This year, the Passion and Resurrection are framed by the Incarnation: St. Joseph on the eve of Holy Week, and the Annunciation (March 25), transferred to the first open day after the Octave of Easter.
It is, of course, a Day of Preparation. Organ practice, lots of it. I made it through solid Workouts on the two big pieces for the week: the Samuel Barber Variations on “Wondrous Love” for Maundy Thursday, and the Final from the first symphony of Louis Vierne. More on that as the week progresses.
The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
A guest at Matins: a serious young man, perhaps in his twenties. He came in during the First Lesson, having been waiting for us in the Church – Sunday Matins is in the upstairs Chapel, because we were evicted from the Church by the previous Rector; our presence was disturbing to those who were arriving for the 7:45 Eucharist. I called out page numbers as we proceeded through the Office, but it was quickly clear that our guest was as thoroughly comfortable with Rite One Morning Prayer as Fr. H. (one of our retired priests) and I. It was good to have him there, and it may well have been as good for him to find a community of prayer as it was for the two of us, both old and nearing the end of our days, to have the company of a young man who cares about the things that so few consider to be worth their time.
I should know better. “The voice of prayer is never silent…” Prayer at morning and evening has been continuous in one form or another since the days of Moses, and probably before – perhaps all the way back to when the Lord God walked in the Garden in the cool of the day, seeking the company of the Man and Woman whom he had made. Who am I to think that it could die away when Fr. H. and I are gone from this life?
There have never been many who have been regular with the Daily Office. But there have, and ever shall be, always a few.
***
A lesson in improvisation: stay in the home key if the duration is uncertain.
This year, for the first time I was to “play something” as the people entered the church, having processed with palms around the block – formerly, we continued to sing. At the 9:00 service, it went well enough; at 11:00 on the organ and with a larger congregation, I essayed a modulation to the dominant. About the time I got well into that, the last of the procession came through the door, perhaps two or three minutes sooner than I had estimated. I rushed back to the tonic key, but did not round off the form satisfactorily.
Gerre Hancock recommends for such situations that one alternate phrases in an open-ended pattern (with the implication of staying in the home key): A, then B and return of A, then B and C, and return of B; C and D, and return of C, and so on until the liturgical action is complete (e.g., communion, or today’s procession). I was attempting a set of variations, which would also work – if I had stayed in the tonic.
****
Yoga and Psalmody: This afternoon was the final session of our Lenten Yoga class, taught by my friend and fellow-laborer Nora. I am an entire novice at this ancient practice, though I have some experience with the Alexander Technique and with Pilates, which (I find) have points of contact with Yoga.
Probably the most important shared concept is Breath, and the integration of Breath and Movement. This concept is shared with another ancient practice: Plainsong Psalmody. I went straight from the Yoga class to Evensong, up in the church, and I found my awareness of the Breath at the asterisk much deepened by what I had just done.
I must tell this to the choir on Wednesday, especially the Youth Choir. They follow my lead in taking a long break at the half-verse asterisk – if they don’t, I correct them until they do – but I suspect that they have no idea why it matters. It is a little silent centering of heart and spirit, right there in the middle of every psalm verse. It will help if they inhale slowly through the entire length of the pause, center the breath low in the abdomen, and do all of this with spiritual intention.
When we arrive at the Great Vigil in six days, the adult choir has about forty minutes of psalmody during the Office of Lessons, in the darkness by candlelight. If we could somehow Breathe with intention at all of those half-verses – hundreds of them, probably -- I suspect that we would be transformed.
***
The evening was devoted to next Sunday’s bulletins, and this Wednesday’s rehearsal plan. It will be a complex rehearsal: the first section will be devoted to the First Sunday Evensong (April 3, the Second Sunday of Easter). Some of the singers are dismissed, then we continue with work on the Great Vigil and Sunday morning; then, more of the singers are dismissed and a smaller group rehearses for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.
It took longer to prepare a workable plan than the two hours that it will take to have the rehearsal. I had to go back several times and add little things that we must rehearse on Wednesday because there will be no time on Sunday morning, or Saturday evening.
