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.

--------------------------

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.

Snow Day

It snowed here Saturday night and all day Sunday, about a foot of it. As I often do when the weather is questionable for Sunday morning, I spent Saturday night in my office. That let me get sufficient practice for the morning's organ and piano music on Saturday, extending into the evening, then a good night's sleep, and a fine early start on Sunday.

Had I attempted to drive in on Sunday morning, I probably would not have made it. Only three of our choristers arrived: Bob, Perry, and Natasia. We cancelled our anthem and sang a congregational hymn, but Perry and Natasia sang a descant on the opening hymn and the four of us sang the Psalm.

We had put a lot of preparation into this month's Choral Evensong, being the Eve of Candlemas. It was not to be: given the forecast, we cancelled. Instead, I spent the afternoon and evening working on next Sunday's music: the Bach A minor Prelude and Fugue. We shall see if I have sufficient time this week to pull it off.


This week's musical example is in two parts: First, Psalm 111 in plainsong with congregational antiphon. This is our standard form of psalmody for the Choral Eucharist; we sing Anglican Chant at Evensong. I am pleased with how this turned out today, even with our small group.

I have also included the Hymn that we sang before the Gospel: “Silence!
Frenzied, unclean spirit.” This is a very prickly hymn, and I believe that it has almost disappeared from view. But I would be hard-pressed to find anything better to accompany this day's pericope: St. Mark 1:21-28, wherein our Lord casts out a demon.

The text is under copyright so I cannot print it, but you can find it here with commentary by its author, Thomas Troeger. Thirty years ago, he and Carol Doran taught at the Episcopal seminary in Rochester, NY (an institution that has since closed). They collaborated on two slim volumes of hymns, with Doran writing tunes as unique as Troeger's texts. This one is not my favorite (that would be “Make your prayer and music one,” which is about Paul and Silas singing hymns in the Philippian jail), but it is indicative of the fine work that Doran and Troeger did. Notice how the tune hammers away at one note with lots of dissonance, reflective of the mental anguish of the person possessed by the demon.

I commend their hymns to you; search them out, and sing them.

The Nativity of St. John Baptist: a Movie and a Hymn

In 2006, there appeared a worthwhile cinematic telling of "The Nativity Story." I loved it: I watched it at the cinema about a half-dozen times that December, and donated a copy of the DVD to the public library.

One of my favorite scenes is the portrayal of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to her cousin Elizabeth:
Part 3 of 10
The clip begins with the Annunciation. The part about the Visitation begins at 6:30 in the clip. If I remember rightly, the actress who plays Elizabeth, Shohreh Aghdashloo, is herself a Palestinian Christian. She well portrays this great and holy woman.

The story continues in the next clip, part 4 of 10, which recounts the Birth of St. John Baptist and his Circumcision.

Here is the whole movie.


------------
The office hymn for this Feast is number 271 in the Hymnal 1982, Ut queant laxis (The great forerunner of the morn).

It from this hymn that the master teacher and Benedictine monk Guido of Arezzo (born 991 or 992, died after 1033) derived what we now know as solfege, and as a corollary invented the modern system of musical notation. Both innovations were aimed at making it easier for choristers to learn the plainsong chants of the Church.

Guido noticed that the six scale steps are clearly outlined as the first note of the first six phrases of this tune, and he assigned the text syllables from these points to the scale degrees: Ut - Re - Mi - Fa - Sol - La. Here is a little YouTube clip that perfectly illustrates what is happening: it shows the plainchant with the appropriate syllables outlined in boxes.

To appreciate Guido's leap of imagination, one must recall that the song was not written down for him to look at, not in a form like this. What he had was a text with squiggly lines above it, which very roughly indicated the shape of the tune, and the tune which he had learned by ear. All of the tunes, the enormous mass of Chant for the liturgical year, had to be transmitted by ear from generation to generation.

Guido realized that if one extracted these six pitches and named them, the pitches would have the same name in any chant, any musical composition, and they could then be written down in a clearly indicative manner, including the relationships of half steps and whole steps (the half step is always between Mi and Fa). Further, the entire corpus of chant could be notated with these syllables (and the use of Hexachords, which are multiple overlapping sets of these six pitches).

This changed the world.
(Well, at least the world of music.)

"Ut" was changed to "Doh" some five centuries later because the vowel was thought to sound better in the voice, and "Si" was added about that same time for reasons that are too complex to here recount; in part, it allows one to dispense with the system of overlapping hexachords. In English-speaking countries, "Si" was changed to "Ti" in the nineteenth century so that each syllable would begin with a different letter.

