Joyous Catastrophe

John Donne, for Ash Wednesday:

2012-02-22T13:54:00.002-06:00

At the round earth's imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dea[r]th, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space;
For, if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent, for that's as good
As if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.

— John Donne, Holy Sonnets, VII. (Westmoreland numbering)

Organ Preludes and Postludes through Lent

2012-02-21T16:09:00.007-06:00

22 February (Ash Wednesday):
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck: Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott
Samuel Scheidt: Modus ludendi pleno organo pedaliter, SSWV 157
26 February (Lent I, Invocavit):
Louis Vierne: Berceuse (sur les paroles classiques), Op. 31, No. 19
César Franck: Poco allegro, in C minor (from L'Organiste)
4 March (Lent II, Reminiscere):
Johann Adam Reincken: An Wasserflüssen Babylon
Heinrich Scheidemann: Praeambulum in D minor, WV 32
11 March (Lent III, Oculi):
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck: Mein junges Leben hat ein End
J.S. Bach (arr. Edwin Arthur Kraft): Komm, süßer Tod, BWV 478
18 March (Lent IV, Laetare):
Tiburtio Massaino (tablature by Bernhard Schmid): Laetare Jerusalem
Postlude -
25 March (Lent V, Judica; Annunciation):
Marcel Dupré: How Fair and how Pleasant art Thou, Op. 18, No. 5
Dieterich Buxtehude: Herr Christ, der einig Gottes Sohn, BuxWV 191
1 April (Palm Sunday):
Jeanne Demessieux: Hosanna filio David, Op. 8, No. 6
Jehan Alain: Litanies, JA 119
5 April (Maundy Thursday):
Gerald Near: Ubi caritas et amor
(No postlude)
6 April (Good Friday): No organ music, of course.

As a matter of fact, only my Lutherans will be hearing preludes; for the Episcopalians we will be omitting the prelude and instead singing the proper introit for each Sunday, from the Liber.

Book as Sacrament

2012-02-06T12:38:00.004-06:00

I grow increasingly tired of incorporeal worship. Scripture and music are good, and all — of course they are; would I be a church musician if I didn't think church music was important? — but I don't get much out of a church service without sacrament. I almost added "and without ritual", there, but of course a sacrament is by its nature an act of ritual. The really sustaining thing about sacrament is the thrill of the tangible — and I use the word here according to its root: tangere, "to touch". It is remarkable that we should be made aware of God's mercies by means of things as simple as water, bread and wine. It helps remind us that we cannot dwell entirely within abstractions; that is to say, it goes some way towards rescuïng us from gnosticism.

It is for similar reasons that I cannot abide e-books (among other e- things; I grudgingly use e-mail, but that completes the list of e-nouns and e-verbs I employ. No doubt some wag will point out the irony that I am writing this on a web-log. My only response is to sigh). The experience of reading a book is a tangible pleasure. Bibliophiles will tell you how pleasant is the crispness of new pages, the smell of the ink, the heft of a weighty tome in one's hands. These things I could take or leave, but they are certainly preferable to the antiseptic experience of staring at a screen.

More important is the notion of book ownership, something that is only possible so long as books remain physical items and not a series of zeroes and ones in a hard drive. (Indeed, the notion of ownership is an ephemeral one on this series of tubes: when we are dead, who shall inherit the mp3 files that replaced our records? The Word documents that replaced our manuscripts? Those jpegs that have replaced our family albums?) I am a habitué of used-book shops, so perhaps I am more aware than some that a book ought to outlast its reader. Moreover, it is an gratifying experience to be lent a book, or, better (though indeed, worse), to inherit one. The book becomes more than an object: it is the signifier of a bond between us and those who have shared with us this collection of characters, locations, ideas. If the secondhand book has annotations in someone else's handwriting, so much the better. The tangible object that points us to a greater reality: that is what we are truly losing if we switch to e-readers.

Admirable Words, Vol. IV

2012-01-30T22:57:00.002-06:00

Downton Abbey: the Interactive Fiction Video Game

2012-01-26T20:57:00.008-06:00

Perhaps you, dear reader, like everyone else, are watching the television programme Downton Abbey? I saw the first season when PBS re-aired it back in December, and am currently in the midst of the second season (unlike the Limeys, who have already completed the second season, but like all the rest of the Americans who hesitate to watch it illegally on the series of tubes that is the internet). For those who enjoy costume dramas, the Edwardian era, Maggie Smith, and Anglophilia, as I do, it is the perfect storm. It is commonly observed that the first season is far better; indeed, it is nearly perfect. But the second season, so far, is still quite satisfactory, even though the plots feel far more rushed. I almost hesitate to recommend it, for everyone is doing that now and popular media usually drive me to be contrary, but Downton Abbey really is quite good and you should probably watch it. Start at the beginning, though.

There's already been some merchandising — observe the PBS store, should you need proof of that — but the obvious next step is Downton Abbey: the Text-Based Video Game. I am clearly the man to make this happen, but for the fact that I have only great ideas and no relevant skills to do so. (Such is the plight of the "Idea Man", as no doubt Newt Gingrich could tell you.) Nevertheless, a taste:

You are a DOWAGER COUNTESS.

You are in the library.  There is a SWIVEL CHAIR here.  There is a FOOTMAN nearby.
Exits are EAST, SOUTH, and WEST.

What do you do?
>

South Bend, Again

2012-01-12T20:17:00.006-06:00

It was pleasant to visit South Bend for a few days this week. Officially, my stated reasons for the visit were gastronomical: Madame Chen's (the best Chinese food in the world, so far as I know) and the South Bend Farmer's Market. These were both worthwhile. But it was a pleasure to visit with friends as well, and to play the Fritts (oh, how I've missed playing a tracker instrument!), and to see campus. I was struck by how nice it was, just being in South Bend again. I assure you that the climate does not appeal to me, nor the charm of the city. More than anything it was like seeing an old friend again — not a particularly close friend, but someone worth seeing nonetheless. After a certain amount of time one becomes aware of those little annoyances (or indeed, great glaring flaws of personality) that have prevented closer friendship. But before that happens it is very pleasant, indeed.

Perhaps this goes some way towards explaining our culture's incurable mobility: we long to be somewhere else because we are constantly overstaying our welcome. What we must learn is how to be at home. To do this we must become comfortable not only with a particular place and its particular people, despite their flaws, but also with ourselves. Introspection requires a certain stability, and stability encourages a certain introspection. Doesn't it?

Upcoming Orgelmusik

2012-01-04T23:00:00.008-06:00

Organ preludes and postludes through Quinquagesima, 2012:

1 January (New Year's Day; Holy Name):
J.S. Bach: In dir ist Freude, BWV 615
Johann Gottfried Walther: Das alte Jahr vergangen ist
6 January (Epiphany):
Dietrich Buxtehude: Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BuxWV 223
Max Reger: Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, Op. 135a, No. 29
8 January (Epiphany I, Baptism of the Lord):
J.S. Bach: Prelude and Fugue in G Major, BWV 541
Friedrich Wilhelm Zachau: Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, LV 3
15 January (Epiphany II):
Claude-Bénigne Balbastre: Fugue in D minor
Gerald Near: Alleluia. Laudate Deum omnes angeli eius
22 January (Epiphany III):
César Franck: Prélude, Fugue & Variation, Op. 18
César Franck: Andantino poco allegretto, in Eb Major (from L'Organiste)
29 January (Epiphany IV):
Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg: O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort
Johann Ludwig Krebs: Toccata in G Major
2 February (Candlemas):
Marcel Dupré: Élévation (Très modéré), Op. 32, No. 2
Marcel Dupré: Herr Gott, nun schleuss den Himmel auf, Op. 28, No. 31
5 February (Epiphany V; Septuagesima):
Clemens non Papa (tablature by Bálint Bakfark): Circumdederunt me
Anonymous (tablature by Jan z Lublina): Conradus
12 February (Epiphany VI; Sexagesima):
Domenico Zipoli: Canzona in C Major
Girolamo Frescobaldi: Preambulum tertii toni
19 February (Transfiguration; Quinquagesima):
Gerald Near: Visionem
Felix Mendelssohn: Sonata, Op.65, No. 2: II. Allegro maestoso e vivace

It should also be added that St. Luke's Episcopal Church (Dixon, Illinois) will host Mr Kevin Vaughn for an organ recital on 29 January (at 4:30pm). It promises to be a worthwhile occasion; I am looking forward especially to his Howells and Reger.

In dulci jubilo

2011-12-25T13:21:00.004-06:00

In dulci jubilo,
Nun singet und seid froh!
Unsers Herzens Wonne liegt
in praesepio,
Und leuchtet als die Sonne
Matris in gremio,
Alpha es et O!

O Jesu parvule
Nach dir ist mir so weh!
Tröst' mir mein Gemüte
O puer optime
Durch alle deine Güte
O princeps gloriae.
Trahe me post te!

O Patris caritas!
O Nati lenitas!
Wir wären all verdorben
Per nostra crimina
So hat er uns erworben
Coelorum gaudia
Eia, wären wir da!

Ubi sunt gaudia
Nirgend mehr denn da!
Da die Engel singen
Nova cantica,
Und die Schellen klingen
In regis curia.
Eia, wären wir da!

"The Blessed Son of God"

2011-12-24T12:05:00.001-06:00

Listen: Ralph Vaughan Williams — "The Blessed Son of God",
Being the fifth movement from his Christmas cantata Hodie
Performed by The Tudor Choir on this CD.
Or, if you are averse to downloading, listen to a fine performance here.

The blessed Sonne of God onely
In a crybbe full poore dyd lye:
With oure poore flesh and oure poore bloude
Was clothed that everlastynge good.
Kirieleyson.

The Lorde Christ Jesu, God’s Sonne deare,
Was a gest and a straunger here;
Us for to brynge from mysery,
That we might lyve eternally.
Kirieleyson.

All this dyd He for us frely,
For to declare His great mercy:
All Christendome be mery therfore,
And geve Hym thankes evermore.
Kirieleyson.

— Myles Coverdale, after Martin Luther (a loose translation of selected verses of "Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ")

St. Lucy's Day

2011-12-13T19:01:00.005-06:00

The best method of getting into the mind of prehistoric man is to spend more time outdoors. Perhaps the first thing one notices, upon doing so, is that one becomes far more aware of natural cycles: the phase of the moon, the barometric pressure, the time the sun sets (or, if you are un buen madrugador, the time it rises). Around this time of year it is quite possible to believe that the days will continue to get shorter and shorter until some scientist finally notices that the Earth's axis has somehow started tipping and our hemisphere will never see light again. This is, of course, implausible, though stranger things have happened elsewhere in the galaxy. The worst-case scenario would be a tidally-locked planet, with constant light in one hemisphere and constant darkness in t'other. Another possibility is a fate like that of the planet Uranus, the axis of which is so tilted that each pole is in complete darkness for forty-two years; of course, its orbital period is also much longer than Earth's. Whatever our axial tilt is, for those of us sensitive to a lack of sunlight the solstice can't come too soon.

Coïncidentally or not, today is the feast of Saint Lucy, long thought to be the shortest day of the year. ("'Tis the year's midnight", as Donne says.) The saint's connection with light needs little explanation.

There are, as it happens, quite a few hymns appropriate for this time of year. Many are used at compline. Perhaps the best is Christe, qui lux es et dies. (If you ever get a chance to hear Robert White's four polyphonic settings, do so. Here are the first and last; I can't readily find the other two.) This hymn was, in turn, adapted into two German chorales: Christe, der du bist Tag und Licht and Christe, der du bist der helle Tag. Another compline hymn is Te lucis ante terminum; my favorite version is the mode VIII melody used on ordinary Sundays and minor feasts. Other hymns include Conditor alme siderum and Lucis creator optime.

Some might complain that we've become too accustomed to the dichotomy between light and darkness, with its implication that light is to be preferred. This does not bother me. As anyone who has woken before the dawn can tell you, it is natural for man to want light. Consider Psalm 130:

I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.
My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.

Peace, Goodwill, Christmas Hymns

2011-12-10T19:23:00.005-06:00

I was once on the verge of becoming a Christmas fundamentalist. So obsessed was I with the idea of reclaiming Advent (which is, after all, a wonderful season that is overlooked by far too many) that I became a bit angry at the thought of putting up Christmas decorations before The Day Itself. Christmas music pumped out over the loud speakers at sundry public places was cause to avoid going anywhere. The Feast of the Incarnation, I was at pains to remind everybody, is properly speaking the start of the Christmas season, which lasts until Epiphany (though one could leave up Christmas decorations until the Feast of the Purification of Mary, Candlemas, on the second of February).

Whether it is a sign of the abandonment of principle or merely the mellowing of age, I am no longer quite so angry to see people celebrating Christmas weeks before the Holiday itself. Advent, after all, is only one of the casualties of liturgical ignorance. (I don't think I'll ever understand Christians whose only vestiges of the church year are Christmas and Easter. But then, they are no doubt bewildered by the sort of High Church pageantry that I enjoy.)

I appreciate, at least, that some people are more pleasant during the Christmas season; there is a general feeling of goodwill that makes it more difficult to be purposefully unpleasant. I suspect this is due, in part, to the music. This is the only time of year when we are permitted to like music written before we were born. This should only be encouraged: Christmas music is perhaps the last widely-known musical repertory that links us to a bygone age. Incidentally, this is also the best model for a body of hymnody: people should be taught all the good old hymns. Anyone advocating all new music in church should observe the emotional connection people have to all their favorite Christmas hymns, and ponder this in their hearts.

This is not to say that all old music, or all music that induces nostalgia, is good music. Consider "The Little Drummer Boy", written in 1941: it is one of the perversely worst-written songs ever made, from a compositional standpoint. But then, nostalgia is not a particularly logical impulse.

Rite, Meaning, Continuity

2011-12-04T18:17:00.002-06:00

Mr Dreher has some good points about the power — and importance — of good ritual:

There is something enchanting, in the literal sense of the word, about having the reality of the Divine encompass one through one's senses. It is possible, of course, to be present in such a place and to shut oneself off from the presence of the Holy Spirit. But for me, I find it much more difficult to resist entering into a state of openness when there are so many sensual reminders — the incense, the vivid icons, the ritual motions — of the unseen reality around us, and within us.

If you read Bellah's book, "Religion in Human Evolution," you understand why ritual is more important than theology. No doubt that ritual completely disconnected from theology is empty. But humans never outgrow the deep need for ritual. It's built into the biological fabric of our being. You mess with that, you're messing with things you ought not touch.

Yes. We must, of course, address the the danger of rite displacing God from the center of worship. But this is only a danger because ritual is so important; it does serve such a important function in our lives. To devalue meaningful ritual (which is, by its nature, something inherited, something that has been a part of a given community for a significant amount of time) is to deprive ourselves of a powerful means of communion.

Perhaps the most common argument at any church is "But we've always done it that way!" This is not, in and of itself, a good argument. (It is, however, far preferable to that other common argument: "We need to change x to get new members!" These words portend doom.) We shouldn't appeal to tradition simply because it is tradition. We appeal to tradition because we trust that our forebears did things for good reason, because tradition acquires richer meanings with time, because tradition connects us to believers dead and yet unborn.

Augustana, Revisited

2011-12-02T22:14:00.007-06:00

This evening I attended the Augustana Choirs and Orchestra Christmas concert. What's that, you well may ask, a Christmas concert in the first week of Advent? Madness! you may correctly observe. But it was an enjoyable concert, for the most part, nonetheless. There's a certain percentage of Christmas schlock that is required to satiate the blue-haired little old ladies, but fortunately there was some real repertoire as well. My favorite was Respighi's L'adorazione dei magi, part of his triptych on Botticelli themes. I do believe the more I hear Respighi the more I like him.

Returning to Augustana, whatever the circumstances, has always been pleasant for me: I feel at home there in a way I never will feel anywhere else. Notre Dame had its benefits, of course, but I never felt like a part of that community (if such a large school can be called a "community" at all). The arguments I heard — and took part in — there could interest me intellectually, but there was ultimately a disconnect somewhere: what is it to me, if the Basilica uses chant or guitars? It's not my Basilica. It was easier to take a step back and observe the pettiness and uncharity at Notre Dame. There's no less pettiness and uncharity at Augustana, of course — indeed, there may be more, per capita — but it is somehow more tolerable because it is a place I think worth fighting for; it is home. And home, for all its frustrations, is still preferable to anyplace else.

