Part Three: "A first step"

[With the Celviano hybrid piano], we have developed something entirely new… which is a first step. (From the CEO of the Bechstein piano company in this video.)

What are the long-term prospects for the flagship pianos: the nine-foot Steinway D concert grand (list price: about $150,000), the Yamaha CFX ($180,000), the Bösendorfer Imperial ($250,000)?

What are the prospects for the somewhat smaller 6’11” Steinway B and its cousins of various sizes from Steinway and other builders? Will this be the “next step?” for the hybrid builders?

The answer may turn on the function of such instruments. The concert grands are almost always purchased by institutions, and such a piano on the main stage is a statement that “we are important.” But $150,000 (and up) is a lot of money, and music is a low priority for most schools. When will some budget-strapped college take the leap and put a Yamaha N3 on stage?

More to the point: Can the best of the hybrids be the solo instrument for a piano concerto with the top-level orchestras of the world, and the top concert artists? Can they do the job for chamber music, again with world-class performers? Can they satisfy pianists whose career is on the line, and their fellow musicians, collaborators in music such as Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise, the Brahms violin sonatas, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time?

Here, I draw on my experience in church music and organ. The “king of instruments” has for decades faced the challenge of electronic substitutes, starting with the Hammond. Pipe organs are an order of magnitude more expensive than even the flagship pianos. They make large demands on the architecture of any space they will occupy – and sometimes dominate, visually and aurally. They are immobile. Many of them are as much at the mercy of electronic component failures as the lowliest electric “keyboard.” The electronic builders, such as Allen, are reaping the benefits of computer technology just like the makers of electronic and hybrid pianos. And they are doing good work, but their best customized work is almost as expensive as a similar pipe organ. Despite the disadvantages and expense of pipe organs, the electronics have not driven them from the field and there is no evidence that this will change anytime soon.

One reason that the pipe organs have maintained their place is this: I have yet to hear an electronic organ that supports congregational singing as well as even a modest-sized pipe organ, such as our Pilcher – if it is a quality instrument. This last is important, for there are many pipe organs that are not much good, especially from some of the “factory” builders of the mid-twentieth century, and I would take an Allen over such an organ any day. And there are many acoustic pianos that are not much good, including quite a few grand pianos. I have been comparing the Yamaha and Casio hybrids to the best of the grand pianos and finding it a tossup. Given the choice between the hybrid and a used (or new) piano that was never of high quality, the choice would be obvious: go with the better sound, the better action feel, and that would be with the hybrids.

There seems to be something about the sound that comes from a good pipe organ that blends with the human voice in a way that the electronic sounds from speakers – even the large arrays of speakers scattered through the room that one finds in top-level electronic installations – cannot match.

That makes me wonder how a hybrid piano would sound with, say, the Cleveland Orchestra. I would be very interested in the answer to that. [Edited in August 2018 to add: Hybrid pianos revisited]

My closest personal experience for comparison would be from graduate school, when our choir sang with the New York Philharmonic. On one occasion we sang in Carnegie Hall, a space that does not have a pipe organ (neither does their “home,” Avery Fisher Hall – now “David Geffen Hall,” after they sold the name to the highest bidder in 2014: price tag, $100 million). The program began with the Berlioz Te Deum, which has a large and important organ part. Leonard Raver on an Allen electronic did his best (and, given the setting, the Allen people surely did their best as well), but in passages such as the beginning of that piece, where organ and orchestra trade off fortissimo chords, the Allen was clearly the loser. It was sufficiently loud, but sounded cheap and tinny in comparison with the orchestra, and in the tuttis, the organ sound, loud as it was, entirely disappeared under the orchestra and chorus [“Cheap and tinny” does not apply to this performance from King’s College, Cambridge, but it shows how important the organ part is to the piece.]

That was thirty-five years ago, but even then the electronic builders were claiming their instruments were equal to the best pipe organs. When played solo, they sounded pretty good; it was only in a situation such as that poor outclassed instrument in Carnegie Hall, or a church organ with a vigorous congregation singing, that their limitations became obvious.

