the thought came to me of Schweitzer sitting at the organ, in that photo on my door. I thought of him playing the Vater unser, which he certainly did, for he played the complete organ works of Bach in concert from memory (“from heart” might be the better term), having learned some of them in a WW I prison camp in Africa (where he was a missionary of German descent in French territory, and thus rounded up), “playing” on a tabletop with paper drawings of a keyboard and organ pedals
And I knew that he would approve of the way that I had spent the morning. I asked him to intercede for me.
It is now 3:00. My dinner is finished, I have lingered beyond it to finish this essay, and I must attend to my work. I hope for one more playthrough of the Vater unser, but I must also run the hymns, set the hymn boards – and not neglect the youth choir’s anthem: the choral song “He that is down need fear no fall” by Vaughan Williams. It has the potential to be Real Music, if they (and I) get it right.
As we discussed at the youth choir rehearsal, among his other works, Schweitzer was a bit of a theologian, most noted for his book “The Quest for the Historical Jesus.” In my opinion, the book opened a can of worms, leading to such abominations as the so-called “Jesus Seminar.” Some of the young people had heard bits and pieces of such discussions at home and in sermons, about how (so the scholars say, some of them) much of the Gospel accounts were written down so long after the fact that the things they describe are not true, not in a historical sense. So how can we know the “Real” Jesus?
That was Schweitzer’s question, too. One of the reasons I respect him is that he did not need this question to be answered in order to follow and serve Jesus as his Lord. I posted this quotation, mostly for the twelve-year-old who went on at length about these things, for it is the only real answer to it: Schweitzer puts this as the final paragraph of his book.
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same words: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who He is.
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