All told, I am involved in sixty musical items, large and small, between the beginning of Maundy Thursday and the end of the 11:00 service on Easter Day, and the choir needs at least some rehearsal on the majority of them. That is what makes this Wednesday’s rehearsal harder than usual to plan.
The list of sixty items does not include the Youth Choir rehearsal on Wednesday – they are focusing on the next time they sing, which is April 10 – nor the Taize service on Tuesday – nor the four additional Evensong items that will be in the Wednesday evening rehearsal – nor (thankfully) a prelude and postlude for Sunday morning; the brass quintet will do that.
For now, I am in fairly good shape in terms of practicing, thanks to hard work at the organ on Friday and Saturday. It is the organizational part that is on the edge of slipping into chaos. There may be some important things that I overlook until the moment they are needed., and there are certainly a great many small (and a few not-so-small) tasks that must all be completed in due time.
But I don’t need all sixty musical items at once; we can (and must) take One Service at a Time. The most complex of them is the Great Vigil, with twenty-one items; the simplest is Good Friday, with three hymns and a psalm.
When I feel overworked, I consider J. S. Bach, who worked much harder, and at a supremely high level. His example urges me onward, to do what I can in my time and place.
*****
I will attempt to write something here in the Music Box each day of this Week, and perhaps the Octave of Easter as well. In the meantime, here are a couple of YouTube clips from recent weeks.
First, an anthem: “When all else is gone.” The text by Shirley Erena Murray did not have a tune in her book “Touch the earth lightly” and I wanted very much for it to be sung on the appropriate Sunday as a response to I Corinthians 13. The only way for that to happen was for me to write something. It is again appropriate this week, the time “when all else is gone.”
when our faith is gone, when hope is vain,
love moves the stone,
love, love alone.
(Shirley Erena Murray, copyright © 2008)
Artwork: The deposition of Christ in the sepulchure (El Greco, c. 1575)
And an organ piece: this was the Liszt that I played for the midday Lenten recital at the Congregational church: here is the link. I should say a bit more about this music: here are part of my program notes from the concert.
Variations on “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen” Franz LISZT (1811-86)
Friend of Berlioz, Chopin, Paganini, von Bulow, Wagner, Bruckner… at the center of the most radical wing of German music of the mid-nineteenth century… adored by audiences across Europe and constantly surrounded by admirers… champion of new music and supporter of young composers, through his efforts making possible the first productions of Tannhäuser and Lohengrin… generous supporter of those in need, playing many of his recitals as benefits for the poor or for disaster relief… one of the greatest pianists of all time… a Roman Catholic of deep and mystical leanings who contemplated the priesthood as a young man and turned again to the Church in his later years… This was Franz Liszt, a musician of great complexity and genius.
The Variations date from a period of inner turmoil and grief. Liszt had departed Weimar in unhappy circumstances, settling in Rome where his long-time mistress, the Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, had come in hopes of gaining a divorce or annulment from the Roman Catholic authorities; by this time, it was becoming clear that this was a hopeless effort. His son Daniel had died in 1859; his daughter Blandina died in childbirth in 1862, the most immediate impulse behind the Variations. About this time (1863), Liszt moved into a monastic cell at the Oratorio della Madonna di Rosario in Rome and took holy orders.
The Variations are built on the bass line of the first chorus of Bach’s Cantata 12, “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen” – “Tears, complaints, cares, fear, anguish, and distress are the bitter bread of Christians.” Bach later used the same bass line as the ostinato of the Crucifixus from the B Minor Mass. Liszt develops this ostinato through a series of thirty increasingly free variations. After the final variation builds through a series of diminished seventh chords to a climax, a recitative leads to the conclusion, the chorale which closes Cantata 12: “Was Gott tut, daß ist wohlgetan” (“What God does is well-done”).
Artwork: Christ on the Mount of Olives, and the Angel with the Cup of Suffering (Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, c. 1750)
Christ being nailed to the Cross (Albrecht Dürer, 1511)
Christ carrying the Cross (El Greco, c. 1578)
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