St. Gregory the Great

Today is the Feast of St. Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome from 590 until his death on this day in the year 604. He is important to me because during his tenure, he saw to it that the then-amorphous body of Latin liturgical plainsong was organized into the structure that survives today in those places where the Proper Chants of the Mass are sung [this is the traditional view (for example, see here); many scholars disagree, arguing that the codification of the Chants happened about a century later.]. Also, he is partly responsible for the Sunday Lectionary and the Collects of the Day. When Charlemagne asked Pope Adrian in the 780's to send him a copy of the Roman service book, what arrived was the Gregorian Sacramentary, which was then used throughout the Holy Roman Empire and beyond. It is said that Gregory "collected the Sacramentary of Gelasius in one book, leaving out much, changing little, adding something." (John the Deacon, 8th c., in his "Life of Gregory;" quoted from Wikipedia s.v. "Sacramentary")

As one of the greatest of the Pontiffs, it is fitting to invoke his prayers as the College of Cardinals sit in conclave to select a successor to Benedict XVI.

I am thankful that Gregory saw fit to send missionaries to the English people. For all its faults (and there were many) the Roman Christianity that spread from Canterbury tied Britain into the larger Christian world.

Here is an English translation of the Gradual, prepared by Bruce E. Ford. It happens that we are singing a number of the Holy Week chants from this book this season. The document is a 415 page PDF file.

Here is a medieval drawing of Gregory with the Holy Spirit singing the chant in his ear as he writes it in a chant book.

And here is a painting of him by Rubens.

St. Gregory left the Church in better shape than he found it. May we seek to do the same.

“Are you a Benedictine?”

After church last Sunday, a visitor asked me this. He is connected with the Benedictine Abbey of St. Meinrad, in southern Indiana and (I gather) was in town for the week.

I was confused; why would he think such a thing? It turns out that it was because of the Psalm. We had sung a plainsong setting of Psalm 132 in the service, and in his view, we sang it stylistically and well. The choir does good work with the psalmody; it is perhaps the best singing that we do. I do pester them about it quite a bit: shape of phrases (like a wave coming onto a tropical beach, then going back out), pause at the asterisk, diction. But the credit, if there is any, is mostly theirs; they have done this enough so that they listen to each other, and it is sung prayer – as it ought to be.

No, I am not a Benedictine. But my teacher was: Fr. Gerard Farrell, OSB (1919-2000). I am delighted to post a link to this page, which honors his memory.

He was an organ student of Flor Peeters and a graduate of the Eastman School of Music. He became Choirmaster at the great Abbey of St. John in Collegeville, Minnesota in 1951. Among his innovations, he instituted daily Choral Vespers, where it had previously been sung only on Sundays. I suspect that he would be pleased that the pendulum has swung back sufficiently so that a service such as the one I described in the previous essay, most of it in Latin, would again be valued, or indeed permitted by those in authority.

After the Second Vatican Council and the changes to the monastic liturgy, especially the use of the Vernacular and the desire of many to abandon the heritage of Gregorian Chant, he strove to hold the old and new together, as outlined on the memorial page, but eventually in 1969 resigned from the position, like many other Catholic Church Musicians of those dark days. He moved east, and (among other duties) taught at Westminster Choir College, serving also as associate priest in the local parish. I had the privilege of taking his graduate course in Gregorian Chant; I wish I had continued with his advanced class in Semiology and Paleography (that is, working with the original chant manuscripts and grappling with issues of interpretation of the ancient Neumes; he was one of the masters of his generation in that field), but my paths led in other directions.

In the end, he was permitted to return to the Abbey; he taught week-long summer courses in Chant there in his final years, and went there to die, as is appropriate for a Brother of the Order of St. Benedict. He arrived there on December 30, 1999 with terminal cancer, and died on January 9, 2000, with Requiem Mass at the Abbey on January 12.

May he rest in peace. May he remember us his students before the Throne of Grace.

Choral Vespers

The current BBC Choral Evensong broadcast from Westminster Cathedral is a good example of Roman Catholic Choral Vespers, which is an ancestor of Anglican Choral Evensong. (For those who wish to listen to it, hurry: it disappears from the Net tomorrow.)

As in Evensong, there is an opening dialogue (V. Deus in adjutorum meum intende. R. Domine ad adjuvandum me festina), then an Office Hymn (where we would sing the Phos Hilaron, “O gracious Light”), then Psalmody.

There is but one Lesson, followed by the Magnificat. In this service, a Homily then occurred, followed by the Lord's Prayer (sung by the choir), spoken intercessions, an Anthem, dismissal, and organ postlude.

