An Artist, a choral anthem, and an improvisation.

I have posted two more items on YouTube. First, our anthem from last Sunday:

Whom have I (Jane Marshall)

Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is nothing in the earth that I desire besides thee. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. (Psalm 73:25, 26)

Artwork: St. Simeon with the infant Jesus (Rembrandt, 1669)

I chose the painting because in this, old Simeon found his heaven on earth. He may well have thought of this verse from the Psalms as he beheld the Child.

*******************
Second, my improvisation from September 11, when we had the Gospel about the lost sheep, and Him who went after it:

What wondrous love is this
It is a set of variations, with an excursion to the tune St. Columba (The King of love my shepherd is), which was part of the service that day.

Artwork: Jesus with the crown of thorns (Ilya Repin, 1913)

Ilya Repin (1844-1930) was a revolutionary artist in his youth. Born in Ukraine, his studies and much of his career were in St. Petersburg, and his sympathies with the “Rebellion of the fourteen,” who left the Imperial Academy, calling themselves the “itinerants,” or Peredvizhniki. Much of his work was with portraits and groups of all kinds of people from peasants to aristocrats, including some who remain famous, such as the composer Modest Mussorgsky, a philosopher and two composers Odoevsky, Balakirev, and Glinka, and ten paintings of his friend, the author Leo Tolstoy. Here is one of Tolstoy at work in his study.

The painting on the YouTube clip (“Jesus with the crown of thorns”), in the challenging medium of oil paint on concrete, shows his interest in impressionism, awakened when he visited France and Italy. As with many impressionist works, it is better viewed at a distance – on my computer, it becomes strong when seen from across the room, but not so much up close. Most of his work is in the “realist” style that was revolutionary when Repin was young – but by the time of his death, hailed by the Soviets as the model for Socialist Realism.

Repin lived in his latter years a few miles from St. Petersburg across what was then the border with Finland, in a house he designed and built (since 1948, the town has been part of the USSR and now Russia).

Here is a good site to view his paintings.

From the biography on the Repin site: “His realistic works often expressed great psychological depth and showed the tensions within the existing social order.” It is a reminder that he lived in a challenging time and place, doing his best to make strong and honest art. May all artists, musicians, and writers do the same.

O Crux, ave, spes unica

The Solemnity of the Holy Cross: September 14

God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. (Galatians 6:14)

“You’ll find me at the foot of the cross,” Uncle Harry used to say. Year after year he would say it, as I grew from infancy into childhood (“Knucklehead,” he named me in those days because I always had my "head in the clouds" and didn't pay attention to things as I should), then into a geeky (and even more impractical) teenager, and an adult. But I never knew what he meant, not until he died and was buried. Sure enough, there at the cemetery, his grave (and later on that of his wife, my Aunt Geneva) was at the foot of a large cross, outlined in a boxwood hedge on a hillside (this was West Virginia, after all), and visible for a mile or more. Right there at the foot of that cross they were buried, and there they remain until the end of days.

Mind you, Uncle Harry was not a church-goer. Far from it. He was a profane man, who poked fun at his wife’s devotion and prayers. He had served in the War, then worked in a lumbering operation until he could work no more. Hard work, among the sort of people Mrs. Clinton considers “deplorable.” That is what she would have thought of Harry and Geneva, and my parents, and for that matter, me.

But he purchased a burial plot at the foot of the cross.

And he gave me the little New Testament that he carried over in France and Germany with an inscription “to my favorite nephew” and an admonition to “read this book.”

It is hard to wrap one’s head around the Solemnity of the Holy Cross. I know, because I have spent all morning trying to figure out how to explain it to the youth choir in their rehearsal this afternoon. What it boils down to is this: how can I “glory in the cross,” as St. Paul writes in Galatians? How can I glory in the agony and death of my Savior, whom I love?

We have the same quandary on Good Friday, when many congregations around the world engage in the Veneration of the Cross. As the Prayerbook says,

If desired, a wooden cross may now be brought into the church and placed in the sight of the people. Appropriate devotions may follow. (BCP p. 281)

Some people come forward and kneel before the cross. Some kiss it.

In our place, we sing the spiritual:

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

That is, in truth, about the only way one can venerate the Cross -- on that day, on this, or on any day: “Sometimes it causes me to tremble.” No words. Not even music, though it comes closer.

Uncle Harry loved to listen to the old Gospel songs. One of his favorites was an LP recording of Tennessee Ernie Ford, and on that record was “The Old Rugged Cross.”

So I’ll cherish the old rugged Cross,
Till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged Cross,
and exchange it someday for a crown.

That is what this Solemnity of the Holy Cross is about. Do we think of the Cross once we are outside of Holy Week? What place does it have in our daily life? Do we “cling to the old rugged Cross?” St. Paul is right: it is the only way to be “crucified to the world, and the world to me.” It is only the Cross that can show up all the deceits of “the world, the flesh, and the devil” for what they are, and deliver us from their power.

When I survey the wondrous cross
where the young Prince of Glory died,
my richest gain I count but loss,
and pour contempt on all my pride.
(Isaac Watts)

At Matins this morning, I sang another hymn, this one from the early days of the Church. It is more elegant, but at its core it is saying the same thing as the Tennessee Ernie Ford song:

O tree of beauty, tree most fair,
ordained those holy limbs to bear;
gone is thy shame, each crimson’d bough
proclaims the King of glory now.

O cross, our one reliance, hail!
Still may thy power with us avail
to save us sinners from our sin,
God’s righteousness for all to win.
[from “The royal banners forward go,” by Venantius Fortunatus (540?-600?)]

Fortunatus wrote this, it is thought, when a fragment of the True Cross was brought to Poitiers in the year 569, and that is another tie to this Day, September 14, when St. Helena dedicated the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the site where she had found that “tree of beauty, tree most fair” among the piles of rubbish.

The stanza “O cross, our one reliance, hail” is better in Latin, especially the first line:

O Crux, ave, spes unica;
Hoc Passionis tempore,
Auge piis justitiam,
Reis que dona veniam.

