Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son; and thou shalt call his name Emmanuel (Isaiah 7:14 and St. Matthew 1:23)When I was planning the choir season and saw this for the First Lesson and Gospel of this day, my heart leaped. We can sing the Handel! Recitative and Aria from Messiah, “O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion.” And for what is probably the only year, the alto aria fits the youth choir to perfection. Our three young men are more tenors now than altos, but they can still sing in this range, along with the trebles. We can bring in a violinist (Leonardo Perez, a doctoral student at the university who is a delight to work with), and two young men of our parish on violoncello and bass for the continuo line, along with my friend Jean at the organ. The adult choir can join for the SATB ending.
And so it is; on this day, we sing. Days later as I write this, it rings in my heart.
Like the rest of Messiah, this aria and chorus are amazing. My opinion is that Handel wrote this piece in a burst of what was genuinely Divine Inspiration – how else could it have come into being, and in the breakneck speed in which he wrote it? The deeper one studies it, the more miraculous it is.
And the little recitative that begins it, the Scriptural tie to this day… less than thirty seconds, and absolutely perfect, right down to the tag line at the end: “God with us,” then the V-I cadence. We struggled with this in rehearsal, and had to sing it several times in the warmup; in the service, it was perfect. As with all that we sing, I want these words, this music, to take root in the hearts of our choristers.
I worried about the text. I could envision one of our twelve-year old boys raising his hand in rehearsal and asking “What is a virgin?” I asked my fellow-laborer in Christ (Nora) what to do; she was not encouraging. In essence, she advised me to dodge the question. Tell them to ask their parents at home, then call the parents of the child who raised the issue and tell them.
It did not come up. In a way, I wish it had, though I do not know how I could have addressed it in a rehearsal.
The virginity of St. Mary is one of the great Secrets of God, equal in stature to the other one: the bodily Resurrection of Christ from the dead. Both are thoroughly attested by Scripture, part of the central bedrock of Christian belief in all times and places -- until recently. The first is perhaps more scandalous than the last. It is so thoroughly unscientific. It is a rehash of legends from pagan mythology. It is, like the Resurrection, a pious fable tacked on generations later to suit the needs of the emerging church.
Or so they say.
And, like the Resurrection, it is absolutely true, whether the liberal theologians and clergy like it or not. Without it, there is no Incarnation; he is not Emmanuel, God with us, but just another teacher -- exactly as Gabriel explains to St. Mary at the Annunciation: "That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God" (St. Luke 1:35). For something that is as readily knowable as these doctrines, it is amazing how they remain a secret. Without faith, they are as invisible as if they were buried on the back side of the moon.
Our young people are not going to hear about this doctrine in our parish, and probably not anywhere in the Episcopal Church, where neither Virgin Birth nor Resurrection are widely believed. But perhaps they will someday remember singing this little recitative and wonder what it means.
Tuesday: Bulletin Crazy Day
As expected, much of today is committed to the service bulletins for the coming weekend. The day is further complicated by the Christmas luncheon for staff and volunteers – close to two hours. Many of the volunteers are retired, and perfectly happy to while away the afternoon. I am chomping at the bit, restlessly longing to get onto the bench and to my proper duty. But there is more bulletin work, and (of course) more e-mails. And I am tired, worn out from a Monday filled with errands, grocery shopping, cooking and dishwashing.
I finally get around to practice around 3 pm, and I had to postpone my young student’s lesson to another day in order to get any practicing at all. I begin with piano improvisation, working with the chorale Es ist ein Ros’. That goes well enough, so I try Stille Nacht. And I discover that I do not Know the Tune. Worse still, others are at work in the church, hearing me mangle it. I cannot control the third phrase of this wide-ranging tune and repeatedly miss notes in any key other than B flat major, even playing it in unison. It is thoroughly embarrassing; I have been a church musician for upwards of forty years and I cannot play “Silent Night?”
The people who are at work move on to one of their tasks: testing the sound system. One of the clergy has complained about the wireless microphone. It is clear that my attempts at music are disturbing them as they test it and that they likewise think that they are disturbing me, so I close the lid, replace the cover, and bow out.
Some time later, my friend John comes downstairs and tells me that they are done. I go to the organ, and make a beginning with the Third Variation on Vom Himmel hoch. It is the hardest part of the set: "Some canonic variations on the Christmas hymn" as Bach calls it. And it was for this that I cancelled H’s lesson; I knew that if I did not make a start on it today, I could not play it on Saturday night.
I do a First Workout of the latter half of the variation, ninety minutes on about two and a half pages. It is a start.
[I wrote about the Canonic Variations here, when I played them two years ago, and my recording is here.]
The Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle
I am determined to learn Stille Nacht, and give it a good forty minutes at the piano, first thing after I hang up my overcoat, playing it right up until Matins. As I described the other day in “Knowing the Tune,” it continues to be ugly for quite a while, with many times that I cannot even keep the groove going for all of the wrong notes in the tune – and then, about twenty minutes into my work, it suddenly becomes very good indeed. I wish I had recorded it.
From that: straight into Matins, the church still in semidarkness on this shortest day of the year. It is all I can do to sing the appointed Psalms – the twenty-third, the one hundred and twenty-first (“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills…”). How is it that St. Thomas rates these loveliest of Psalms for the Matins of his Feast? And the lessons from the end of Job and the beginning of First Peter? Oh beloved Thomas, Apostle to India, friend of those who long for it to be true: pray for us.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…The part that struck me today was from verses six and seven:
… though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ…Making hash of Stille Nacht is not much for “manifold temptations,” nor even Bulletin Crazy Day in its semiannual appearance (we have a reprise early in Holy Week). But, small as these things are, they are indeed this week a trial of my faith. They are what Pressfield calls “Resistance,” for on a day like yesterday when I barely make it to the piano and then sound horrible when I do, it would be very easy to quit. Or when I tangle with the Third Variation, and find it every bit as challenging as I remember from two years ago – the thought arises “Why am I doing this?”
Please, dear Lord: may this work that we do, even when it is the stumbling over the simplest of things like a beginner, be “found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”
How glad we’ll be to find it so!I work hard at the organ today, all of it on the Variations. It goes well, but by the end of the day I have worked through only two of the five variations. It leaves a lot of work for Friday and Saturday.
Then with the shepherds let us go
To see what God for us has done
In sending us his own dear Son.
One of my street friends comes in and listens for a while. He prays for me after I pray for him: “Help Cassie to play well this week and make good music.” I treasure this support, for God listens to the prayers of the poor. The prayers of people like me – perhaps not so much.
The choral rehearsals go well. The youth choir is singing two movements from “Ceremony of Carols,” and they have the potential to be quite good. We conclude the rehearsal with our annual rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” which grows more memorable every year.
More than half of the adult choir rehearsal is devoted to first beginnings on music for the spring, including a set of Responses for the May evensong; Kenneth Leighton, and it will take us that long to learn them. But we are ready for Christmas Eve; the choir sounds terrific.
Look, look, dear friends, look over there!
What lies within that manger bare?
Who is that lovely little one?
The baby Jesus, God’s dear Son.
Welcome to earth, O noble Guest,
Through whom this sinful world is blest!
You turned not from our needs away!
How can our thanks such love repay?
[to be continued]
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment