Moving Out

I did not want to empty my office in a blizzard. When a sunny and fairly warm Friday arrived early this month, it was time: I rented a U-Haul truck, and with considerable assistance from my friend John Cowan moved most of my things to a storage unit. Since then, only a few things remain, few enough that I can easily load them in the Prius C and be out of the church in about a half-hour when the Last Day comes.

I had packed my clavichord into its shipping case; it was the only large piece, joined by the white wooden chair made by my great-grandfather and a few other small pieces of furniture. The organ music went into boxes, saving out only what I needed for the remaining weeks. The books had come home bit by bit over the last month, a few in my carry bag every day. Photos and diplomas went into boxes, as did my CD recordings. I shifted my work to a laptop, packing away my desktop computer, a twin of one that is at home, to serve as its backup after we move. Thanks to Marie Kondo, surprisingly little needed to go into recycling, the dumpster, or the thrift store. I had already done most of that when I worked through my things, seeking those that spark joy and saying farewell to the rest.

And it is no longer my office. Nineteen years and more it has been, the longest I have been in one place in this lifetime. More of my waking hours were at the church than at home, and the office bore more of my personality than anything in our apartment.

In that lies a challenge for the coming year: can I find a Home in our new home, yet to be found? Beyond that, can I find a Life when so much of my life energy has been tied up in the church and its music?

I got a clue from a long interview with Tulsi Gabbard, the presidential candidate that I wholeheartedly support. To paraphrase, she spoke of the quiet life that would be her “selfish interest” as she called it, home in Hawaii, surfing every day. But asking “what do I want, what would make me happy” rather than finding the real happiness that is “service to God, service to others… service above self” leads to the question “What is it all for?”

If I craft a nice comfortable little niche, playing my clavichord and piano every day, reading books, doing nothing for others, then it is all about myself. But “Is today the day? Any day could be your last. What are you doing with this time?” That is why she is spending this winter in places like Iowa and New Hampshire instead of Hawaii, and why she walks the path that is hers. [these thoughts and quotes are from around the 42 to 46 minute mark in the video]

I do not know what path is mine, not after December 31. But after the political campaign is over, I plan to keep Tulsi’s bumper sticker on my Prius: “Service above self.” I will need that reminder even more in retirement than I do now.

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As I wrote several months ago, I chose to support Tulsi because of her courage in standing up to the corrupt Clinton/DNC machine in the 2016 primaries and supporting Bernie Sanders, courage that was again displayed this week when she refused to support the rush to impeachment that is polarizing the country.

Back in May, I thought that I was finding in Tulsi a political candidate that I could follow and support. I did not then know that I was also finding a spiritual guide and example.

There are three other Democratic candidates that I admire and like: Andrew Yang, Bernie Sanders, Marianne Williamson. But on caucus night in a few weeks, I will stand up for Tulsi. And beyond that, whether she wins or (more likely) falls short, I will honor her and seek to live up to her example.

When are you going to direct a Course?

One of our teen choristers asked me this on Sunday. She was not the first; another asked me late in the week at Todd Hall. He was insistent: “You are good. You ought to be doing this stuff.” Yet another asked the same question during our pre-course rehearsals in June.

I would love to have the opportunity. But for a variety of reasons it is not going to happen, and that is fine with me. For one thing, it is more satisfying to participate as a singer. I learned this partly from the year when I was half-of-an-organist, assisting Br. Vincent. But that is selfish; a better reason is that there are better people available, among them our own Kristin Lensch, long-time treble housemaster at the Course and this year the adult housemaster; she most certainly should be directing Courses, and not just this one. The number of people who could do this work well is not large, perhaps in the dozens, but it is sufficient without me.

For another, these days we have some choral experiences right here in the parish that are comparable to what we achieve at the RSCM Course: for example, our evensong in May.

The work that lies ahead for me is the same as it was at the end of last summer: finding a way to bring the skills home from RSCM to the parish choir, and building on them. I do wish we could have a week of intensive daily rehearsals, especially morning rehearsals when everyone is fresh, here at home instead of only at the Course. It would be good to see what we could then accomplish.

But what we have is one rehearsal a week. Thus, a resolution: make the most of the time that we have, and seek to make every rehearsal as good as the RSCM rehearsals at their best.

There was a time when I was more ambitious. I wanted to be organist/choirmaster at a notable parish or cathedral with a strong RSCM program, regular choral evensongs, choral settings of the Mass at Sunday Eucharist. Directing a few RSCM Courses would have been a culmination to that sort of career. Playing some organ recitals here and there would be good, too, and to be known and respected by other organists, part of the Inner Circle, the people that matter. Thankfully, none of these things have come my way, not even close.

What has come instead is that, little by little, we have right here in our little Midwestern parish developed a strong RSCM program, and we will soon begin our nineteenth season of First Sunday Choral Evensongs. And I have learned to play the hymns tolerably well, and even to improvise a little, something I never expected.

The three choristers who asked me about directing a Course have given me a gift: their esteem. It means the world to me that some of them think sufficiently well of my work as a choral director to say such things. With God’s help, I must live up to it, and be the director they think I am.

Guard my first springs of thought and will

Lord, I my vows to thee renew;
disperse my sins as morning dew;
guard my first springs of thought and will,
and with thyself my spirit fill.
(Thomas Ken, “Awake my soul, and with the sun” [Hymnal 1982 number 11])

Beginnings are important. I continue to work at making my mornings habitual and automatic, for I know how weak I am. There are many days where the thing I want is to go back to bed for a couple more hours. Or stop at one of the three purveyors of donuts along my drive to the church. If I pass that gauntlet, there is the restaurant/coffee shop/grocery less than a block from the church with the most scrumptious pastries. I dare not set foot in that place before noon, except when accompanied by the Brotherhood for our Saturday breakfast once a month. There is strength in numbers.

Or, safely arrived at my office, I want to sit down at the computer and watch YouTube videos and spend all morning eating and drinking tea. Or reading blogs. Or writing for this blog. I hope that the Music Box has been helpful to some people, but many of the best essays in here were written at times when I should have been doing other things, most especially practicing. There is a reason why few people have successfully combined the vocations of Writer and Musician. [Footnote: There have been some: Robert Schumann and Camille Saint-Saens come to mind, also Virgil Thomson. But not many.]

Much of the above is Resistance, for these things are not what I really want, once I get underneath what St. Paul calls the “flesh,” the appetites that are common to us all, both man and beast. My true desire is to be a good and faithful servant, applying himself to “all such good works as [He hath] prepared for us to walk in” (BCP p. 339, the traditional Post-Communion Prayer) in hopes that I might in some small way be of encouragement to others and a witness to the Resurrection. And that involves getting my lazy old carcass onto the organ bench, the piano bench too.

But it also involves e-mail. And office work. And “Getting Things Done” (see Afterword). And none of it is going to amount to anything without the Officium, the Daily Office and the sanctification of the day with prayer and psalmody and Holy Scripture.

There have been long stretches of time when I have heeded what seems to be the majority advice to do the important thing first, and to do your creative work first while you are fresh. For a while I was improvising at the Steinway up in the church before Matins, back when it was a supposedly public service of worship at a fixed hour. Those were some of the happiest times of my life, upstairs in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament with the first light of dawn shining through the church windows, and I made a lot of progress in my playing in those sessions.

But I found that when I did that, I ended up spending most of the day practicing. That is fine for a short while, but soon enough the office work piled into such a backlog that I would then spend many days doing only that, and no practicing at all.

It is not simply majority advice to practice every day; it is universally acknowledged fact. The reason I added the pianist Nathan Carterette’s picture to my “door,” right beside JSB whom he so loves (and plays so well) is a comment he made to my young student HMB about practicing every day. I think his minimum is three hours. And I have a baseball commemorating Cal Ripken, Jr. for the same reason. Show up every day, do the work at a professional level. As recently as the first quarter of this year I was not doing that. I was mired in office work, some weeks hardly practicing at all, and thoroughly discouraged with my playing. [Footnote: Yes, practice every day – except one. “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” Even from the sheerly practical level of best results, I find it necessary to have that full day, twenty-four hours of it, with not a note of music. In the long run, I play better when I do this. I find the truth of it most of all at times such as Holy Week – or this week, with the chamber music festival and the ordination of a friend – when I violate this Commandment and work every day. And in fact I normally have two days off, one which I seek to observe as a Sabbath and the other as a day of reminder that I am not just an Organist, but also a Husband, with duties at home and many errands and tasks therewith.]

Somehow there must be a balance. For now, it seems to work this way for me on a typical weekday:

- The morning at home (feed the cats and myself, do other things necessary to get out the door).
- Drive to church
- Physical practice
- Matins, with the Great Litany on Wednesdays and Fridays
- Improvise at the Clavichord.
As I recently wrote, the clavichord was my life preserver through the bad times this winter, on many days the only playing that I did.

- Set an Alarm for practicing so I don’t get stuck in the following
- Turn on the computers.
- Tea Ceremony (some of my friends, or anyone who visits my office at certain hours, know what I mean)
- During this, clear the decks. Process any handwritten notes from overnight about things to do, get the physical and e-mail IN boxes to zero. (see footnote, shortly)
- Go upstairs and practice the organ for at least one hour, again setting an alarm to make me stop at that point.

The addition of the Alarm before booting the computers has proven to be the key. That way, I commit to practicing, even if I have not succeeded in clearing the decks when it rings. And I can convince myself to leave the office with the thought “Just one hour. I can come back to this stuff then,” and many days I do precisely that.

[Footnote: Clearing the IN boxes does not at all mean doing everything that is there. I had to learn this from the “Getting Things Done” method. But you take every item, every e-mail, and process it. If it can be properly dealt with in less than two or three minutes, do it immediately. If it prompts a longer TBD, get it on the TBD list or into the “Action” folder of the e-mail. If appropriate, put it in the “Wait for” folder. If it is the “camel’s nose under the edge of the tent” and is going to become a full-fledged Project, start a folder for it. Eventually you deal with the Action items and TBDs, and if the Tea Ceremony has enough time before the practice alarm, I can make some progress on these things. But not until the main IN boxes are completely clear.]

From then on, the day is more fluid. On good days, there is more practicing, possibly a lot more. On other days, the rest of it is consumed with other work.

But the above plan of action is not perfect. Today I arrived several hours late, having been at the church well into the previous two evenings with the festival rehearsals. I chose to get a full seven hours of sleep instead of pressing on as I have in past years during the chamber music week. At the church, I managed only Matins and Litany, then it was nearly time for the television people to arrive to set up their equipment for the concerts, so I skipped the clavichord and office work, and went straight upstairs. While I waited for them, I improvised on the Steinway, mostly on the chant Veni Creator Spiritus, with thoughts of the impending ordination service and improvising a prelude on an organ I have never played. They were late, so I got about 45 minutes of work on the tune, and it was a delight, from the initial work with the unison tune in several keys to the places where that led. I so wish that I could start every day in this manner. But I cannot; I have tried that and it does not work, not for me.

I hope that the bit of improvisatory work was productive as well, for I do indeed have the improvisation ahead. Veni Creator Spiritus scares me, especially having played part of the Duruflé setting on Whitsunday. There is no way I can approach what he did with the tune, or what JSB did with its variant Komm, heiliger Geist. There is nothing else to say after what these (and other) composers did with it.

And yet… I find the Great Tunes, of which Veni Creator is one, to be the easiest on which to improvise. Nettleton. Ein feste Burg. Wondrous Love. New Britain. Old Hundredth. Hyfrydol. The Third Tune (Tallis). Once you get started, the ideas flow more easily than they do with some of the lesser tunes. In working with such tunes over what is now several years of regular improvisation, I have come to greater understanding of why the jazzmen and women keep playing the Old Standards. You can return to such tunes and still find something new to say; they are inexhaustible.

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Afterword: I several times above mentioned “Getting Things Done” (“GTD” for short) thinking that I had written of it in the Music Box. I find that I haven’t, except for this which was written before I encountered the book of that name by David Allen. Since reading the book about a year and a half ago, it has considerably improved my workflow. I keep two of Mr. Allen’s charts on my Door, one Xeroxed from his book and the other considerably adapted to reflect my vocation and purposes. Here is his website. There are also many YouTube videos about aspects of GTD, some better than others.

The book is readily available in most libraries – the one near the church had I think seven copies when I checked one out to read it. He has followed up with sequels, including most recently an adaptation of GTD for teenagers. I have not read it [for one thing, it is still pre-release, not yet published], but I commend it to my readers who are in that stage of life. I wish I had known of these principles in high school and college.

Yet another Afterword (June 23) I would be a hypocrite were I to omit mention of this day's work, or rather the undisciplined lack thereof. Being weary from too many days in a row, it was too easy to sit in my office in front of the computer, not setting an alarm to go upstairs and practice, and after I had done plenty of that, more-or-less working (online reading of the journal "The American Organist" as I ate a leisurely second breakfast with tea) I found a link to this:
Anthony Bourdain's "Parts Unknown" - a visit to West Virginia

And not just West Virginia: McDowell County in the southern part of the state, a place that I love. My recent vacation did not take me to McDowell County, but I did spend time in some of the neighboring counties of Southwest Virginia, places like Coeburn, Norton, and Big Stone Gap. We still own land in another part of southern West Virginia, but I do not see how we could ever go back there to live. I have been away too long; I have become entirely foreign to that culture and my wife has never been part of it.

I should have been working; I should have watched it later. But I am glad that I took the hour to see this sympathetic portrait of the people and culture of the coalfields. I commend it to you.

I had never heard of Mr. Bourdain until he died a few weeks ago. My ignorance of him is my loss; his untimely death by suicide is a loss for all of us. May he rest in peace.

Give the glory to the Lord, and the Lamb

Last night (May 6, the Sixth Sunday of Easter) was our final choral evensong of the season. As is our custom, it was sung by the combined youth and adult choirs. Because most of the youth choir was at last summer's RSCM Course, we were so bold as to attempt some music that would otherwise be more than we could handle, for we had sung it at the Course.

I could write of the Howells "Collegium Regale" Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, and what a privilege it was to conduct this. I hope that I will never forget the delicate shimmering beauty of the opening, at first just the youth choir trebles and altos with the adult women joining a bit later. Or the four young choirmen singing the tenor lead that begins the Nunc Dimittis. Or the magnificence of the "Glory be to the Father...", which was profoundly moving.

I could write of how fine it was to be Organist for the Britten "Rejoice in the Lamb," the anthem for this evensong, and of my high regard for my friend Jean who directed this and played for the Howells, plus a significant prelude, and urged me to prepare a careful plan for the warmup rehearsal, timed to the minute for each item that we needed, and in the event, essential.

I could write of the Smith Responses, and our teen chorister Charles who was superb as Officiant. And I could write of my friend Nora, who was Preacher for the evening. And the David Hogan "O gracious Light," and the closing hymn, "The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended," with the descant by John Scott (may he rest in peace) that we sang at last summer's Course. This proved the perfect ending to the service and was, again, profoundly moving for me and probably others.

But of all these things, what impressed me the most was the Psalmody, the three Psalms appointed for the Sixth Evening. I had thought we would need considerable rehearsal, because the two choirs do not routinely sing psalmody together, nor do they rehearse together. Nor was it a small group; with the combined choirs, we numbered about twenty-five. With psalmody, small is often best, for the ensemble is easier to achieve. And familiarity with one another's singing is essential. For best results, the group should sing Psalms together every day. Or several times a day, as the brothers and sisters of Religion do in the monastaries and convents.

We were arranged in divided choir, the adults on Cantoris, the youth on Decani. I reminded them to watch one another across the middle, and most of all to listen. We launched into Psalm 32: "Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven..." After a couple of verses, I quit playing. Then I walked to the back of the church, my arms folded so that I would not try to direct them.

They were flawless. Well, not quite; psalmody is never flawless. But they were extremely good. And they did not need me, or any direction, or even accompaniment. They could have gone right through the full set, which they did later in the service (Psalms 32, 33, and 34), but it was clear that for rehearsal, all that was needed was a couple of verses of each to remind them of the chants.

If there is one thing of which I am proud with these choristers, it is this: they have learned to sing the Psalms. David Willcocks used to say that the psalmody was what made a choir like the one he directed at King's what it was (and is). The psalms require sensitivity to diction, pacing, and most of all attentive ensemble with the other singers. I can attest on our more humble scale that much of what progress has been made during my tenure has been the result of the psalmody, both the Anglican Chant of evensong and the plainsong that is our staple for the morning Eucharists.

Getting through all of this music in good order was an accomplishment for our parish choir, young and old. But last night, I was numb to it, immediately carried off by concerns for the traditional end-of-season pizza supper (which went well), and some administrative concerns that appeared via e-mail, and by the Sunday evening routine of bulletin-making. The best I could say at that point was that I was glad it was done. But today is better; I can see what a Good Thing last night was, both in sum for all of the choir and individually for many of the choristers - and probably in many ways which I will never know, for them and for others. For a while longer, it remains my privilege and vocation to work with them and perhaps make a bit of difference. For this I offer my thanks to the One who calls us and whom we praise in song.

Soli Deo Gloria.

A Declaration of Religious Principles

The following was formerly the Declaration of Religious Principles of the American Guild of Organists. The AGO no longer appears to adhere to any religious principles, though many of its members do. This statement is old-fashioned in its language, and perhaps its concepts, and I emphasize that it no longer reflects the “mind and intention” of the AGO in any official way.

I find that this document, at one time available from the AGO as a poster, is not available on the Internet. To remedy that and in hopes that it may be of encouragement to some, here it is:

Soli Deo Gloria
Declaration of Religious Principles

For the greater glory of God, and for the cause of worthy music in this land, we, being severally members of the American Guild of Organists, do declare our mind and intention in the things following:

We believe that the office of music in Divine Worship is a Sacred Oblation before the Most High.

We believe that they who are set as Choir Directors and as Organists in the House of God ought themselves to be people of devout conduct teaching the ways of earnestness to the Choirs committed to their charge.

We believe that the unity of purpose and fellowship of life between Clergy and Choirs should be everywhere established and maintained.

We believe that at all times and in all places it is meet, right, and our bounden duty to work and to pray for the advancement of Divine Worship in the holy gifts of strength and nobleness; to the end that God’s House may be purges of its blemishes, that the minds of all may be instructed, that the honor of that House may be guarded in our time and in the time to come.

Wherefore we do give ourselves with reverence and humility to these endeavors, offering up our works and our lives in the Name of Him, without Whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy. Amen.

Bach and Stability of Life

In a conversation with a priest about why Rite One (the traditional Anglican language of prayer) has virtually disappeared, she explained that the theology of the Episcopal Church has moved so far from the Rite One texts that it is no longer appropriate to use them.

Not the language, not the “thees” and “thous” and all the rest: the theology. I believe that she is right as to why Rite One is in disfavor with Episcopal clergy. It is more a matter of the Prayer of Humble Access (BCP p. 337):

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

Or the Post-Communion Prayer (BCP p. 339), one of the most magnificent paragraphs in the English language:

Almighty and everlasting God, we most heartily thank thee for that thou dost feed us, in these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; and dost assure us thereby of thy favor and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs, through hope, of thy everlasting kingdom. And we humbly beseech thee, O heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honor and glory, world without end. Amen.

I expect that I shall never hear either of these passages again in public worship. Thoroughly Modern Episcopalians do not believe these things.

But I do.

It is a very different church from the one I entered by means of the laying on of hands in the Sacrament of Confirmation in the 1980’s. Back then, the liturgy, the theology (e.g., Richard Hooker), and especially the language of liturgy were compelling reasons to be Episcopal. No longer. If it were not for the music, I would see no reason to remain.

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Following a suggestion from Daniel Coyle’s “Talent Code,” I have a “wall” (in my case, a “door”) bearing photos and paintings of musicians whom I humbly seek to emulate (“we feebly struggle, they in glory shine”): Keith Jarrett. Anton Bruckner. Joseph Haydn (I added him this week, for reasons I may describe someday).

And at the top, J. S. Bach.

A non-musician visited my office recently. He commented “All the musicians revere Bach. I don’t understand it.” I tried to explain, failing miserably; the only way to communicate his importance is by playing or singing his music. I am reminded every time I play his music that I must be serious about my work, and do it more diligently. I must always commit all of it to the Lord Christ who helps us, and to the great glory of God. “S.D.G.” he would write on his scores: Soli Deo Gloria.

Because of his picture on my door, Bach had a surprise for me after my conversation with the priest about Rite One: a lesson in Stability of Life.

By the 1730’s and 40’s, the Lutheran Church was not the one into which he was baptized back there in Eisenach in 1685, just downhill from the Wartburg Castle where Luther had translated the Holy Scriptures. The clergy with whom Bach served in Leipzig were full of Enlightenment ideas, totally foreign to Bach’s solid Lutheran orthodoxy.

And he stayed at his post.

He wrote things like the St. Matthew Passion, when there was no one who either desired or expected such a thing. And motets, and cantatas. And the Third Part of the Clavierübung, framing his musical exposition of the Lutheran Catechism with the E flat prelude and fugue. And the Canonic Variations on Luther’s Christmas hymn “Vom Himmel hoch.”

Forgotten now, because the musical scores remain and the people have come and gone, but he taught several generations of choristers and surely influenced them. Just as surely, he must have been a light in the darkness for those in Leipzig who shared Bach’s dismay at the confusing new ideas, so bereft of spiritual substance. He remains a light in our darkness; how can one play or sing his music without believing? At least for a moment, at least as long as the music lasts.

It would be unimaginable for Old Bach to be anything other than a Lutheran. He is the very essence of Lutheranism.

Would that I were such a saint. From now on, when I look at his picture on my door, I will hear him say something I heard recently as a word of prophecy from another source:

“You still have work to do.”

Jesu, juva.

RSCM Report, part three: Taking it Home

I have taken choristers to RSCM courses for upwards of thirty years. Most of those years, it has been just a few young people, a fraction of the choir back home. Where I now work, it began with two little girls entering the fourth grade, the minimum age for the course. They came home with a vision of the possibilities and did all that was in their power to make the parish youth choir better. As did I, year after year.

This year we took fourteen choristers and a proctor. It is almost the entire Youth Choir, plus Tom (who now sings with the adult choir). No longer do we need one or two people to show the others how it is done; they all know, and several of them were among the leading choristers vocally and musically. All of them know what it is like to sing this kind of music well, with connection and intensity and total commitment, among a group where everyone is at that level. All of them surely want to keep singing this way.

It is an opportunity unique to my decades of church music, and unique to the choirs participating in the course this year. I do not think that any of the other directors are returning home to as strong of a group as I will face in our first rehearsals a month from now - not even Mr. Buzard, our course director, who has the task of building a program for young singers from scratch at a distinguished cathedral where there have been choirs, but no young singers for almost a century. I am sure he would love to start with a group such as what we will have back in Iowa City.

It is a test for me. How can I help these choristers maintain the level of work that they have done this week? Here we have six hours or more of rehearsal a day; at home, it amounts to one hour a week, and many of the choristers cannot be there for all of that. That is the issue, a perennial issue for most church choirs of all ages. One rehearsal a week is not sufficient; it is like trying to play the organ by practicing one day a week.

But the choristers (and adults) have busy lives, of which choral music is only a part, and it is right that it be so. On the wider scale, is choral music at a high level going to be solely for the handful of places with choir schools, daily rehearsals, daily choral services, semi-professional and highly trained singers on the ATB parts? Is music at this level a closed door to everyone else?

The answer to that comes down, in microcosm, to what I do with these choristers back home, starting on Wednesday, August 23. We repeat the Bruce Neswick anthem “The Invitation” for a service with the bishop on Friday, September 8. Can we sing that anthem and that service with the intensity we gave to choral evensong at the RSCM? Can we then carry this forward into the fall and winter? We plan to sing the Vaughan Williams setting of “Lord, thou hast been our refuge” on Christ the King; can we make this as strong as the Howells canticles and “Rejoice in the Lamb” at the course? And in doing such things, can we incorporate new first-year choristers and give them a good start?