Nearly all of the service was in Latin, and most of it in plainsong.

My impressions: I miss the polyphonic Preces and Responses. So far as I know, there is no Roman Catholic equivalent of the Smith Responses, or Ayleward, or any of the other settings. Instead, the Preces is in plainsong and the “responses” are spoken – in this service, they were in a litany form, with short intercessions each followed by the response “Lord, hear our prayer.” As I have written elsewhere, one must sing the Preces as a chorister with enormous energy; I liken it to thoroughbreds in the starting gate, bursting with excitement at the prospect of what lies ahead; in many respects, it is my favorite part of the entire Office. At the other end, what could be finer than the third Amen in Smith? Or its equivalent in many other settings?

Over time, I suspect that I would miss Anglican Chant. The psalmody in this service is splendidly done, with good shape to the plainsong tones and good pauses at the asterisk. But psalmody in Anglican Chant has its own virtues, without which we would be impoverished.

I miss the Nunc Dimittis. In nearly all of the Anglican musical settings, the Nunc Dimittis is a quiet counterpoise to the often more energetic setting of the Magnificat. On the other hand, the Roman version of the Office puts a greater emphasis on the Song of Mary, an emphasis that is not without its advantages. In the service from Westminster Cathedral, by the time one reaches the Magnificat, there has been nearly a half-hour of Latin plainsong, and now – Polyphony! It is like the return of flowers and sunshine in spring. In this service, the setting was the “St. Patrick's Magnificat” by the distinguished Scottish composer James MacMillan, a fine and challenging unaccompanied setting worthy of the long tradition of Latin settings of the Canticle. But I can think of a dozen or more Anglican settings of the Nunc Dimittis which are precious to me. Again, we would be impoverished without such music.

And, as much as I love the great and venerable language of the Western Church, I miss English, or at least the traditional “Rite One” English for which Choral Evensong is almost the final refuge. I hold many aspects of Roman Catholic liturgy, theology, and practice in high esteem, but I also espouse many of the Reformed concepts enshrined in the Book of Common Prayer, not least the idea of liturgy in the English language.

Roman Catholic Vespers is an honorable tradition, much older than what we have as Anglicans. But it may be that Anglican Choral Evensong is our finest gift to the larger Church. There is nothing quite like it in any other tradition.

[Footnote: I commend the General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours, which outlines the theology of the Daily Office and how it is to be conducted in the Roman Catholic manner. I know of no document equivalent to this in Anglicanism – can anyone suggest something?]

Plainsong Psalmody from Portsmouth

The current BBC Choral Evensong is from Portsmouth Cathedral, and presents an outstanding example of plainsong psalmody. Most cathedral Evensongs are done with Anglican Chant, and it is worthwhile to listen to the plainsong as a contrast; it begins about 7'20” into the broadcast and continues for about ten minutes. A few items to note:

-- the pause at the asterisk: I have learned from my own singing of the psalms and from choral rehearsals in trying to do it this way (and undoing past habits of not making much of a pause) that this is spiritually valuable. It causes one to slow down. Evidence for this is that I tend to forget and rush through the asterisk when I am in a hurry, or not focused on the moment. I would go so far as to say that this little silence is a principal contributor to the following:

-- the hypnotic quality of the chant, when carried through the large quantity of psalmody appointed in the Offices: This has the potential to aid in the spiritual connectedness that is sought in Taizé music, and more effectively in plainsong than in the latter, in my opinion.

-- the shaping of phrases: In plainsong, most phrases have an arched shape, especially when there is much text on the reciting note. There is a slight crescendo through the reciting note, and relaxation through the ending. Many have likened it to ocean waves calmly and rhythmically washing up the beach and receding. The Portsmouth choir does it exceedingly well.

-- the objectivity: In our parish, we sometimes sing Eucharistic psalmody to the Ionian Psalter of Peter Hallock. These settings are excellent, and much valued. Hallock takes a radically different approach, with wide swings of dynamic, expressive of the text – and there is much in the Psalter that, on its surface, calls for such expressiveness. Anglican Chant psalmody can partake of such expression, as well. But that is not the approach of plainsong psalmody; it is the calm, meditative prayer of Holy Mother Church, generation after generation through all the vicissitudes of life, in spiritual union with the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit.

-- the organ accompaniment: It is modest, and entirely in the background. In our parish, we generally sing plainsong without accompaniment, but if the organ is to be used, this is the way it should be done. Good plainsong accompaniment adds to the hypnotic quality of the chant.

The BBC only keeps the Evensong broadcasts online for a week; this one will disappear after Tuesday, Dec. 27. For those who encounter this posting after that, similar examples from Portsmouth might be found on YouTube – I haven't looked, so I cannot say for sure.

