RSCM Report: Part Four and Epilogue

July 28: When shall I come before the presence of God?

The RSCM course finished the week with Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis. We sang the Mozart Missa Brevis, K. 65. It is a little jewel, a treasure from the godlike genius of this thirteen-year-old boy. As a musician he sprang fully formed into the world, yet he retained the heart of a child all his days. In this piece, there are places in which it is as if one can hear him say "Hmmm... what happens if I try this?" He is at play with his musical building blocks, and it is a delight to listen to him. My favorite part of it: the little Benedictus, a one-page duet for soprano and alto, sung by Caitlin and Kristin. The manner in which the soprano comes out of the forte at the end of the Sanctus, and is then joined by the alto, is magical. No small part of its effect on me was my affectionate regard for these two singers, and for Br. Vincent at the organ. This emotional connection is not to be discounted; music, and most of all church music, is never discrete from those who make it. Live music is a human connection, a mode of communication from heart to heart. A recording can preserve this like a flower pressed in a book, but the life is gone from it.

I was on the risers at the Basilica among the six tenors and eleven basses. Of these seventeen choirmen, all but two are under the age of thirty. Six of them (counting me) are from our parish. I am proud of this, perhaps inordinately. Mark and Mike have been especially impressive in their singing this week; they have become fine young musicians, and on this day, they were right behind me, singing in my ears, their strong confident bass making it easy for me to sing my tenor part. But I am equally proud of the others -- Edgar, Ken, Max.

We support one another, we choral singers. When we get our part right, it makes it easier for the rest of the choir; when we get it wrong, the others may be able to hold the performance together, but their work is made more difficult by our weakness. On this day, almost everything went well. The choir has become very good this week, perhaps the best of any year that I have sung in this Course. Mr. Kleinschmidt, our director for the week, deserves much credit for this; he is at the Course for the third time, and is one of the finest directors we have had. He is gracious, organized, humorous at times, always focused and demanding the same from us.

The Mozart was good, but my soul was most bound up with our anthem at the Offertory: Howells' "Like as the hart."

When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?

The choir sings this phrase early in the piece, and it is a fine moment. But at the end when this phrase returns, it transcends any language. It is no longer an impassioned cry as it was before, but something other, something that can be described only through music. Aside from the softer dynamic and the indication of "dulce ed ardente" (sweetly and ardently), the only difference at first is the addition of a solo soprano line at the top of the texture, sung this week by Kyle with heartstopping beauty. [I think that, for this phrase, we sang it better than the choir of St. Paul's, London on the linked recording. They are too loud, in my opinion. And Kyle's voice is better.] Earlier in the week after we sang the piece at Vespers, I commented on this to Debra N., my friend, the director who has brought Kyle and Bryn, Eddie, Elizabeth, Spencer, and so many other fine musicians to the course. I told her how I came undone when I heard Kyle's voice, looked across and saw her singing. "You think it gets you," she said, agreeing with me. "Think what I felt like: that was my kid singing it."

Kyle and her sisters have been like family for Debra; they have sung in her choir from childhood. In the same manner, people like Jennifer and Mark, Mike and Tom, Meredith and Edgar, Ken and Ted, Max, Lucy, and so many others have become like family for me. Because of this Course, these choristers from Debra's choir, and Mr. B's choristers, such as Weezer and Michael, Meara, and others from past years such as Laura and Lindsey, and many others from many places who have come to this Course, have become like family to me as well, and my choristers to them. Each of these choristers sings in other choirs, too, and will be singing, Lord willing, long after my time is done. Some of them may be directing choirs, bringing young choristers of their own to RSCM Courses.

Such ties interweave like a tapestry across the generations and across the world into a seamless whole, which is the Body of Christ. Our unity is not yet fully visible, but we glimpse it when we sing.