I can and must do some things at home which are not feasible at the course. Can I do better about teaching them solfege and making them independent musicians? Can I work with our young choirmen? They are not maintaining good posture at all times in rehearsal. Several of them need to open their mouths for a taller vocal space. Can I help them make these things habitual? Many of the choristers, trebles and teens alike, are not marking their scores. That is because I have not taught them to do this, and that is one of the ways in which choristers - or any professional musicians - can remember what they have rehearsed when it has been a week since they last met. Can I help them make music an essential part of their lives for the rest of their days, and beyond that through the ages of eternity? And most of all, can I through the music we sing and rehearse do my part in bringing them into the full maturity of the image of Christ?

And can we do all of this in that one little hour per week? For me, it is now or never. I will be judged on this at the Day of Doom. Will it be recorded in the presence of my Lord and the holy angels that I gave it all that I have, leaning ever on the Holy Paraclete for guidance and strength? Or will the record state that I slacked off, allowed the choristers given into my care to slack off, and squandered the opportunity? “Where much is given, much is required.”

Jesu, juva.

----------------------
I acknowledge Mike Wagner for his sermon at one of the weekday evensongs at the Course, which I think he titled “Taking it home.” Mike sings in one of the finest choirs in America (the Nordic Choir of Luther College), and described how another collegiate director said to his director “this choir has ‘it,’” meaning by “it” what I call “connection.” Our RSCM director of a few years ago, Andrew Walker, called it “attitude.”

Back at the Choir College, Dr. Flummerfelt described it as Connection, and I will probably use that word, though Attitude needs less explanation. When singing, are you connected to the text and musical line with all of your being? Or are you going through the motions? It might be possible for instrumentalists to sometimes get away with the latter, but the voice is so thoroughly a window into the soul that it is immediately obvious if the singers are not Connected -- and, if the other basics are in place and the group has done its homework, Connection makes it possible for the song to touch the hearts of the listeners. This will never happen if the hearts of the singers are not likewise touched by the Song and absolutely committed to it.

Whatever we call it, we had it at the Course, and now we must take it home. Tomorrow’s essay will describe an example of how this is done.

He who would valiant be

He who would valiant be
‘gainst all disaster,
let him in constancy
follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement
shall make him once relent
his first avowed intent
to be a pilgrim.
(John Bunyan, adapted by Percy Dearmer)

Having played Bach for all of my organ voluntaries for the four weeks ending with Trinity Sunday, I determined to improvise all voluntaries for the summer at both the 9:00 and 11:00 services: piano and organ. I hoped that sustained effort might result in some skill development, sorely lacking at the organ and still much needed at the piano.

The prospect of this work scares me about as much as anything I have attempted musically. How am I going to practice? How can I improvise this much and not drive away the 11:00 congregation? Are they going to put up with my learning curve, which will doubtless be steep? How dare I put my music ahead of the likes of JSB, or Paul Manz, or Kenton Coe, or John Stanley (whose voluntaries would be much easier to prepare for a summer Sunday than improvisations)?

Well. Nothing for it but to give it a try.

Week I, ending with June 18

On this first week, my practice time is limited by preparations for Saturday’s Gay Pride Parade, in which our parish has a float. On the float: the Palm Sunday Marching Band in its second public appearance, having expanded its repertoire well beyond “All glory, laud, and honor.”

For the uninitiated, the PSMB is a group of (mostly) middle-school bandswomen and men. Our group this time consisted of three clarinets, oboe, alto saxophone, trombone, and a band/choir mother walking alongside the float playing recorder. For safety’s sake, we play everything in unison, though that puts the alto sax in a not-so-comfortable tessiatura.

The parade was terrific fun. People cheered, many sang along with us.

But I was not as prepared for Sunday as I would have liked, especially for this first Sunday of my summer’s work. The piano prelude at 9:00 went well; it is here on SoundCloud.

The organ? Not so much. For a prelude, I improvised on the fine tune East Acklam (“For the fruit of all creation, thanks be to God”). It was thoroughly conventional. Dull. And too long for what little imagination there was in it. At least it was soft and hopefully inoffensive. The postlude was better, based on Paderborn (“Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim”). It was lively and had some good moments, though the big ending that was the direction it wanted was about four bars too long. Still, it was a start: big endings are notoriously difficult – certainly for me, but even the Real Composers sometimes have problems.

Week II, ending with June 25

Well. How does one practice?

On the face of it, no problem: I have described my improvisation practicing here, complete with YouTube example. But how does that work out when this sort of practice is all that I am doing, all week – for that matter, all summer?

His eye is on the sparrow:

I sing because I’m happy,
I sing because I’m free,
For his eye is on the sparrow,
And I know he watches me.
(Civilla D. Martin)

This is the piano prelude, for we are singing this fine old Gospel song at both services. It gives me another opportunity to Play the Changes, this time with a longer and more challenging chord structure.

Perversely, the improvisation seems to want the key of G flat major. I try playing it from the printed version (C major, a fully written out SATB hymnal version with chord symbols) and stumble along with it all week, until in exasperation I write out a lead sheet version in G flat. To make it more fun, I use alto clef, because the tune fits the staff better that way. If nothing else, the week has taught me the value of lead sheets. The written harmony parts are a distraction for this sort of work, and as much as I like the Roman numeral chord designations (I, IV, V, etc.), the letter-name chord symbols are less subject to error in this context. I even discover why the jazzmen often make enharmonic changes that seem strange to a classically-trained player, for I quickly replace the IV chord (C flat major) with B major, totally foreign to the key but something I’m more likely to play correctly on the fly.

After Matins on Saturday, I give it the T. Monk treatment – just shy of two hours. At first it remains cheesy, the sort of backgroundish Baptist communion music that I once could play well. At about the one-hour mark, it becomes more interesting. I find myself in what is almost a bop version, a four-against-three walking bass line with syncopated melody. This is fun, so I stay with it for several variations, but my chops are definitely not ready to do this in public. From there it gets slow and much more dissonant. I find that I can pretend the alto clef is treble and play the tune as C mixolydian, while still playing the G flat chord pattern (well, mostly). Thinking of how much other work lies ahead, I round it off with a final play-through of the tune, soft and meditative. It is good; I hope I can find this place on Sunday morning.

That is one of the problems for the improviser. You find the magic, the unexpected insights into the tune, but the gold is mixed with the dross. How can you get to it when the congregation is not going to patiently listen to you stumble around for an hour or more? How can you play the good stuff and not any of the bad stuff?

The best I can say is that this sort of long-form practicing puts enough material into the Cauldron of Song (with homage to JRRT’s Cauldron of Story) so that the unconscious can work with it through the week – I suspect much of this work occurs as we sleep – and on Sunday we can perhaps be sufficiently transparent so that the Holy Spirit can use us for Her divine purposes.

Another problem is that some of the more bizarre material (such as the bitonal variations) would not make sense to listeners who had not walked the long path to that point in the music. I do not yet see how to get there in the time frame of a service prelude. Perhaps the value of it for practice is that it builds confidence that no matter how strange the material you stumble into, you can do something with it, and that something might be more worthwhile than all the rest of the piece.

My almost-two-hours complete, I am exhausted. “We come to practice as warriors,” says Steven Pressfield. It is time for an Alexander lay-down exercise. A re-exposure to the Alexander Technique by means of an AGO chapter program this spring and the book I read after that taught me the importance of the exercise at this point, after practice. The authors say to practice twenty minutes, then do the lay-down for twenty minutes. I have trouble imagining any professional musician with enough time for that, but I have this spring and summer made it habitual to do a five or ten minute lay-down after each hour of work. Or in this case, longer – that is part of why I am so tired.

On this day, I make it a full twenty-minute laydown, followed by Second Breakfast, a hobbitish custom I happily embrace. It is well over an hour before I am ready for another round.

