I will sing with the Spirit

I will sing with the Spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also (I Corinthians 14:15)

Our choir sang John Rutter’s setting of this text, the motto of the Royal School of Church Music, at the November Evensong. In deciding whether to post it, I scanned YouTube, which claims “about 10,700 results” for this title. There is the version by Rutter’s own choir, the Cambridge Singers, another by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and what must be hundreds or thousands more from every part of the world, choirs large and small, professional and amateur. Here are a few that I enjoyed from the first couple of pages of results :

A girls’ choir from Jatipon, West Java, Indonesia.

Another girls’ choir (with nine members), from Ontario, Canada.

And yet another girls’ choir, this one in a performance that appears to be part of what won the choir a gold medal at a choral festival. It is a place that I cannot figure out where it is, or even what language is on the banner behind them. In many respects, this is my favorite version, even more than our own choir.

On a much larger scale, this performance is with a large festival choir and orchestra, I think in South Africa. It is a place named Kapstadt, and there is a city by that name there, and the wonderful ethnic mix of choir and orchestra could be South African. Thanks be to God; I remember the days when such a choir would have been impossible in that country. “Hope changes everything.”

The above performances are all in English; here is one in the language Malagasy, from the island of Madagascar, in a gorgeous church.

What these five choirs from around the world have in common is the beautiful and intense Connection with which they sing.

I think that we also sang with Connection, and I don’t find anything quite like our version, which is posted here, although (as usual) it is audio only; the photo is of our combined choirs from last year.

I write this essay as a reminder that what we do in our little corner of the Midwest is a very small part of the Song. It is sung everywhere, and unites us across cultures, ethnic backgrounds, language, and time. It is thus a sign of hope. Things will not always be as they are now; someday "they will beat their swords into plowshares," as we heard in the Advent lessons this morning.

Hope changes everything

From the song “Sing, People, Sing,” by Pat Humphries and Sandy Opatow, as arranged by Jean Littlejohn:

O hear the banjo ring
Hear the people sing
Hope changes everything
Sing, people, sing.

Jean’s choir, the Family Folk Machine, sang this in their concert this afternoon.

From Russ Feingold, former Senator from Wisconsin who lost a bid in the recent election to return to the Senate: in an e-mail to his supporters after the election, he wrote “… something is happening in our country. I don't understand it completely. I don't think anybody does. But we as Americans have to do the best we can to deal with the pain in this country and get people to come together.”

It looks to me like we are in for hard times. I have said it before: under the label “national calamity” in the sidebar to the left, I see that I have said it in one way or another twenty-one times in this blog. Here is part of one such essay, from 2013:

The final hymn festival, the closing event of the [Hymn Society] conference, was titled "New shoots and buds: new directions in congregational song," led (mostly) by Tony Alonso and Hilary Seraph Donaldson with lots of other musicians -- almost all of them under the age of thirty (Hilary's father Andrew, a long-time Hymn Society leader, was one of the exceptions; it was great to see father and daughter together among the musicians.)

I learned that the organizers had not met in person before the conference. The planning, extending over a year, was done entirely through meetings on Skype and through other forms of electronic communication.

And they see what I see in the world. The penultimate hymn was a call to eschatological hope, which is central to the witness of the Church -- a hymn that they said was hard for them to find. It was sung to the strong shape-note tune "Morning Trumpet," with lines like this:

“Let the banker and the president beware the trumpet's call,
And beat swords of greed and commerce into equal shares for all.
Let the teachers speak in wisdom, let the music-makers play,
Let the weavers weave the tent where we shall gather on that day.

“Lowly eyes shall be lifted, while the tyrants taste their fear,
For that sound is both a gospel and a warning...”
("The trumpet in the morning," by Rory Cooney)

I sang, we all sang, with tears in our eyes, longing for that day when all shall be made right.

Later that day as I drove west through the Alleghenies into one last mist-shrouded mountain sunset, I thought of these brave words and those who sang them. Will they -- will we -- have the strength to stand when the drone attacks and "peacekeepers" kill our friends, spies and informers are everywhere, and all is darkness -- as it already is in parts of the world?

