Ignition

Christianity is caught, not taught. (old RSCM saying)

In “The Talent Code” [see the previous essay], Daniel Coyle writes that what he calls “ignition” is “the set of signals and unconscious forces that create our identity; the moments that lead us to say ‘this is what I want to be’” (p. 108, author’s emphasis). It is the realization that “I’d better get busy” (p. 111), and it is often a sense of wanting to belong to a group: “Those people over there are doing something terrifically worthwhile” (p. 108). It is what Steven Pressfield calls “Turning Pro.”

Coyle is speaking of music, athletics, and other endeavors of the sort that demand the effort of “deep practice” and years of commitment. This is all very true; it is one reason that I take choristers to the RSCM summer course in St. Louis. I hope that for some of them, it will be a defining event. It is one reason that when we are doing something big for our parish at home, such as the Beethoven chorus from “Mount of Olives” a year ago, or “Worthy is the Lamb” from Messiah, I seek to include the youth choir. For some of them, singing such music might be the key that unlocks their vocation.

But music and athletics are not the only things that demand effort and long-term commitment, nor are they the most important:

And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. (St. Matthew 4:19)

St. Clare of Assisi is a good example. She heard and saw Francis, and as Coyle would say, she thought “this is what I want to be.” The fire burned strongly enough in her to overcome every obstacle.

How can we live in such a way as to ignite such a flame in those around us? How can our parishes become places that will cause people to think that “Those people over there are doing something terrifically worthwhile?” This is the center point of evangelism. No amount of talk will do it.

One of our teenage choristers showed up at this morning's warmup rehearsal with a friend. I could have told her to sit out in the congregation while her friend sang in the choir, and come to our next rehearsal if she wanted to sing. That would have been sensible, and would have respected the rehearsal time that the other choristers had put into their work. But I knew that this girl was a singer, and the moment would have passed by the next rehearsal. So I invited her to put on a vestment and sing with us. Perhaps nothing will come of it. Or perhaps it might be a beginning.

We need a lot more of this.

See also this, from my online friend Tim Chesterton:
“What does discipleship look like?”

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For those who are nearby, I am playing a noontime recital at the Congregational Church on Wednesday, March 8, starting at noon. Here is my program, with notes (I have spent much of the evening writing them). There is a lot of work ahead: I have struggled with the Vaughan Williams fugue, applying my “deep practice” methods to it and finally completing a First and Second Workout. It took so long that I have neglected its prelude (which I played in December, but which needs to be practiced). One of the Messiaen movements is new to me, and starting to frighten me. It is fingered, but must be learned by next Sunday, when it is to be the postlude. To say nothing of March 8, about ten days from now. Jesu juva.

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Prelude and Fugue in C minor (Ralph Vaughan Williams)

Four movements from Livre du Saint Sacrement (Olivier Messiaen)
1. Adoro te (I adore thee)
2. la source de Vie (the source of Life)
3. le Dieu caché (the hidden God)
6. la manne et le Pain de Vie (the manna and the Bread of Life)

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Notes:

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was a towering influence in British musical life through the first half of the twentieth century. Although he was a prolific composer, he wrote little for the organ; today’s work, the Prelude and Fugue in C minor, is the most substantial of his organ works. He wrote it in 1921, revised it in 1923 and again in 1930, when he also arranged it for orchestra.

The prelude is in rondo form, with the principal theme and its massive chords separated by two quieter, flowing sections. The fugue is characterized by constant two-against-three motion, established immediately by its subject and countersubject, building to a grand conclusion. Both movements are colored by modal and pentatonic harmonies, as is characteristic of much of his music.


Olivier Messiaen (1908-92) was equally significant in the musical life of France in the twentieth century. His music strikes many as strange. I believe that this is accurate; it is strange because it is holy. Two key elements appear constantly: birdsong and color. None of his music, aside from one unaccompanied motet, is “liturgical.” He considered that the only acceptable liturgical music is plainsong. While Messiaen occasionally quoted plainsong, he preferred to quote birds, considering them to be the greatest of musicians. An avid amateur ornithologist, he transcribed their songs into notation in the field wherever he traveled, and incorporated them into virtually all of his music from the 1960’s onward.

In my opinion, Messiaen can be compared only with J. S. Bach in his ability to depict matters of faith by means of music. Yet, Messiaen would be the first to say, as he wrote in the preface to his “Quartet for the End of Time,” that “All this is simply striving and childish stammering if one compares it to the overwhelming grandeur of the subject.”

Livre du Saint Sacrement (Book of the Blessed Sacrament) was his final composition for the organ, commissioned by the American Guild of Organists for their national convention in Detroit, 1986. In eighteen movements with a duration of about an hour and a half, it is an extended meditation on the central mystery of the Christian faith.

The cycle begins with Adoro te. Messiaen writes: “[the first three movements are] acts of adoration to the Christ who is invisible, but genuinely present in the Blessed Sacrament.” Adoro te is quiet, warm,and sensuous. Messiaen draws the title from the first words of a hymn by Thomas Aquinas: "Humbly I adore thee, Verity unseen…" See also Colossians 1:15: “He is the image of the invisible God…”

la Source de Vie is gentle, a quiet depiction of the Water of Life. Messiaen quotes St. Bonaventure: “My heart is ever thirsting for you, O fountain of life, source of the eternal light!”

le Dieu caché juxtaposes a plainsong Alleluia; a unison melody as a reply to it; the song of the bird Onycognathus tristrami (Tristram’s grackle, notated by Messiaen at Engedi, between Masada and the Dead Sea); and a slow descending chordal figure, like a meditation. These are presented in block form, each element extended as it reappears. Near the end, we hear the song of Hippolais pallida (Olivaceous Warbler, notated at Lod, near modern-day Tel Aviv.) Messiaen quotes:

My eyes could not bear to behold the splendor of your glory. It is with regard for my weakness that you veil yourself in the Sacrament. (from "The Imitation of Christ," Book IV, chapter 11)

On the Cross only the divinity was hidden. But here [in the Sacrament] is hidden also the Humanity. In confessing and believing both, I ask that which the repentant thief asked. (St. Thomas Aquinas, from the hymn Adoro te)

In la manne et le Pain de Vie, the sounds are those of a desert, with silences and waiting, and frightening things scurrying about, and the calls of two birds, both native to the deserts of Judea: Oenanthe lugens (Mourning Chat) and Ammomanes deserti (Desert Lark). Again he uses block form, extending each musical element as it reappears. The movement ends in repose, with a final two measures that could be from Debussy. Messiaen quotes:

You gave your people food of angels, and without their toil you supplied them from heaven with bread ready to eat, providing every pleasure and suited to every taste. For your sustenance manifested your sweetness toward your children; and the bread, ministering to the desire of the one who took it, was changed to suit everyone's liking. (Wisdom 16:20-21)

The life that Christ gives us by communion is all of his life, with the special graces he has deserved, living for us each of his mysteries. (Dom Columba Marmion, “Christ in His Mysteries,” chapter 18)

I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. (John 6:51)