He who would valiant be:

This week’s hymnody puts the question to my premise. There is a fine setting by Leo Sowerby of St. Dunstan’s (“He who would valiant be,” the opening hymn at 11:00) which I could play for a prelude, and it would be superior to anything I could possibly improvise. Worse still, the closing hymn is Ein feste Burg (“A mighty fortress”). That one puts me in competition with the whole array of German Lutheran composers, up to unplayable (for me) masterpieces such as Max Reger’s fantasia on this tune. More practically, there is a setting by Michael Praetorius that I have played many times. It likewise is superior to anything I could improvise. Right up to the bulletin deadline, I ask myself: Am I really going to do this? Shouldn’t I give up, and play the repertoire based on these tunes? That would put me right back to where I have been all these years – scrambling from one week to the next to prepare repertoire, always wanting to improve but never having sufficient practice time for something that is clearly optional to my work.

This fortnight, I have applied the same improvisatory practice techniques to these hymn tunes at the organ, but it became quickly evident that the music must go in a different direction from what it would be at the piano. The organ seems to demand more counterpoint. It is coloristic, more perhaps than the piano but in quite a different manner. One thing that is requiring work is to think ahead about registrations. I find myself playing with one hand while setting a registration on the other manual for music that has not yet come into existence – that is, I have only a vague notion as to what I might play for the next bit. But the registration helps create it when the time comes. That too is a surprising insight.

After initial work early in the week on each tune separately, I am finding that on the final days it is well to simply work through the 11:00 service, beginning to end. This Saturday, I improvise on St. Dunstan’s for a half-hour or so, then recall that I was intending – and had practiced and intended all week – to work Wer nun den lieben Gott (“If thou but suffer God to guide thee”) into the prelude as a contrasting theme, so I do – in this case as a coda of about twenty minutes.

After all that, playing St. Dunstan’s as the opening hymn is easy; I need only stay in the printed key and keep the tempo slow, probably much slower than I am thinking of it for improvisation.

Following a brief Alexander break, I work through the other hymns and service music, experimenting with an improvised introduction to Wer nun den lieben Gott. That too becomes easy after having worked with the tune at length through the week.

I finish the “pretended-service” with the congregational version of Ein feste Burg, and launch into improvisation on it. Again, the good stuff does not arrive for about twenty minutes.

June 25 - Sunday Scorecard:

The piano improvisation on “His eye is on the sparrow” is here.

Some of it is pretty good. I particularly like the “bass” solo on one of the stanzas, and the final time fully through the tune, taking a lot more time with it. As with last Sunday, I should have stopped four bars sooner.

Perhaps the real benefit of working on this one tune so much, probably four or five hours this week, came not at the 9:00 service where I improvised on it, but at 11:00. I lost count of the stanzas (a constant danger, especially for hymns that finish with a refrain or chorus) and kept playing after the congregation was done. It became clear that I should continue, as a coda of sorts. People started humming along, and it was absolutely right, the thing that was needed for that moment in the liturgy. I would not have played it as well without the practicing.

Both of the organ improvisations went well. I kept them fairly simple, conservative and brief, and they were more interesting than the ones from last week, though a bit sloppy in places. I will take “sloppy” over “dull” (e.g., last Sunday’s prelude) any day. Here is a SoundCloud clip combining the prelude and postlude.

[a technical footnote: There is a brand-new computer in the music office, running Windows 10. But Microsoft has done away with Windows Movie Maker, which I used to make MP4 clips to post on YouTube. I do not know how to work around this, so my YouTube channel may be finished. It is for now, anyway.]


Four insights:

1. This work will make me a better organist. After a mere fortnight, there is considerable improvement. Were I to practice every hymn in this manner, every week, my hymn playing would be transformed.

2. Improvising is not a shortcut. Yes, I can sit down at the organ or piano and play something without preparation. The results are not dissimilar from what would happen if I sight-read my normal preludes and postludes without working out fingerings and practicing them.

3. It pleases me that I managed to play the two organ pieces without sounding – well, like anyone that I can think of. There is certainly influence from a great many sources in these things. But I cannot readily say “This sounds like [fill in the blank].”

4. I have little sense as to where this will lead.

The Three Practices

What is a practice anyway?

To “have a practice” in yoga, say, or tai chi, or calligraphy, is to follow a rigorous, prescribed regimen with the intention of elevating the mind and the spirit to a higher level.

A practice implies engagement in a ritual. A practice may be defined as the dedicated, daily exercise of commitment, will, and focused intention aimed, on one level at the achievement of mastery in a field but, on a loftier level, intended to produce a communion with a power greater than ourselves…
[Steven Pressfield: “Turning Pro” (Black Irish Books, 2012), p. 120]

I observe three practices. They define and structure my days. Other work is important and at times pushes one or more practice to the sidelines – but not entirely off the field of play. At my best, the practices take precedence and other work flows around them. They are: Physical, Spiritual, Musical.

Physical Practice

The physical leads to the spiritual. The humble produces the sublime. (ibid., p. 116)

Without attention to the physical, I cannot for long continue my musical work, or (for that matter) life. This means adequate sleep, exercise, healthy food and water. The details of my practice are not important, and will certainly differ from yours. What matters is to do something, pretty much every day. Walk. Lift weights. Do yoga or Pilates. Play outdoor games and sports (indoor sports, too). Swim. Cycle. Dig a garden bed. Climb a mountain. I am old, and my physical practice is rather more modest than most of these things. But it is daily.

I am indebted to my fellow-laborer in Christ (and yoga instructor) Nora, for the insight that exercise and other aspects of the physical can be a spiritual practice. Movement and breath open spiritual doors that are perhaps impossible to unlock in other ways.

Spiritual Practice

Operi Dei nihil praeponatur. Prefer nothing ahead of the Work of God.
(Rule of St. Benedict: Opus Dei, the Work of God, was the term Benedict used for the cycle of prayer that comprises the Daily Office.)

The foundation and framework of spiritual practice is the Daily Office. In the Anglican/Episcopal tradition, the cornerstones are Matins (Morning Prayer) and Evensong (Evening Prayer), with the Little Hours: Midday Prayer and Compline. All of these services are near the front of the Book of Common Prayer.

The Daily Office is too much; at times it seems to set too high of a standard to pray all of these services, every day, and many people might not find them helpful at all. At the same time, the Office is not enough. St. Benedict emphasized in his Rule that they can exist only in the context of work: Ora et labora, Prayer and Work. And community: spiritual practice may have a strong solitary element, but cannot survive without connection to the wider Church – for example, the Holy Eucharist on Sundays and participation in congregational life, mission, and service.

There are other paths to spiritual practice, more paths than one could explore in a lifetime. Whatever form a spiritual practice might take, it seems important that it include prayer and the reading of Holy Scripture, with generous helpings of both elements. It should also lead to Conversion of Life, another Benedictine concept. Continual exposure to prayer and Scripture with a willing heart and mind almost of necessity will result in some changes in one’s life, bringing one slowly, almost imperceptibly, closer to the Image of Christ, the fullness of being for which God created us. It is very much like the result of physical practice – steady attention to healthy diet and exercise over time changes who we are.

I would commend physical and spiritual practice to everyone. The third practice is a part of my specific vocation; there are obviously many other callings. I suspect that most any of them can be undertaken as a path toward spiritual wholeness, but I can speak for only the one I have walked:


Musical Practice

Practice makes perfect.

As with the others, the details of my musical practice are not important (except to me), and I have written of them elsewhere.

What matters for music is strikingly similar to the other practices: do something pretty much every day. Work in an orderly manner. Be patient, for progress will be slow, perhaps imperceptible. And for music to be a spiritual path, simply be open to the possibility as you work at it. Much of the time, you might not sense any spiritual connection – you might be too busy being a conduit for spiritual healing to those who hear you. But there will likely be times when it is so strong that you cannot miss it.

A musical practice cannot happen without the other two. Without the physical, the instrument (you, that is) falls apart in short order: physical or mental breakdown, repetitive motion injuries. Without the spiritual, the music quickly becomes about oneself, about pride and applause and getting one’s way, and it ceases to be real music that can bring healing to the universe. In the same manner, spiritual practice is strengthened by music: “he who sings prays twice,” as Augustine said. Many forms of physical practice are amenable to music, which can make a hard workout more enjoyable or a meditative workout more open to the Spirit.

Most aspects of these three practices are simple. But they are not easy. They demand a lot of time, and the Adversary (Hebrew: Ha-Satan) always has things for us that seem more important, more urgent. More fun. And easier, with the instant gratification that no genuine practice can offer. “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.” (Matthew 7:13)


Three thoughts that might help:

Habits – build specific times into your day and week for these things. Do them every day, whether you feel like it or not. After a few months, you will have a compulsion to do the practice at the time when you normally do it. Rejoice and be glad in this.

Placeholders – if you don’t feel like doing it, or have something else you must do, try to keep a toehold in the practice. If you cannot face an hour of exercise, do just one thing, maybe five minutes. The same goes for other practices – if you can’t pray Matins, see if you can say the Lord’s Prayer at the time when you would habitually pray. If you can’t countenance two or three hours at the organ and piano, do five minutes of scales or improvisation. The placeholder keeps the practice habit where it belongs, and very often, once you can get started, you find that you can keep going after all.

When you fall down, get back up – Even with strong habitual practices, we fail. We miss a day. And another. Maybe a whole week. Or more, perhaps a lot more. The longer we are absent from a practice, the harder it is to get back into it, but so long as life lasts, it is not impossible. The secret is to start over again. Today. Now. If we have once established a practice, it will come back to us, like riding a bicycle after many years. The Church builds in two seasons especially for this purpose: Advent and Lent. Both of them are occasions to rebuild what has fallen down, to shake off the dust and get moving again. They last long enough to establish – or re-establish – a good habit. But we can do this at any time, and must do it as often as we fall.

Resistance wins the day

I have heard it called the “Facebook effect.” All of my “friends” post photos of their vacations to exotic places; I stay at home and work. They speak glowingly of their children, all of them beautiful and strong and intelligent; I am childless. Each of them has hundreds of “friends,” perhaps thousands; I have what seems like but a handful, and I know that most of them are acquaintances, not friends in any true sense. [Disclaimer: I deleted my Facebook account after the November election. That action has improved my quality of life.]

What is happening is, of course, that these other people are posting about the good things and not the bad, nor the humdrum routine of work and responsibility.

This Music Box is no exception. From these pages, one could get the idea that I am diligent, always striving to play the organ and piano a little better, regular with the Daily Office and prayer, organized and efficient, always faithful to my Lord. Would that it were so!

I begin things and never complete them. I waste time, lots of it. Good habits that I seek to establish wilt when the times are challenging, leaving only the bad habits (which seem invulnerable). When confronted with milk chocolate, I am as helpless as a junkie. Or doughnuts. Or pastries. I dare not keep such things at home, or in my office.

And there are days like yesterday.

I began well; by the grace of God, on this day (and most days) my habits carried me through the morning routines at home, and right on through Matins at church. But then it is my custom to brew some tea, sit down at the computer, and eat a second breakfast.

It is the most dangerous part of my day, and most of all on Fridays, when I generally have no fixed commitments.

My Rule of Life says to check e-mail, both church and personal, and deal with it while I eat. Then I check the Internet; the Rule says to do so quickly and efficiently, without getting bogged down or extending this beyond the time it takes me to eat. There are several blogs that I follow, plus some weekly newsletters. The two that are the most important to me are these:

Faith, Folk, and Charity

I have mentioned Fr. Tim Chesterton several times in the Music Box; he is an Anglican priest and pastor of a parish in Edmonton, Alberta. He is more of an Evangelical than I am, and he is a guitar-playing folk singer. Both of these qualities are good for me, for I am a Rite One Anglo-Catholic and an organist/choirmaster who can easily become narrow in his musical tastes. His blog includes his weekly sermons, which I love; they are down-to-earth, practical, Biblical. And they frequently include music. It was Fr. Tim who introduced me to Stan Rogers, for example. And Kate Rusby, featured in his current post.

Jesse’s Café Américain

It is a marvelous blend of financial, spiritual, and political commentary, and even (sometimes) music—like Fr. Tim, Jesse posts YouTube clips, tending toward jazz. One Christmas, he even posted one of mine; “O holy Night” from our Christmas Day service, with Ting Davidson on the violin. Jesse bills his site as “an oasis of civility in an increasingly uncivil world,” and begins with a header that is most often of spiritual nature – the current one is a quote from John Henry Newman.

As it happens, the current post (April 28) includes a passage that pertains to my topic for today:

Remember that salvation has been bought for us by the greatest love that one can receive, and that we should therefore take no pride in it. Rather, we are a child not of our own works or words but of mercy, and we are therefore expected, no we are commanded, to extend that mercy to others. As you judge, so shall you be judged.

To take pride in our position and status and knowledge in the manner of the Pharisees, and especially to abuse our faith as a platform for hatred, violence, and other offenses against others, is to sin against the Spirit. And this is the one sin that will not be easily forgiven.

This then is a purpose of suffering, that we may be kept safe from such a temptation to think so falsely of ourselves, and imagine ourselves to be what we are not. For it is in this disordered pride that the first sin found its mark.

This, in the middle of a commentary on the first quarter GDP numbers and the day’s price action in the financial markets.

At the bottom of his page are more quotes, and what I think is his motto: “Need little. Want less. Love more.”

But I digress.

Yesterday, it was Jesse’s Café that led me astray (I hasten to add, through no fault of its proprietor). In a sidebar, he offers “Matières à Réflexion,” a list of blogposts, news articles, essays, videos that he considers worth a look. On this day, one of them was a link to a New Yorker article: Rod Dreher’s monastic vision

And that consumed the rest of the day.

I read the (long) article, which sparked my interest in Dreher’s book, “The Benedictine Option.” That led me to his blog, which is (I gather) famous and widely read; the New Yorker article says he gets around a million page views per month.

I disagree with many of his stances, but I agree with many others. He writes well, and prolifically; he posts daily, often at considerable length. As often happens when I discover a blog, I read and read some more, and then more. Much about the “Benedictine Option.” And politics. And the Orthodox church, and Catholicism. The New Yorker describes it well – “orthodox Christianity, religious freedom, the ‘L.G.B.T. agenda,’ the hypocrisy of privileged liberals, the nihilism of secular capitalism, the appeal of monasticism, the spiritual impoverishment of modernity, brisket—while sharing candid, emotional stories about his life.”

When I started, it was about 10:00. Before I knew it, it was nearly noon.

That was bad enough. Round One goes to Resistance.

[Resistance] takes many forms: procrastination, fear, self-medication, drugs/alcohol/junk food, cruelty to others and to self, wasting time with television/internet, criticism of others, the fear of criticism from others…

It is universal; everyone faces it, every day. Resistance especially abhors “the pursuit of any calling in writing, painting, music, film, dance, or any creative art… any diet or health regimen… any program of spiritual advancement… education of every kind… any act of political, moral, or ethical courage…” (p. 5 and 6, where Pressfield lists eleven such activities). Resistance hates these things, and will do anything to “shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.”

I said the Midday Office and went upstairs to my proper duties. Or I tried: I set the hymn boards and prepared my hymnals for the weekend’s services. But it was cold in the church, the fruit of a cold, rainy day. I knew that I must practice; Sunday loomed ahead, and Choral Evensong next weekend.

I was cold and tired, still not fully recovered from Holy Week and the hard week that followed. I knew that if I could just change my shoes and get on the bench, I might be all right.

But I could not bring myself to do it.

“It is dinnertime. I can practice after I eat.” I retired to my nice cozy office, brewed some more tea, set out my food. And returned to Mr. Dreher’s blog, which I found compelling.

One o’clock passed. Then two o’clock. “I must practice,” I thought. But it was so cold upstairs, and dark. The thought of going up there was more than I could handle. “Just a little more; I might as well finish this up.” Three o’clock.

Now, it was time to go home; no practicing for me today. The very thing for which I was made, and placed here to do for the glory of God and (hopefully) the benefit of His people, and I spend five hours on the Internet instead of attending to it.

Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill. Its target is the epicenter of our being: our genius, our soul, the unique and priceless gift we were put on earth to give and that no one else has but us. Resistance means business. When we fight it, we are in a war to the death. (Steven Pressfield, “The War of Art” p. 15, quoted here.)

Not only did I fail in this, but I equally failed to do work that was available to me – and pressing – in my nice cozy office. Five hours.