The Six-Day War, and the Hand of God

Judaism is not simply an amalgam of national concepts, moral and ritual laws, subjective emotions. Jewish existence is an engagement to what is greater than ourselves. It is sustained by numinous powers; it is carried on the wings of a hidden Presence in history. That Presence, often passive and suppressed, breaks forth in rare moments. (Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Israel: An echo of eternity,” p. 96. Heschel was an American rabbi, theologian and author. Several of his books are important to me, and this book, listed below, started the train of thought leading to this essay.)

Heschel, Abraham Joshua: Israel: An echo of eternity (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1969
Pressfield, Steven: The Lion’s Gate: On the front lines of the Six Day War (Penguin Group, New York, 2014)
Dayan, Moshe: Living with the Bible (William Morrow and Company, New York, 1978)
************
A reminder: as stated in the sidebar, the opinions here expressed are mine, and may not reflect the teachings of the parish where I work.
************
In 1967, I was a young teenager and a young Christian, still reading the Old Testament for the first time. Perhaps because of my youth, I found it horribly unfair that, as pressure mounted against Israel from all of its neighbors that spring, the United States dithered. The Soviets were arming Egypt with their most modern weapons; the U.S. would not even send Israel the weapons they had already purchased.

The United Nations had a force of peacekeepers in the Sinai, which was supposed to be a demilitarized zone. When President Nasser of Egypt ordered them out, they packed up and left while the Egyptian tanks moved in.

It was not fair. Why didn’t we do something? Why didn’t the U.N. stand up to this aggression, as they did in Korea? It was blindingly obvious that the Western world would stand by, wringing its hands while the Jewish nation was obliterated. They were badly outnumbered, surrounded by enemies, with no friends.

As it transpired, Israel did not need help from the United Nations, nor the United States. They had a helper who was considerably more reliable:

Behold, he who keeps watch over Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. (Psalm 121:4)

I have lived to see the Hand of God in action among the great deeds of the world one time, perhaps two. The one of which I am certain is the Six Day War, June 5 through 10, 1967.

The events of this time could have been lifted straight from the pages of Judges, First Samuel, and the Maccabees where the LORD of Hosts rescued his people from the hand of enemies that surrounded them on every side, enemies who appeared to be far stronger. That was clearly the situation in the spring and summer of 1967, with the entire Arab world united in determination to destroy the “Zionist entity.”

I have come to more fully understand what the Hand of God looks like in action by reading Steven Pressfield’s account of the war: “The Lion’s Gate,” which is mostly a collection of personal accounts by Israeli veterans who fought in that conflict. The Hand of God in action is for the most part individual people doing what is right (led, I would say, by the Spirit of God), in accord with Divine Providence.

Even the three supreme instances of the Hand of God, where He acted with the most glorious and surprising power, required human cooperation. The deliverance of the Children of Israel from Egypt depended on the sometimes hesitant obedience of Moses (Exodus 3, especially vv. 9-12). The Incarnation depended upon the free assent of Our Lady to what was asked of her (St. Luke 2:38). And the greatest of all the mighty acts of God hinged upon one person, alone in his prayers one night in Gethsemane (St. Luke 22:39-44).

Although the United States did not sufficiently support Israel in the wars of 1948, 1956, and 1967, we were better in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, resupplying the Israelis as fast as the Soviets were resupplying the Egyptians and Syrians, and ultimately facing down the Soviets to keep the war from spiraling into something larger. The work of President Carter in brokering the Camp David accords a few years later (1978) was important. The courage of the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in seeking peace by means of this agreement is something to be remembered through the generations. Carter and Sadat are further examples of men simply doing what seemed right at the time, despite what it might cost them. For Sadat, it cost him his life in 1981.

I support the Zionist cause insofar as I am able, which means primarily by prayer, and (when needed) letters to my elected representatives, and by speaking up for Israel. That can be hard, because it is fashionable in the circles in which I work and live to support the Palestinians, and to consider the Israelis to be the Bad Guys. The best I can understand the liberal position, the State of Israel is one last relic of colonialism, inflicted upon the innocent Arab residents of Palestine by the British Mandate. For liberal Christians, there is the additional notion that the Old Testament (like the New) is largely pious fabrication. The Israelites were simply one of many Canaanite peoples. They invented a “back-story” involving supposed promise of the Land to the Patriarchs (fictional persons, no doubt) to justify their genocidal seizure of Canaan. For example, this from an encyclopedic source:

The Abraham story cannot be definitively related to any specific time, and it is widely agreed that the patriarchal age, along with the exodus and the period of the judges, is a late literary construct that does not relate to any period in actual history. A common hypothesis among scholars is that it was composed in the early Persian period (late 6th century BCE) as a result of tensions between Jewish landowners who had stayed in Judah during the Babylonian captivity and traced their right to the land through their "father Abraham", and the returning exiles who based their counter-claim on Moses and the Exodus tradition (Wikipedia, s.v. “Abraham,” accessed 9/9/2016)

For whatever reasons, there are periodically workshops and lectures in our college town, advertised on our parish's bulletin boards, concerning the righteous struggle of the Palestinian freedom fighters against oppression. Not a word about the Israeli side.

The U.S. has remained one of Israel’s allies. I must do my small part to help keep it that way.

The Israelis are not the Bad Guys. Neither are the Palestinians. But the Land belongs to the Jewish people by express gift from God, and Jerusalem most of all. It is impossible to read the Old Testament without seeing the promise of the Land to the children of Israel. The Land was a part of the first thing that God said to Abram (Genesis 12:1), and the promise is repeated from Genesis to Malachi (Mal. 3:12, for example: “And all nations shall call you blessed; for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.”)

********
In the first weeks of June 1967, the situation appeared hopeless. By the end of the month, not only had Israel survived, but they had recovered their lands on the west side of Jordan, and most of all, Jerusalem.

