the voice of the Church

Wednesday of Holy Week
(9 am) I need to practice. But the rehearsal with the brass quintet is at noon, and I must have Parts to set before them.

And many of them are buried somewhere on my desk. Now the impending chaos that comes from allowing things to pile up confronts me. I spend the first half-hour and more digging through the papers, putting some in a pile to do Later (that is, next week. High in this stack are various matters relating to the RSCM Course this summer), others in a pile to do Real Soon Now (some of it before tonight’s rehearsals), and a depressingly large pile of things that are Not Important, and Not Urgent. They are mostly things that people have given me to read, and I need somehow to honor their intent. But not now.

Some of the most important of the brass Parts lie at the very bottom of the pile, along with the elusive list of the five players’ names and instruments – I had the names in my head, but incorrectly lined up with their instruments. I adjust the church bulletin, thankful to catch this in time.

The big part of this work, now that I have found them, is adding tuba parts to the things that were arranged for quartet, not quintet, most of all the anthem. I scribble something out, finishing at 11:40. Time to go upstairs for the rehearsal.

It is in this manner that a great deal of composing and arranging is done – scribbling something out at the last possible moment. And some of the work done in such a manner is of the highest order. Not mine; if it is adequate, I will be content.

(later)
The brass rehearsal goes well, finishing at 12:30 on the dot. It is a good group, all the better because they play regularly together – they are the graduate student brass quintet of the local university. The tuba player gives me a "thumbs up" on my scribbled parts.

The afternoon is devoted to setup and preparation for the choral rehearsals: youth choir at 4:15, adult choirs at 7:00. I put the adult music in order and take it upstairs to the church, make my plans for the youth choir, set up the room, and it is 4:00.

“Sing, don’t Talk.”
But today some Talking is in order: review of the Proper Liturgies for Holy Week from the BCP, review of the difference between Proper and Ordinary, some final discussion of the Lent Madness, which has occupied us (perhaps too much) during Lent. For today is the Finals: Julian of Norwich vs. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I have quotes from each of them to read.

And a lot of singing: their project for April 10 is the conclusion of Handel’s Messiah – Worthy is the Lamb, Blessing and Honor, and the Amen. This is a tall order for a choir at our level, but the afternoon’s work goes well. We have a group of trebles, all around ten or eleven years old, who have grown into choristers who can take something like the Handel and sing it with strong Connection and delight. It is an honor to work with this choir.

The evening’s adult rehearsal goes well; I stay on task, though I talk a little too much, reading them Bonhoeffer quotes about Singing. We lay the foundation for next Sunday’s Evensong, review the music for Saturday night and Sunday, then work with the smaller group on the Maundy Thursday music and liturgy. They had volunteered to stay past our 9:00 dismissal for extra work, and I take them up on it. I hope that the extra half-hour will solidify the Thursday anthems – the one that is shakiest is the Duruflé Tantum ergo. Some of this group’s singing equals or even surpasses the level of Connection that I had heard and seen in those ten-year-old trebles, especially on the Bruckner Pange lingua. Without that sort of all-out conviction, of connection to the Music, Bruckner’s choral music (or for that matter, his orchestral music) fails, for when we sing it well, we are mirroring the love of God that was in his simple and pure heart. But here also, there is the transition at the page turn… it remains shaky.

No organ practice today, for all that I desired it. That leaves a lot of work for tomorrow.

Bonhoeffer, from his book “Christian Community, or Life Together”:

It is the voice of the Church that is heard in singing together. It is not you that sings, it is the Church that is singing, and you, as a member of the Church, may share in its song. Thus all singing together that is right must serve to widen our spiritual horizon, make us see our little company as a member of the great Christian Church on earth, and help us willingly and gladly to join our singing, be it feeble or good, to the song of the Church…

The more we sing, the more joy we will derive from it, but, above all, the more devotion and discipline and joy we put into our singing, the richer will be the blessing that will come to the whole life of the fellowship from singing together.