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I thought I might get through today's service without too many tears. I made it through the Mozart, through the Howells. I began to get teary-eyed in the final hymn when I saw the girls on the back row of the treble side hugging each other as they sang. But at the end, Mr. B. came up and hugged Mr. Kleinschmidt his friend, tears in his eyes, and I totally lost it. Some of us adults knew what the choristers did not: this was Mr. B.'s final year as Course Director, at least for a time. He is the one who started the St. Louis Course from scratch sixteen years ago, and I am convinced that this is the Great Work of his life. Now he is laying it aside, and it is obvious how much it means to him, and what an emotional day this was for him. In the downstairs choir room, he told the choir of the news after the service; it was an emotional moment for us all, most of all for his own choristers who love this man so deeply.

I have not yet dealt with it; I cannot imagine this Course without him. For now, I can only thank him for what he has done: the tedious administrative groundwork that has gone into the Course, year after year; his gracious hospitality in the "big house" after midweek Evensongs which made the Course such a special place for many of the adult participants, and so much more. May God's blessings be with him, and with us as we seek to go onward next year.


August 6: Epilogue and Loose Ends

I spent about four hours last Monday cleaning and detailing the Toyota. Even though my wife had insisted I take it on the road trips, she was a little resentful by the time I returned. She told me that one of her co-workers had asked how she liked her new car; "I've hardly driven it yet," she said. "My husband has it somewhere out in Virginia."

So, I did my utmost to restore it to like-new condition. The afternoon of careful cleaning and detailing, of window-washing and upholstery cleaning, of vacuuming and picking the remaining bits of grass and dirt out of the carpet, of Armor-All on the tires and interior vinyl, became a sort of farewell to the car that, as expected, I have grown to love over this month. I left the parking brake off as she prefers, carefully folded the towel that she likes to put in the seat for lower back support, locked the doors, and put my copy of the key away where I won't be tempted to use it.

Fortunately, last week was quiet at the church. I did little more at work than practice and tie up loose ends from my travels. More broadly, I have tried to return to my normal routine, with some stumbles. I have had trouble getting back into the regular Daily Office; it was not until the following Sunday that I managed to pray both Morning and Evening Prayer in the same day. I have exercised and cut back on eating, but I gained about eight pounds and need to turn that around.

And I have been posting these writings from my travels. On the road, I wrote with pen and paper, leaving the final stages for my return. It has been a good way to round off this month, a good way to remember it.

Eddie and Debra posted a YouTube clip of our RSCM St. Louis choristers singing the Stanford. In the visual part at the beginning, you can see the semichorus of which I have written this week, many of the other choristers behind us, and the Concordia Seminary Chapel. More importantly, you can hear us sing and discern for yourselves what sort of work we have done.

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I have now read "The Hunger Games" and, in one three-hour session, its sequel "Catching Fire." I continue to think that these are important books. My favorite character is Rue, the quiet and shy little twelve-year old who allies with the heroine Katniss in the arena. She should have no chance in the Games, being so small. But "I'm really hard to catch," she says. "If they can't catch me, they can't kill me." It turns out in the book that Rue's "favorite thing in the world" is Music, something that was hardly hinted at in the movie. And we learn in the book that Katniss' father, who died some years before in a mine accident, was also a musician. "When he sang, the birds would stop and listen," one of the characters says.

Between the two of them, Katniss and Rue represent a land and a way of life that is dear to me: Rue's District 11 is obviously the rural South (and Midwest?), here given over to agriculture in a manner very familiar from export agriculture in the Third World, the fields surrounded by tall fences with armed guards to keep the farmworkers from eating any of the crops they grow. And the District 12 of Katniss, Peeta, and Gale is obviously the Appalachian coal fields. I have known young men like Gale -- my father was one of them -- who only really lived when they were outdoors in the mountains and trees and blue sky, but had to earn their living in the darkness of the mines. My father's escape was the Army; he figured that he'd rather have Germans shooting at him than stay another day down there, and after the war he found ways to never go back. The "feel" of District 12 was right at home, with characters like Greasy Sal and places like The Hob, the indifference and scorn in which the District is held by the Important People, the thriving unofficial economy described in the first book and crushed by the "peacekeepers" in the second, and the people like Katniss and Gale who head off into the woods every chance they get.