Rowan Williams: "Advent Calendar"

2011-11-30T23:18:00.004-06:00

He will come like last leaf's fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud's folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

—from The Poems of Rowan Williams

Dominus Regnavit

2011-11-20T15:13:00.005-06:00

Days like today are cause for optimism: both of my church services went well, and there are so many good hymn tunes for Christ the King Sunday. (Diademata is a particular favorite; everybody likes "Crown Him with Many Crowns".) I am becoming more and more fond of this part of November, when the fields are cleared and nearly all the trees are bare, before it snows; it's not desolate but rather clean-looking. Perhaps it's just this year in the three-year lectionary cycle, but the readings — with their apocalyptic imagery — lead nicely into Advent. Comparing different hymnals, there is even overlap between end-of-the-church-year hymns and Advent hymns: Helmsley ("Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending"), for example.

The notion, particularly relevant today, of the kingship of God is an interesting one. Perhaps the most common conception of God in the psalms is as awesome King; another, nearly as common, is as just Judge. Indeed, the two concepts seem closely linked in ancient Jewry. Other psalms (cf. esp. 45, 72, 89) describe God's covenant with mortal kings, who are expected to carry out God's justice. Some sections read as little more than monarchist propaganda; the Bible is not a book for republicans. In any case, it appears that legitimate, God-pleasing government has an obligation to the poor, a fact lost on a great many people nowadays.

There is one issue I've always wondered about: if earthly kings derive their legitimacy from God, what meaning does the title "King" have for God himself? There is — we presume! — no higher power to grant God the title. It seems that God is King simply by virtue of being God.

* * *
Next week is the start of Advent. I have resolved that I should start posting — here, if there is no more suitable place — music selections from the liturgies at my churches, like some do. So: here is some of the upcoming music at St. Paul Lutheran and St. Luke's Episcopal.

Organ preludes and postludes for Advent and Christmas, 2011:
27 November (Advent I):
J.S. Bach: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 645
W.F. Bach: Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, F.38, No. 1
4 December (Advent II):
Jeanne Demessieux: Rorate caeli, Op. 8, No. 1
Michael Praetorius: Alvus tumescit virginis
11 December (Advent III, Gaudete):
Healey Willan: Prelude on Richmond
Gerald Near: Benedixisti, Domine, terram tuam
18 December (Advent IV):
J.S. Bach: Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659
Paul Manz: Toccata on Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, Op. 5, No. 10
24 December (Christmas Eve):
Claude-Bénigne Balbastre: Quand Jésus naquit à Noël
Dieterich Buxtehude: In dulci jubilo, BuxWV 197
25 December (Christmas Day):
Louis-Claude Daquin: Noël X (Grand jeu et Duo)
Georg Böhm: Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her

The American Guild of Organists

2011-11-14T21:42:00.003-06:00

This evening I attended my first AGO meeting. I am pleased to report that it went reasonably well. The theme for pieces was "things based on hymn-tunes"; I performed that bombastic Karg-Elert Nun danket alle Gott setting, and, to atone for that, also BWV 645. The membership of the local chapter is quite tolerable: the only instances in which I found it necessary to bite my tongue were when I heard praise of Allen instruments. (One must bear in mind that many — far too many — organists out here in the provinces have never played a tracker, and thus may be forgiven for their misguided tastes.)

Being away from school, even for only these few months, has taught me how important the company of one's peers is. It is, of course, a bit of a stretch to call my fellow AGO members peers — they are, after all, predominantly women who could charitably be called "post-middle-aged" — but it is nice to have people who understand the vicissitudes of a career in church music. In every profession one needs people to whom one can complain about one's job; I suspect this is the true origin of the great medieval guilds.

Wolf Hall

2011-11-07T16:23:00.004-06:00

Finished, at last, with my slog through Tolkien, I turned immediately to Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. It's been a bit of an adjustment, going from Tolkien (who, though a worthwhile read, has too many adverbs and all the humor of the Heimskringla) to Mantel, whose wit could be metaphorically compared to something that is very sharp.

The hero (or antihero, if you must) of the book is Thomas Cromwell (who was indeed related to Oliver, though we mustn't hold that against him). History, for the most part, has not been kind to Cromwell: the impression one often gets is that he was an amoral schemer, who, in the end, reaped the whirlwind after several years of attempting to manipulate the king's favor. If you've seen A Man for All Seasons you've probably got a much more charitable opinion of Cromwell's rival Thomas More, whom Roman Catholics now call a saint; he's held in high esteem at Notre Dame, certainly. But Mantel deconstructs this beatific image we have of More: as she sees it, he was little more than a religious zealot.

[Cromwell] never sees More — a star in another firmament, who acknowledges him with a grim nod — without wanting to ask him, what's wrong with you? Or what's wrong with me? Why does everything you know, and everything you've learned, confirm you in what you believed before?

It's worth remembering that More was not some selfless defender of personal conscience to be compared to Cromwell's unprincipled henchman of royal prerogative. More merely preferred Papal tyranny to royal tyranny. The question, perhaps, is: which should one prefer in Henry VIII's England? Despite my fondness for Anglicanism, I still have this image of the king as this horrible sort of Bluebeard character, ruled by his appetites, quite probably more beast than man. I don't know if Mantel means to dispel this characterization further on in the book; after all, I've only read about a hundred of its six-hundred-odd pages. But I recommend it highly, so far.

Faust (1926)

2011-10-31T20:46:00.005-05:00

Sort-of-but-not-really because it's Halloween I finally sat down and watched the 1926 silent film Faust, which I had never heard of but just read about over at the A.V. Club. (That web-site has some good things, but its advertising is consistently obnoxious.) If you haven't seen it and fancy yourself a film-lover, you should see it. The modern moviegoer is perhaps reluctant to take silent films seriously — so conditioned are we by the special effects and other conventions of movies these days — but once one discards certain expectations and assumptions it becomes clear how original and effective the best silent movies are. To employ an inadequate metaphor, it's like drawing a circle: sure, it's quite easy to open MS Paint and make a perfect circle, but it takes real practice and dedication to actually draw a circle, with a pencil, on paper. Faust passes the test of all real art: it's still worth experiencing today.

It occurred to me that Faust can be understood as symbolic of 20th-century German history: Faust renounces God to reshape the world according to his own ideas, with disastrous consequences. It then occurred to me that Thomas Mann already noted the Faustian resonances in the Third Reich. It then occurred to me that I really ought to begin reading Mann's Doktor Faustus: presently all my knowledge about it is secondhand, by way of The Rest Is Noise, which you really should read.

Quam dilecta!

2011-10-25T23:40:00.004-05:00

You'll pardon, I hope, my low output as of late. (I won't apologize for it, anyway.) I have been thinking about several things — Montaigne and friendship, the pleasures of Indian summer, the nature of consciousness (with a nod to Andrew Bird) — but am not yet prepared to expatiate upon any of these themes. I shall, however, refer you to several other things worth reading.

Philip Larkin: "An Arundel Tomb"
Jason Peters: Curiosity Killed the Keg: A Tribute
One can read lots of tiresome articles of socio-political claptrap by conservative Christians; sometimes that sort of thing shews up on FPR. But Peters, though he could quite fairly be called "conservative" and "Christian", manages again and again to write things that are actually worthwhile. In this particular treatise — O Theophilus — he makes several very good and entirely accurate points, among them observations about booze, O'Connor, and contemporary Protestant hymnody.
I have had Coverdale's version of Psalm 84 in my head for a while, now. (I suppose this is mostly due to the Vaughan Williams setting.) Its palpable desire for God is quite arresting, I think.
O how amiable are thy dwellings, thou Lord of hosts! My soul hath a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God. Yea, the sparrow hath found her an house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young, even thy altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they will be alway praising thee.

Thoughts from Concordia

2011-10-18T07:50:00.001-05:00

Thoughts that have occurred to me whilst attending the 2011 Lectures in Church Music Conference (at Concordia University, Chicago):

Good music is, inevitably, about addressing issues, solving problems. The issue/problem may be one about musical form, or color (e.g. instrumentation, texture), or compositional process (canons, fugues), or, in vocal music, text, or other things. Bad music, when it refuses to acknowledge a problem, is saccharine; when it fails to adequately address a problem, it is unsatisfying.
Most defects of musicianship can be fixed, but I suspect that a poor interior sense of rhythm is irremediable. How can you learn something that ought to be inborn? (Well, technically, a sense of rhythm is acquired, but this takes place so early in childhood that it's like original sin: probably not inborn, but as good as.)
Fr Anthony Ruff, whom I admire more and more, gave a presentation on the implementation of the new translation of the Roman Missal, with special emphasis on ecumenism (since this is, after all, a mostly-Lutheran conference). It is hard not to be disgusted with how Rome has bungled the new translation. It's not only that it is fundamentally flawed — after all, the current translation is deeply flawed, albeit in a different way — but far worse is the autocratic way Rome has handled things. From time to time, when utterly frustrated with the follies of Protestants, I find solace in the fact that at least we don't have to put up with the Roman Catholic hierarchy. If "by their fruits shall ye know them", then I fear we know the hierarchy all too well.
Last night we had a concert of seventeenth-century Lutheran music (mostly Schütz, Schein, and Scheidt; no Praetorius, unfortunately). I've said it before: it's too bad that we hear this repertoire so rarely nowadays. One of these days, when I've got an early music consort at my disposal, I shall endeavor to do some of it.

Oh, and today is St. Luke's Day, the titular feast (heh) at my Episcopal parish in Dixon. We shall have some good hymns, I think. (I've had the tune Westminster Abbey stuck in my head for several days, now; I'm planning a rather grandiose introduction with the chamades, which should wake people up, if nothing else.)

Admirable Words, Vol. III

2011-10-06T21:52:00.004-05:00

The 2011 American Alain Festival

2011-09-30T21:14:00.007-05:00

Greetings, dear reader, from Lawrence, Kansas, where I am staying the night after two-and-a-half days in Wichita at the 2011 American Alain Festival. Jehan Alain, for those of you with limited knowledge of 20th-century French organ composers, was quite possibly the most original voice of his generation, with a prodigious output (considering his brief twenty-nine years on this earth). Moreover he had a generous soul and a fervid imagination. This year marks Alain's hundredth birthday, and we celebrated his life and work with a series of lectures and performances. Our guest of honor was Aurélie Decourt, the composer's niece (and daughter of Marie-Claire Alain, who during her career was unquestionably the foremost expert on her brother's works). Other guests included many of Marie-Claire's American students (of whom many are bigwigs at various universities and larger churches). All in all it's been quite worthwhile. The world of professional organists is a relatively small one, and it has been interesting to observe professional organists en masse: though some are prone to cattiness (a common trait in all of academe, I fear), many are agreeable enough. Most could fairly be called eccentric, in one way or another.

I fear it may not interest you for me to go into much detail about what we covered at the conference. Suffice it to say we examined Alain's biography, instruments, and influences. There is also the issue of the various editions of Alain's works, which have differed in many registrations and other markings. Indeed, there was a major controversy about twenty years ago when a musicologist raised questions about the integrity of Marie-Claire's work. This led to much bickering back-and-forth, and it was quite obvious that there is still much bitterness over the whole episode. Such are the petty affairs of academia, I suppose.

See also:
Alain's Postlude for the Office of Compline
(a past entry on this-a-here web-log)

The Inauguration of the Organ at Gröningen, 1596

2011-09-23T22:44:00.004-05:00

In 1596 Heinrich Julius (1564-1613), the Most Reverend Bishop of Halberstadt and Serene Duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, celebrated the completion of the pipe organ he had ordered four years earlier from the organ-builder David Beck. To inaugurate the instrument, located in the Schloßkirche at Gröningen, he hosted fifty-three organists and church musicians from across Germany, among them the renowned Hieronymus Praetorius (1560-1629) and Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612). Heinrich Julius's own music director at the time may have already been the young Michael Praetorius (1572-1621), who would go on to have a remarkable career as composer (of more than 1,200 chorale arrangements), consultant, and music theorist (his Syntagma Musicum is doubtless our most important source for music practice of the early seventeenth century).

Heinrich Julius himself was one of those colorful characters who abound in the first century of the Reformation: a Lutheran, elected bishop at the age of two, patron of the arts, witch-hunter, alcoholic, kabbalist, and polymath (or, perhaps more accurately, dilettante): he was trained in ancient and modern languages, philosophy, law, and theology, and fancied himself a playwright, architect, and musician. His learned tastes — though they fostered much great art that has survived to this day — proved financially ruinous, alienating both the nobility and the burghers of his realm.

We can only speculate about the goings-on at the conference at Gröningen. It is certain that the gathered organists took full advantage of the opportunity to observe the variety of compositions, styles, and performance practices assembled from across the Holy Roman Empire. It is almost equally certain that demand for liquor far exceeded the capacities of the city of Gröningen during the conference.

Unfortunately, of the fifty-three organists who were in attendance, very few left music that has survived to this day. What is still extant is very impressive, at least when performed on an appropriate instrument. I am fortunate to have an organist friend who visited Germany this past summer and purchased for me a number of very fine organ CDs, among them one featuring works of H. Praetorius, Hassler, and M. Praetorius, played on the Fritzsche/Treutmann organ at the Church of St. Levin in Harbke.

Listen: Michael Praetorius - Wir gläuben all an einen Gott
(11min, 20.66MB)
performed by Jean-Charles Ablitzer

Contra Keillor

2011-09-10T20:09:00.004-05:00

My chief pleasure for the past, oh, eighteen years, or so, was being a good student. (Like many people at institutes of "higher" "education", I suspect I am better suited to be a student than to go into any sort of useful career. But I am attempting to correct this by means of honest employment, if music can be called honest employment.) Now that this is no longer an option, I find one must savor life's little pleasures, like discovering a new, good, artist while listening to Pandora. Or the lime yogurt, served in a waffle cone, at Arthur's. Or the luxury of an off switch when I hear Garrison Keillor, that old windbag, on the radio.

Do not misunderstand me: I think Minnesotans and Lutherans owe a debt of gratitude to Mr Keillor for all those years of good PR. I was once a great fan of A Prairie Home Companion, and I still tune in to it regularly. But invariably I will turn it off within a few minutes. Sometimes there may be good musical guests on the program, but the rest is quite dispensable. Oh! Another quaint anecdote about Wobegonians! Oh! Another sketch based on puns! Oh! He's singing again. Really it is Keillor's singing that is the worst. It is emblematic of the sort of sentimental self-indulgence that has come to define the program, which has been coasting — I think — for years, now. I rather hope they don't find a new host to replace Keillor when he finally quits milking the cash-cow that is public radio in a few years.

Chicago, Briefly

2011-09-02T20:05:00.003-05:00

I am just returned from a brief trip to Chicago. The traffic was pritnear unbearable, but was, I hope, justified by my destinations. Besides attending a quite tolerable concert (the rather-unfortunately-named band Balmorhea), I was fortunate enough to visit Powell's Bookstore (which, indeed, is a sister store of the venerable Portland institution I visited in January); I purchased Mann's Doctor Faustus and an old edition of Chesterton's biography of St. Francis, which I think will someday make a fine gift. (Yes, I have begun to buy second copies of some books, the mark of an irredeemable bibliophile. But my excuse is that I do intend to give them away, eventually.) Best of all I went to a Meinl Kaffeehaus, where I had the first proper Eiskaffee and Palatschinken since I returned from Vienna (now several years ago). "O Memory, hope, love of finished years!" The great pleasure of such fare was counterbalanced by the reminder that I will likely not be able to visit Vienna for some time still. Nevertheless I recommend the place highly.

The Lord of the Rings, Considered

2011-08-28T13:27:00.006-05:00

You know, late August is actually very pleasant. This had never occurred to me before, as for the past twenty years I had always been distracted at this time of year by the beginning of school. I must say, I do not particularly miss being so busy that I have no time to devote to worthwhile things beyond the scope of my studies. For the first time in many years I am re-reading The Lord of the Rings. I must say, it is a different experience reading the book when one is finally past adolescence. One never steps in the same river twice; nor does he read the same novel, apparently.

Tolkien's two deep and abiding passions, it seems, are nature and words. The strengths and weaknesses of his writing reflect these. He is fond of writing about landscapes — trees and hills and valleys and such — and I think he is quite good at this: certainly his descriptions of places are strong enough that I have always found the movies rather disappointing on that front. (New Zealand looks like a pleasant enough place, but it lacks the grand scope of Middle-earth. They are little islands, after all.) The other thing Tolkien clearly enjoys is poetry, and the books are littered with songs. Some of these are effective, and many are not. (One presumes that they all might be better with music, but then, that is a limitation of the medium.)

Tolkien's greatest strength as an author is his capacity for depth: as in a Netherlandish painting, the background (the histories, the geography, the languages of Middle-earth) is just as interesting as the foreground (the main characters and their travails). Indeed, the background is often more interesting. Tolkien's chief defect, I think, is a general lack of humor; even his intended levity (mostly hobbit matters) comes across as rather strained. Nor is he particularly good at writing about action — but then, few writers really are. The characters are best read as archetypes, as in myth, for in most cases there is little evidence of compelling underlying psychology. These faults — and all those songs! — aside, I'd still say The Lord of the Rings is not so easily dismissed as some literature snobs would have it. It is more than the sum of its parts.

Eucharistic Distraction

2011-08-21T19:22:00.002-05:00

The first thing anybody must come to terms with, regarding any sort of understanding of the Eucharist that is not strictly memorialist, is that it doesn't make any sense. Whether you're for transubstantiation, consubstantiation, or the sacramental union, there remains that moment — that crucial moment — when the Body and Blood of Christ becomes present where once was only bread and wine. Ultimately the only justification for such a belief is Scriptural: if the Eucharistic narratives in three of the Gospels and Paul's first letter to the Corinthians are to be taken as true — and indeed, what is Christianity if they are not? — then we have some license to believe that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. (The question, then, is whether Jesus was speaking literally. This is another topic of debate that is better discussed elsewhere.)

This is all to say that there is justification for a belief in the Real Presence, if one is willing to accept a number of things as a matter of faith. What I'm actually wondering about, today, is whether the Eucharist should ever feel different. What faith I have in the Real Presence is, apparently, quite fragile, for I find that the feeling of receiving Communion varies drastically, depending on the situation. We know, if Augustine is to be trusted, that the worthiness (or, as the case usually is, unworthiness) of the priest does not effect the efficacy of the Sacrament: ex opere operato, and all that. This I can believe, readily enough. The problem is that I find it difficult to take the Eucharist as seriously as I should when I am the only one attempting to do so. My experience of the Real Presence depends very much upon external factors: is the Host treated in a manner befitting the very Body of Christ? Do my fellow congregants approach it as the Body of Christ? Do the non-essentials — the aesthetic considerations, from the music to the architecture to the altar-cloth — serve to enhance or distract from the experience of partaking in the Body of Christ? None of these things, so far as I can tell, should change the efficacy of the Sacrament, and yet they all affect me an awful lot. I find this troubling. I must ask myself the question all those of a high-church persuasion must ask themselves: am I merely a shallow aesthete? Why am I so distracted by those things that are, after all, of little importance when compared to the awesome (and I use the word in its older, better sense) mystery of the Sacrament?

I don't know. If, dear reader, such questions do not interest you, I apologize for all this, which must seem like so much theological wankery. Here is something that everyone ought to appreciate, whatever their view of the Sacrament:

Thomas Tallis: Verily, Verily I Say Unto You (John 6:53-56)

St. Mary the Virgin (Observed)

2011-08-14T20:52:00.005-05:00

Today the Episcopalians of Dixon, Illinois — whose organist I now, er, am — celebrated the feast day of St. Mary the Virgin. We did some fine hymns (including that versification of the Magnificat, set to "Woodlands", which is an eminently singable tune), and the assigned readings are also very good. Father's sermon addressed the place of Mary in the Christian tradition; in true High-Church Anglican fashion, he said enough things to alienate both Roman Catholics and Protestants. But I happen to think that in this issue — as in many others — the via media is the via optima. Taking into account Mary's special place in God's redemption narrative, one may reasonably consider her the greatest of the saints. Some Lutherans, and most other Protestants, forget this. (Recall, though, that there have always been Lutherans who have relied on the intercession of saints, with the proper understanding that God alone is the source of all grace.) But, on the other hand, not even the Theotokos is worthy of worship. Miffed Roman Catholics will insist that they do not worship but rather venerate her (a fine distinction, to be sure), but certain Romish ideas — such as the understanding of Mary as Co-Redemptrix — seem to me quite certainly idolatrous.

But enough of argumentative things. I'll refer you to the post I wrote at Annunciation, with a Pärt setting of the Magnificat and excerpts from a rather good sermon. And here is Mary's song (Luke 1:46-55), for your dose of sweet sweet Book of Common Prayer:

My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden.
For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath magnified me, and holy is his Name.
And his mercy is on them that fear him, throughout all generations.
He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel, as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed, for ever.

Speak, Euterpe

2011-07-31T18:16:00.005-05:00

(An aside: I always thought it unfortunate that the muse of music should have such an ungainly name. Somebody should look into it.)

As a result, chiefly, of several nights of poor or insufficient sleep, I am in no state to do any serious thinking. (I would like to believe that some thought goes into posts on this-a-here web-log, though perhaps some readers may wish to correct that particular misapprehension of mine.) However, I would like to present two examples of admirable music, of divers and sundry kinds. Both are indisputably good, though the question of what makes music good will have to wait for another time.

Fretwork: Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582:

Art Tatum: "Night and Day":

Religion Beyond Cliché

2011-07-19T22:14:00.007-05:00

Clichés, as insufferable as they are, exist because they generally express things that are true. The most unfortunate thing about clichés is that, with prolonged exposure, they lose their effectiveness: we not only take the truth for granted, but begin to doubt its accuracy to begin with. This, as I see it, is one of the chief weaknesses of religion. Revolutionary ideas become Sunday-school platitudes, first disdained and then ignored entirely. (This goes some way towards explaining why, in a society permeated with Christian symbolism and mores, Christianity itself is not taken the least bit seriously. Granted, we've mostly ignored the teachings of Christ — "love thy neighbor", hmm? — for the last two thousand years, but at least there was a time when the religion itself was taken seriously.)

Occasionally we encounter situations that expose to us the very real truth behind the cliché: like a character in a Flannery O'Connor story, we are shocked into seeing the true nature of things, if only for a moment. Let us assume that it is better to seek unpleasant truth than to be contented with comfortable falsehood. (Only a hedonist could prefer the latter.) It is therefore beneficial to seek situations that lead to those experiences that make us more aware of reality, and likewise to avoid those things that keep us comfortably oblivious.

What is reality? From a Christian perspective, the ultimate — and indeed, the only — reality is that of God's love for us. (Come to think of it, this may apply to some other religions as well. But I won't make claims on behalf of other belief systems.) How, then, are we to become more aware of this? There are many arguments to be made for asceticism, for conscious renunciation of worldly pleasures. I suggest that the ascetic life, if it is one's vocation, is a good and noble calling; certainly we all "must achieve the character, and acquire the skills, to live much poorer than we do", as Mr Berry so admirably puts it. But it is clearly not the case that every man should flee to the monastery, or to the hermitage. What, then, is the course of action for he who is not called to seek God by himself? I hope to think about this further.

Washington, D.C.

2011-07-10T15:31:00.005-05:00

Greetings, dear reader, from Our Nation's Capital. Though this is apparently the very worst time of year, weather-wise, to be here, I have found it a pleasant-enough place during this past week's vacation. Well, it is not technically a vacation, as I have been put to work: this morning I served as organist at Luther Place Memorial Church, which is on Thomas Circle, in what is a nice — if terribly gentrified — part of the city. The organ is a 4-manual Möller that has undergone several renovations, but it's not as bad as I feared. The reeds are surprisingly robust, but the mixtures emit a rather awful shriek, like some examples of less-fortuitous Orgelbewegung design.

The more places in this world I visit, the less inclined am I to see the sights everyone is enjoined to see. This is chiefly because one is always surrounded by tourists in such places, and tourists — especially, I have noted, American tourists — are almost always insufferable. (Perhaps this amounts to a measure of self-loathing on my part?) At the National Gallery of Art — which is a fine museum, though rather disappointing compared to my beloved Art Institute of Chicago — my experience was severely hampered by obnoxious tourists talking loudly and ignorantly, with art-school-reject tour guides shouting to be heard over them ("Now, the art in this room is a style known as Byzantine!"). Despite the ambiance, the collection is a good one. I find I am drawn the most to late medieval painting (Giotto is a particular favorite, and he has a wonderful Madonna and Child there) and to early Renaissance Netherlandish paintings: there's a spiritual richness there that one doesn't see in many other times and genres. Some things (e.g. American colonial art) leave me entirely cold.

Whilst in the city I have availed myself of various things one cannot do (not well, anyway) at home. I have discovered several excellent restaurants: perhaps the nicest surprise has been Julia's Empanadas, on Connecticut Avenue between M and N. (An empanada is, apparently, the Hispanic equivalent of the Cornish pasty: it is very tasty, indeed, at least at Julia's, and they are quite reasonably priced.) Today I took a yoga class: it was at a level a bit above my current skills (that is, none), but enjoyable nonetheless. And I have been wandering around various parts of the city. From what I have seen D.C. resembles far more closely a European city than its American counterparts: there's a sort of Hausmanesque plan to the streets, and indeed some impressive Second Empire architecture down closer to the Mall. The strict guidelines for building height make it a cozier — if more congested, traffic-wise — place to live. The metro and other mass transit services are not nearly as convenient or ubiquitous as those of Vienna, but one mustn't complain about such things.

All in all, it's not a bad city. No, indeed.

Admirable Words, Vol. II

2011-06-29T16:43:00.002-05:00

Brume
Catarrh
Embroglio (a better spelling than the more common Imbroglio)
Ibex
Plinth
Poltroon
Pottage
Reprobate
Sentinel
Tin

Ars Itineris?

2011-06-21T22:50:00.006-05:00

Seneca, Ad Lucilium epistulae morales, XXVIII. "On Travel as a Cure for Discontent":

Do you suppose that you alone have had this experience? Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate. Though you may cross vast spaces of sea, and though, as our Virgil remarks: "Lands and cities are left astern," your faults will follow you wherever you travel. Socrates made the same remark to one who complained: he said, "Why do you wonder that globetrotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you? The reason which set you wandering is ever at your heels." What pleasure is there in seeing new lands? Or in surveying cities and spots of interest? All your bustle is useless. Do you ask why such flight does not help you? It is because you flee along with yourself. You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.

Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to his nephew Peter Carr, 10 August 1787:

[Traveling] makes men wiser, but less happy. When men of sober age travel, they gather knowledge, which they may apply usefully for their country, but they are subject ever after to recollections mixed with regret — their affections are weakened by being extended over more objects, and they learn new habits which cannot be gratified when they return home. Young men who travel are exposed to all these inconveniences in a higher degree, to others still more serious, and do not acquire that wisdom for which a previous foundation is requisite, by repeated and just observations at home. The glare of pomp and pleasure is analogous to the motion of the blood — it absorbs all their affection and attention, they are torn from it as from the only good in this world, and return to their home as to a place of exile and condemnation. Their eyes are forever turned back to the object they have lost, and its recollection poisons the residue of their lives. Their first and most delicate passions are hackneyed on unworthy objects here, and they carry home the dregs, insufficient to make themselves or anybody else happy. Add to this that a habit of idleness — an inability to apply themselves to business — is acquired and renders them useless to themselves and their country. These observations are founded in experience. There is no place where your pursuit of knowledge will be so little obstructed by foreign objects, as in your own country, nor any, wherein the virtues of the heart will be less exposed to be weakened. Be good, be learned, and be industrious, and you will not want the aid of traveling, to render you precious to your country, dear to your friends, happy within yourself.

Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness, p. 43:

[T]he world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home."

Adventures in Openmindedness, Part II

2011-06-20T17:28:00.004-05:00

Well, I finished that Murdoch book. It was, at least, more satisfying than A Severed Head, though I suspect the discrepancy owes much to the different circumstances in which I read each: one was drudgery — and, as it seemed, not morally or intellectually profitable drudgery — while the other was my own choice to read, upon the recommendation of (relatively trustworthy) counsel.

A Fairly Honourable Defeat belongs in that class of books, along with The Picture of Dorian Gray and Lolita, in which people do wicked things — things which lead readers to denounce the books as immoral — but eventually receive their comeuppance — a fact that is often ignored by the outraged sort of reader. Such books have, as Wilde observed of his book, "a terrible moral". (This is, of course, the older and more etymologically correct meaning of terrible: "causing terror", not "very bad".) Murdoch's work differs from those two books, however, in that justice is not visited upon all transgressors equally. Indeed, the peccadilloes of relatively good characters result in harsh consequences, while far worse offenders go, for the most part, unpunished.

If a morality can be gleaned from this book, it is a decidedly anti-consequentialist one. We've all discussed the hypothetical scenario: it's 1941 and you're hiding Jews in your attic: when the Gestapo officer asks you whether you're hiding anyone, is it immoral to lie? If it is always immoral to lie, then the moral thing to do is to tell him, "why yes, they're in the attic." However, if morality is determined by the consequences of one's actions, and the result of honesty in this case would be the death of innocents, then the consequentialist would lie (normally a moral evil) to effect the saving of lives (considered — we must assume! — a good). But in Murdoch's world, even the best-intentioned lies lead to disaster and despair. It is, perhaps, a reminder that we are ultimately ignorant creatures, quite unable to judge the consequences of our actions, regardless of our intentions. It is not a reässuring moral.

In any case, I have reconsidered my opinion of Dame Iris. I don't believe I'd get along with her very well if we were to meet, but then, that is rarely the case with authors and composers and artists I admire. (Dürer or Mahler would probably be rather irritating in person, I suspect.) Hers is not a world I wish to inhabit, but it is an acceptable one — perhaps even a necessary one — to visit.

Adventures in Openmindedness, Part I

2011-06-09T23:25:00.004-05:00

It is important to examine one's prejudices. This is not to say that all prejudice is bad; no, indeed! We need prejudice to adequately function in the world: without prejudice we'd have to impartially examine each and every person and situation we meet, and there simply isn't time for that. But we must, when we have time, reässess certain things, in case we have judged them unfairly.

The particular thing I wish to examine, in this instance, is the work of Iris Murdoch, which (and whom) I took a dislike to during my years of undergraduate study. My distaste was fortified by the opinion of one of my favorite writers, Flannery O'Connor, who said Murdoch's works are "completely hollow". Thus summarily dismissed, I was content to leave it at that. But considering the advice of a friend, who gave me a copy of A Fairly Honorable Defeat, I am prepared to give Dame Iris another chance.

I am now two chapters into that book. Almost immediately I noticed a similarity between it and A Severed Head, my other foray into Murdochiana. The chief characteristic of Murdoch's characters — at least, all those I've encountered so far — is that they are all terribly bored, and it is this boredom that leads them to do various wicked things. (I do not mean to say that the characters are boring; Murdoch is a good enough writer that she can at least keep our interest. And besides, I am not yet of the opinion that only virtuous people are genuinely interesting; there are enough books with bad sorts that are still compelling.)

Existential boredom — which we must differentiate from incidental boredom, the sort even the sanest man might sometimes have, as when waiting for a bus or discussing politics with a libertarian — is indicative of spiritual malaise. It is the result of a lack of joy in one's life. It is probably the same thing as acedia, which the desert fathers were right to consider the worst of sins. What is one to make of a writer whose every last character is existentially bored? May we fairly assume that Murdoch herself felt this way? I'm not sure. Further reading should prove useful; I shall continue my (re)evaluation.

Fructus Laborum

2011-06-06T09:48:00.003-05:00

It is important to have things to do. A day or two of bone-idleness is enough: any more than that and you'll probably end up sitting on the sofa eating bon-bons and watching soap opera (which, it should be observed, is not nearly as interesting as real opera. When's the last time a soap opera character rode her horse onto a funeral pyre, immolating herself and destroying the world?).

My recently-concluded project, with which I occupied myself after the end of classes, was to transcribe about two-dozen Michael Praetorius scores. (I had access to both Praetorius and Finale — the score-writing program — at Notre Dame's library. It is now a four-hour commute away, which is a bit too far to justify further such endeavors there.) I did this because I someday hope to avail myself of the pieces: they're terribly practical, being based on chorales, and he wrote them for all sorts of combinations of voice parts. For the benefit of others (oh, how generous, I!) I put the scores up on the Choral Public Domain Library.

Iconophilia

2011-06-03T22:07:00.006-05:00

There is a tension inherent in the Christian tradition between the urge to glorify the Divine through art and the temptation for that same art to serve as a sort of substitute for the Divine. All too often we have put aesthetic concerns above truly spiritual ones. (Church musicians, I feel compelled to add, are far more susceptible to this sort of error, whatever our personal tastes.) Of course, the reason this mistake is so commonly made is because aesthetic experience is so easily mistaken for spiritual experience. It is the natural impulse of the artist to create beautiful things, and these beautiful things can effect a sort of transcendence within us. The problem begins when this aesthetic transcendence is mistaken for that different sort of transcendence which is truly spiritual.

Paul, preaching in Athens, touches upon this point:

For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.” Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.

(That's Acts 17:28-29 (NRSV). Paul is quoting Epimenides's Cretica — which he cites also in his letter to Titus — and Aratus's Phaenomena; we see already the appropriation of Greek pagan imagery and language for the Christian God.)

As early as Paul, then, we see the impulse for iconoclasm, the reluctance to make physical objects that might take God's rightful place in the center of worship. (Indeed, this impulse is far older than Paul, dating back at least to those graven images Moses warned us against.) The easiest way to avoid the pitfall of worshipping the aesthetically beautiful is to destroy it. This explains why some Byzantines broke their icons and why Calvinists dismantled pipe organs.

But orthodox thought, in both the East and West, came to the conclusion that images aren't so bad: after all, God created the physical world and pronounced it good (whatever the Gnostics might tell you), and thought it so good that He took physical form. If Divinity itself might assume our mortal flesh, who's to say that we cannot appreciate the visible as signifier for the (invisible) Divine? Music, too, can remind us of the beauty of God.

The problem, of course, is when we forget that there is anything beyond mere art. This happens when we make the concert hall our temple, or — if we're at least so correct as to know what a proper temple is — when we put the quality of the Offertory anthem above the quality of our service to the poor. Both are offerings, of course: the sacrifice of praise is no less fitting than the succour of the needy. Both should proceed in equal measure from the well-formed soul. For further thoughts on "Art and the Motion of the Soul", I'll refer you to Peters.

Regarding Children

2011-05-27T21:10:00.000-05:00

Do you recall the accompanist job at an elementary school I mentioned a few months ago? This week I concluded my duties there. I must say it has been a surprisingly good experience.

Chief among its benefits is that I no longer view children as an annoyance. They can be annoying, to be sure, but I now realize that this is not their default state. C.S.L. observes that it is the stupidest children who are most childish, just as it is the stupidest grown-ups who are the most grown-up. I am inclined to agree. Childish children can at least be improved; there is little hope for the incorrigibly adult. The best thing about working with the young is that it keeps one honest. (Or, at least it should.) Children are like animals in that they are acutely sensitive to — though not, usually, consciously aware of — a person's mood. They recognize mendacity, unlike so many adults, because they have not yet become inured to it. They almost always respond to kindness and enthusiasm.

For any of my readers who dislike children, I'll say this: you probably don't dislike them as much as you think. They're not all so irritating as those you see in public. (Young children are worst-behaved when with their parents, and adolescents are worst-behaved when with their peers. These are exactly the people one generally sees them with in public.)

I can say without exaggeration that this job has been a blessing. Of course, it's easy for me to say that: I experienced all the best things about teaching (seeing progress, nurturing what will become life-long interests, receiving the guileless admiration of children) without any of the bad things (disciplining children, dealing with ignorant or unreasonable parents). But in any case, I can now understand why people get such satisfaction from teaching young children.

Knoxville: Summer of 1915

2011-05-15T20:41:00.006-05:00

In this time of leaving, becoming aware of all the places and things and people at Notre Dame I will see no more, I have spent some time thinking about those other times that are now lost to me: my undergraduate years, high school (however unpleasant), even my childhood. In a short while my years at Notre Dame will join those others, to add to the pain of recollection (which, happy or not, is painful; that is the nature of nostalgia).

Ah, but now it is nearly summer, the part of the year I remember best from my childhood. (For all my love of Rilke and autumn and that sort of Sehnsucht, there is something more personal about the memories of summer.) I suspect it was the same for James Agee, who wrote about his own childhood in Knoxville, Tennessee:

It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street and the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees, of birds' hung havens, hangars. People go by; things go by.
...
On the rough wet grass of the backyard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there. They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine... with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home. One is a musician, she is living at home. One is my mother who is good to me. One is my father who is good to me. By some chance, here they are, all on this earth, and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night.

May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble, and in the hour of their taking away.

After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.

That is from Agee's essay, "Knoxville: Summer of 1915", which was later selected to serve as the introduction to his semi-autobiographical (posthumous) novel, A Death in the Family.

Samuel Barber set much of Agee's essay to music in his Knoxville: Summer of 1915. I am not sure which is my favorite recording of this admirable work (it is probably either that of Eleanor Steber or Leontyne Price). But in any case I will refer you here, where you can listen to it. (That particular recording is not special, but is the most convenient and legal to come by.)

I have been listening to the piece many times in the last few weeks. It resonates with the sense of loss I already have begun to feel about this particular place, these particular people. Oh, the terrible sweetness of nostalgia! — nostalgia, even, as in this prose poem and this composition, for a time I myself have never known and will never know. Discussing the piece in a 1949 radio interview, Barber noted its expression of "a child's feeling of loneliness, wonder, and lack of identity in that marginal world between twilight and sleep." Do you recall these feelings? I do. Sometimes I wonder whether there's much difference at all between the insecurities of childhood and the insecurities of the present.

Graduate Transience

2011-05-05T13:35:00.007-05:00

As for the graduate student, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.

In these last few weeks at Notre Dame, now that my recital is over and I have only seven more pages to write about Sarum chant and its influence on English polyphony, things have turned bittersweet. ("Bittersweet": another overused word. Oh well.) One becomes aware of how brief two years actually is. Yesterday I had my last class; today I had my last lesson and cantored for the last time at the Basilica. Wandering around before Mass, I saw some saints in the windows I hadn't noticed before: Margaret (with snake), Mechtilde, Jerome. At lunch I happened to run into some fellow sacred music students, and afterwards we basked in the sun and shot the breeze, enjoying some Gemütlichkeit. (An aside: the first recorded use of "shoot the breeze" is from 1941, but beyond that nobody is quite sure where the expression comes from. How many other etymologies have we lost?) This is exactly the sort of thing one can do in a community, and it is exactly the sort of thing that is cut short when graduate study concludes and we scatter to the ends of the earth. How can we hope to have real community without some semblance of rootedness? The Benedictine vows of stability, conversion of manners, and obedience are much better things than we give them credit for.

G.M. Hopkins, "Spring"

2011-05-02T08:44:00.002-05:00

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring —
         When weeds in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
         Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
         The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
         The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
         A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. — Have, get, before it cloy,
         Before it cloud, Christ, lord and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
         Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Christ ist erstanden

2011-04-24T15:00:00.008-05:00

"The Resurrection", from Matthias Grünewald's stunning Isenheim Altarpiece. This is the primary reason I want to visit Alsace.

Lutheran Worship, the old blue hymnal we used to use, had its flaws — and they were numerous — but one thing I liked very much about it was its pairing of two particular Easter hymns, Christ lag in Todesbanden (#123) and Christ ist erstanden (#124), on facing pages: it's a grand thing to go from one great melody to another. (They're both based on everyone's favorite sequence, Victimae paschali laudes, anyway.) For your paschal edification, here are settings of each hymn:

J.S. Bach: Christ lag in Todesbanden, chorale, the second movement of BWV 4.

Michael Praetorius: Christ ist erstanden, from Polyhymnia Caduceatrix et Panegyrica (1619).

Media vita in morte sumus

2011-04-20T07:41:00.004-05:00

In the midst of life we are in death:
of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord?

Recently I've been looking into Tudor church music, especially the sort written during the reign of Mary I. (Foxe's Book of Martyrs notes that "Mary, having succeeded by false promises in obtaining the crown, speedily commenced the execution of her avowed intention of extirpating and burning every Protestant." So you see, children, propaganda is not so modern an invention as we sometimes think.)

The casual listener of classical music may know the name Thomas Tallis, but it is far less likely he knows that of John Sheppard (c.1515-1558), who also wrote music at about the same time. (Oh, the vicissitudes of musical popularity!) Sheppard's work is every bit as impressive as that of his better-known contemporary. Chief among his compositions is a remarkable six-voice setting of the text Media vita, the antiphon for the Nunc Dimittis at Compline on major feast days in the two weeks before Passion Sunday. Though in the one surviving source for this motet (Oxford: Christ Church Library, Mus. 979-983) the tenor partbook is missing, there are several reconstructions, including one by the Tallis Scholars.

Listen: John Sheppard - Media vita,
performed by the Tallis Scholars (dir. Peter Phillips), available here

The word "poignant", like the word "unique", is terribly overused these days, but I daresay that this motet is poignant; in any case it is well-suited for Lent. It may not even be hyperbole to say that Sheppard's Media vita is one of the most important works of English polyphony.

Music Links Round-up

2011-04-15T19:08:00.003-05:00

Click the squares: Wondering why there are no dissonances? 'Cause it's a pentatonic scale!
Nokia fugue: Not bad fugal writing, really. The motivic derivations are not quite as tight as Bach (cf. BWV 547), but there are nice little surprises. (Look for the inversion, for example.)
Compleat organ works of Bach, available for free download
Arvo Pärt Information Archive
Bizarre Musical Deaths
Our Polyphony Class Web-site: with recordings of Renaissance polyphony by our professor's (pretty good) ensemble, Pomerium

And, for good measure, some web-logs concerning matters musical:
Chantblog
Magister Perotinus
Pipe Organs (dormant, but its archives are worth giving a look-see)

Humor and Religion

2011-04-10T21:38:00.009-05:00

It has been a general guideline of mine, for years, now, not to trust anyone without a sense of humor. Humor is a good and worthwhile thing, and I will have no truck with anyone who insists on doing without it. (Perhaps there are some people who never acquired a proper sense of humor; if so, these are wretches to be pitied. What I am chiefly concerned with, here, is the sort of person who has a sense of humor and seeks to stifle it.) The particular misconception of the humorless is that lightheartedness somehow contradicts the effort to take things seriously, that humor is somehow the opposite of earnestness.

I am sorry to say that there are a great many religious people who feel (and act) this way. Many of them are convinced that religion is A Very Serious Thing Indeed, and that any attempt to acknowledge the inherent humor of certain things (dropped thuribles, outlandish lectors, ridiculous vestments) would be to detract from the dignity and reverence and decorum due to the Mass.

(An aside: it's always about the dignity and reverence and decorum of the Mass, in some Roman Catholic circles. What is dignity and reverence and decorum, anyway? Is it a Mass where nobody smiles, or acknowledges the presence of others? Is proper reverence so easily confused with catatonic rigidity? Mind you, I shudder as much as the next person at the thought of those horror stories of post-Vatican II liturgies — beach balls at Mass, rainbow vestments — but one can acknowledge the human dimension of the liturgy without resorting to such excesses. In any case, it might be worth pointing out that regrettably varicolored vestments are not the sole province of hippies and Franciscans.)

But where was I? Oh, yes, humor. Would you believe, like St. John Chrysostom — or Jorge the monk in Eco's The Name of the Rose — that Christ never laughed? I certainly hope not; there's enough to be construed as humor in the Gospels to suggest that he did. (Roman Catholics may take particular satisfaction in that the Church was founded on a pun.)

In any case, if you would associate with religious types at all, I would suggest the sort with a sense of humor: most Anglicans, for example. Avoid the dire sort of fundamentalists (of both Protestant and Papist persuasions). As for me, I shall be having a Life of Brian viewing party next Sunday.

Miscellaneous Links:
A Joking Matter: And Jesus Laughed
On the Second Book of Aristotle's Poetics (his lost treatise on Comedy)
Umberto Eco web-site

The Venice Baroque Orchestra

2011-04-09T20:49:00.005-05:00

This evening I attended a performance by the Venice Baroque Orchestra. It was quite good. The program included concerti by Albinoni (yes, he of the famous Adagio. Except that that particular Adagio was not actually written by him), Galuppi, Tartini, and of course Vivaldi. The popular insult for Vivaldi is that he wrote the same concerto five hundred times; indeed, in mediocre performances this often comes across as accurate. But in a really good performance — like the one I heard tonight, fortunately — the music sounds much more inspired. (The key for the performer, I suspect, is to become aware of the improvisatory nature of the music. Paradoxically, one must work far harder to make music sound as though it were improvised.) When it is performed well, one can understand why Bach thought so highly of the music of his contemporary.

Incidentally, I think I might look into becoming a theorbist. Surely the demand for skilled players of the theorbo is great, is it not? (Not every over-eager high schooler with some slight skill at playing the theorbo is deciding to do it for a living — now is he? — unlike the case in certain other instruments, the blogger added, insultingly.) And the fellow who played it tonight looked to be having an awful lot of fun.

Mark Your Calendars:

2011-03-27T21:28:00.002-05:00

An ORGAN RECITAL
Reyes Organ & Choral Hall, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, Notre Dame
7:00pm, 30 April 2011
The program will feature both the Paul Fritts Opus 24 and our 17th-century Neapolitan instrument (by an anonymous builder, restored by Martin Pasi). A small schola will perform a chorale as well as plainchant from the office of compline.

J.S. Bach (1685-1750): Prelude & Fugue in G Major, BWV 541
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963): Organ Sonata No. 2
Domenico Zipoli (1688-1726): selections from Intavolatura per Organo e Cimbalo, Part I
Johann Adam Reincken (1643-1722): Chorale Fantasia on An Wasserflüssen Babylon
J.S. Bach: Prelude & Fugue in A Major, BWV 536
Jehan Alain (1911-1940): Postlude pour l'Office des Complies, AWV 13

Annunciation

2011-03-25T13:52:00.006-05:00

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation. For my part, I will be playing for a service with the (precipitously high-church, Deo gratias) Lutherans over at Emmaus.

Shortly after the account of the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38) comes the greatest of the Biblical canticles, the Magnificat. For your edification, I offer an excellent recording of Arvo Pärt's setting of this song, as well as two excerpts of a sermon Luther gave on the Magnificat.

Listen: Arvo Pärt, Magnificat
(Performed by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, dir. Tõnu Kaljuste, found on this CD.)
Luke 1:46-47 (Authorised Version): And Mary said, "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour."

For God is not magnified by us so far as His nature is concerned — He is unchangeable — but He is magnified in our knowledge and experience, when we greatly esteem Him and highly regard Him, especially as to his grace and goodness. Therefore the holy Mother does not say, “My voice or my mouth, my hand or my thoughts, my reason or my will, doth magnify the Lord.” For there be many who praise God with a loud voice, preach about Him with high sounding words, speak much of Him, dispute and write about Him and paint His image; whose thoughts dwell often upon Him, and who reach out after Him and speculate about Him with their reason; there are also many who exalt Him with false devotion and a false will. But Mary says, “My soul doth magnify Him” — that is, my whole life and being, mind and strength, esteem Him highly.

Luke 1:48-49: "For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name."

The "great things" are nothing less than that she became the Mother of God, in which work so many and such great good things are bestowed upon her as pass man's understanding. For on this there follows all honor, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of mankind, among whom she has no equal, namely, that she had a child by the Father in Heaven, and such a child. She herself is unable to find a name for this work, it is too exceedingly great; all she can do is break out in the fervent cry: "They are great things", impossible to describe or define. Hence men have crowded all her glory into a single word, calling her the Mother of God. No one can say anything greater of her or to her, though he had as many tongues as there are leaves on the trees, or grass in the fields, or stars in the sky, or sand by the sea. It needs to be pondered in the heart, what it means to be the Mother of God.

Detachment

2011-03-22T20:10:00.006-05:00

We've all had one of those days, wherein it becomes exceedingly obvious that most people are knaves, louts, and fools. Today the world conspired to give me one of those days. (I shan't bore you with the details.) I am pleased to report, however, that for some reason the parade of asinine behavior did not manage to put me in a bad mood. I suspect that working with children has done me good: if nothing else, it has convinced me that people are not created as bad as they become, and indeed, with a proper education, most can be quite tolerable.

Is this, perhaps, the secret to avoiding irritation (which provokes a host of vices): to simply remove oneself from a situation and observe it as a third party might? It certainly doesn't hurt. I must endeavor to try this in future occasions of unpleasantness.

Angelus Silesius writes,

Niemand hat seinen Stand so hoch und groß gemacht
Als eine Seel die ihr Gemüth in Ruh gebracht.

Acedia

2011-03-13T20:25:00.004-05:00

Occasionally when I am in a fit of melancholy it leads to acedia, as has happened these past few days. I would describe acedia, but I find that the fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus did so far better in his Praktikos:

The demon of acedia, which is also called the noonday demon, is the most burdensome of all the demons. It besets the monk at about the fourth hour (10 am) of the morning, encircling his soul until about the eighth hour (2 pm). First it makes the sun seem to slow down or stop moving, so that the day appears to be fifty hours long. Then it makes the monk keep looking out of his window and forces him to go bounding out of his cell to examine the sun to see how much longer it is to 3 o’clock, and to look round in all directions in case any of the brethren is there. Then it makes him hate the place and his way of life and his manual work. It makes him think that there is no charity left among the brethren; no one is going to come and visit him. If anyone has upset the monk recently, the demon throws this in too to increase his hatred. It makes him desire other places where he can easily find all that he needs and practice an easier, more convenient craft. After all, pleasing the Lord is not dependent on geography, the demon adds; God is to be worshipped everywhere. It joins to this the remembrance of the monk’s family and his previous way of life, and suggests to him that he still has a long time to live, raising up before his eyes a vision of how burdensome the ascetic life is.

While we are perhaps not monastics, the affliction is much the same.

Ash Wednesday

2011-03-09T19:42:00.004-06:00

Both the Old Testament and Epistle readings for today (in the Papist lectionary, anyway) emphasize that now is actually a pretty good time to start being good. Joel 2:12-13, in Coverdale's translation, reads:

¹²Now therfore saieth the LORDE: Turne you vnto me with all youre hertes, with fastinge, wepynge and mournynge: ¹³rente youre hertes, & not youre clothes. Turne you vnto the LORDE youre God, for he is gracious & mercifull, longe sufferynge & of greate compassion: & redy to pardone wickednes.

(Who says centuries-old translations aren't acceptable? With the possible exceptions of "rend" and "long-suffering", I daresay the passage is perfectly understandable, even to the average American. Bible translations that dumb-down the language — viz., the NIV, the NAB, et alia, ad nauseam — are only greasing the slippery slope towards illiteracy.) Consider also part of today's Epistle, from 2 Corinthians 6:1-2:

¹We as helpers therfore exhorte you, that ye receaue not ye grace of God in vayne. ²For he sayeth: I haue herde the in the tyme accepted, and in the daye of saluacion haue I succoured the. Beholde, now is the accepted tyme, now is the daye of saluacion.

(Again, no problems with the language except perhaps "exhort" and "succored", but certainly every college graduate should know these words.)

To these exhortations let us add that of John Donne. They don't make many Anglicans like John Donne anymore; this is a pity. In a sermon preached to Queen Anne (James I's consort, not the later queen regnant), he echoes a passage from Augustine's Con fessions:

Yet if we have omitted our first early, our youth, there is one early left for us; this minute; seek Christ early, now, now, as soon as his Spirit begins to shine upon your hearts. Now as soon as you begin your day of Regeneration, seek him the first minute of this day, for you know not whether this day shall have two minutes or no, that is, whether his Spirit, that descends upon you now, will tarry and rest upon you or not, as it did upon Christ at his baptisme.

Therefore shall every one that is godlie make his Prayer unto thee O God, in a time when thou may'st be found: we acknowledg this to be that time, and we come to thee now early, with the confession of thy servant Augustine, sero te amavi pulchritudo tam antiqua, tam nova; O glorious beauty, infinitely reverend, infinitely fresh and young, we come late to thy love, if we consider the past daies of our lives, but early if thou beest pleased to reckon with us from this houre of the shining of thy grace upon us; and therefore O God, as thou hast brought us safely to the beginning of this day, as thou hast not given us over to a finall perishing in the works of night and darkness, as thou hast brought us to the beginning of this day of grace, so defend us in the same with thy mighty power, and grant that this day, this day of thy visitation, we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger, no such sinne, no such danger as may separate us from thee, or frustrate us of our hopes in that eternall kingdom which thy Sonne our saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood.

The Call, George Herbert

2011-03-08T12:05:00.004-06:00

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
Such a Life, as killeth death.

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast, as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joyes in love.

---
I figured such a poem was appropriate for this Shrove Tuesday. There's an admirable setting of it by Ralph Vaughan Williams (the fourth of his Five Mystical Songs), which has been adapted as a hymn tune.

Festina Lente

2011-03-05T21:16:00.007-06:00

Yesterday, eager to leave South Bend for a while, I undertook an excursion to Chicago. The first parts of the trip — the Cathedral District, Giordano's, the Art Institute — were successful, but a visit out to Bucktown provoked in me a terrible fit of melancholia. It may have been partly the rain, which was cold and constant, but moreso it was the idea that people who live in such a neighborhood — educated liberated young professionals of comfortable means, not beholden to anybody — can still manage to be so unhappy. How unutterably dreary a life of material satisfaction and nothing else! Even when free of the obligations and petty bigotries and irritating stupidities of small-town life, how wretched existence can be!

What I am saying, here, is that a life of real freedom is not An Easy Thing. It's not so simple as merely removing societal constraints and then hoping for a flourishing of aesthetic, philosophical, spiritual awareness. Housewives in the suburbs with three children and an SUV in the four-car garage are unfortunate. But even worse is the young bohemian who has cast off the shackles of the bourgeois life, only to find himself further enchained; what liberation is there to be had from this second, self-imposed imprisonment?

For a while now the phrase "Festina lente" has been running through my mind. "Make haste slowly", yes. But towards what?

Postlude pour l'office de Complies

2011-02-27T17:43:00.002-06:00

The case of Jehan Alain is one of the great what-ifs of classical music. Had he lived more than his twenty-nine years — in 1940 he was gunned down by advancing German soldiers, but not before taking out sixteen of them — who knows what sort of music he might have written? As it is, his output is a gift to organists: he combines twentieth-century harmonic language with influences of plainchant, chansons, jazz, and oriental dance, all with a very French ear for colors. (The house-organ built by his father Albert is an odd little instrument, indeed. But what mutations!)

One of my favorite Alain works is the Postlude for the Office of Compline, which he wrote while on retreat at the Abbey of Valloires in 1930. The piece is a dreamy series of chords — almost static, at first — over which is laid several quotations of chant. (One presumes that Alain originally heard the chants performed in a Solesmes style; they certainly aren't metrical in the composition. Indeed, the snippets of chant in the piece bear little rhythmic relation to the accompaniment, which makes the piece rather more difficult than it sounds.)

Listen: Postlude pour l'office de Complies
This is a live performance on the Letourneau instrument at the Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemani, performed by W. Dudley Oakes. (I would provide a link so that you could purchase the CD, but the abbey, where I bought it, does not appear to be selling it online.)

We hear portions of the following melodies: Miserere mei, Domine; Te lucis ante terminum; In manus tuas; Salva nos, Domine; and finally the minor doxology, with some repeated amens. I suspect that there's an essay to be written regarding Alain and the "Cistercian aesthetic", one characterized by simplicity, utility, and yet great beauty.

"In our time we are tired of lofty discourse. The public is not so stupid. Do not insist on musical evidence. Avoid commonplaces. Be brief." — Jehan Alain

An Order for Compline (Book of Common Prayer)
Pre-Reform Order of Compline (Roman Catholic)
Some free Alain scores
Cistercian architecture, a fine introduction to Cistercian aesthetics

Absentmindedness

2011-02-23T19:07:00.004-06:00

This past weekend I served as a calcant for several hours. A calcant (non-organists can be forgiven for not knowing the terminology), from the Latin calcare, "to tread", is the unfortunate fellow whose job it is to pump the bellows to supply wind pressure to an organ's pipes. It is a dull task that is at the same time quite unforgiving of lapses in concentration, for if the wind lags everyone in the audience will hear it. In former times, I suppose, it was the duty of every apprentice-organist to pump the bellows; perhaps it is only fitting I should have to do it. Bach surely served as calcant for his teacher Böhm, don't you think?

Calcants' minds wander. Indeed, my mind has been elsewhere much of the time these past few weeks. There is the past: on Monday the weather reminded me so much of early spring in Vienna that I experienced the first palpable longing for that city I've felt in more than a year. When will I walk 'round the Ringstraße again; when shall I climb Kahlenberg; when shall I eat at Schnitzel King or Café Prückel? I want to go back before I forget how to use the subway or order a Hot-Dog.

There is also the future to distract me. I come from a long line of worriers, and I have begun to wonder about the sort of job I'll get after I am an accredited Master of Sacred Music. My natural inclination — one not yet dulled by the unquestioned assumptions of an incurably mobile society — is to go home. Ah, but I wonder what it will be like, trying to make good music and good liturgy in a place where ignorance and poor taste are so entrenched. I am willing to teach, of course, but one cannot change a culture singlehandedly.

In any case, I acknowledge I really ought to be thinking about the present. All shall be well, and all that.

O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas

2011-02-16T21:04:00.003-06:00

O Thou whose pow'r o'er moving worlds presides,
Whose voice created, and whose wisdom guides,
On darkling man in pure effulgence shine,
And cheer the clouded mind with light divine.
'Tis thine alone to calm the pious breast
With silent confidence and holy rest:
From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,
Path, motive, guide, original, and end.

— Dr Johnson, after Boethius (Consolatio Philosophiae, Book III §9)

Admirable Words, Vol. I

2011-02-09T22:09:00.003-06:00

On Translating Borges

2011-02-07T17:22:00.004-06:00

For what amounts to years, now, I have been attempting to translate a lecture given by Jorge Luis Borges on the Book of Job. (He's got some interesting ideas about it, as it so happens.) Every time I near completion, however, I find myself dissatisfied with the result. It is invariably either unfaithful to the original or awkward-sounding in English. (One will note that often Borges used Spanish words to unusual effect. But the English-speaking reader is not aware of this and will likely attribute it to poor translation.) Consider, if you will, the opening paragraph — insofar as an oral lecture can be divided into paragraphs:

A pesar de la hospitalidad que siento en ustedes me considero un poco intruso. Pero hay dos razones que me hacen mitigar esa impresión. Una de las razones es que yo he sido criado dentro de la fe cristiana y la cultura occidental; la cristiandad, más allá de nuestras convicciones o de nuestras dudas personales, es una malgama de dos naciones que me parecen esenciales para el mundo occidental. Esas son: Israel (el cristianismo procede de Israel) y Grecia. Más allá de las vicisitudes de nuestra sangre, de nuestra múltiple sangre, ya que tenemos dos padres, cuatro abuelos, etc. — en progresión geométrica — y ya que Roma fue una suerte de extensión del helenismo, creo que todos, por el mero hecho de pertener a la cultura occidental, somos hebreos y griegos. De modo que algún derecho me asiste hoy al hablar sobre el Libro de Job, aunque ignore la lengua hebrea y aunque no he podido leer el texto original y los comentarios Rabínicos.

And here is my attempt at a translation:

Despite the hospitality I sense in all of you, I consider myself rather intrusive. But there are two reasons that mitigate this impression of mine. One of them is that I have been raised in the Christian faith and in western culture; Christianity, notwithstanding our personal beliefs or doubts, is an amalgam of two nations that seem to me essential to the western world. They are: Israel (Christianity arose out of Israel) and Greece. Regardless of the vicissitudes of our blood, out of our multiple heritages, since we have two parents, four grandparents, etc. — in a geometrical progression — and since Rome was a sort of extension of Hellenism, I believe that all of us, by the mere fact of belonging to western culture, are Hebrews and Greeks. As a result, I have a certain right to speak today about the Book of Job, though I know no Hebrew and though I have not been able to read the original text nor its Rabbinical commentaries.

What is one to do? Part of the problem is that spoken sentences can be far longer than their written counterparts before becoming excessive; one can nest parentheticals (as I am wont to do) without too badly breaking up the flow of a spoken idea, but when written this becomes tiresome after a while, unless you read lots of James and must therefore enjoy endless sentences.

The chief problem, I suppose, is that Borges's style is deliberately obscure. In a review of five new Borges anthologies, Martin Schifino (interesting surname, that) explains this well:

[Alfred] MacAdam describes Borges's early style as "tortuous" and his vocabulary as "rarefied". [Suzanne] Levine calls the writing of his essays "radical" and even "bizarre to those who read him in Spanish today". Both are right in general. But it is a matter of detail in which way Borges "replays the Latinate prose of the Baroque era", and perhaps the best way to convey this might not be to "improvise a rococo English" – an intention declared, but fortunately never carried out, by Levine. The baroque influence can be felt, sure enough, in Borges's inkhorn terms, but his rhetorical habits are much closer to home: plain Edwardian. He sounds a little like Kipling, and a lot like Chesterton. His essays are full of Chestertonian throat-clearing and oratorical flourishes. Part of the challenge for translators may be to make new an existing manner that has fallen out of favour. In any case, more resources from the English tradition will need mining if Borges's big voice is to be fully energized.

The best way to translate Borges, then? Read more Chesterton. Borges was famously fond of him, anyway.

Flor Tropical, por D.C. Hawley

2011-02-03T21:38:00.002-06:00

En el aro ardiente que ciñe el trópico
un día andaba con la cara al sol
cuando una liana me detuvo el paso,
una liana que llevaba una flor:
flor tan bella que no pude dejarla;
me la llevé de esas tierras del sol,
yo me la llevé a mis llanos helados,
tierras frías calentadas de amor,
y entre las nieves de llanos lejanos
revivía la liana y floreció.

Y ahora que las nieves de mis setenta
largos inviernos cubriéndome están,
soy como la casa en tierras del norte:
mientras más helada, más calor da.
Sobre el llano se amontona la nieve;
dentro aún guardo mi flor tropical.

Lucky Jim

2011-02-02T18:25:00.003-06:00

I took advantage of the Schneetag today to finish Kingsley Amis's first novel, Lucky Jim. (I have added to my list of aliases the name "Kingsley"; why does no one name their son Kingsley nowadays?) The book is really quite funny. It is about the goings-on at a university. As anyone who has attended an institution of "higher" "education" can tell you, academics are generally an absurd lot: their foibles call out to be lampooned, and Amis is mercilessly accurate. Though the novel can be said to have a protagonist (the titular Jim), all of the characters therein are for the most part contemptible, loathsome, and unpleasant. The book is a rogues' gallery of all the worst types of people one can find on a college campus: the soporific tenured professor (whose natural habitat is the history or English department), the incompetent and disinterested junior professor, the perpetually-medicated and emotionally unstable female academic, the spiteful colleague, the pretentious and self-absorbed artiste...

One might think that such a book, lacking any character of any virtue whatsoëver, would be a depressing read. On the contrary: it is the funniest book I've read in a good long while. Whether you be a misanthrope or not, it is still gratifying to see absurd pomposity — the sort of behavior any college student can identify — mocked.

High-Church Lutherans, eh?

2011-01-30T15:40:00.006-06:00

Yesterday evening I attended Trinity Lutheran Church (LCMS) over in Elkhart. (Remember that accompaniment job I mentioned? Some of the children were singing an anthem at the service and I accompanied them.) It was the second most high-church Lutheran service I have ever attended. (The highest-church Lutherans I have encountered so far are at Emmaus Lutheran — also LCMS, incidentally — where the pastor goes so far as to preside ad orientem.) They have a rather unusual liturgy at Trinity. Though it's clearly based on the standard Lutheran order of worship, there are many elements taken from Roman Catholicism. (An aside: these are the sort of Lutherans, I suspect, for whom the adjective "Roman" must be appended to "Catholic", to avoid confusion; like Anglo-Catholics, these Lutherans affirm their membership in the one holy catholic and apostolic church. Why should the Papists have a monopoly on the word "catholic"?) I was most surprised to find the Domine non sum dignus, an admirable pre-Communion prayer I have only heard in R.C. Masses: "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed." (Never mind that it's a poor translation of the Latin. At least they're using it.) Now, I have heard that this particular prayer was added at the Council of Trent (a concession, of sorts, to emphasize that, despite past abuses, the Church never taught the doctrine of salvation by works alone). We have, then, cross-fertilization of Roman Catholic and Lutheran liturgies, post-Reformation! Ecumenically speaking, I see no reason why this is a bad thing. If we can agree on so much (on the Real Presence in the Eucharist, on the Justification of sinners, on the value of meaningful — which is to say, liturgical — liturgy), then perhaps there is cause for optimism. I really cannot abide the sort of chauvinistic Christian who is so committed to his own denomination that he sees no benefit in ecumenical dialogue. Indeed, the desire to help heal the rifts of the Reformation is one of the chief fruits of the Second Vatican Council. Admittedly, we may regret aspects of the implementation of ideas from Vatican II (guitars, bad vestments, et al.), but it is vital that we hold on to the impetus to work towards reunification of the sundered Christian churches. Good liturgy is an important way to move towards this goal.

Writer's Voice

2011-01-23T20:32:00.005-06:00

Recently I've been getting into E.B. White's (yes, he of Charlotte's Web; also, the White of Strunk & White) book of essays, One Man's Meat. It is rather good, so far. The writing, at least, is well-crafted. Surely you know the feeling, when beginning a book, of making the acquaintance of a particular voice, a personality. It is even better when that voice is not only unique but also agreeable. (There are enough voices that are distinctive but towards which I feel little natural affinity: Hemingway, or Wilde. That's not to say I dislike The Sun Also Rises — and indeed, I would place The Picture of Dorian Gray among my top thirty favorite books — but I can't imagine having a particularly satisfying conversation with either of those authors. Perhaps it is a matter of temperament, or childhood inculcation. I will always enjoy that chummy, donnish tone of C.S. Lewis, but then, the Narnia books were my constant companions when I was young.) E.B. White's voice is honest and simple: earnest without being humorless, occasionally wise without being pompous. If you weren't assigned to read "Once More to the Lake" in school, you simply must go and read it. (I was assigned it, and although being given as homework is generally sufficient to ruin any good thing, I still remember that essay fondly.)

In any case, the man knew what writing is like:

[T]here is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments — moments of sustained creation — when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on.

Acts, Chapter 29

2011-01-17T19:44:00.002-06:00

¹And it came to pass, when Paul was in Corinth, he and certain disciples came upon a mob that was stoning an organist.
²And Paul said unto them, “What then hath he done unto thee that his head should be bruised?”
³And the people cried with one voice, “He hath played too loud!
⁴Yea, in the singing of the psalms, he maketh our heads to ring as if they were beaten with hammers.
⁵Behold, he sitteth up high in the loft, and mighty are the pipes and mighty is the noise thereof, and though there be few of us below, he none the less playeth with all the stops, the Assyrian trumpet stop and the stop of the ram’s horn and the stop that soundeth like the sawing of stone, and we cannot hear the words that cometh out of our own mouths.
⁶He always tosseth in variations that confuse us mightily and he playeth loud and discordant and always in a militant tempo, so that we have not time to breathe as we sing.
⁷Lo, he is a plague upon the faith and should be chastised.”
⁸Paul, hearing this, had himself picked up a small stone, and was about to cast it, but he set it down, and bade the organist come forward.
⁹He was a narrow man, sallow of complexion, with dry skin, flaking and thin of hair.
¹⁰And Paul said unto him, “Why hath thou so abused thy brethren?”
¹¹And the organist replied, “I could not hear them singing from where I sat, and therefore played the louder so as to encourage them.”
¹²And Paul turned round to the mob and said loudly, “Let him who has never played an organ cast the first stone.”
¹³And they cast stones for a while until their arms were tired and Paul bade the organist repent and he did.
¹⁴And Paul said unto him, “Thou shalt take up the flute and play it for thirty days, to cleanse thy spirit.”
¹⁵And afterward they returned to Corinth and sang psalms unaccompanied and then had coffee and were refreshed in the faith.

Apparently that's by Garrison Keillor. We saw it posted in Fritts's workshop in Tacoma.

Portland & Seattle

2011-01-17T18:15:00.004-06:00

Late Saturday evening I returned from a trip to the Pacific Northwest: the Notre Dame Liturgical Choir went on tour, and I joined them. (My instinct, before we left, was that spending a week with a crowd of undergraduates would be insufferable, but it turned out to be quite enjoyable. One is always pleasantly surprised with Notre Dame students.)

In Portland I got so far as writing the first draft of an entry (dated 12 January), which I present here.

I suppose I might as well send you, dear reader, greetings from Portland, Oregon, where I am currently on tour with the Notre Dame Liturgical Choir. In many ways it is a pleasant city. The climate is at least comfortable: today a dusting of sleet was considered sufficient cause to shut schools down early. (The day we left South Bend, two feet of snow had fallen, with talk of more to come.) I spent several hours at Powell's Books, and suspect that I could've been there considerably longer. (Among the eleven books I purchased were the Bainton biography of Luther, a memoir of Antarctic exploration, a book about Prester John.... I suppose I shall have sufficient reading material for a while, now.)

I'm not sure I saw enough of Seattle to judge it properly, but from what I saw it seems a beautiful city (near-constant rain notwithstanding). Both cities are replete with two extremes of people: hipsters and yuppies on one end, and the homeless on t'other. (A more waggish observer than myself might observe that the only difference in attire between hipsters and the homeless is that hipsters choose to dress that way.) In both cities an awful lot of the people are from Somewhere Else.

There is an undercurrent of desperation in the major cities of the Northwest. For a century-and-a-half now, these cities have been the final destination in that great exodus from points eastward (Europe, New York, Iowa): all those people, leaving home in hopes of a new and better life in the West, find themselves facing the open Pacific, with nowhere else to run to. What is the end result of an incurably mobile society? We might observe it first in the cities of the West.

And yet Portland and Seattle are in several ways quite pleasant. People there are at least aware that recycling and public transit are Good Ideas. The seafood is excellent (a welcome consolation for one who views red meat with increasing — though not yet total — distaste). Though chain restaurants and cafés are ubiquitous, there are also some very good local places to be found nearly everywhere. There are some simply excellent organs to be found in that part of the country: we visited Paul Fritts's workshop and he took us on a tour of several impor tant instruments in the area. (Fritts has the beady eyes and quiet demeanor that are apparently required for organ-builders, but he seems a nice fellow.) All in all, I can't say I've firmly made up my mind about either Portland or Seattle. While there is much to criticize, there's much to admire as well. I hope to travel to both cities again.

A Tolerable Punch Recipe

2010-12-27T11:14:00.004-06:00

For a family gathering yesterday we attempted a punch recipe (found in what appears to be a local hippie magazine), with some success. Here is the recipe:

2 cups boiling water
3/4 cup honey
4 cups cranberry juice
2 cups orange juice
1 cup lemon juice
4 cups ginger ale
Ice, preferably in cubes
(Optional:) sliced lemons, limes, oranges, or strawberries

Mix boiling water & honey, stirring to dissolve; chill. Mix juices, then add honey-water. Just before serving, add ginger ale, ice, and those optional fruits. (A quantity of vodka may also be added.)

Puer natus est nobis

2010-12-25T18:09:00.007-06:00

It has been my experience that every Christmas season is more miserable than the previous one. This impression may indeed be borne out by objective facts: each year the world is generally a worse place. The great mass of people are more acquisitive, not less; they are more ignorant, not less. I find television more and more insufferable each year. (A notable exception to this was the airing of the Chuck Jones version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! that I caught the other day. It still holds up. The irony, of course, is that a story about Christmas being worth more than mere presents is punctuated by commercials exhorting us to spend more than we can afford for things we do not need.)

Oh, but let us set aside such complaints. The Feast of the Incarnation is as good an occasion as any to be joyful. I find that I am at least happy when working — that is, when playing the organ. The Lutherans last night sang lustily, and the instrument was a fine Casavant (out-of-tune krummhorn notwithstanding). Why, some brave members of the congregation even attempted the high descant at the end of "The First Nowell". The important thing about congregational singing is not that it be particularly beautiful to listen to, but that it be enthusiastic and sincere. These Lutherans passed the test.

For the season, I offer a brief (minute-long) setting of what is perhaps my favorite carol, performed by The King's Singers:
J.S. Bach: In dulci jubilo

The O Antiphons

2010-12-18T13:18:00.007-06:00

I had, for some time now, been planning to do a series of posts on the O Antiphons, which are sung at vespers on the seven evenings before Christmas Eve. (The Sarum usage — leave it to the English to be peculiar — is to begin one day earlier, and thus add an eighth text on the last day before Christmas Eve, O virgo virginum.) But — curses! — I already missed the first one, which was yesterday, and besides, A.C.A. Hall, the (Anglican) Bishop of Vermont, already wrote a fine explanation of the antiphons around 1914.

Lovers of good music ought to acquaint themselves with a (German) setting of the antiphons by Arvo Pärt. I suspect Pärt envisioned them to be sung as a set, and thus not liturgically, but I daresay they are still spiritually edifying. You may download the .mp4 files below; they are from a recording by Tõnu Kaljuste and the (excellent) Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, found on this disc.

Arvo Pärt, 7 Magnificat-Antiphonen:
1. O Weisheit
2. O Adonai
3. O Sproß aus Isais Wurzel
4. O Schlüssel Davids
5. O Morgenstern
6. O König aller Völker
7. O Immanuel

Gaudete Sunday

2010-12-12T11:39:00.005-06:00

To my list of many weaknesses we may add "middle-aged ladies giving out free samples at grocery stores". I am entirely unable to refuse a kindly-offered free sample, even if I am quite sure I don't want it. I then feel obligated to buy whatever the product is. Today I purchased some peanut brittle. I don't really care for peanut brittle, but being unable to resist this particular sort of sales pitch, here we are: now I have a package of peanut brittle. I suppose the best thing to do now is to bring it to this evening's annual Basilica Schola Gaudete Sunday party. (Yes, it is already Gaudete Sunday! Did you wear pink today? I could not summon the courage to buy a pink shirt, but I got a pink tie on sale.)

Tropes, and Praetorius Again

2010-12-10T20:58:00.006-06:00

It is curious how, just around the time that final exams come around, every other intellectual endeavor that is not especially related to the finals becomes far more interesting. I have observed this effect many times now. This time I have become distracted by thoughts of 11th-century troped Masses from Aquitaine (we're considering a festive one for Christmas with the Papists), and by the vocal settings of Praetorius I have already mentioned. It is worth noting that for nearly his whole career long Praetorius was employed at Wolfenbüttel, out in the sticks, yet he was terrifically well-informed about the musical developments (esp. Italian) of his day. He gives me hope that a musician committed to a particular community need not resign himself to a life of musical mediocrity.

If you get a chance, there's a 13-part version of Wie schön leuchtet from his collection Puericinium that is very fine indeed. If you are feeling more triumphal, there are three impressive settings of In dulci jubilo from his Polyhymnia Caduceatrix et Panegyrica, for twelve, sixteen, and twenty(!) parts. One of these days, when I am an established and successful Kantor, I shall do an all-Praetorius Mass, like the Christmas Mass CD I just ordered. (Back in those days, Lutherans were not afraid of the word "Mass"; I propose we bring it back into use. I'm tired of omitting things for fear of being perceived as "too Catholic". The ordinaries of Praetorius's liturgy were done in Latin; Article XXIV §3 of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession notes,
"We retain the Latin language on account of those who are learning and understand Latin, and we mingle with it German hymns, in order that the people also may have something to learn, and by which faith and fear may be called forth. This custom has always existed in the churches." We might try that, as well.)

The Vertigo of Lists

2010-11-30T20:17:00.007-06:00

Lists are interesting things, don't you agree? All sorts of things can be listed; it appeals to our sense of order and completeness. Anywho, I recently got another Umberto Eco book, The Infinity of Lists. (The Italian title is La Vertigine della Lista, which sounds much more like a title Eco would come up with. Why the translator changed it I do not know.) It's just the sort of book any list-lover will appreciate. Included are various and sundry lists: of rivers mentioned in Joyce, of pulp novels in Don Quijote's library, of saints, of the conquests of Don Giovanni (enumerated in Leporello's famous "catalogue aria"), of Borges' seres imaginarios, of the ancestors of Jesus, of gemstones, of things Rabelais discusses as substitutes for toilet paper. Indeed, these and many more things. The book is rather dizzying in its variety and erudition. But don't take *my* word for it!

Musical Context; Praetorius

2010-11-21T22:03:00.005-06:00

The best moments in a student's life are those in which one becomes aware of connections, I think. We may experience months of ingesting raw information without being able to synthesize it, and then we are suddenly aware that there are links to be made — and, indeed, that these links have already been made by older and wiser minds than ours.

Musicians require a certain tunnel-vision, without which it is impossible to put so much time and effort into the methodical practicing of repertoire. But this narrow lens, this focus, also can make it more difficult to see the connections between our music and the context into which it must inevitably be placed. It is encouraging, therefore, to observe examples of men (and, why not, women) who successfully manage to be both serious musicians (who are, because of their craft, inclined towards solitary practice and its attendant antisocial behaviors) and serious theologians, or even philosophers. Such people put music in the larger context of things, giving it an order and meaning beyond the mere notes on a page.

Anyone who knows anything about Bach would surely put him among such musician-theologians; it is beyond question that many of his compositions were both intellectual exercise, theological treatise, and aesthetic masterpiece. (Consider, for example, the Clavierübung Book III.) Likewise Michael Praetorius, whose choral music I have recently become acquainted with. It's very practical stuff (some settings are for as few as two voices; many parts can be performed by either vocalists or instrumentalists) that is at the same time theologically sound and quite wonderful to listen to. Praetorius shared Luther's (correct) view of music as Gottesdienst, divine service. Those chorale tunes are more than just window-dressing, you know.

For Advent (next week!):

Michael Praetorius sheet music: Werner Icking Music Archive | Choral Public Domain Library

Organists: Consider the Seamstress

2010-11-06T21:04:00.003-05:00

Kierkegaard, in one paragraph, makes a convincing case for the proper production and understanding of all sacred art:

When a woman makes an altar cloth, so far as she is able, she makes every flower as lovely as the graceful flowers of the field, as far as she is able, every star as sparkling as the glistening stars of the night. She withholds nothing, but uses the most precious things she possesses. She sells off every other claim upon her life that she may purchase the most uninterrupted and favorable time of the day and night for her one and only, for her beloved work. But when the cloth is finished and put to its sacred use: then she is deeply distressed if someone should make the mistake of looking at her art, instead of at the meaning of the cloth; or make the mistake of looking at a defect, instead of at the meaning of the cloth. For she could not work the sacred meaning into the cloth itself, nor could she sew it on the cloth as though it were one more ornament. This meaning really lies in the beholder and in the beholder’s understanding, if he, in the endless distance of the separation, above himself and above his own self, has completely forgotten the needlewoman and what was hers to do. It was allowable, it was proper, it was duty, it was a precious duty, it was the highest happiness of all for the needlewoman to do everything in order to accomplish what was hers to do; but it was a trespass against God, an insulting misunderstanding of the poor needle-woman, when someone looked wrongly and saw what was only there, not to attract attention to itself, but rather so that its omission would not distract by drawing attention to itself.

— Preface to Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing, trans. Douglas V. Steere

Flurries; Pandora

2010-11-05T12:35:00.005-05:00

It's the first snowfall today, here in South Bend. I, for one, welcome the change: there's nothing like snow to clear out the melancholia of autumn. Freezing temperatures focus the mind, giving one a sense of renewed purpose and direction. Oh, that it were Advent already! But we must wait nearly a month 'til then; November is liturgically the least satisfying month. Had I the power to unilaterally revise the calendar, I would return us to the ancient practice of beginning Advent on the Feast of St. Martin of Tours, 11 November (which, as it so happens, is also the commemoration of Søren Kierkegaard, whose writings make for good Advent reading).

I've been listening to Pandora Radio of late. It's useful for learning about artists or songs similar to those I already prefer. It is less far useful for discovering new composers, as the format is so heavily dependent on instrumentation: thus, most recommendations based on Poulenc are short piano pieces, most recommendations based on Hindemith are chamber music for winds, and most recommendations based on Pärt are choral works; you get the idea. (What of Poulenc's choral stuff, or Hindemith's organ works, or Pärt's chamber music?) The algorithms and fractals and whatnot used are not yet ideal for discerning similar tonal language. Pandora nonetheless is an interesting service; at least it's free. You may observe, if you like, my selections on my profile page there.

Reformation Sunday

2010-10-31T16:50:00.005-05:00

Today Lutherans (and some reluctant Anglicans) observe Reformation Day. (Listen to Bach's Cantata #80, or Mendelssohn's Fifth Symphony. You might also consider getting out your copy of Luther's Small Catechism.) I write "observe", rather than "celebrate", because, ecumenically speaking, I don't suppose schism is to be lauded. Stanley Hauerwas (a Protestant who, besides being a theologian you actually might've heard of, has taught at both Augustana and Notre Dame) expresses this ambivalence pretty well:

Reformation Sunday does not name a happy event for the Church Catholic; on the contrary, it names failure. Of course, the church rightly names failure, or at least horror, as part of our church year. We do, after all, go through crucifixion as part of Holy Week. Certainly if the Reformation is to be narrated rightly, it is to be narrated as part of those dark days.