Pipe organ (and traditional piano) technology have not changed much since then while the electronics have made great strides, thanks most of all to massively improved computing power for sampling and signal processing. But I would bet that an electronic organ in Carnegie Hall would still disappear under an orchestral tutti.

I would guess – and it is no more than that – that compared to any of the “flagship” concert grands that I named, the Yamaha N3 hybrid would likewise fall short in a pianistic equivalent such as the beginning of Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto.

But not by much.

The best I could tell, with the volume turned all the way up the N3 and Casio hybrids have exactly the same loudness as a large grand piano, vigorously played – and that is enough to balance a symphony orchestra. I think that the sound quality would be close enough to fool most of a concert audience. The visuals of the pianist sitting at what is hardly twice the size of a little spinet – as opposed to a nine-foot black ebony piano, its lid up – would be dismaying, and that alone might be enough to keep the hybrids at bay. For now.

The lockdown of “Steinway Artists” is also a factor. Most of the concert pianists in America are on that list, and they are bound by contract to play only Steinway pianos. But there are plenty of Yamaha Artists, especially in Asia. One of them might give it a try – perhaps at first in concert with a lower-tier orchestra in a hall without a quality piano. Again, I would very much like to hear the result.

Quality mid-sized grands like the Steinway B will continue to be demanded by piano faculty for their teaching studios and for school auditoriums and other venues where a full-scale concert grand would be a bit much. One example would be our parish church. I lead our weekly “middle” service from our Steinway Model L. It does not support congregational singing in the same manner as the Pilcher organ across the way, but when played with intelligence it does a good job in its own way. Would the N3 hybrid do as well? Again, I do not know.

My guess would be that again, it would fall short of our Steinway, but not by much. I am confident that it would surpass the large majority of church pianos in this role – probably ninety percent or more of them, from my experience -- and I would encourage a church that is seeking a piano to give the hybrids a serious look and listen, perhaps a “test-drive” if that can be arranged.

For a church, one factor that would favor an acoustic piano is the longer view. In the previous posting, I noted that I will not be playing the piano in fifty or sixty years. But at the church, I would hope that someone is. I doubted whether the hybrid pianos would still be usable that far down the road; our Steinway is over a century old, and there is no reason why it will not be viable when it is two centuries old, if it is cared for properly and rebuilt a couple of times along the way. The same goes for mechanical action pipe organs, whose enemies in the long run are most often war, fires and other natural disasters, and change of fashion – not irreparable breakdown of the instrument on its own account. The potential longevity of pianos and organs of traditional construction – and other instruments, such as quality violins, many of them centuries old – is a significant incentive for a church to purchase the best instruments and then take care of them. In the long run, that is good stewardship, better than buying something new every few decades. For a piano in the main worship space, I would counsel: Save up the money, seek donations over whatever length of years that it takes, and buy a Steinway or Yamaha acoustic grand, of a size suitable to the worship space. Or consider a quality rebuilt piano, such as the ones sold by Tom Zasadny, who did the renovation on our Steinway. If chosen carefully, such a piano is every bit as good as a brand-new Steinway, and less expensive. If it is clear that it will take a long time to gather the funds, one of the hybrid pianos would be a fine interim instrument, with the plan of eventually moving it to another space in the church, such as a choir room or chapel.

But what about my more humble purpose: a home piano? A mid-sized grand would be a worthy expenditure for a professional pianist who needs a top-quality instrument, especially if she also teaches at home and rehearses with chamber ensembles or singers. For a retired church organist? Not so much.

A used piano is a possibility. I am a piano technician, so I could do quite a bit of renovation work myself: things like hammer and damper replacement and regulation. I have restrung pianos, including two quality grands back in the 1990’s, and I could do it, but it is hard work, and requires either a large workshop or turning one’s music room or living room into a workshop for several months. And I am not so confident in my skills as I would have been twenty years ago; there would probably be some work that I would have to do a second (or third) time to get it right. So, unless it were a used piano needing only relatively minor renovation, I don’t think that I should consider it.