Rue is killed in the Hunger Games; she is caught in a snare and speared through the abdomen, which was for me the darkest moment in either the first book or movie. There are plenty of other dark moments later on, as well. I have read that Suzanne Collins who wrote these books got the idea one night as she was channel surfing and juxtaposing reality TV with coverage of the war in Iraq. "The Hunger Games" books are fiction, but one does not have to go far to find young people being senselessly killed, their beauty and promise for this life obliterated by war, or by the death that roams the streets and neighborhoods of many of our cities, or by the slow death of the spirit, crushed by the burdens of this world.

To me, the great flaw of these books is the lack of the eschatological hope that shines through the Magnificat. These are not books devoid of morality; the thirst for justice burns like a torch throughout, and that connects them to the Psalmist. But religion in any form is entirely absent from this fictional society, and from the minds of the characters. The closest we come is when Katniss sings an old mountain lullaby to Rue as she dies, a song about a quiet and safe place of flowers and sunshine. Perhaps this is in the song a surviving hint of "hope beyond the circles of the world," as Aragorn said in another novel. But here it seems like no more than pretty words, something to comfort a dying child but without any real substance. I have yet to read the third and final book, "Mockingjay" (and probably won't until after seeing the second movie this fall), but I have cheated and read the plot summary on Wikipedia. Many readers have found the ending unsatisfactory, and I suspect the empty space in this fictional world where there ought to be a God is part of the underlying problem, for without God there can ultimately be no satisfactory resolution of these matters. I will probably write more on this when I have read the final book.

I do not greatly blame Ms. Collins for this; there are few modern works of fiction that are any different in this respect, and at least in hers, there is that aching desire for justice, for an end to iniquity. This is no post-modern world where it is all a matter of opinion.

"Whenever I see something beautiful, I think of her," says Katniss later about Rue. I will too, for a time. Perhaps a long time.

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And now, back to work. Sunday finally felt like a beginning of my normal life: matins with Fr. H., the 8:45 service, the 11:00 service, an afternoon of office work and practice, evensong in the courtyard with the birds and insects and flowers. Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration and a good work day, including some time in an e-mail conversation about next year's RSCM Course. I am increasingly confident that it will be a good Course. Lord willing, we will be there.

It is back to work for all of us who were at the Course, and the work that most of us do as church musicians -- organists, directors, choristers -- is of high importance, all the more as increasingly "the wicked prowl on every side, and that which is worthless is highly prized by everyone" (Psalm 12:8).

Deposuit potentes de sede,
Et exaltavit humiles.

Our Lord continually said, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel." (St. Mark 1:15). Not "will be at hand" -- IS at hand, and we can hear it when we sing. It is, through his death and resurrection, a completed action. Almost every hymn or anthem we sing makes this proclamation in one way or another, and in the coming weeks and months, so long as this life lasts, it is my task to play and sing and conduct in a manner that bears witness to these things:

Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. (Jude v.24-25)

A park, a visit, and a movie

[Some of my readers may be expecting an RSCM Report. With God's grace, it should be forthcoming by the weekend. Before that, I have today's post and two more about other matters, which (to my mind) relate to what follows at RSCM.]

July 8: The Valley of Virginia

I roll up I-81 through the Virginia Highlands, the foothills again shrouded with morning mist, behind them the mountaintops blue in the distance. I had hoped to drive part of the day on the Blue Ridge Parkway which winds northeast along the ridgetops, but instead I spend three hours at the rest area near Roanoke after the long descent from Christiansburg into the Valley of Virginia. I sit at a picnic table and write my account of yesterday's visit with old friends. By the time I finish, it is three o'clock in the afternoon, a fine hot day of white cumulus and blue sky.