There is nothing for it but repentance and amendment of life. Conversion of life, as the Benedictines would say:

Redeem thy misspent time that’s past
And live this day as if thy last.
Improve thy talent with due care;
For the great day thyself prepare.
(Thomas Ken)

It will be all right. Pressfield says elsewhere “One bad day is nothing. Ten bad days are nothing. You are in this for the long haul.” I am well-prepared for this Sunday—that is part of what opened the door for Resistance, for Necessity was not wielding its whip to press me forward at it had during the fortnight leading up to Easter. It is next Sunday’s Evensong that may suffer.

Today has been much better. For one thing, I dressed more warmly, and that made it easier to get on the bench in what was (again) a cold, dark church when I started. What I face is nothing; the old-time churches were not heated at all, and that did not deter the likes of Bach and Buxtehude and Franck and Bruckner from their work.

I am not going to purchase Mr. Dreher’s book; I read enough of his blog to see that I would probably enjoy it, but despite its title and premise, it offers little that would be new to me. I am pleased that a book about the Rule of Benedict and Christian life together is a best-seller (number seven on the NY Times list). But I already own at least two books that I think cover some of the same ground, about how to live as a Christian in a world that is coming unglued: Marva Dawn’s “Unfettered Hope,” which will never be a best-seller but may be a better book than Dreher’s. And from a world that was genuinely and totally unglued in a way I hope to never see: “Life together” (D. Bonhoeffer). Or I can go to the source: the Rule of Benedict itself.

I will not give up the Internet, though Dreher’s counsel of periodic “fasting” from the Net and related media is well-taken. On the whole, the things I have read on the Net have educated me and made me a better person—even a better musician—and it was through discussion forums (and this Music Box and its predecessor on LiveJournal) that I learned to write.

But it is dangerous. It is my greatest weakness, and requires more vigilance than I gave it yesterday.

How I practice: a demonstration

I described my practice method in a 2011 essay. Recently, I encountered the book “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle, where he describes a practice method similar to this, calling it “Deep Practice.” Here is my version:

- Work out the fingering
- Play a short passage (perhaps four measures, or one phrase), slowly.
- Play it again
- Play it a third time, still very slowly.
[See the 2019 addendum below]
- Modify the rhythms several ways, still just this one phrase. The goal is to isolate the smallest musical unit – two notes – and tie them together with the neighboring units.
- Then larger groupings – four notes, two beats, a measure.
- Play the passage at a faster tempo, performance tempo if possible.
- Move to the next phrase, learn it in the same manner.
- For review, play the two phrases together.
- Move on to the third phrase.
- Repeat…
- When the practice session is nearly finished (or when I have worked through the entire movement or large section), give it a final slow, careful, mistake-free playthrough at half tempo or less. It settles the day’s work, as if telling the mind and body “Yes, this is how it goes.”
- The next day, repeat the above.

I have recorded an example of how this goes; it can be found here.

It is my first beginning with the Franck Chorale in E major, which will hopefully be the prelude for the February Evensong tomorrow. Before taking it to the organ as it is in the example, I have worked out the fingering, thoroughly. I write a finger number for every note.

I begin not at the beginning of the piece, but at measure 170. This begins a passage of about sixty bars that I expect to be the most challenging, and I normally begin my work on a piece at such a spot, building around it as the work progresses.

I am pleased that there are Problems, especially at the page turn between measures 174 and 175. It happens to be a difficult spot, made harder by the page turn. This seems to happen a lot; I have wondered if music editors do it intentionally. Especially in the first slow playthrough, there are almost always a few problems, and the clip is a good illustration of how to work on them, not allowing a mistake to go uncorrected.

Basically, my little workpiece is one phrase. I extend it a measure and a half past the phrase end because of the page turn, with the intention of starting the next phrase just before the page turn, giving it a double dose of work. Unless the turn is very easy, I generally do this.

After all of the rhythmic variations and groupings and playthroughs, I move on to the next phrase and treat it in the same manner. Then I string the two phrases together, and move on to the third phrase. When it is done, I string at least the second and third phrases together, and perhaps include the first phrase again, as well. At the end of the practice session, I finish with a final slow play-through of all that I have covered. I use the metronome for this, normally at half of the performance tempo.

The method seems highly inefficient in the short run, for it took me over twenty minutes to work through ten measures of music – in a piece that is 259 measures long. But I think that the listener can tell that those twenty minutes resulted in significant progress on the little passage, and one more day’s work on it will solidify it. In the long run, I find this method of work to be an immense time-saver.

My plan is to give the two pages that I got through today their Second Workout on my next day of practice – pretty much the same as the First Workout, except that it usually goes more smoothly – then lay it aside until I have worked through the entire piece in this manner. If possible, I will try to include one slow playthrough per week of the parts I have previously covered to keep them somewhat fresh. If this works, it could be the key for how I can better prepare a lot of music for one occasion, such as a recital or the Great Vigil/Easter Day.

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I made the recording and wrote most of the above on January 6 and 7. It is now February 4, with the Evensong coming up tomorrow. The Franck has made good progress and I think it will be ready, even though I did not complete my Second Workout on one two-page section of the piece until yesterday.

For a long time, I have been on a journey toward being a Better Musician. It has troubled me for years that I continue to make so many mistakes in performance, so I continue to improve my practice methods. I think that this month’s work on the Franck is a step in the right direction.
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Addendum, June 2019

The above system worked for a time. Old age and the onset of "yips" led to a modification: on the first day with a new piece, do the three slow play-throughs of a short segment, typically two to four measures. Move on to the next segment, with three slow play-throughs. Play the first and second segment together, slowly. Move on to the third segment, reviewing segments two and three. Then the fourth segment, reviewing segments three and four. And likewise through to the end of the movement or the piece, or the practice time available for the day.

I found that going onward with the rhythmic practice on the initial day ultimately contributed to the "yips" in performance. Nowadays, I do better by working gently the first day. On the second and subsequent days, I proceed as described above, with one slow play-through of each segment followed by rhythmic practice.

I still get the "yips," but not quite as badly.

The only other significant modification I have made is that I work more with one hand at a time, especially if there is any problem at any point from the first slow playing to the final preparations for performance. Isolate the short segment and the hand which is having difficulty, play the one hand's music slowly, perhaps with the rhythms if that seems like it will help, then put it back with the other hand and the pedals.

Chronicles of Advent

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

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!
Then with the shepherds let us go
To see what God for us has done
In sending us his own dear Son.

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.

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]

A visit to the piano store

It began with a guitar string. My wife needed one, so the two of us went to the excellent local music store, West Music. We went to the guitar and pop music end of the building, she got her string, and we spent a few minutes in the guitar room, where she tried out an instrument.

That was enough excuse for me to drag her to the far end of the store: the pianos. To my surprise, it was the annual Steinway Extravaganza, when the company ships in many of their higher-end grand pianos for a few days. I happened on this event one time a few years ago. That time, I was thinking in terms of the church and its needs. This time, it is for me; a piano of my very own.

But not a high-end Steinway. For the first time in my life, we could in theory drop $80 or $90 grand on a piano, but that would be from retirement savings and it would be imprudent. I played a few notes on the “Legends Tour” concert grands that had been played by a variety of famous people and moved on to a Steinway Model B for a couple of minutes. It was a terrific piano (as I described in the link above). The store was busy and my wife was itching to go, so that was it. In the car, I mentioned that I would like to have a piano when we retire, a thought which I had never dared voice.

Silence.

I dropped the subject. Several hours later, she brought it up, having had time to think about it. First, she reminded me that we are not going to spend that kind of money on a piano. And that the sound of a piano hurts her ears. Second, I am aware that it would be a large imposition on her for me to practice for hours at home. Her instrument – classical guitar – is much kinder to fellow householders than a piano. My playing would impose on neighbors as well, if we end up in a town-house or apartment, which is likely.

Having hosted the jazz department for eight years at the church, I am aware that it would also be an imposition for me to seek arrangements with a nearby church for any serious amount of daily piano (or organ) practice, if I am not working as their musician. One or two days a week might be possible: every day? Not so much.

