High-Church Lutherans, eh?

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

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

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

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 important 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

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

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

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

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

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

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!