A road trip such as this is for me a spiritual retreat, and the writing is part of it. The Daily Office, the long silences, the solitude, the (mostly) simple food, sleeping in the car, the unfolding vista of Nature... these are my teachers and companions. It is for this that I once thought to become a truck driver so that I could be on the road all the time. But it is enough to be as it is, and I do bless the Lord for the Road, and for the coming Home at last.

As is my practice, I stop at Lexington for a brief visit to the burial places of my heroes Lee and Jackson, arriving at the Lee Chapel minutes before closing time. I buy a photograph of Lee taken a year before his death, dressed in tuxedo and bow tie as president of Washington College. It will go on my desk with my icons as a reminder of this man's diligence in his administrative work. The Episcopal Church nearby is closed for the day, but I walk out to the cemetery to Jackson's grave.

From there, I go up at last to the Parkway for the late afternoon and sunset, with a night this time in an old-fashioned motel at Buena Vista, the sort of motel where each room is an individual tiny cottage. It is run by a gentleman from the Fiji Islands, and does not appear to be prospering; one gets the impression that no one has slept in this room for a long time.

July 9-12: A drive, a backyard and a movie

On this day, I briefly stop at the Green Valley Book Fair and buy gifts for two of my co-workers, plus a book for myself. Then, it is up the mountain again; my plan is to drive the northern half of the Skyline Drive, through the Shenandoah National Park.

Yesterday, I had thought to enter the park late in the day and stay for the night in one of the campgrounds, but I thought "They will be full. It is July, right after the fourth, a holiday week." No, I could have easily stayed there instead of the motel; the campgrounds I saw were less than half full. "People don't camp out much anymore," I am told by one of the park rangers. Nor do they drive through the Park; there is almost no traffic. I hardly see two score of cars all day. I can remember visits over the years when there was heavy traffic in this park: long lines of cars, trucks with campers, motor homes.

This is perhaps the most beautiful part of the Appalachians. There are plenty of opportunities for hiking, camping, and fishing in the park, and if nothing else, simply the leisurely drive along the mountaintops. If any of my readers should visit this part of the country, I highly recommend taking a day (or better, two or three) for this. Here is a typical view from the road.

By evening, I am at my sister's house, in a Maryland suburb of Washington. It is as it has been for decades; almost every horizontal surface is covered with books, knick-knacks, plants, quilting supplies. The cabinets, the many bookcases all groaning under double-shelved books -- everything overflows. There are piles of books on the floor, to the point where one can hardly enter some of the rooms. In the front yard, the old white Mitsubishi van is filled with more books, boxes of them, blue tarps lashed over it all with clothesline ropes, the tires flat. It has been no more than a storage building for ten years and more, reminding me of the old rusting cars and trucks on cinder blocks in the hill country.

Those who have seen my office may be tempted to say "It runs in the family," and they would be right. Were I not married to a Midwestern woman of Dutch descent who likes everything to be tidy, I would be just like my sister. Living with a slovenly hillbilly was a huge adjustment for her after we got married; she has improved me somewhat.

But there is a glory to this old house of my sister's, bursting at the seams with decades of clutter. It is the back yard: a riotous profusion of wildflowers, ferns, vegetables, trees, birds. Whenever an empty bit of soil becomes available, my sister puts a plant in it.

I sit in their glass-walled back room and feel as if I am in a forest, on this quarter-acre suburban lot within earshot of the Beltway. Over the almost forty years that she has lived there, she has created a little paradise. The arrangement of the plants seems random, but she has considered patterns of sun and shade, shelter from wind and frost, companion-planting principles. The result is an unstudied naturalness and beauty.

She and her husband love science fiction and fantasy -- it is she that introduced me to Tolkien in my childhood, and it is she who cajoled my parents into letting the two of us stay up late to watch the original Star Trek episodes every week. We saw three science fiction movies during my visit, including the current Star Trek movie (disappointing). One of the three movies was excellent, the one that we watched at home on DVD: "The Hunger Games." It is in part a commentary on the manner in which a small number of wealthy and powerful people, living in the "Capitol," manipulate and exploit everyone else. The protagonists are from District 12, the coal-fields, where most people live on the edge of starvation. Here is an account of the Hunger Games universe.