But if I am not working, why do I want to practice? That is the part which my wife had not considered; she thought (and probably hoped) that I would never want to play again. I sometimes thought that too until a few months ago. For a funeral, I had to learn a Mozart sonata in the span of a couple of days. I had not played that sort of music for decades, and it awakened a longing – I could return to the piano and play Mozart. And Haydn, and Beethoven. Schubert, whom I especially loved. Chopin. Liszt. The Bach suites, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations, which I played in concert half a lifetime ago.

It was the first time I had looked toward retirement with any glimmer of hope or vocation. Would anyone want to hear me play? Probably not. There are already too many pianists in the world. But I think of Messiaen’s statement: “An apple tree makes apples. I make music.” I have known apple trees – including one I planted, decades ago, near what is now an abandoned farm house – whose fruit is ignored, left for the wild animals. That does not stop them from doing what God made them to do.

I understand why my wife might hope that I would close the fallboard and walk away. For thirty-plus years she has followed me through several job-related moves. She has almost never had a weekend with me, not since our honeymoon. We go weeks at a time with our paths crossing briefly with hardly a chance for two sentences. I think she would like to see her husband a little more often. I would like to see her, too; she is my favorite person and best friend. And it is true: for medical reasons, piano and organ music does hurt her ears, along with other loud noises. She has reason to dread having a husband who wants to practice.


Well, then: what to do about an instrument? As we passed through the Steinways, I saw the store’s Yamaha digital grand with its price tag of $14,999 (list price: $20,000). I thought about it: Headphones. Volume control. Still a lot of money, but not an impossible sum.

To be continued…

endings and beginnings

The last spring recital is finished. The accompanist came downstairs to shake my hand and wish me a good summer. He has been a student here in the jazz department and in classical piano, playing Rachmaninoff and Prokofieff and Scriabin well into the night upstairs on the good Steinway, year after year. This fall, he will be with the others in the new music building, not here.

The teacher was a classical saxophonist in the doctoral program; he graduated a few years ago, after years of the saxophone quartet that he headed rehearsing here at the church. This afternoon’s event was his spring studio recital. After the students had left and I had locked the doors, he got out his own instrument and played in the church. I stood outside in the courtyard, singing Evensong with the fireflies, the light streaming through the stained glass from inside the church. The last daylight faded, the first stars appeared.

Eventually, he found me and, like the pianist, shook my hand and thanked me. “This place is so beautiful,” he said, looking back at the church. “There isn’t another acoustic like this anywhere around.”


Ascension, Whitsunday, Trinity Sunday – all past. The choirs are on summer holiday, after one final gathering this past Wednesday. This week, since Trinity, remained full, thanks to yesterday’s wedding. This afternoon, I finished the 2015-16 planning cycle, pencilling the last voluntaries into my planning book, ordering the choral music for the youth choir’s fall season.

One of our adult choristers has moved to Virginia; he was back today, here for the weekend to load his possessions into a U-Haul. He has joined the choir of a big-time Episcopal church. And he said “the choir out there is larger. But we sing just as well as they do, and better on the Anglican chant.”

I resist the thought that somehow, this choir in this Midwestern town could possibly become a “big-time” program, the sort of place that I have always looked to for an example of how to Do It Right. We don’t have the paid singers that a major league choir would have; we have some choristers who would not pass an audition. We have an overworked organist/director who cannot devote enough time to either part of his job. The youth choir has just one rehearsal a week when all the articles in the journals say that you must have at least two, and that they must sing for church every Sunday. And half of our choristers aren’t even there for the whole rehearsal – they have other activities, and I often think that choir comes last on their list.

I cannot see how we could be an example to anyone; there must be better examples wherever one might want to find them. But here we are. If nothing else, we might be an example of working within what is possible, and allowing the music of this place to develop in its own direction – that would include my own work as an organist and pianist. I never expected that I would be improvising piano preludes every Sunday, and finding it one of the most challenging and satisfying parts of my work.

And I never dared hope that I could have a rehearsal like this past Wednesday. The choristers who are going to this summer’s RSCM course gathered for an afternoon read-through of the music. They sailed through it all, finding none of it particularly difficult. Five of them: three teen girls, a changing-voice alto (maybe; he might still be a second treble in July), a young tenor. The alto said “After the Handel Amen, this stuff isn’t so hard.” That was not at all to look down on the course music; they loved it, and recognized what it would take to prepare it. But they were not intimidated by it.

They refused to take a break; they wanted to keep on singing, seeing the time slip away. And they asked for another rehearsal.

The rehearsal ended, and I walked with friends over to the Mill (the local venue for Good Music), where youth choir families and some of the adult choir were gathering for an end-of-year celebration, eating and drinking and listening to the local bluegrass band. Some of the young choristers took to the dance floor alongside the elderly couples, one lady (probably in her eighties) in her red spangled blouse that has probably been her dancing outfit for fifty years, she and her husband having as much fun as the children. We stayed for hours, sitting and talking and enjoying the evening. I love these people; they are like family to me.

Cantare amantis est.

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The selection of music for upcoming weeks and months is the first part of a trinity, a “sub-creation” that is in its limited way a mirror, an icon of the Maker of all things in whose image we are made. I quoted this from Dorothy Sayers just a few weeks ago, after having noted it here:

For every work [or act] of creation is threefold, an earthly trinity to match the heavenly.

First [not in time, but merely in order of enumeration] there is the Creative Idea, passionless, timeless, beholding the whole work complete at once, the end in the beginning: and this is the image of the Father.

Second, there is the Creative Energy [or Activity] begotten of that idea, working in time from the beginning to the end, with sweat and passion, being incarnate in the bonds of matter: and this is the image of the Word.

Third, there is the Creative Power, the meaning of the work and its response in the lively soul: and this is the image of the indwelling Spirit.

And these three are one, each equally in itself the whole work, whereof none can exist without other: and this is the image of the Trinity.

The selection of music is the Creative Idea. And most years, there are a few points where the insight of what will work on a given Sunday overwhelms me, every bit as much as it actual performance might.

For today’s work, it was the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A: December 18, 2016. Chapter one of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, with supporting lessons from Isaiah and Romans, and Psalm 80. I needed something for the youth choir to sing that day, for that is the one day in Advent that will work for their schedule. I was thinking small, what with Christmas Eve around the corner – until it hit me: “O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion…”

They could sing the alto “solo.” I took it to the piano and sang it through myself; some of it is a little low for trebles, but I am guessing that we will have boys for whom this will be ideal, and with them singing up in the alto/falsetto range alongside the girls and treble boys, it will be a beautiful and unique sound, a bit like the male alto in the linked recording. And then the adults can join them on the SATB section at the end.

It will be just right, exactly what needs to be said at that point in the liturgy, in the year, and in the development of these choirs and the life of this parish. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I wrote it into the planning calendar, “beholding the whole work complete at once.”

Arise, shine, for thy light is come.
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.

It is a Gift to live in the Creative Idea for an afternoon, most of it working with organ voluntaries (for the adult schedule, hymnody, and psalmody are already in place; all that remained were the voluntaries and the youth choir). There are other moments where the Idea was overwhelming: the Stanford Te Deum in B flat with the adults for the Sunday in October when we have Choral Matins, the youth choir in September singing Alice Parker’s arrangement of “Be thou my vision” with (I hope) the string players drawn from the choir itself. And quite a few things in the organ music.

Now I, and all of us, will have to learn these things. It will take work, lots of it, “with sweat and passion, being incarnate in the bonds of matter. And this is the image of the Word.”

And then the Creative Power, the effect of this music in the hearts of those who hear it, as well as those who sing it.

A chance encounter

This morning at about 6:45, I happened by a janitor who was mopping the concrete floor of the parking garage stairwell. He was whistling, and clearly enjoying his work.

It was the hymn tune Rockingham. In the Episcopal book, it is the tune for "When I survey the wondrous cross" plus a few other texts.

I didn't comment beyond wishing him a good day, because I didn't want to embarrass him. But it cheered my soul to know beyond any doubt, by his delight in the morning and by this tune that only a Christian would know, that he is my brother in Christ, doing his work as I hope that I can do mine today.

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. (St. Matthew 5:14-16)