I was taken to task by a commenter after the election because of my hardness of heart and lack of political activism. I was told that I need to get off of my organ bench and live up to my “loudly proclaimed discipleship.”

Well, no I don’t. Instead, I must redouble my efforts to play better, to be a better choral director and church musician.

One part of what I must do - what all musicians must do, young and old – is sing together. My friend Jean has a big role in this, here in our community. In a different way, I have a role, too: there are specific things – true things - that we can sing in a church choir and in a Christian congregation that a community group cannot, and things that I can share through the music of Bach and Messiaen and others, and our work as choral singers, and in my own creations, that are my particular responsibility.

There are times when Music is one of the few ways that we can find hope.
There are times when Music binds up the wounds of the soul and body.
There are times when the Song is what holds us together.
There are times when the only way we can come together is by singing.

It seems insignificant. Impractical. Powerless.
No more than a mustard seed, or yeast in the dough.

But it is what I am called to do. So is Jean, so are countless others around the world, and not just musicians: poets, authors, dancers, artists, anyone who creates. We must put our best stuff out there, and keep on doing it, no matter what. Why? “Hope changes everything.”

I cannot see how it can change anything at all; that is why it is Hope, for it is not based on what we can see.

But “we are saved by hope.” (Romans 8:24)

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
(Emily Dickinson)

From this morning's liturgy:
To thy heavenly banquet (Alexis Lvov)

… if written down, it would appear as a well-thought-out work.

It has always been known that the greatest pianoforte players were also the greatest composers; but how did they play? Not like the pianists of today, who prance up and down the keyboard with passages which they have practiced—putsch, putsch, putsch;—what does that mean? Nothing! When true pianoforte virtuosi played it was always something homogeneous, an entity; if written down, it would appear as a well-thought-out work. That is pianoforte playing; the other thing is nothing. (Ludwig van Beethoven, as recalled by Wenzel Tomaschek – see the footnote)

Recently, I subscribed to the journal “International Piano.” having learned to my dismay that the old “Piano Quarterly” which I read for years is defunct.

In the current issue (pages 16-17), one of the columnists discusses a recent list of the “twenty-five greatest pianists” of all time, prepared by a UK classical music station. The columnist points out that such lists are always highly subjective, no more than “light entertainment.” He complains that the list includes pianists who died before the age of recordings, about whom we can go only on hearsay – Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Clara Schumann. Then he claims that none of these could stand up against the current generation of virtuosi. “Beethoven would have made the Top 25 in 1800. But in 1900—let alone 2016? No way. Even Liszt, acknowledged as the greatest pianist of the nineteenth century by most of his peers, would struggle against the talents of today.”

I don’t think so.

Not in the terms described by Beethoven. I would much rather hear him play – wrong notes, broken strings and hammers, deafness and all – than any of the modern players, “prancing up and down the keyboard” with their carefully manicured repertoire. “From the heart—may it return to the heart,” Beethoven said of the Missa Solemnis, and there is no doubt that this characterized all of his playing. Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann – it was the same with them.

But that is beside my point.

“… it was always something homogeneous, an entity; if written down it would appear as a well-thought-out work. That is pianoforte playing; the other thing is nothing.”

A “well-thought-out work.” That is how I want to play. That is why the constant struggle to improvise inside of a form rather than just “noodling” is so important.

At the suggestion of a friend, I listened to some recordings by a well-known New Age pianist (whom I will not here name). He succeeded in what I think was his aim – music that is intentionally bland. All mezzo-forte so that it can serve as background at home or in the workplace – no pianos that would disappear behind background noise, no fortes that would draw attention to themselves. The typical piece is (to my way of thinking) a mere fragment – two or perhaps three chords carefully chosen so as to never resolve in a cadence, in a simple and repeated left-hand figuration, with bits of melody and a few gentle jazz riffs in the right hand. To put it in the best light, it is relaxing, so long as one does not listen too closely.