I am a little surprised that such an explicit indictment of the "one percent" was allowed to enter the public sphere. The lords of public opinion doubtless presume that these books and movies will have their few minutes in the spotlight and then be buried under the torrent of trivia and filth that spews endlessly from the Media.

Having seen how some of my choristers reacted to the Hunger Games, I would not be so sure. My impression is that these books and movies have entered the ongoing corpus of young adult literature every bit as much as Harry Potter. For a long time to come, young folk will read these books, see these movies, and be formed by them. The result is unknowable.

The International Space Station

The commander of the ISS Mission 32, Sunita Williams, conducts a 25-minute tour of the ISS in November 2012.
LINK

Just seeing her and the other astronauts gliding through the passageways as if they were swimming is astonishing to an old science fiction fan such as I am. For all its faults, it is a Real Space Station. In orbit. Out there in Space.

Back in the old days, I was a Star Trek fan. I was a teenager when the original television series aired, with Captain Kirk, Scottie, Bones, Spock, and all the rest. My parents gave my sister and me special permission to stay up late this one night of the week to watch it with them on our black and white TV. Later on, I watched the Star Trek Next Generation series, and was a big fan of Deep Space Nine – for one thing, DS-9 included a character who took Religion seriously, something notably absent from the other incarnations of Star Trek, and from much of print science fiction.

For I devoured the books. I was a subscriber to the Science Fiction Book Club for decades, and likewise to the Analog science fiction magazine. Heinlein, Asimov, Poul Anderson, James White... later on Anne McCaffrey and the Pern novels (ah, Masterharper Robinton!!! And Menolly. And all the other harpers and musicians in those books... And the Dragons!!!). These days I read much less of the genre, indeed very little of it beyond the works of Carol Cherryh and Lois McMaster Bujold.

Among Bujold's early books was “Falling Free,” which I read in a four-part serialization in Analog with fabulous cover art based on the story by Michael Whelan (not, be it noted, the art from the later reprint that appears in the linked Wikipedia article, but rather this). Part of Bujold's point in this book was to explore what it would mean in a world of genetic engineering for one's engineering projects – living beings, in this case sentient beings – to become obsolete, a moral question that remains open. The characters who populate this story are the Quaddies – genetically engineered from Homo sapiens to be better suited for zero-gravity and life in space. Most easily noticed are their four arms (two of them in place of our legs). About the time that they are fully developed and there is a good-sized population ready to be sold and leased (for, being genetically-engineered corporate property, they are not “people” and thus have no rights), artificial gravity is invented, and the corporation is pulling the plug on the project, including killing all of the now-useless quaddies. It is a great story, and turns out well (the quaddies reappear in some of her later stories, including a character who is a four-handed keyboard musician, and most of all in the 2002 novel "Diplomatic Immunity," which takes place some two centuries later), but my point for today is that the ISS video puts me in mind of them. We humans are not well-suited for living in space. But oh, how splendid it is to go there!!!

At one point, Commander Williams takes us to the Cupola, where one can watch the Earth go by underneath. Words fail me.

The NASA program costs a lot of money (though an order of magnitude less than, say, bailing out the TBTF banks). No doubt the day will come when some penny-pinching Congress shuts it down. In 2009, NASA announced plans to end the ISS program in early 2016 (just three years from now!); the current President has said he would like to extend it to 2020. The Russians have plans to re-use their modules for a possible new station, but it may be that they will go it alone, without international cooperation. The European Space Agency, especially, has had a hard time coming up with funding for their part of the ISS, and the US is not in much better shape.

It will be hard to watch the dream die; a part of me will die with it.
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Here is the website for further information about the International Space Station. There are a variety of other videos, and lots of pictures. There is even a live video/audio stream where you can follow the day-to-day activity.