Recently I've been thinking about that Ratzinger quotation I mentioned in my 4 October entry, the one about the only effective apologia for Christianity being its art and its saints. We've already discussed saints to some degree; now for art. I daresay Protestantism has held its own pretty well on the aesthetic front: George Herbert, John Donne, Cranmer's tremendous prose, Buxtehude, Handel, and Bach – Bach, perhaps the pinnacle of Western music, who was a devout Lutheran. Is it terribly shallow of me to admit that I am reluctant to convert to Roman Catholicism — or to Eastern Orthodoxy, for that matter — due in no small part to aesthetic reasons? Why, if art is one of the great justifications for Christianity, should I renounce the treasures of my Protestant musical and linguistic heritage in exchange for the Gather hymnal and the New American Bible? Gerard Manley Hopkins admitted frankly that "bad taste is always meeting one in the accessories of [Roman] Catholicism", and he lived long before the Novus Ordo and guitar Masses.

Rainer Maria Rilke: Herbst

2010-10-26T15:16:00.002-05:00

Die Blätter fallen, fallen wie von weit,
als welkten in den Himmeln ferne Gärten;
sie fallen mit verneinender Gebärde.

Und in den Nächten fällt die schwere Erde
aus allen Sternen in die Einsamkeit.

Wir alle fallen. Diese Hand da fällt.
Und sieh dir andre an: es ist in allen.

Und doch ist Einer, welcher dieses Fallen
unendlich sanft in seinen Händen hält.

---
You may refer here for various translations, if you must. 'Twould be better to learn German, probably.
I noticed that it was almost a year ago today that I posted Mr Berry's "A Gracious Sabbath", which accords nicely with this poem.

Sufjan in Chicago

2010-10-16T15:12:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I attended Sufjan Stevens's concert at the Chicago Theatre. It was enjoyable, if not profound. My opinion of his latest album, The Age of Adz (from which most of the songs last night were taken), remains much the same as what I thought of his last EP: he can't go on like this forever. Mr Stevens has a gift for catchy musical motives; in past albums (esp. Illinois and Michigan) he used this to create satisfying contrapuntal layers. Now that he's working so overwhelmingly with electronics, there's a certain finesse that's lost. His lyrics, with some exceptions, are (intentionally?) enigmatic; while this was tolerable when the music was prettier, it's more difficult to maintain an emotional connection to a song when neither the music nor the words are particularly comprehensible. Perhaps Mr Stevens would prefer not to be understood.

The most impressive part of last night's concert was "Impossible Soul", a veritable suite with epic ambitions (or, if you prefer, delusions of grandeur).

Listen: Sufjan Stevens, "Impossible Soul"

Sufjan Stevens at the Chicago Theatre
Set List:
"Seven Swans" (from Seven Swans)
"Too Much" (The Age of Adz)
"Age of Adz" (ibid.)
"Heirloom" (All Delighted People)
"I Walked" (The Age of Adz)
"Now That I'm Older" (ibid.)
"Vesuvius" (ibid.)
"Futile Devices" (ibid.)
"Get Real Get Right" (ibid.)
"The Owl and the Tanager" (All Delighted People)
"Impossible Soul" (The Age of Adz)
"Chicago" (Illinois)
Encores:
"Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois" (Illinois)
"Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!" (ibid.)
"Casimir Pulaski Day" (ibid.)
"John Wayne Gacy, Jr." (ibid.)

Nico Muhly

2010-10-11T15:49:00.006-05:00

My most recent music discovery: Nico Muhly, whose music sounds like a combination of some of the more interesting elements in Byrd, Tavener, and John Adams. I'll refer you to a little feature about him at NPR Music, where you may find a recording of his Senex Puerum Portabat — originally an antiphon for Candlemas, but reënvisioned for Christmas with the addition of the Hodie Christus natus est text and some festive trombones. Also interesting is the Bright Mass with Canons. Elsewhere, Muhly makes a good case for Renaissance polyphony:

In Romantic music, every note — every detail of orchestration — is illustrative of the composer's emotional journey; in the audience, we're obliged to follow the itinerary outlined for us. At its best, this feels like an adventure. At its worst, it's like being stuck in conversation with a man muttering professorially into a pint of beer. I would get frustrated playing Beethoven sonatas, thinking: "Yes, I agree that it is raining very hard, and we were talking about this at great length before that sweet part when you wanted to talk about your girlfriend and you cried a little bit, but why can't you just hide under that tarpaulin there instead of staying out in the cold and gnashing your teeth?"

By contrast, Byrd, Gibbons, Weelkes and Tye were like the dinner guests on whom you had crushes as a child, not because of any particular story they told, but because of the way they told those stories — the turns of phrase, the little obsessive details, the localised, rather than structural repetitions. The content of the stories could be in another language, but the little gestures — the musical equivalent of subtly tapping the table twice to reinforce a conclusion, smoothing out the tablecloth before the punchline of a joke, a well-timed sip of wine with eyebrows cocked - were the stars of the show, they were like the things you remember when people you love have changed, or moved away, or died.

A Pronouncement, ex Cathedra

2010-10-09T18:50:00.003-05:00

It is difficult, what with today's postmodern world and such, to make definite announcements regarding just about anything. But I aver, with every ounce of conviction that I have, that the best drink that there is to be gotten anywhere is the simple Gin & Tonic. Why, whenever I drink it, I feel like I've donned my pith helmet and am relaxing in a cavernous lodge somewhere in Kenya (which I am inclined to pronounce "keen-ya", when I drink Gin & Tonics) or the Punjab or some other barbarous place where I've been sent by Her Majesty the Queen to establish some outpost of civilization (which is to say, British civilization, which is to say, British colonization). The best gins, I have found, are probably Bombay Sapphire or Hendrick's, though I will settle for Tanqueray in a pinch.

The Adoration of the Magi

2010-10-08T14:00:00.005-05:00

We are defined by, more than anything else, our desires: both the fulfilled ones and the thwarted ones, I think. Once a man has it in his head that he wants something, this desire begins to shape him. Ambition, or lust, or greed, eventually become engraved on a man's face, as do the more admirable, less common, desires. One need only to consider the sorts of things people want nowadays to begin to understand why the world is an imperfect place (and getting worse, one will note).

This is all just a roundabout way of coming to the point I was going to make when I started writing. When I was in Prague, I visited — as all tourists to that city must — Prague Castle. The most impressive part of that very large complex is probably St. Vitus's Cathedral, which is as fine an example of Gothic architecture as you'll find anywhere in Mitteleuropa. My favorite memory of the castle, however, comes from the considerably smaller Basilica of St. George, which is basically Romanesque (albeit with some Gothic and, regrettably, Baroque elements. I cannot understand why anyone would deface the simple purity of a Romanesque interior with the gaudy showiness of a Baroque façade). In one of the side aisles (to the south of the nave, if my memory serves), there is a medieval carved (wooden?) relief depicting the adoration of the Magi: I say without hesitation that this was my favorite work of art that I saw in Prague. I did not take a picture of it — I find tourists taking pictures in church to be irritating enough that I did not dare do so myself — but here is the best picture of it that I could find on the internet:

Of the six figures, three are unexceptional: the two wise-men in the background, and St. Joseph (who always seems to get a rather raw deal in such depictions. Here he looks rather disinterested. It's not his son, anyway, after all). But the three central figures are remarkable. The Theotokos sits with the Christ-child on her lap, looking rather guarded: who is this foreigner come to gawk at her son? Most striking is the third wise-man, who has taken off his crown. (Why are the Magi supposed to've been kings? Oh well; no matter.) His expression — which you can't see so well in this particular photograph — is of undisguised wonder: here, here, offering his hands in a childlike gesture of blessing, is the desire of the man's heart. The carving has captured a moment of transcendence: the union of the soul with the soul's creator. What else is there to say about the Christian life, save that we ought to seek Christ with such fervor? Would that all sacred art served as such good catechesis...

St. Francis

2010-10-04T20:43:00.003-05:00

Today is the feast of St. Francis of Assisi. By a happy coïncidence, it also happened that today there was a lecture given here at Notre Dame on G.K. Chesterton, which I attended. Here's a bit of what Chesterton has to say about Francis:

To most people ... there is a fascinating inconsistency in the position of Saint Francis. He expressed in loftier and bolder language than any earthly thinker the conception that laughter is as divine as tears. He called his monks the mountebanks of God. He never forgot to take pleasure in a bird as it flashed past him, or a drop of water as it fell from his finger: he was, perhaps, the happiest of the sons of men. Yet this man undoubtedly founded his whole polity on the negation of what we think the most imperious necessities; in his three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, he denied to himself and those he loved most, property, love, and liberty. Why was it that the most large-hearted and poetic spirits in that age found their most congenial atmosphere in these awful renunciations? Why did he who loved where all men were blind, seek to blind himself where all men loved? Why was he a monk and not a troubadour? These questions are far too large to be answered fully here, but in any life of Francis they ought at least to have been asked; we have a suspicion that if they were answered we should suddenly find that much of the enigma of this sullen time of ours was answered also.

I'll refer you also to Chesterton's biography of St. Francis.

The current Pope, when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, noted that "[t]he only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced, and the art which has grown in her womb." St. Francis is one of those saints who represent Christianity rather well, if I do say so myself. Incidentally, I don't doubt that the Christian religion is still producing saints, though few of them have such good P.R. as Mother Teresa. The real question is whether there is any more Christian art being produced nowadays. (Let's save that topic for another day, shall we?)

What, another recital?

2010-09-30T20:31:00.006-05:00

Dear reader (I would write "dear readers", but that would be presuming I have more than one): you are cordially invited to my organ recital tomorrow, to be held at Christ Church Cathedral, in Indianapolis, following the noon Eucharist. It will be an all-Buxtehude concert, played on the fine Taylor & Boody gallery organ there, with these works:

Praeludium in C Major, BuxWV 137
Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist, BuxWV 208
Praeludium in G Minor, BuxWV 149
Wir danken dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BuxWV 224
Te Deum Laudamus, BuxWV 218

The recital ought to last between thirty-five and forty minutes. Bring all your friends!

A Grief Deferred

2010-09-29T08:55:00.003-05:00

This past weekend I visited home. The occasion, like most funerals and some weddings, was not a particularly happy one, but, like funerals and weddings, it provided a good opportunity to reunite with family. (The thing about having a large extended family — my mother is one of ten children — is that one rarely gets to see all of them together. It is genuinely pleasant to see all these people together, enjoying, for the most part, one another's company.) The most difficult thing about the whole affair, for me, was driving back to South Bend on Sunday: every time I return to South Bend I become more aware that I don't belong there. It was worst this time because the grief of this past occasion is still not fully computed and dealt with, and my absence from home isn't going to help. Lo and behold, Peters just wrote about the locality of grief:

We are going to travel some, all of us, and that, I suppose, is good. It is what I call a limited good. But we do the living no good, and the dead no honor, if we disregard our place. We should be home as much as possible. There are griefs to bear everywhere, and to some degree we can bear them anywhere — even distant griefs. But home is where most of them are — and where we bear them most fully, and best.

Home is unpleasant, in a few ways: certainly, I cannot deal with family all the time. (You are aware, no doubt, of the myriad specific ways in which family can be irritating.) But right now it looks like the minor irritations family can provoke are far preferable to the weight of guilt I feel for being away.

Quoth Bl. John Henry Newman:

2010-09-19T20:23:00.006-05:00

May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.

— from Sermon #20, Wisdom and Innocence, preached 19 February 1843 at Littlemore

As it so happens, Arvo Pärt has set this to music, in his 2000 composition "Littlemore Tractus":

Reincken; Singers

2010-09-13T17:22:00.006-05:00

There are worse ways to spend a mid-September afternoon than sitting out on the back porch, listening to Reincken's Hortus Musicus. Johann Adam Reincken is one of those composers you've probably never heard of, unless you're an organist, and that's a pity. I happen to be learning his chorale-fantasia on An Wasserflüssen Babylon, and it is very impressive writing. Reincken's known output is quite small, most likely because so much has been lost. Johann Mattheson attributed Reincken's low output to his proclivities for wine and women, which is certainly a more interesting explanation, but not entirely fair: it was probably just sour grapes, as Mattheson made an unsuccessful bid to replace Reincken at the Hamburg Katharinenkirche in 1705.
* * *
You may not be aware that I now have a second job, namely, that of an accompanist at a Lutheran school over in Elkhart. While I've never especially enjoyed being around children, it is good to acquire experience working with them, I suppose. It being a private school, they are at least not so irritating as most children one sees in public. In any case, it is not my job to discipline them.

Whereas most adults are hesitant to sing in public — observe the national anthem at a game sometime, or simply attend Mass — a good eighty percent of children are quite robust singers. (It is a Lutheran school, which would suggest that these children are predisposed towards better singing than their Roman Catholic or Evangelical or agnostic counterparts, but I do not think that this is the case.) When exposed to music good and early in their lives, children are surprisingly quick to learn, and quite fearless. (It is interesting to note, though, that even as children some are unable to match pitch when surrounded by a sea of unisons. Perhaps a blighted few just aren't meant to sing, but these are to be pitied. I remain convinced that there are far more potential singers out there than actually avail themselves of the opportunity to do so, in church or elsewhere.) Oh, would that all children received adequate musical educations! Then perhaps we might all be able to sing four-part hymnody, as God and Bach intended.

On Cheap Language

2010-09-06T17:15:00.007-05:00

Liturgy can, and ought to, be an uplifting experience. At its best it can free us, albeit temporarily, from the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to. At its worst it is not only inane, but maddening. I regret to tell you, dear reader, that the Mass I attended this evening was far closer to the latter than the former.

Chief among its problems was the priest. He was one of those who is fond of coming up with what he considers to be exemplary ritual improvisations; that is, he made stuff up. This wouldn't've been a problem, but for the fact that these improvisations only served to distract from the order of the Mass. (Just stick to the rubrics, Father.) Then there was the homily. As a Protestant, I place a far higher premium on competent preaching than Roman Catholics. But even by Papist standards, this priest had a tin ear for turns of phrase. This is, I suppose, the end result of decades of wrong ideas about what constitutes good language. What sort of prose is being fostered by the language of the 1970 Missal, by the New American Bible, and by the hymnody of Breaking Bread and Gather? Ugly language begets ugly language. The point I'm trying to make here is that what we read affects how we write and speak. (Compare the language of Abraham Lincoln, who grew up reading the noble and glorious Authorised Version, with that of most modern politicians, who have read... well, it's not quite certain whether they've read anything. Is Sarah Palin a voracious reader of Jonathan Swift?) If we're going to use the vernacular, we should take it upon ourselves to employ translations that are not, quite frankly, ugly.

If priests are incapable of minimally proficient sermonizing, they ought to deliver the homilies of the great preachers of the Church. Would you object to hearing the sermons of John Chrysostom, or Augustine, or John Henry Newman, instead of the underdeveloped ramblings of a man who thinks "Gather Us In" is excellent poetry? I certainly wouldn't.

Late August Miscellany

2010-08-28T20:57:00.007-05:00

1. I've been listening to that Sufjan EP some more. It is baroque stuff, and by "baroque" I use the definition Borges gave us in his second preface to the Historia universal de la infamia:

Yo diría que barroco es aquel estilo que deliberadamente agota (o quiere agotar) sus posibilidades y que linda con su propia caricatura. ... [Y]o diría que es barroca la etapa final de todo arte, cuando éste exhibe y dilapida sus medios.

This overreach—and yes, I do consider it overreaching—cannot last forever. Once given resources are exhausted and the artist finally realizes it he must make drastic reductions or cease creating altogether. Either Sufjan will follow this EP (and the recently-announced new album, which sounds like similar stuff) with a pared-down release, or he will burn out by making increasingly busy and opaque music.

2. File under coincidences, ecclesiastic: just this evening I received an invitation to play a noontime concert at the Episcopal Cathedral in Indianapolis (following the Friday noon Eucharist, sometime in the next few months), where I attended this past July when I was in that city. They have two fine instruments (I can't speak for the third, the little one), but I'm leaning towards the Taylor & Boody, as I believe I'd like to do an all-Buxtehude concert...

3. Cantoring at Mass tomorrow; you may watch it on the internets, if you insist. I get to wear me a surplice! Will inform if it has lace.