And there remains the issue of disturbing neighbors and spouse. For me, that would be the deciding factor. If I were to retire today, I would like to go with the Yamaha N3, but it would be hard to justify the $15,000 to $20,000 price, either to my wife or to God. That leaves the lower-priced Yamaha N2 or N1 and the Casio Celviano GP-500 and its lower-priced siblings. They are all good, and within this group it appears to me that “you get what you pay for” – the higher-priced instruments are incrementally better, but even the lowest-price instrument, the Celviano GP-300, would suffice. I would worry a little about long-term reliability – in essence, a race as to who breaks down first, me or the piano – but would otherwise be thoroughly content with any of these pianos.

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Again, if this is “a first step,” where might it go? The piano has had periods of rapid development, especially from around 1800 to 1860. Since 1900, it has remained pretty much the same – there is little difference between our century-old Steinway at church and the brand-new ones in the showroom. Might the hybrids move beyond imitation of the finest acoustic pianos to lead the way toward a different kind of professional instrument, as different from the current piano as the piano of our time is from the eighteenth century fortepianos?


Afterword: Why not an organ?

I am, after all, an Organist. Why choose a piano instead of an electronic organ?

Price. An entry-level Allen electronic “Historique” organ (their home-line of instruments) starts at around $17,000. For a two-manual instrument with lots of limitations, an instrument with which I would be thoroughly dissatisfied.

I played an Allen for several years, and gave the dedicatory recital for an Allen at another parish in the area. They are acceptable instruments. But I would not want to live with one of them for the rest of my life. There are other electronic builders, each claiming superiority, but they would all be similar. For me, an electronic home organ would always feel and sound like a cheap imitation of a pipe organ, and I would long for the real thing every time I played it. It is telling, in this context, to compare that with my experience of the hybrid pianos.

It is possible to put a mechanical-action pipe organ in a home; many contemporary builders would be happy to make one to my specifications. It would be a small and limited instrument, it would disturb the neighbors even more than a piano, and it would be very expensive.

Versatility. On the piano, one can do a lot of the practicing that is needed to continue as an organist – essentially, everything except pedaling and passagework that demands two manuals. It does not work the other way; playing an electronic organ at home does not prepare one to play Beethoven or Chopin on a piano.

Versatility is another advantage of the hybrids over the acoustic pianos. They are MIDI instruments which can be connected to the electronic world. For relatively little money I could add a used computer plus Hauptwerk software with organ sounds, playable from the hybrid piano keyboard and listenable either through headphones, computer speakers, or external amp and speaker. The result would be akin to a one-manual organ with no pedals. It would be exceedingly strange at first to play “organ” with the feel of a piano keyboard, but I think that I would prefer that to the feel of an Allen organ, or for that matter any pipe organ with a non-mechanical action.

Stage of Life. I have played the organ for a long time; forty years and counting. I am a Fellow of the Guild. I have played a lot of wonderful organ literature and performed recitals, including a few “on the road,” enough to give me a small taste of “Concert Artist.” I have been mostly fortunate in my instruments -- I was part of the fundraising and installation for one of Randall Dyer’s signature three-manual instruments and then played it for more than a decade. It remains the finest organ I have played regularly. [A personal note: the first photo on the linked page from the OHS database, an exterior view of the church, was the view from our kitchen window, for we lived across the street from the church. I would see it every time I washed dishes.] I have now played our Pilcher mechanical action organ for many years, and in its way, it is an equally satisfying instrument.


It has been a terrific life – and I have not here mentioned the joys of working with choral singers young and old, nor selecting and playing the hymns.

There are many aspects of my work that I love, as readers of these pages will know. But there is a lot of it, and I have less energy for it every year, especially around Christmas and Holy Week. Readers of these pages will know about that, too. It is a demanding life. That is not just me; every church musician who takes it seriously finds it so.