July, 1967… I have discovered a new land. Israel is not the same as before. There is great astonishment in the souls. It is as if the prophets had risen from their graves… My ancestors could only dream of you—to my people in Auschwitz you were more remote than the moon, and I can touch your stones! Am I worthy? How shall I ever repay for these moments? (Heschel, p. 7, speaking of the return to Jerusalem.)

***************

I have known Avremale [Schecter, sergeant, “A” company, Battalion 71] and his brothers since we were boys. His father was the kindest, most simple and modest man. He worked all his life for the Tnuva Dairy in Tel Aviv, riding his bicycle to work, raising his boys, asking nothing but to be here as a Jew in this land, but feeling always that our people’s return remained incomplete, with the Wall and the Old City in the hands of those who hated us.

Now I see Avremale, with his Uzi with its folding stock under one arm and the tefillin in place on his head and other arm. I know he is thinking of his father.

The others want to pray, too, but none of them knows how. Avremale has to teach them. (Pressfield p. 343, quoting Yoram Zamosh, “A” company's commander, describing the scene when the first Jewish soldiers reach the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem)

[Zamosh continues, describing Moshe Stempel, one of his officers] … Stempel held my arm in a grip of iron. Twice he tried to speak and twice his voice failed. He pulled me so close that the brows of our helmets were touching.

“Zamosh!” Stempel said, with such emotion that I can hear the words still, though he spoke them almost fifty years ago. “Zamosh, if my grandfather, if my great-grandfather, if any of my family who have been murdered in pograms and in the death camps… if they could know, somehow, even for one second, that I, their grandson, would be standing here at this hour, in this place, wearing the red boots of an Israeli paratrooper… if they could know this, Zamosh, for just one instant, they would suffer death a thousand times and count it as nothing.”

Stempel gripped my arm as if he would never let go. “We shall never, never leave this place,” he said. “Never will we give this up. Never.” (Pressfield p. 406)

I worry about the Israelis, which puts me in good company:

Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me. (Isaiah 49:15-16)

But there is this:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! (St. Matthew 23:37)

That is why I worry. From this distance, it does not seem to me that the Israelis treat the “strangers within their gates” (that is, the Palestinians) as they ought. Nor are their actions as individuals and a nation especially righteous. (Neither are ours, and our treatment of the “strangers” within our gates, the undocumented and mostly Hispanic immigrants who do much of the hard work of this country, leaves much to be desired.)

We have the unshakable promise of God that he will look after Israel forever. But even a cursory reading of the Old Testament shows what that can look like. It can at times look very much like what is not much beyond living memory: the Shoah.

The attack [in the 1948 war, against a formidable Egyptian position] was ready to go. At the last minute a half dozen trucks rumbled up, bringing reinforcements. The men got off. They were pale and thin. They had numbers tatooed on their arms. Someone said they had spent the last two years in relocation camps—under the British, of course—in Cyprus. They had got to Israel just a week earlier and been given only a few days of military training. They came up and were issued rifles. I will never forget their faces. They were certain they were going to die. But their eyes were shining… (Pressfield p. 82, quoting Lou Lenart, an American Jew who was a major figure in the newborn Israel Air Force during the 1948 war. Lenart describes elsewhere how he came to an enduring hatred of the British, for setting the new Israeli state up to fail as soon it was born. Pressfield dedicated this book to Lenart.)

Pressfield’s book led me to what he calls an “extraordinary personal testament,” “Living with the Bible” by Moshe Dayan, minister of defense during the Six Day War. His mode of “living with the Bible” was new to me, and I suspect possible only for an Israeli. Dayan was not an observant Jew; he never even did his Bar Mitzvah. But his faith leaps from the pages of this book, a faith that is that of a warrior. It is a faith in the God who revealed Himself to Abraham, to Isaac and Jacob, the God who carried His people through the wilderness, gave them the Land, has stayed with them through thousands of years, and remains with them today. He delights most of all in the battles described in the Scripture, giving insights to them that one does not hear from the scholars -- especially the liberal Christian scholars, who mostly gloss over these passages or deplore them as barbaric. His characterization of Samson brought him to life for me in a way that nothing else has: a man who loved his strength and freedom, walking where he would through the countryside with the wind in his hair, even when it was the land of his enemies the Philistines, for whom he had no fear.

My Bible consists of the books of the Patriarchs and the Judges. Its pages narrate the stories of Joshua and Gideon, of Saul and David and Jonathan. Say these names: Galilee, Mount Carmel, Beersheba, the Vale of Sharon. These sites are not theoretical to me… They comprise the hills and flats that I have plowed and planted, tramped over and slumbered upon. A field at Ramat Yohanan has soaked up the last of my brother Zorik’s blood. I left my own eye in the dirt across the border with Lebanon. How many thousands have given the same and more?

The treads of a half-track rend a slope that has no name and is known to no one. Up comes an arrowhead three thousand years old… Into the sunlight emerges a shard from the era of Joshua, the handle of a vessel from which a soldier of Israel once drank. Who was that man? He was myself. I am that man.

He shivered on watch, this fellow thirty centuries gone; he marched through the night; he defended his fields and flocks. (Pressfield p. 162, quoting Dayan)

Dayan viewed it as his responsibility to defend this Land, and the idea of Israel, with all of his being. There were many like him then, and hopefully now:

[Menachem] Begin is curt, humorless, intractable. But he is without fear. He has endured political imprisonment under the Soviets, from which ordeal he emerged tougher than ever and more passionately dedicated to Jewish nationhood and to political autonomy for the Jewish people. He is a good man, possibly a great one. The nation needs men like him as much as she needs visionaries like Ben-Gurion and poets like Natan Alterman.

‘To the banks of the Jordan’ is Begin’s party signature. His vision is of the Israel of the Bible. He speak passionately at this cabinet meeting [which made the decision to launch the pre-emptive strike on June 5, destroying most of the Egyptian air force on the ground], citing numerous biblical passages, to which [Levi] Eshkol [the prime minister] with good humor appends, “Amen, amen.” (Pressfield p. 158, quoting Dayan)

For the Israelis and Palestinians and their neighbors, there are still no clear solutions. There have been too many wrongs, too much bloodshed. How can the two peoples ever live at peace?