Contra Academicos

2010-08-24T21:01:00.006-05:00

I worry, as I am wont to do (despite certain advice to the contrary). Lately, I've been worrying about the MSM program at Notre Dame (among other things). Are we students wise to commit ourselves into the hands of a group of people—that is, professors—who have dedicated themselves to the life of the mind? How many of my professors know where their food comes from? (They need not know how to prune an apple tree, or plow a furrow, but ideally they'd know people who can.) More importantly, how many of them live within an hour's drive of their families? How many of them have a real sense of place? (I don't mean to besmirch any of my teachers, mind you. I respect and admire them a great deal. One must think about these things, is all.)

I wonder about the future of the program. I don't mean to say that churches don't need qualified musicians; indeed, I'd like to think that sacred music is a ministry of great importance, one that should have well-trained ministers. But I wonder whether we students are being trained for real jobs. The organists, I suppose, should be able to find some work: nearly all of us can sing and conduct, even if we're not very good at it. I worry, though, whether those students being trained in singing or conducting alone will be able to find churches that can support them if they cannot play organ (or even piano) well enough to lead a congregation. (And the program is being expanded to include more of them! Where are all these churches big enough to hire a full-time choral conductor? As for full-time cantors, well, I don't know if there is such a thing.) Perhaps I'm just being pessimistic. I just hope that the goals of the program are grounded in reality—as grounded, ideally, as the teachers should be.

Regarding New Acquaintances

2010-08-21T21:29:00.004-05:00

Well, school is about to start again here at Notre Dame. The bevy of preparatory activities includes several events designed to help the sacred music students better get to know each other. (It being only a two-year program, we lose half the people we knew last year and must acquaint ourselves with the newbies. That is the technical term, "newbies", correct?)

I find meeting new people to be an intimidating prospect. People you know are at least used to your foibles; with established acquaintances there is the illusion of knowing each other. With new people there's no set of attributes you can comfortably attribute to them (easily, or fairly, anyway). I am, of course, pessimistic that any two people can really know each other in a deep sense, but it is disarming nonetheless to not have even the impression of knowing someone. There is some consolation in the fact that organists tend to be good-natured (if eccentric) types.

* * *
In other news, it seems Sufjan Stevens has released a new EP in a sneaky manner: he hadn't announced he was working on it or anything. You may give it a listen (or even purchase it) here. I rather wish Mr Stevens would move away from all those artsy types in Brooklyn and move back to the Midwest. Need one live a bohemian lifestyle to produce art? I certainly hope not.

On Drink, and Drunks

2010-08-13T23:13:00.007-05:00

I have decided that I am willing to give Riesling another try. (Heretofore my opinion of it was much the same as my opinion of diesel, the taste of which I had not considered dissimilar.) My next step, I suppose, is to obtain some unobjectionable examples of said wine. I therefore ask your advice, dear reader: if you happen to have particular Riesling preferences, I would like to know them.

* * *
As a college student I have learned far more about drunks than I ever intended. It had never occurred to me, however, to create a taxonomy of drunks. It did occur to Thomas Nashe, who includes one in Pierce Penilesse his Supplication to the Divell. I present it here, without commentary and with only the slightest editing; one hopes you can manage the Elizabethan spelling.

Nor haue we one or two kinde of drunkards onely, but eight kindes:

(1) The first is ape drunke; and he leapes, and singes, and hollowes, and daunceth for the heauens.
(2) The second is lion drunke; and he flinges the pots about the house, calls his hostesse whore, breakes the glasse windowes with his dagger, and is apt to quarell with anie man that speaks to him.
(3) The third is swine drunke; heauie, lumpish, and sleepie, and cries for a little more drinke, and a few more cloathes.
(4) The fourth is sheepe drunke; wise in his own conceipt, when he cannot bring foorth a right word.
(5) The fifth is mawdlen drunke; when a fellowe will weepe for kindnes in the midst of his ale, and kisse you, saying, "By God, captaine, I loue thee. Goe thy wayes; thou dost not thinke so often of me as I doo of thee; I would (if it pleased God) I could not loue thee so well as I doo;" and then he puts his finger in his eye, and cryes.
(6) The sixt is Martin drunke; when a man is drunke, and drinkes himselfe sober ere he stirre.
(7) The seuenth is goate drunke; when, in his drunkennes, he hath no minde but on lecherie.
(8) The eighth is fox drunke — when he is craftie drunke, as manie of the Dutchmen bee, that will neuer bargaine but when they are drunke.

All these species, and more, haue I seen practiced in one companie at one sitting, when I haue been permitted to remayne sober amongst them, onely to note their seuerall humours.

(Yes, of course, Nashe, you were only there to observe...)

Opinions; Home

2010-08-11T10:03:00.003-05:00

It is the singular misfortune of conciliatory, or cowardly, men—and honesty compels me to include myself among their ranks—to be paralyzed in most matters of opinion. This is not to say that we are devoid of opinions; no, indeed. But to strongly voice almost any opinion is enough to make enemies with someone, and the coward seeks to avoid this. Among the irreligious, therefore, one opts not to voice any excess of spiritual conviction; among the liberally-minded one cannot risk being perceived as reäctionary; among the Lutherans it is wise to downplay Catholic sympathies. But the reverse is also true: mention not your doubts among the devout, nor your questions among the conservative, nor your Lutheran tendencies among the Papists. Perhaps it would be an easier matter if I were fundamentally on one side or t'other. It's safe enough, I suppose, in either opposing camp, but dangerous to venture in the no-man's-land between them. Now, here I thought adulthood was a time for solidifying one's prejudices; perhaps that means I'm not an adult yet.

Ah, but perhaps there is one issue where I'm content to be disagreed with. Allow me to elucidate. For a young person my age, with college education (and mind you, I am inclined to put the word "education" in quotation marks), the inevitable topics of conversation with people I haven't seen for a good while are What I Have Been Doing With Myself and What I Plan to Do With Myself. The answers, of course, are that only a year ago I received a degree in music, and that I intend to complete my masters in sacred music. Inevitably next in the conversation comes the question of where I intend to move away to in order to find work. I'm quite tired of this assumption. (Interestingly, it is perhaps most prevalent in rural communities, where the permanent leaving of the educated young is more regular than the return of the swallows to Capistrano.) Let it be known henceforth, then, that I do not subscribe to the idea that I need to move away in order to make something of myself. I disagree, yes, I disagree with this notion, and I wish to disabuse people of it. I want to stay home. Home, in this sense, is not my parents' house—which would drive me to madness, if not parricide—but rather the area I've known all my life: patria mea.

The difficult thing about unpopular convictions, besides the alienating effect they have on those with differing (that is, wrong) ideas, is that they must be reflected in one's own life, lest one be branded a hypocrite. I can only hope this staying-at-home thing works out, eh?

"The Wish to be Generous", Wendell Berry

2010-07-24T21:54:00.000-05:00

All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.

Summer Work

2010-07-14T19:45:00.006-05:00

South Bend, three quarters of the year, is a generally unpleasant place to live, what with the near-constant cloudiness and not-too-great traffic and general urban decay. But in the summer, oh, the summer, South Bend is a veritable nice place to live. This is no doubt due to the weather, which is as sunny as the rest of the year is cloudy, the time zone, which means the sun sets here at nearly ten in the evening, and the lack of Notre Dame students, who made roads and Fiddler's Hearth altogether too crowded. Yes, life is good, for the moment, in South Bend. I'm keeping busy, what with five hours of classes daily and cantoring for evening prayer in the Ladychapel nightly. Indeed, there aren't enough hours in the day to really finish all of my homework. Spirits are high, though: I am too busy to be unhappy.

I wonder about this. Industriousness is to be praised, innit? The saying is that "hell is full of the talented, but heaven is full of the hard-working". But I wonder whether all this work is a distraction, eh? Well, let's hope not. In any case, I don't have time to think much about such things, anyway.

Worship as Idolatry

2010-07-08T20:26:00.006-05:00

The Ten Commandments give an admirable sense of the priorities of ancient Jewry. The first (or first and second, depending on your reckoning; I am inclined to use the numbering of Lutherans and Papists) is that we are to have no gods before God, nor shall we make graven images. In many ways this commandment sums up the set: God is to be our chief desire.

The great danger to religious sorts (and I hope it is fair to include myself among those of a religious bent) is that one's vocation, or theological dispute, or worship itself, can become an idol, supplanting God from God's rightful place at the Center of Things. I may maintain, in my correct opinion, that Thomas Tallis is vastly superior to Marty Haugen, and that the Roman Catholics' attempts at translation pale in comparison to the peerless language of Cranmer, and that, all things considered, ad orientem is probably a better way of celebrating a Mass, but the moment that any of these opinions distracts me from the Charity which is the heart of God, I have committed idolatry. We forget, in our attempts to perform good music for the rite, that the rite itself is no substitute for God.

Recently I've been reading C.S. Lewis's quite sensible (though not particularly scholarly) essays on the Psalms. While I'll recommend the whole book to you, I'll only quote a relevant passage:

[N]o sooner is it possible to distinguish the rite from the vision of God than there is a danger of the rite becoming a substitute for, and a rival to, God Himself. Once it can be thought of separately, it will; and it may take on a rebellious, cancerous life of its own. ... Worse still, [rituals] may be regarded as the only thing [God] wants, so that their punctual performance will satisfy Him without obedience to His demands for mercy, "judgement", and truth. To the priests themselves the whole system will seem important simply because it is both their art and their livelihood; all their pedantry, all their pride, all their economic position, is bound up with it.

The frightening thing for a church musician, of course, is that we are just as susceptible as priests to this sort of distortion. It's enough to make one wonder whether we really need professional church musicians at all.

---

In other news: Praetorius! | Prakticello!

Yes He Kahane

2010-07-06T22:09:00.003-05:00

I sometimes whether wonder I've heard enough music. That is, I wonder whether any new discoveries I make are merely further distractions, when indeed I have heard more music than anyone can really appreciate in a lifetime. And then I find something new. (Novelty is a seductive mistress, though short-lived.)

The latest discovery is Gabriel Kahane, who was born in the same decade as I, and who writes what I believe is called "chamber pop" music, inflected with influences ranging from Bach to Appalachian folk to Schoenberg. Here's a gadget by which you can listen to his self-titled album:

Indianapolis

2010-07-05T08:41:00.002-05:00

Greetings from Indianapolis, capital of Indiana, seat of several dioceses, city of broad streets, numerous beggars, limited green space and, at least on the Fourth of July, lots and lots of traffic. I was here to play a wedding (it went well enough). Yesterday I attended church with the Episcopalians downtown, which was pleasant: excellent instrument, choir (all-male! one doesn't hear that sound much anymore), and sermon.

Indianapolis is a nice enough place to visit, but I wouldn't live here. It's too big: urban areas of a certain size inspire me with neuroses. Modern life in these United States, and urban life in particular, requires a profound amount of trust in people one does not know: architects, elevator-builders, policemen, food safety standard-setters and inspectors of many sorts, motorists, even fellow pedestrians. In the city one must count on everyone else not to be crazy. This confidence is sometimes misplaced.

At the same time, I think it's important that the Church is present in the city. There's enough emphasis in the Bible on helping the poor that it is more than negligent to avoid them. (Are you ever bothered by thoughts of your sins of omission? I certainly am. I'm banking on the idea that this "God" fellow is the merciful sort.) I had planned to attend a Lutheran church yesterday, but there is not a single Lutheran congregation, ELCA or LCMS, in downtown Indianapolis: they've all moved to the suburbs. Where would Jesus live, I wonder?

Catafalque:

2010-06-12T21:19:00.006-05:00

About an hour ago, prompted by a friend, I was perusing a sermon on the inter-net for my edification when, all of a sudden, the word CATAFALQUE appeared to me. This was curious, because that word was nowhere to be found on the page, nor did I see any adjacent words that could easily be jumbled and arranged to spell it. (Nonetheless that is my theory, that I saw enough constituënt letters of the word that my brain somehow assembled it.) What was more curious is that, though I had probably seen the word somewhere before, I could not define it. Upon looking up "catafalque", I was intrigued to find that it is a synonym of "bier", or "hearse". One does wonder whether this is some sort of omen. In any case, it is an interesting word.

Corpus Christi (Observed)

2010-06-06T18:17:00.003-05:00

Today is the celebration of the Body of Christ. (Or rather, Thursday was the celebration of the Body of Christ, but it's more convenient to do the celebrating today.) The term has two senses, both of which are absurd. The first is that from the Gospel, where Jesus institutes Holy Communion with a piece of bread and the words "this is my body". I'll let Miss O'Connor speak for that:

"Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. [Mary McCarthy] said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the 'most portable' person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, 'Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.' That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable."

The second sense is from Paul's letters: here it is the mystical union of all believers under the headship of Christ. Like Christ's earthly body, it is broken and wounded: it gives every impression of being done for. Christians have failed, and continue to fail, at that whole "unity" business, just as we have failed at that "charity" thing. I'm not exactly sure how we're supposed to remedy our shortcomings in embodying the second meaning of "Body of Christ". Perhaps it has something to do with the first meaning.

The Order of Precedence in Boardinghouse Fires

2010-05-29T18:56:00.005-05:00

Mark Twain was no stranger to priorities. In his Unfinished Burlesque of Books on Etiquette, he presents a list of things to be saved in boardinghouse fires. The first things to be saved by any gentleman are, of course, young ladies. "Partiality, in the matter of rescue," he writes, is "to be shown to:
1. Fiancées.
2. Persons toward whom the operator feels a tender sentiment, but has not yet declared himself.
3. Sisters.
4. Stepsisters.
5. Nieces.
6. First cousins.
7. Cripples.
8. Second cousins.
9. Invalids.
10. Young-lady relations by marriage.
11. Third cousins, and young-lady friends of the family.
12. The Unclassified.

"Parties belonging to these twelve divisions should be saved in the order in which they are named.

"The operator must keep himself utterly calm, and his line of procedure constantly in mind; otherwise the confusion around him will be almost sure to betray him into very embarrassing breaches of etiquette. Where there is much smoke, it is often quite difficult to distinguish between new Relatives by Marriage and Unclassified young ladies; wherefore it is provided that if the operator, in cases of this sort, shall rescue a No. 12 when he should have rescued a No. 10, it is not requisite that he carry No. 12 back again, but that he leave her where she is without remark, and go and fetch out No. 10. An apology to No. 10 is not imperative; still, it is good form to offer it."

Later on, Twain gives the remainder of the list of things to be rescued from fires:
13. Babies.
14. Children under 10 years of age.
15. Young widows.
16. Young married females.
17. Elderly married ditto.
18. Elderly widows.
19. Clergymen.
20. Boarders in general.
21. Female domestics.
22. Male ditto.
23. Landlady.
24. Landlord.
25. Firemen.
26. Furniture.
27. Mothers-in-law.

De Civitate

2010-05-28T22:09:00.005-05:00

The Bible, one will note, begins in a garden and ends in a city. This seems to imply some sort of progression from rural to urban life, a progression which I am not sure is real progress at all. Let me explain.

My travails started when I agreed, most agreeably, to drive some friends to Union Station in Chicago, the train ride from South Bend being inconveniently timed for a transfer to the train to Milwaukee (their home). I had not anticipated that this would necessitate my driving into the very heart of downtown Chicago (and on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, no less: the very time when, it seems, the totality of the citizenry of the Windy City departs, by car, for greener climes). Suffice it to say that the experience was not pleasant: what is normally a four-hour drive from South Bend to home became a seven-hour ordeal. The more I visit the city, the more I am convinced that I hate it beyond reason. This is mainly due, I suppose, to traffic, which provokes in me a most powerful misanthropy.

Does city life have any redeemable qualities? Surely it must; surely something must counterbalance the infernal drudgery of commuting. Or is it only for money that people work in such an environment? If this is so, then I cannot understand people, in general, at all. It is far better to live in a bare cell in heaven than a McMansion in hell.

Those Mid-May Blues

2010-05-22T20:52:00.005-05:00

These past few days in May, for some reason, have provoked a certain nostalgia in me, for reasons I can't quite rationalize. (Well, yes, granted: nostalgia generally isn't to be rationalized. But here even the cause of the nostalgia is a mystery. Perhaps it's the weather?) I find myself looking back on my salad days—fully behind me, I assume—with a certain wistfulness. Why? Certainly not because I was happier; indeed, I was far more morose, if not melancholisch, back in high school. I suppose it's the callowness that I miss. I was less aware, then, of how many problems there are out there in the world.

Dear, if I feel such nostalgia at the age of twenty-three, what shall I do at forty-three? How many more realities can I face before becoming either irreparably cynical or inescapably escapist?