For now, I think that my playing is the best it has been, and I continue (with ups and downs) to learn and improve. I am not ready to hang up my shoes, not yet.

But all things come to an end.

Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne Peccet ad extremum ridendus. (Horace, as quoted by Samuel Johnson at the head of No. 207, “The Rambler,” March 10, 1752, which would be the penultimate number. ) Johnson concludes his essay with these words:

He that is himself weary will soon weary the publick. Let him therefore lay down his employment, whatever it be, who can no longer exert his former activity or attention; let him not endeavor to struggle with censure, or obstinately infest the stage till a general hiss commands him to depart.

Pianos, Part Two

On Monday, I returned to the music store. The Steinway event had ended, but many of the pianos remained, several of them with “Sold” flags on them. I was correct in assuming it would be a quiet day. The store’s piano person, Nelda Wittig, patiently endured me for about two hours (in which I was the only customer in the store), and was very helpful. I started with the Yamaha hybrid piano, the Model N3 AvantGrand, improvising for forty minutes or so. I was entranced.

Regretfully, I left the N3, walking to the Steinway B across the room. It is still the best. And still four or five times as expensive: list price: $93,000 and up. I tried a mid-sized Yamaha acoustic grand, the Model C3X, a fine piano, very clean-sounding and beautiful, a joy to play. It is a 6’1” grand, listing for about $55,000. I went back to the N3 hybrid. And back to the C3X. It was uncanny; the actions were absolutely the same. The sound? Almost the same. It might be simply that the hybrid’s sound is based not on the mid-sized Yamaha grand, but their concert grand, Model CFX. To a person sitting at the keyboard, the sound and feel of the two pianos is very close, amazingly close. In a “blindfold” test, I would not be able to distinguish the actions by feel and response, including the damper pedal mechanism. I would have to think carefully about the sound, and if I did not know the N3 was a digital piano, I would not label it as one.

I tried a mid-sized Boston grand (I think it was the 5’10” Model GP-178). The Boston, from Steinway’s “second level” brand, was perfectly fine, with a list price of about $30,000. I would call it a toss-up between the Boston and the Yamaha N3. Were I in a situation where an acoustic grand would be acceptable – for example, retiring to a country farmhouse with no nearby neighbors and a heated outbuilding or garage which I could occupy as a music room without disturbing anyone, I would give the Boston serious consideration, though its price would be a stretch. But the N3 hybrid is so close to it in quality as to be a virtual toss-up, at half the price. And it has headphones and a volume knob.

Casio is also making a hybrid piano, the Celviano GP-500. It was nearby, so I sat down to give it a try, not expecting much.

It was the surprise of the day.

For keyboard musicians, Casio has some history. We tend to think of the company in terms of $100 battery-powered keyboard toys to pick up at Target or WalMart for a child, such as the ML-1 of the 1990's, a two-octave portable with illuminated keys – though some creative pop and alternative musicians have taken the very cheesiness of such instruments as the basis for good work, almost always tongue-in-cheek. More than that, people of my generation remember when “Made in Japan” was a synonym for “Cheap Junk,” and Casio was part of that era with a variety of inexpensive products. That was before Toyota and others – including Yamaha – made it their mission to turn it around and make “Made in Japan” a badge of quality, the finest in the world. Casio has been part of that, too, seeking especially to bring increasing quality to the lower-priced end of their markets. Their wristwatches, for example, are highly regarded, and they produced the first pocket calculator, and the first inkjet printer. They have been making electronic keyboards since 1980 (mostly portables, including instruments for stage use), and introduced the Celviano line of digital pianos in 1991 as a competitor to Yamaha's Clavinova, and the Privia line in 2003. Their website speaks of the goal of one of their founders in 1946, Toshio Kashio, to eventually "create electronic musical instruments that were also affordable for hobby musicians," and to "allow amateurs to participate in the big music business – without having to spend the equivalent of a new car."