[quoting Dayan, Pressfield writes] All the same, I am no hater of Arabs. I grew up with Bedouin herders and farmers. We have plowed together, and planted, and sat side by side in the furrows to take our noon meal.

Who is the Arab? No man makes a better friend than he. None will stand his ground with greater courage. To the Arab, honor is all. He will drain his blood for the clan and the tribe, and for the stranger he has taken in at the gate. No one laughs like an Arab, or loves his children with such tenderness; no one dances like him or worships God with greater devotion, and none is more compassionate to the weak and the helpless.

The modern world, in which the sons of Ishmael have fallen behind and become a backward people, is a nightmare of shame from which the proud Arab cannot awaken. This is the source of his violent and inextinguishable rage. (Pressfield, p. 162)

Many have come to hate the United States, too – partly because of our support for Israel, but we have given people many more reasons to despise us. Hatred boils in our own land, between races, between rich and poor, between political factions. It seems hopeless.

But the Hand of God worked in the summer of 1967, and in the collapse of the Soviet empire some years after. It is through such actions as were taken by ordinary people in those times that God’s purposes prevailed. It is through our actions, here and now, that God may again bring to pass what seems impossible.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours… (St. Teresa of Avila)

The ultimate meaning of the State of Israel must be seen in terms of the vision of the prophets: the redemption of all men. The religious duty of the Jew is to participate in the process of continuous redemption, in seeing that justice prevails over power, that awareness of God penetrates human understanding. (Heschel, p. 156)

Distler: Organ Sonata

Just a brief note to tell you that I have posted my recording of Hugo Distler’s Sonata for organ on YouTube. It is from the May 2016 Choral Evensong, but I am only now getting around to preparing it and putting it online.

I am surprised that there are not more recordings of Distler’s organ music on YouTube. So far as I am concerned, he is the finest composer of organ and choral music in the German twentieth century. He did not live long enough to write a lot of music, which makes the things that we have all the more precious.

This work is a trio sonata, modeled more or less on Bach’s six Trio Sonatas (as opposed to, say, the organ sonatas of Mendelssohn, or the Classical era sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven).

It is an honor for me to play this, and his settings of Wachet auf and Nun komm der heiden Heiland. Most of his choral music is too hard for the choirs I have directed, but we have sung a few things. I would like to do more.

Work over your head

“Work over your head,” writes Steven Pressfield in his book “Turning Pro.”

It would be easier to do otherwise. Then, I might not be terrified on Sunday mornings. I cannot recall a Sunday, not in thirty years of playing, without something that was on the edge of going wrong, something that has kept me awake on Saturday night.

Weekly improvisation has made it worse. When we have practiced a written composition sufficiently, there is much that could go wrong, but it is unlikely to entirely fall apart, at least when playing from the score. An improvisation? If it goes badly, it can be memorably awful. There is no limit as to how bad it can be.

Even if it goes well, there are always aspects which could be better. Where are the beautiful lines, the harmonies, the elegance and precision of form that were effortless in practice? Instead, the voice leading is awkward, the transitions are clunky, the phrases and periods are out of proportion, even the tune slips out of control.

Postludes at the organ are the worst. I played one of them on Sunday. [Here is the link, including the closing hymn to put the improvisation into its context.] It was a tune that I do not like, but it was the closing hymn and it needed a big, loud postlude to finish it off.

I was terrified.

Somehow, I got through it more or less in accord with my plan, scribbled on a piece of staff paper: introduction based on the first phrase, going forward with the tune mostly in the pedal, a middle section on the manuals, based mostly on the third phrase with movement through some of the flat keys, a return to the tonic for a mostly straight up play-through of the tune (in the pedals) with imitative work in the manuals.

But how to finish it off? With my piano preludes, I tend toward extended codas, most often at a soft dynamic. That is partly by preference, but I have found the coda to be useful because it is flexible. It can be long, short, or absent without harming the overall form. That allows me to finish the piece precisely at 9:00 a.m. For this postlude, a gentle ending would not do. I consider the final phrase of the hymn tune to be its weakest point, which was all the more reason that the improvisation needed a big ending.

Even the greatest of composers sometimes have difficulty with the big ending -- Bruckner, for one, whose endings can be among the most majestic of all but sometimes (I think) fail to carry off the grandeur of his intent -- but even (once or twice) Beethoven, and perhaps Bach -- I have never been happy with the ending of the Piece d’Orgue, for example. How does one make it sufficiently weighty to finish the piece, without bombast? In my practice this week, the ending was never satisfactory. I focused on it with my Saturday practice, striving to keep it short, and I think that it was still a bit overdone in the actuality on Sunday.

But it could have been worse. There was a chance that it could have been as bad as it was in some of my practicing.

I wish I could do it like Mozart. Earlier this month I had occasion to play his piano sonata, KV 545 in C major, as the prelude for a funeral. It is not a piece that is “big” in any dimension; it is gentle, playful in the closing rondo, but never loud. The endings of the three movements are simple, and absolutely right. When he is working on a larger scale, his endings are no less perfect. It may be that the ensemble that finishes off Act Two of Figaro is the most perfect ending in all of music, not only in itself but in relation to the rest of the opera. [The linked performance here is faulty in some technical respects, but the singers are among the finest, starting with Hermann Prey and Dietrich Fischer-Diskau, with Karl Böhm and the Vienna Philharmonic]

I studied the finale as a project while in graduate school, my admiration increasing all the while. The pacing, the tonal structure, the manner in which one by one all of the characters appear, all the tangled comic threads of plot are brought together, and the buildup of intensity… Oh, to make music like that!

In my opinion, each number in Figaro is a miracle; it is totally beyond me how anyone could create anything so perfect; nothing like it was ever done again, not even by Beethoven (Johannes Brahms, quoted in Wikipedia, s.v. “The Marriage of Figaro”)

Another example, one that we sang last season, is the “Worthy is the Lamb” which concludes Handel’s Messiah (see Here, and Here). It is enormous (especially the Amen) and it could not be any less without falling short in relation to the oratorio as a whole, to say nothing of its great Subject. When the trumpets come in with the stretto on the final page, the sopranos and trebles singing the final fugal entrance that begins on high A, swooping down an octave and a half to the low D, any listener who is paying attention is carried right up to the heavenly places. Or there is the ending of Bach’s “St. Anne” Fugue, which I played twice for funerals in the last fortnight. The manner in which the voice in the tenor soars up through the alto in the final cadence to finish on the B flat is extraordinary. Every time, it is as if my spirit is soaring up with it into the eternal dance of the Trinity.

My work will never be at that level. But I would like to make music with integrity on the scale that is appropriate to my place and time, whether it is in performance of music by others, or my improvisations and hymn playing. That will not happen if I play it safe.

Footnote:
I was not kind to the hymntune, which appears in only one hymnal, the Hymnal 1982 of the Episcopal Church – the one we use. I must say more, because the composer, Erik Routley, was one of my teachers, and it was named for another, James Litton.

I wrote of Dr. Routley here, and cannot speak too highly of him. Few people have been more important to me. But I do not think that this tune is among his best. For that, one might look at Augustine, for the George Herbert text “Let all the world in every corner sing” (H-82, number 402) or Woodbury for the Charles Wesley text “Come, O thou Traveler unknown” (H-82, number 639).

a followup

To those who have already read my previous post (about Jimmy Carter and the elections), thank you. I encourage you to take another look, because I have added quite a bit of material overnight.

May God's blessings be with you all.

Jimmy Carter: "Stay engaged. Stay involved."

Jimmy Carter Convention Speech
Tuesday, July 26th, 2016
2016 Democratic National Convention

The full message, pre-recorded by President Carter, is only two-and-a-half minutes, so you might be willing to take the time to listen to all of it. My impression is that hardly anyone in the convention hall was paying the slightest attention. One has to dig around a bit to find any mention of it. President Carter has, on the whole, not been well treated by his party in the years since he was in office. From the first, he was outside of the establishment, and even being elected President was not enough to bring him into the fold, it seems.

Because so few people would have noticed, I think it important to highlight one part of his message, the part that I think was what the former President most wanted to communicate:

I thank Senator Sanders for energizing and bringing so many young people into the electoral process. To all of you young Americans, I say:

Stay engaged. Stay involved. And be sure to vote this November.

The parent site for this link appears to be a good source for those who might wish to listen to any of the convention speeches; they are all here, or will be once they have been presented.

I have heard President Carter, whom I revere. I am not interested in the rest of them.
Not even Senator Sanders.

I am not surprised that the allegations we have made all year about the Democratic National Committee being essentially a branch of the Clinton campaign have proven to be true. And I am not surprised that Senator Sanders is trying to bring his followers into line to support Secretary Clinton. “Democracy is messy,” I think he said.

I cannot bring myself to listen to Sanders' speech, nor that of Senator Warren, whom I used to admire (but no longer).

Nonetheless, on a day when I am angry, and almost in tears over the direction our people have chosen – either Secretary Clinton or Mr. Trump – I repeat what I wrote a few weeks ago, quoting from Robert E. Lee:

I think it is the duty of every citizen, in the present condition of the Country, to do all in his power to aid in the restoration of peace and harmony. It is particularly incumbent upon those charged with the instruction of the young to set them an example.

I do not see any good way forward for our country. Or rather, I think that (as with the choice between Reagan and Carter) we have been presented with a good choice, and chosen the path of darkness.

I want to tune out, in disgust at the whole sorry mess. I know that many other Sanders supporters want to tune out, especially many of the young people, finding out for the first time how ugly it can be – a lesson I first learned under the tutelage of Richard M. Nixon, with a refresher course under Ronald Reagan.

And I think, again, of Mr. Lincoln sitting in that telegraph office, or late into the night in the White House. And of Lt. Col. Faith on Hill 1221 in the freezing cold.

Stay engaged. Stay involved.

What will this look like?

I recall the young volunteers and paid staff for the Sanders campaign with whom I worked before the Iowa caucuses. What strikes me in retrospect is how different they were from me; it was a cultural divide. They lived via social media; they worked hard, some of them sleeping on the floor of the campaign office in the final weeks.

They believed in progressive ideals, things like gender rights, inter-cultural respect, a guaranteed minimum wage, single-payer health care, breaking up the Wall Street banks. I share these beliefs. But they believed they could actually do something about them.

Most of them absolutely loathed Mrs. Clinton, and I suspect that they still do. They recognized that she embodies the Status Quo. Four (or eight) more years of things exactly as they are, but a little worse every year. And the alternative -- Mr. Donald Trump, with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, firm control of all three branches of the Federal government, and Republicans controlling most of the states as well -- might be even worse.

What now?

Perhaps it might be working for "down-ticket" candidates, such as the two people on a "Sanders ticket" that will be on the ballot this fall for our local County Commission. Perhaps it might mean running for office yourself.

Here is a cold, hard fact that must be addressed. Since 2009, some 900 legislative seats have been lost to Republicans in state after state throughout this country. In fact, the Republican Party now controls 31 state legislatures and controls both the governors’ mansions and statehouses in 23 states. That is unacceptable.

We need to start engaging at the local and state level in an unprecedented way. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers helped us make political history during the last year. These are people deeply concerned about the future of our country and their own communities. Now we need many of them to start running for school boards, city councils, county commissions, state legislatures and governorships. State and local governments make enormously important decisions and we cannot allow right-wing Republicans to increasingly control them.

I hope very much that many of you listening tonight are prepared to engage at that level.... I have no doubt that with the energy and enthusiasm our campaign has shown that we can win significant numbers of local and state elections if people are prepared to become involved. I also hope people will give serious thought to running for statewide offices and the U.S. Congress. (Sen. Bernie Sanders, in a speech on June 16, 2016 at Burlington, Vermont)

To any young adults (and older ones, too) who have every right to feel discouraged: "Stay engaged. Stay involved." It is going to be a hard and long fight. Senator Sanders is not likely to live long enough to see the things he believes in come to pass. You might not, either, even if you are an idealistic eighteen-year-old in your first election.

Today (as I update this post on Saturday) is the Feast of William Wilberforce, M.P.
Read about him; he is a reminder of what can happen, with God's help.

From the bio by James Kiefer (linked above):

[Wilberforce] introduced his first anti-slavery motion in the House of Commons in 1788, in a three-and-a-half hour oration that concluded: "Sir, when we think of eternity and the future consequence of all human conduct, what is there in this life that shall make any man contradict the dictates of his conscience, the principles of justice and the law of God!" The motion was defeated. Wilberforce brought it up again every year for eighteen years, until the slave trade was finally abolished on 25 March 1806. He continued the campaign against slavery itself, and the bill for the abolition of all slavery in British territories passed its crucial vote just four days before his death on 29 July 1833. A year later, on 31 July 1834, 800,000 slaves, chiefly in the British West Indies, were set free.

RSCM Report: I was glad when they said unto me

Part Three: Liturgy, and Concluding Thoughts

I was glad when they said unto me
Let us go into the house of the LORD.

Some years ago, one of our music directors, it may have been Simon Lole, introduced the choristers to the acoustics of the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis by having the trebles sing a simple triad: Sol, Mi, Do, release. The tones blended into a chord, which hung in the air for many seconds.

Mr. Neswick chose a different approach; we launched immediately into our “big” piece for the Basilica, a setting by Leo Sowerby of Psalm 122. The organ begins with majesty, growing ever greater; the choir sings the opening words; we feel what it is like to make Music together in such a space.

It was overwhelming.

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” This experience of majesty, something Music can open, is a part of it. The Roman Catholics can do this very well in their liturgies, when they take a notion. Which they did on Sunday morning: Solemn Pontifical Mass with the Cardinal Archbishop as Celebrant and Preacher. As the procession came down the aisle, incense floating in a cloud through the huge space, Neswick played the opening hymn: “Christ is made the sure foundation,” to the tune Westminster Abbey. We sang, the trebles and tenors soaring into a descant (which I think was composed for this occasion by Mr. Neswick). The clergy ascended to the High Altar, censed it, kissed it, the incense filling the church. Gloria in excelsis Deo.

Behold, our feet are standing
Within thy gates, O Jerusalem.

My favorite service of most RSCM Courses is not the one at the Basilica, nor the Evensong the night before at the Presbyterian church. It is the Thursday night Choral Evensong at the Chapel of Saint Cecilia, on the grounds of the Todd Hall Retreat Center.

We have worked together this week. We have sung, laughed, played, perhaps wept, eaten, sung some more, prayed, worshipped in community, rested (not enough, for most of us), and (again) sung some more. It was a lot; I wish it were more. I wish we could keep having these daily rehearsals, keep improving, keep singing together.

We have come far. On Monday, it was clear that we would have to step it up. I was thinking then of my own choristers, and not sufficiently of myself, for as an alto, I had to step it up quite a bit to keep up with the group as they developed through the week. The adult and teen tenors and basses were excellent from the outset; some of these men have considerable experience as Choirmen in top-notch cathedral and parish choirs.

I could not be more proud of the two young men who sang beside me, Charles and Charlie, and the other young altos. But most of all, I admire the trebles. Without any one or two choristers taking the lead, the entire section grew from a group that sounded like young children to a strong, confident team that could, I think, do anything. By Thursday night, they sing with rich, vibrant tone, and more than that, intelligence and connection. Mr. Neswick certainly helped, by prodding us up the path and showing us how it could be done, but it was in the end the trebles themselves that did it.

[Edited to add: here is a link to a recording from the Saturday evensong, on Dropbox, with grateful thanks to Brian Hunt, who made the recording. There are other tracks from the evensong on the main page, here.]

The penultimate anthem at the Evensong is a setting of “Sing ye faithful, sing with gladness” by Richard Wayne Dirksen. It is for the most part a rollicking dancelike piece, enjoyable to sing. Even the two middle stanzas about the Crucifixion retain a sense of fun in the background.

The hymn text completed, Dirksen reduces the texture for a coda. A solo group of four, which includes Lucy and Caleigh from our Iowa choir, sings a repeated Alleluia based on the “Queen’s Change.” The rest of the trebles and altos sustain these notes as if it were a carillon playing them; the lower voices sing one last bit of the head motive and text.

It is very much as if we were in heaven.

For me, hearing Caleigh’s and Lucy’s voices in the solo, clear and strong, made it even more powerful. I have known these girls since they were quite small and they are important to me, as are all of our choristers (the ones at home as well as the ones at the Course). When we repeated the anthem in Saturday’s evensong, I was quite overcome, unable to sing my part of it for a while.

But I have already done my part. I have been one of many who have taught these girls and boys, and brought them to this day. I hope that I was useful in the alto section; I think that I was for the first part of the week. By the end of the week, especially when the altos were joined by Kristin and Debbie, the section was fine without me. Of this I am glad.

For my days will soon be done. It is these young people, and those like them in every land, every culture, who must carry the Song forward into what may be dark and uncertain times.

On the fringes of our week: the Republican National Convention. Some of the adults (most decidedly not me) were following bits of it on Twitter and similar online sources, and it came up in the conversations at meals more often than I would have liked. The Democrats are this week, and in my opinion not one whit better or more virtuous than the Republicans.

The Song is never in a vacuum; the Light shines not in light, but darkness. Not just the Alleluias at the end of the Dirksen, but the whole week of the Course was in many respects a taste of heaven. It must not stop there; it must, somehow, ring outward into the world even as our sounds rang through the Basilica. It is given us as musicians to be a sign of Hope. And it is needed, desperately. What we have in our voices, our intelligence, our working together, our playing of instruments, our Song – this is part of what the world needs for its healing and reconciliation. This is an important part of what we can give to it.

The connection between the Course and “back home” is, I think, in the Daily Office. It pleased me that some of our choristers joined us for daily Morning Prayer in the chapel even when they did not have to. It may be that they “get it.” I hope so.

On the face of it, the Officium, especially as led by a Benedictine (that is, Brother Vincent Ignatius, OSB, my friend) has a certain pedestrian quality to it. There is no excitement. None. Especially in the middle of Ordinary Time. There are no external reasons to be carried up into the heavenly places, as I was in the Dirksen Alleluias.

What one finds instead is Stability. And over time, Conversion of Life. The psalms, the lessons, the prayers… day after day. A rhythm like that of the sun and moon, rising and setting. A river flowing, quiet and calm but irresistible: “On this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

-----------
When I returned to my parish church for this day (Tuesday, July 26: the Feast of Joachim and Anna, parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary), somewhat in dread of the morning’s impending staff meeting, and what might lie in wait for me in the e-mail in-box, I began, as is my custom and duty, with Matins (Morning Prayer). Most days it is just me. I took my books into the church’s courtyard and began:

I was glad when they said to me: Let us go into the house of the Lord….

O Lord, open thou our lips:
And our mouth shall shew forth thy praise….

We sang these words back at Todd Hall. We rehearsed them with diligence, we sang them in the liturgy. It may appear that I was alone this morning in the courtyard, under a half moon in a clear blue sky, singing the Psalms, reading the Lessons, singing the Creed, the Suffrages, the Collects, in the company of a pair of goldfinches flurrying about, and a dove – a yearling, whose mother hatched him this spring from an egg in the tree right here, outside the Sacristy window.

When one sings or says the Officium, one is never alone. Not least, when I sing Matins and Evensong here in the parish courtyard or church, I renew my connection to the Evensongs at Todd Hall, from this Course and all the Courses of the last score (almost) of years – and all the Courses yet to come, and our monthly Evensongs here in the parish church. I renew my connection to those with whom I have sung, not a few of them now in that greater Light, where the Song is heard undimmed by mortal frailty.

To those of my young friends who may someday read these pages: I commend to you the daily practice of Morning and Evening Prayer. You already know how to do it; it is simply Choral Evensong without the choir. If you wish, you may speak it, as we did in the daily Morning Prayer at Todd Hall. I will observe that it is better if you sing it, and better still to do it outdoors when you can. And better still if you can find a community, however small, to do it with you. That makes the connection to the wider Church more readily visible, as it did last week at the Course. For a few of you, the Officium might become part of a life’s Vocation, as it has for Brother Vincent. But the path is open to all, whatever their state of life.

For the usage of the Episcopal Church, everything you need is in the Book of Common Prayer, a Bible, the Hymnal 1982, and perhaps a Psalter such as the big red Plainsong Psalters on the shelf in our choir room. You can also find most of this in various online sources. There is no special place or time to start; the river began to flow thousands of years ago. Or rather, there is a special place and time to start: Here. Now.

Remember that it will not be exciting. After a while, it will be quite ordinary, like breathing. But remember also before whom you stand, and with whom you are singing and praying. You may not see them or hear them, not in the way that is possible when we are in a Course, but they are there.

“On this rock I will build my Church…”

RSCM Report: Him let all your music honor

Sing, ye faithful, sing with gladness,
wake your noblest, sweetest strain,
with the praises of your Savior
let his house resound again;
Him let all your music honor,
and your songs exalt his reign
(John Ellerton, 1870)

Part Two: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

Bruce Neswick is the music director for the week. He is one of the leading church musicians in the U.S. and, I suppose, the world. Among the work he has done: founding the Girls’ Choir at the Washington National Cathedral in the late 1990’s, serving with distinction as cathedral organist at Buffalo, Lexington (Kentucky), Atlanta, St. John the Divine in NYC, and now Trinity Cathedral, Portland. He and I are of similar age, and (as I learned) both of us vegetarians, having become so upon reading “Diet for a Small Planet” while college students in the 1970’s.

His work with the choir is in the grand Cathedral Tradition, what I often consider the “big leagues” of choral music – the choirs of men and boys (and, thanks in part to Bruce, girls) who rehearse daily and sing evensong several times a week. They work hard and intensively, and at their best, the young people in such choirs make some of the finest music in the world.

I know “educators” who would say that it is asking too much to expect children or teens to stay focused for anything beyond five minutes, much less an hour or more at a time through a challenging rehearsal. And that is what we had – plenty of fun and light-hearted humor (for which Mr. Neswick is a master), but steady, serious, detailed work. I am a professional musician, and I have been doing this sort of thing for a long time – and there was one morning when I was near panic, thinking “I can’t do this.” He was asking a level of perfection that seemed beyond me – and, by staying with it, I attained it, doing some things vocally that surpassed anything I had done before. I became a better musician this week.

And there were little fourth-graders at their first Course, doing the same thing. No one told them that they couldn’t be this good, that they couldn’t do serious and important work at the same level as adult professionals.

If they can do this, they can do a great many other things.

We sing: Neswick stops us, we focus on one detail in what we have sung; we stay with it until it is right, or at least improved. As we return to the same music in later rehearsals, we attend to smaller details that he had allowed to pass in the earlier singings, and make the phrases, the overall sweep of the anthems and canticles and psalms, better and more focused.

He is a master of framing his comments positively. Not once did he say “that’s wrong.” More likely responses would be “Almost,” or “Maybe that C sharp could be a little higher.” If a treble had tried a phrase as a solo (which is a constant part of the rehearsals) and missed it, Neswick would have one or two more join to try it again, and praise them when they get it right. If there was a note or other detail that the choir missed the first time, he often called on an experienced chorister to demonstrate how it should go. This is old-school, straight out of the RSCM Chorister Training Scheme materials of forty or fifty years ago. And it still works.