Next up from BBC Choral Evensong: the Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, beginning on Christmas Day.

Holy Week, Easter, plainsong, and indulgences

Over the last several weeks, there has been some good liturgy and music, and some bad. Some thoughts in review:

At one time, I had hoped that the adult choir could sing Bruckner's setting of Christus factus est for Passion Sunday. It became clear that they couldn't. Instead, we sang the proper plainsong gradual with the same text, using the English-language version in Bruce Ford's excellent American Gradual (available as a PDF download, for those who might be interested in it).

The youth choir was scheduled to sing at the contemporary service. I could not find a suitable anthem, and I wanted them to experience plainsong, so they ended up also singing one of the Passion Sunday propers from the American Gradual, the Offertory (Improperium, based on verses from Psalm 69).

Both of these plainsong propers were challenging. To their credit, both choirs took them seriously. The youth choir knew it well enough, but they could have sung it louder. We were missing almost half the choir, including some strong singers, but that is no excuse. Nonetheless, I remain convinced that it was the right choice for them, proper for their spiritual and musical development -- mine, too, for I learned a lot from teaching it to them.

As it transpired, the Improperium came at a point in the service when it was what needed to be said. We had heard St. Luke's passion narrative, but that had been followed by fifteen minutes of announcements, all having to do with the sale of this and that for various fundraising projects, ending with someone saying that she thought we should sell indulgences: a great way to raise some money. And, to our shame, certain people thought it was a terrific idea and we are doing exactly that; we heard another invitation to buy them in today's services. "Lighten up; it's just a joke?" Martin Luther did not think so, nor did the Magisterium that opposed him. Nor do I. But that day, people were laughing, in high spirits. Forget about Christ on the cross. Who cares about that when you come to church to see your friends and have a few laughs?

Immediately after, the youth choir sang their anthem. It was as if it were from a different universe from what we had just been hearing:

"Shame and reproach have broken my heart, and it cannot be healed. I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found no one. They gave me gall to eat, and when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink."

Upon several weeks of reflection, I am increasingly convinced that, quiet as it was, it may have been the "still, small voice" for those who had ears to hear. One of the jazz musicians in the congregation complimented us on it after the service, though many other people, including the Rector, complained about not being able to hear it. I think I will leave it at that.

The adults did a fine job with their Christus factus est, and the traditional congregation appreciated it. The choir did excellent work throughout the busy week, highlighted by a heartfelt rendition of Mozart's Ave verum corpus on Maundy Thursday, and "My dancing day" at the Great Vigil. We had a newly composed prelude for brass and organ on Easter Day at the traditional service, and as is the custom, we finished with the congregation singing the Hallelujah Chorus. Unfortunately, I followed that with a sloppy rendition of Gigout's "Grand Choir Dialogue."

Not to be outdone, I gave an equally sloppy reading of Vierne's "Carillon" from the Twenty-Four Pieces on the following Sunday. At least the Messiaen at the end of the Great Vigil went well enough, a movement from the Book of the Blessed Sacrament, "The resurrection of Christ." It was, again, what needed to be said at that point in the liturgy and the week, a vision of angels and light: "Why do you seek the living among the dead?"

Our principal liturgies through the period were badly conducted, with Passion Sunday, the Great Vigil, and Easter Day being the worst. One of our teenage acolytes characterized the Vigil as a "major liturgical fail." He was right. I made my contributions to these failures with slipshod work on the bulletins and errors at the organ, to say nothing of my failure to elicit a stronger sound from the youth choir. But, as I said to someone after one of the services, "Christ is still risen."

Life goes on. We had excellent liturgy and music (except for my postlude) the following Sunday and a good jazz Eucharist this morning. The choirs are working hard and determined to do their best; I am, too. This week gave me a lot of time for organ practice, and I have used it. The lesson for me at the organ is that it is not enough to know the music well; one must know it so well that when something goes wrong (a muffed page turn and a missed stop change, respectively), one can carry on without trashing several measures of music. More Messiaen is on the way -- for the Sunday (May 9) when we hear from the end of Revelation about the "pure river of water of life, clear as crystal" and trees whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, the "Serene Alleluias" from the Ascension suite, on which I spent about six hours this week, and Bach: the C major prelude and fugue in 9/8 time for the Sunday after the Ascension, and the Kyrie Gott Vater, Christe aller Welt Trost, and Kyrie Gott heiliger Geist from the Clavierübung for Trinity Sunday. I hope I can do these things in a worthy manner.

We all have much to do.