I realized quickly that, despite my prejudice against it, this was a Serious Piano. Casio has partnered with the German piano builder Bechstein to develop the instrument, with Bechstein’s flagship piano sound and action feel -- the epitome of a German piano, as Mendelssohn and the Schumanns and Liszt played. It is not quite the acoustic grand piano action in the manner that the Yamaha instrument uses, but Casio and Bechstein have made it equally accurate in feel, and in some respects it might be an improvement. The best I can tell, the whippen, jack, and repetition lever of an acoustic grand action have been replaced with less complex – and less likely to need repair or adjustment – components, balanced and weighted to feel like the Bechstein action. The sound is terrific. Or rather, sounds. Besides the “Berlin Grand” that is the Bechstein, there is a “Hamburg Grand” (read: Steinway imitation) and “Vienna Grand” (Bösendorfer imitation), both exceedingly fine. Plus harpsichord and various other sounds. [The Yamaha also has multiple sounds, most notably their equivalent of the “Vienna Grand” – with sound samples from the Bösendorfer, which is owned by Yamaha. I was so entranced with their default sound, based on sampled sounds from the Yamaha CFX concert grand, that I did not even try the Vienna sound.]

After fifteen minutes or so, I found Ms. Wittig at her desk. “Tell me about that Casio,” I said. She did, explaining much of what I just wrote, and telling me that her jaw-dropping reaction was similar to mine when it first arrived in the store this spring. Most jaw-dropping of all is the price: $6,500. One-third of the Yamaha N3’s list price. Less than one-tenth of a big-time Steinway’s list price. And there is a similar model, the GP-300, that lists for $4,000, and (I gather) a GP-400 that is somewhere in between. I went from the GP-500 back to the Steinway B. There is precious little difference in sound or feel for an order of magnitude of price difference.

Upon a few days’ reflection, I recognize that the Yamaha N3 is more refined than the Casio. But (again) it is three times as expensive. And the GP-500 is definitely not a toy. I think that Toshio K. would be very pleased.

[Edited Nov. 11, 2016 to add: Kawai, a long-time builder of acoustic pianos and competitor with Yamaha in this field, also has a line of hybrid pianos introduced in 2015; details can be found at their website here. In some respects, they appear to be similar to the Yamaha and Casio hybrids; their unique feature is using a wooden soundboard as sort of a "subwoofer" speaker. Prices appear to be around $6000 and up. There are likely to be many other such instruments in the coming years.]


Some thoughts:

The spinet piano, the type of piano on which I learned to play, has been dead for a generation. For that matter, the traditional acoustic studio upright might be dead. It is as expensive as the Casio and the Yamaha N1 hybrids (certainly the NU-1, an entry-level version of the hybrid based on the Yamaha upright piano action, listing at $6,500. I played this for a while, and it is a delightful little piano), and the musical experience of playing anything short of the best uprights is decidedly inferior to playing a grand.

There has never been much reason for a musician to consider “baby” grands with their small soundboards and short bass strings; they are sonically inferior to a quality upright. And (again) they are at least as expensive as the Casio and Yamaha hybrids. The baby grand might hang on to a market niche as an expensive furnishing for a large living room or hotel lobby.

The practice room upright? That jury is still deliberating. By light-years, I would prefer to play either of the hybrids over any piano that I have encountered in a practice room, and the potential for headphones is a huge plus for practicing in tight quarters. The question will be how well the hybrids hold up to years of heavy and occasionally abusive playing. The Yamaha should be fine, for its action has been proven in such situations; the Casio is an open question, though it is clear that they have gone to considerable lengths to build an equally durable action.