That is what I want to avoid.

A convoluted path led me to the work of Mike Garson, a pianist who is best known for his work with the rock musician David Bowie, plus the bands “Nine Inch Nails” and “Smashing Pumpkins.” Not music to which I have until now paid any attention – I knew the name “David Bowie” (may he rest in peace) but had never listened to so much as one of his songs until the other day. For an example of Garson’s work in this context, I would recommend the song “Aladdin Sane.” Garson has a classical piano background, plus a lot of experience in jazz. And he has sought to find his own way of playing. It is a far cry from the New Age pianist who carefully stays in the background.

I can learn from this man. A good introduction to Garson’s way of thinking, which is highly spiritual in its ethos, can be found in this interview. His work is so different from anything I have done as to be extremely valuable for me. Thus, I shelled out $50 for his video “master class.” I am not very far into it as yet, but there are many ideas here. He describes his “Now Music” (his term for solo improvisation), and his beginning with it – a discipline of improvising little “etudes” – at first, just fifteen seconds or so, working at a specific figuration or other musical element. He says that he did more than three thousand of these.

That is a terrific idea for someone who wants to learn to improvise; it is not far from Gerre Hancock’s suggestion to harmonize scales in many different musical styles – those too are a form of little “etude,” or “study.”

But that begs the question: what direction should I go? I have been reading about Beethoven; I could extract interesting bits from his sonatas and make them into etudes, with the goal of making these things my own. Or Chopin – another of Garson’s projects as he developed his “Now Music” was to improvise a Nocturne in every key. Or I could go back to Fux and the Gradus ad Parnassum – this is how to deal with the Gradus as an improviser, and perhaps the key to it I have been seeking – improvise a little phrase in species counterpoint, play it back and check for parallel fifths and other violations, try it again. I never made it past two-part counterpoint; what would happen if I ventured into three-part and beyond?

I cannot do all of these things, and the direction I choose will change the manner in which I will play. For now, I will continue with the Garson masterclass, and my work Sunday by Sunday. That is the context which must guide my work; though I can learn from Garson, I cannot play like him because I must begin the Gathering of the Holy Eucharist. My music must remain linked to the tunes that will be used in the service, and it cannot be so “in your face” as to draw undue attention to itself. But neither can it be bland background music which would imply that what is to follow is without significance.

*******
Footnote: The Beethoven quote is from the biography “Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph” by Jan Swafford, pg. 644. Swafford adds: “What Beethoven was talking about was not playing from score but rather improvisation. [Carl] Czerny noted that Beethoven’s more formal improvisations sounded like a published piece, just as Beethoven here said they should.” Swafford also adds in an endnote (p. 1026) that Tomaschek wrote his recollection many years after his visit to Beethoven, so it might have been distorted by time and memory.

I have been reading the Beethoven biography for several months. It has made me like Beethoven considerably less. But (and I think this is part of Swafford’s point) it is all the more amazing that his music could come into being when his mundane life was such a shambles.

Seid umschlungen, Millionen!
Diesen Küß der ganzen Welt!

Sanders for President, Part Two

At the outset, I must say that I am delighted that Queen Hillary got her comeuppance, alongside the Democratic National Committee and the mainstream media.

I have not forgiven her for the manner in which she illegally torpedoed the Sanders campaign, using the supposedly impartial Democratic National Committee as an arm of her campaign and the news media as mouthpieces for her campaign propaganda.

I have not forgiven her for calling my people “deplorables.” It was a defining moment for me when I realized that it is precisely what she would have thought of my parents and virtually everyone that I grew up with.

I have not forgiven her for being in bed with the Wall Street bankers, for being obviously more comfortable with the Goldman Sachs executives than with unemployed coal miners or people at a food bank in Kimball, West Virginia.