Increasingly, Caleigh and Lucy from our Iowa choir are among those on whom he calls. It may be that he came only gradually to recognize their solid musicianship. Clio and Sloane, both of them strong high school musicians, are also among those to whom Neswick turns when he needs a good example. The two of them sing the solo on the anthem “Prayer of the Venerable Bede” (Richard Proulx) – long, unaccompanied, and challenging. At the final evensong, they sing it from the rear gallery of the church; it is magical.

Duncan and Iain are among the boy trebles who are leaders. One of my young friends from previous courses was the tenor to whom Neswick would look: Saul, here from Texas with two younger brothers. It was not so long ago that he was a first-year treble; now, he has a gorgeous tenor voice and first-class musicianship, both as a singer and a violinist. He and his brother Diego demonstrated the latter with a violin duet at the talent show, drawing a standing ovation led by Mr. Neswick. I got to know Saul three years ago when I sang between him and his friend Mario, both of them (that year) brand-new tenors, much as I am this year with Charles and Charlie.

I am proud of all the Iowa choristers. The girls I have mentioned, but I must say more about Alice and Lily. They were not often called upon for solos or examples, but both of them were solid and reliable choristers all week long, fully engaged with the Song. And it is Lily who, back home, is always on time for every rehearsal (along with her younger brother), allowing nothing to take precedence over the choir and its work.

Mike and Tom are across the way, side by side in the bass section, with Mike doubling as proctor and Tom as junior proctor. I suspect that it is a special time for them to sing together, something they cannot often do in a choir nowadays. My friend Judith is in front of me: without her commitment to the Course, it would be difficult or impossible for our group to attend. Beside her is Max in the tenor section, focused and hard-working all week. Beside me is Charles, who became an alto this spring and is attending his first Course. He is a fine and intelligent young man, and it is a delight to sing with him.

I believe that all of us have become better musicians this week. And the treble Sound arrives. At first, there are occasional notes where Mr. Neswick has them sing it several times, working for a “red-hot” sound. Then, more steadily. By Friday, they are singing with a strong ringing tone almost all of the time – and when there is a note that is lacking support and focus, Neswick corrects them and they get it right.


How can I take this home?

Every year, I seek to bring what I have learned to my own work with the choirs in our parish. Most of the time, I fail. I try things, and they don’t work at home.

For one thing, I love Mr. Neswick’s pacing, which is breakneck. That is part of why we can work so well; there is no time to do anything other than work at our highest level. If I were to try this in our adult choir at home, there are a few singers who would be absolutely lost. They would not be able to keep up. I must respect that.

With the trebles, I must likewise respect that not all of them will be outstanding, highly focused choristers. Some of them do indeed have difficulty focusing on anything for more than a couple of minutes. And over the years, I have driven a few singers off by making the rehearsals more challenging than they could manage. I regret this, deeply.

But I can, and should, take home the most important parts of what Mr. Neswick does: Connection to the music, which he leads by his own example of total immersion in what we are doing. A renewed commitment to solfege. Love for the choristers, which grows increasingly clear as the week progresses, most of all in our farewells at the end when he was in tears (another way in which he and I are alike; if my choristers were to give me a card as they did him, I would be an emotional wreck). One detail at a time, staying with it until it has improved. Work where the choir is – as they improve, raise the bar.

[To be continued]

RSCM Report: Sing ye faithful, sing with gladness

Part One: Monday

Fifteen years ago, I brought my first choristers to the St. Louis RSCM Course. One of them, Jennifer, stayed with it. A child of nine or ten years (I think), she and her father Eric and later her brother Mark became regulars at the Course.

For the first time, none of their family are here. They and others of their generation are now adults with commitments elsewhere, though Jennifer drove several hours out of her way in returning from such a commitment to drop in on the Course for a few hours one afternoon.

But there are many others here, many new people old and young. There are so many tenors and basses that I am needed more as an alto, to help secure a section consisting of as many middle-school boys as adult women. I hope to be an example that it is all right for men to sing alto, even if the adult housemaster (my friend Debbie) sometimes refers to the section as “Ladies.” For most of the week’s rehearsals I am between two of the boys: Charles, one of the choristers from my choir; and Charlie, youngest child of my friend Kristin. I well remember her wheeling him around the grounds of Todd Hall in a stroller. Now he is singing alto, and doing very well at it. He is more accurate than I, especially for the first few days (I suspect he was better prepared, which would not take much). Throughout the rehearsals, he sits and stands with good posture, keeps his pencil at the ready, and marks his scores with the efficiency of a pro. In some of the rehearsals, Kristin (herself a fine alto) has the pleasure of singing alongside her son, with her daughter two rows ahead in the trebles.

There are many fine choristers here, and the level of musicianship is high. But in the first rehearsal, the “Sound” is not there – the unique sound of strong, experienced treble boys and girls, ringing in the air. They sound young, tentative. The senior girls who anchored the trebles for years, such as Kyle and Meara, Natalie and Bryn, are gone. Of that group, only Jenna is here, but she is now an alto, seated two places to my right. She and Mike are among the senior proctors, and do excellent work in that regard all through the week.

I look around and realize that the four girls from our choir, all of them entering the seventh or eighth grade this fall – Lily, Alice, Caleigh, Lucy – will have to be among the leaders.

They will need to step it up.

Related: RSCM Report 2010:

In front of me during the full rehearsals were two little girls, Bryn [edit: this would be the same Bryn who became such a strong leader over the next few years] and Lauren. Both were irrepressible, with answers for every question, including quite a few that had not been asked. They were terrific. Across the way in Decani were Tom [ed: by 2016 a second bass, one of the tallest men in the choir, and a fine singer] and Killian, whom I had the privilege of driving around St. Louis when we went offsite to the Basilica and the Science Center. They made me feel young again with their boundless energy, jokes, and non-stop chatter. There were many others, including not only the outgoing ones I have described, but the quiet ones who said little, but saw and experienced much. In a sense, the whole Course is for these children. It is for the moment when they hear That Sound for the first time in rehearsals, the sound I vainly tried to describe a few days ago. It is for the confidence they gain when they realize that they can do the job, as overwhelming as it always seems at first; they can hold their own with the teens and adults and be part of a top-notch choir.