Then again, there might remain a place for what one of our former choristers calls “The Tank” – the blonde Hamilton upright piano that used to be the choir room piano, and now is used mostly for the annual “Cocoa and Carols” event in the undercroft. The Baldwin company specifically designed those Hamiltons and their twins sold under the Baldwin name as practice room and school pianos – not elegant musically, but extraordinarily durable and easy to repair, even more so than the Yamahas (and a lot more so than the Steinways, which can be finicky. Steinway versus Hamilton is somewhat like comparing a Ferrari with a Toyota Corolla). Our Hamilton is probably fifty or sixty years old and in the prime of its career. It will be interesting to see how the hybrids look and sound at that age. My guess is that by then, the electronics will have broken down. Or the speaker cones might have failed, for they are likely to deteriorate with age. If the speakers cannot be replaced, they can be bypassed via the line out into external amps and speakers, so long as the electronics are viable.

But I am not going to be playing the piano in fifty or sixty years.

The closest current equivalent to our Hamilton is the Baldwin B-243, which they describe as the “best selling studio model of all time.” It retails for just under $9,000, pretty much in the middle of the hybrid price range. Their least expensive piano of any type, the BP-1 console upright, is not much cheaper, clocking in at $8,625. As with all Baldwin pianos since 2008, it is built in China.

to be continued: “A first step”

A visit to the piano store

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

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

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

Silence.

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

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

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

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

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


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

To be continued…

Sparrows and Light

One of the first YouTube clips I posted was my prelude on “God of the sparrow” two years ago on this Sunday, the blessing of animals.

Here is the version from today’s 9:00 service:
Improvisation: God of the Sparrow

This time, for the middle section I quote Royal Oak (All things bright and beautiful), which I think turned out well, and I like the return to the B major tonic that follows, and the coda. In places I am intentionally more free with the tunes than I was in 2014, and the form is more complex.

I cannot say which version is better. I wish I had made more progress in my skill level than what these two improvisations indicate.

Perhaps I have made a little progress; I am considerably more comfortable with “surprise” improvisations than I used to be. There was one in this day’s service at the end of communion when there were several minutes to fill. I returned to “God of the sparrow,” this time in D flat, and I think it was pretty good.

But I still cannot do as well at the organ. I played a prelude on the same tune at the choral service two hours later; it had some moments, but it was not as good as the piano version. There was a sixteen-bar period after the first couple of statements of the tune that I intended as a transition, but it was a boring progression of chords without motivic relation to anything, because I was more concerned for that moment with changing the registrations than I was with the musical content. Anyone who improvises must constantly purge his music of such things.

I take encouragement from C.P.E. Bach: somewhere in his Essay he says that the organ and harpsichord are difficult instruments for improvisation. The pianoforte and the clavichord are better suited for it.

Lord willing, I intend to keep trying.

Here is another clip, from last Sunday’s choral evensong:
O gladsome light (David Ashley White)

It is not without its problems, notably a couple of notes in the soprano. But it has strong connection and I am proud of the choir for the way they sang it. As with much of the choral music I post, I have put this on the Net because there are no other recordings on YouTube.

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I have been reading with considerable benefit the Dialogue of Catherine of Siena, a few pages at a time. Yesterday’s insight: this musical work that I do is for the love of my neighbors, which in turn is love of God and in fact the only way that I can by concrete action express any love for God. I do the best that I can because I want it to bring people closer to God, rather than driving them away as bad church music can do, and that is because by God’s grace I care about these people. Or, as my motto from St. Augustine puts it, Cantare amantis est. The music can only exist when it springs from love for those who will hear it, and those with whom one is rehearsing and performing, and at root, this is love of God.

That is worth spending some time on the bench.

We are bound to Him, and not He to us, because before He was loved, He loved us. There it is, then: we cannot love Him with this first love. Yet I say that God demands of us, that as He has loved us without any second thoughts, so He should be loved by us. In what way can we do this, then? I tell you, through a means which he has established, by which we can love Him freely; that is, we can be useful, not to Him -- which is impossible -- but to our neighbor. To show the love that we have for Him, we ought to serve and love every rational creature and extend our charity to good and bad -- as much to one who does us ill service and criticizes us as to one who serves us.

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.

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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)
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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.
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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.”)

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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.)

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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.