I wish that Donald Trump could have lost the election, too. I suspect that his supporters (I am not one of them) will soon discover that, like Clinton, he has both “public” positions and private positions on every issue. I suspect that his views are even more subject to the winds of expediency than Mrs. Clinton’s, and that is saying a lot. I suspect that his anti-establishment talk is no more than that – empty words. He is likely to give an even larger share to the 1% and the corporations in tax breaks, at the ultimate expense of those who will someday, in one way or another, be presented with the bill. These are likely to be the children who sing in my choir and their peers, coming of age in the 2030’s and beyond. I grieve for them.

I suspect that the United States will be a darker, more divided, and more dangerous place in three or four years, most of all for people who are not of white European descent.

Senator Sanders (born 1941) is not young; he will be pushing eighty by the 2020 campaign. Six months ago, I would have said Senator Elizabeth Warren would have been an acceptable second choice as a progressive candidate, but not after her shamefully enthusiastic endorsement of Clinton, when an endorsement of Sanders might have made a difference. “We trusted you,” hecklers cried during her speech at the Democratic convention; I hope that none of us will ever again trust Senator Warren.

But, whoever it might be, I think the stage is set for a genuinely progressive candidate to run against President Trump. By 2020, we will have a good idea what a Trump presidency is like, complete with Republican control of House and Senate and probably the Supreme Court. And I think a great many people by then will be ready for some genuine change.

The trouble is, there are more directions for change than one. The stage may also be set for a more effective candidate from the far right, perhaps a charismatic Iraq/Afghanistan war veteran with a fondness for armbands and torchlight parades. Mr. Trump’s campaign provided a model for how such a person could win an election in the United States. I suspect there are young adults who have been paying attention.

[Edited Nov. 15 to add: I received an anonymous comment on this post, and deleted it. Upon reflection it deserves better than that, and the person raises valid questions which serve as a counterpoise to what I wrote. I continue to maintain, as I did after the Democratic Convention, that I would never vote for Mrs. Clinton even if my vote handed the election to Mr. Trump. I remain comfortable with that decision and consider it thoroughly congruent with my Christian faith. I note that I did take action: I volunteered for the Sanders campaign and gave it financial support, partly because he would have easily defeated Mr. Trump. I gratefully accept this person's prayers for my hardness of heart.

Because there is no way to un-delete a comment, here it is, pasted from the notification e-mail:]

You write: "for calling my people deplorables." I hear that you were personally affronted and that your pride on behalf of your family and old friends was wounded. But, please, help me track both your logic and the juxtaposition with your professed Christian faith.

I have read the statement made by Secretary Clinton to which you refer, along with her apology for that statement. Secretary Clinton called out some Trump supporters for racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and islamaphobia. The days since the election have offered more than 200 episodes of harassment and violence committed in President-Elect Trump's name and verified by the SPLC and ACLU. It would appear that some followers and supporters of P-E Trump do indeed feel lifted up, validated, and emboldened to pursue acts of racism, sexism, homophobia, and islamaphobia.

Questions for your reflection:

1. Did you engage with Secretary Clinton's apology for the comments that personally offended you and your family? And if you did, how? And if you did not, why not? And what does your response illuminate about your faith and discipleship?

2. Having withheld your vote from Senator Clinton, how will you reconcile your conscience with the harms now visited upon women, people of color, LGBTQ people, immigrants, refugees, and our brothers and sisters who are Muslim and Jewish? You, as a white man, hold a privileged and protected status on the streets our our nation that none of the groups just named are able to enjoy. You have contributed to the burdens heaped upon their shoulders. I do hope you will be somewhere besides your organ bench when it comes to offering tangible protection to those groups. Your loudly proclaimed discipleship calls you to nothing else.

I lament and pray for your hardness of heart.

Amazing grace

This was a hymn for last Sunday, and I have posted three new YouTube settings from those services:

Improvisation on Amazing Grace (New Britain)

Some may wish to compare this with my improvisation on the same tune from a year ago. One of the things I liked about that version was that I incorporated a bit of Howells, for that was the Sunday we sang the Collegium Regale Te Deum.

This year’s version is just “New Britain.” I sought to establish a contrast between a solemn version in the low tenor, in A flat, with a bit of scherzetto in the upper register in C major, leading to a dialogue between the two. But I think last year’s version was better, and perhaps one of the best I have done.


Peter Schickele is a well-known musicologist, the world’s leading scholar in the music of P.D.Q. Bach. But he is also a composer. This setting of Amazing Grace for choir has nothing to do with P.D.Q. Bach; it is a fine, serious piece. I am especially proud of the adult choir, who on this day numbered seven singers. Unlike some small Episcopal choirs, we do not have paid singers; all of them are volunteers, who over the course of a year give a lot of time and energy to the choir.

Here is an organ setting by Kenton Coe, one of six settings of early American hymn tunes.

I could write more about “Amazing Grace,” but instead I refer you to Bill Moyers. Some years ago, he prepared a documentary which can be found here.

A Documentary: Amazing Grace (Bill Moyers, for PBS)

The video quality is poor – someone recorded it on their home VCR. The sound quality is nonetheless pretty good. And the content is amazing. It runs an hour and twenty minutes; save it for a time when you can sit down and listen with attention. At the very least, watch the first half hour or so.

If you would prefer a version with better sound and video quality, many libraries will have the DVD, or it can be purchased. If you do that, please don’t buy it (or anything) from Amazon; get it here, from the PBS online store.

Free Leonard Peltier

As of this writing, Native American activists and supporters are engaged in peaceful protest at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota.

Over the weekend, they were attacked by a heavily militarized force of police and national guards from several states, in action reminiscent of the old-time union-busting work of Pinkertons, FBI agents, state police, and the U.S. Army in the Appalachian coal fields (examples: the Battle of Matewan, the Battle of Blair Mountain). It is also very much in the spirit of the “Peacekeepers” from the Hunger Games books.

It also recalls the American Indian Movement and the 71-day siege of their encampment at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1973, an event that is now hardly a footnote in the history books.

As a part of the aftermath of this “incident,” the activist Leonard Peltier was framed for the 1975 murder of two FBI agents. In a highly irregular trial, he was sentenced to two life terms and remains in prison, over forty years later. Among those calling for Peltier’s release over this period: Amnesty International (which considers him a prisoner of conscience), the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela.

Several presidents have failed to pardon him, most notably Bill Clinton, who instead on his final day as president pardoned his buddy Marc Rich, reportedly in return for $1 million in gifts to Clinton-related groups, such as Hillary’s campaign for the U.S. Senate and the Clinton Library Foundation. Peltier had no rich friends to match such an “offer.”

Our presiding bishop, Michael Curry, has visited the Standing Rock encampment. He has called this standoff “another Selma.” But that was in the middle of a movement where a great many people, black and white, cared what happened, and the scenes of police dogs, tear gas, and brutality inflicted on the marchers did much to change public opinion. The Native Americans are a much smaller minority group, and I often think that most people in the mainstream culture simply do not care what happens to them. They are essentially invisible.

They have been trampled by the U.S. government from the beginning of this nation. It looks very much like it is going to happen again at Standing Rock. Yes, there may be public outcry for a while – as there was during and after the Wounded Knee incident. And yes, most people will forget and move on.

And, more than likely, there will be one or more Native American scapegoats to join Leonard Peltier in federal prison.

Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.

****
Today is the Feast of All Saints.
I am not at all saying that Mr. Peltier is a saint; I have no idea.
And I am not saying that all of the people encamped at Standing Rock are saints.
But there are quite a few of them -- including at least one of my friends, a priest who reads this blog -- that are out there in the desert because of their faith, whether they see it as faith in the Christian God or by some other path.

Some of them may become martyrs before all is done.
Martyrdom or not, the path to sainthood can take you to places like Standing Rock, and to situations where it is not at all clear whether you will walk away whole in body, or at all.

The fruit of these days and weeks, however it turns out, may lie dormant for a long time, as it did after Blair Mountain, when it looked like the United Mine Workers of America was dead and gone. It was many years before they again became strong, and the memory of Blair Mountain and Matewan was a part of that.