Two days ago I spent some of my Boxing Day watching Sister Wendy art documentaries from the 90s, which have held up extremely well. (That's the thing about the public television sort of production values, which are never high: when the focus of the program is its content, rather than its medium, the content endures. Consider Julia Child, for example.) I was saddened to hear, later in the day, that she has died. In fact, I must have been watching one of her shows as she was dying, which would strike many people — though not a member of a religious order, I suspect — as a morbid thought.
If you've not encountered her documentaries, I recommend them highly. Sister Wendy is the best sort of person that the Christian tradition can produce: a genuinely humane person, in the truest sense of the word. The Christian life, even the consecrated religious life, should not be a retreat from the reality of lived human experience. I speak, frankly, of sex: Sister Wendy looked at it — and there is so much of it, in the history of art — with an honest and uncompromising eye. (Downplay or retreat from sex in art and you end up sublimating it like Gerard Manley Hopkins, writing quiveringly of bathing boys. Such art, wrought from curdled sexuality, makes me nauseous.) She was a keen observer, and not afraid to look things square in the face.
I'll refer you to an essay she wrote, "The Art of Looking at Art".
And here is one of my favorite Sister Wendy bits, from her Story of Painting:
28 December 2018
17 June 2018
Regarding Gibbons
Glenn Gould, when asked his favorite composer, gave an unexpected answer: Orlando Gibbons. At first glance, this seems an irritatingly contrarian thing to say — and indeed, Gould could be irritatingly contrarian in his musical decisions. (The living musician most like that who comes to mind is John Eliot Gardiner, whose relish in smashing musical idols results in performances that are either epiphanic or perversely wrong-headed, with little in between.) Why should Gould profess a fondness for this relatively minor English composer — all English composers are minor, to hear most musicologists speak about them — over every Continental giant of the literature? How, in short, could Gibbons be better than Bach?
The first misconception one must needs clear up is the lingering denigration of English music. Heinrich Heine, whose distaste for the English in general is well-documented, had the misfortune to hear English music at its early-Victorian nadir, and wrote: "These people have no ear either for rhythm or music, and their unnatural passion for piano playing and singing is all the more repulsive. Nothing on Earth is more terrible than English music, except English painting." (Heine's opinion of J.M.W. Turner, to my mind one of the finest painters of his age, or perhaps of any age, is not recorded. Certainly their concerns overlapped in works like Turner's The Slave Ship and Heine's Das Sklavenschiff.) In 1904 the now-forgotten German critic Oscar Schmitz condemned England as das Land ohne Musik ("the land without music"), and the sentiment has stuck. But whatever the state of British music in the two centuries after the death of Purcell (for, you see, we are apparently obliged to treat Handel as merely a foreign import), the music of the English Renaissance was every bit the equal of that on the Continent. (It's a bit harder to argue that the revival in English music at the turn of the twentieth century produced works of comparable quality to European music of the time, but Elgar and Stanford remain underrated, to say nothing of Vaughan Williams, Howells, and Britten.) And yet the average music-lover has heard of perhaps three English Renaissance composers: Tallis, Byrd, and Gibbons.
Tallis, while perhaps the closest to achieving a vision of the divine (in either his Latin or English works), can be so austere as to distance the listener. Byrd, though the best contrapuntalist, is off-putting to me as a performer because he willfully ignores any constraints of instrumentation or technique. Consider the ranges of his vocal parts: what other Renaissance composer regularly expects two-and-a-half octaves? One gets the sense that Byrd's music, like Bach's, was written to be performed by angels rather than mortals. Perhaps we can come close at times, but there is inevitably a sense of disappointment. Weelkes and Tomkins deserve far more recognition than they are given, but their pieces rarely achieve the internal logic achieved by the big three.
And this, really, is what so distinguishes Gibbons from most composers: his innate sense of proportion. (It is for this reason, incidentally, that Handel is on the same tier of composers as Bach: Handel's sense of proportion is marvelous, which can't always be said of his Thuringian contemporary. It's why Mozart is among the very best composers, and why Mozart's innumerable imitators rarely could produce much worth hearing. There are also certain lesser composers, like Widor, whose sense of proportion saves their works from complete oblivion.) Gibbons had a command of counterpoint as learned as any Englishman between Byrd and Purcell, but it is the underlying structure and balance of his works that make them so very fine. Listen for the precise internal logic of "Behold, thou hast made my days", or "Great King of gods" (with its magnificent "Amen", perhaps the best in all English choral music), or the Short Service, or even the deceptively simple-sounding hymn tunes. (Regrettably, the hymn tunes are marred by the lamentable poetry of the texts for which they were originally compiled. Fortunately, later hymnographers have paired them with better texts.) Very few composers can be said to have composed a perfect work, but Gibbons's anthem "Almighty and everlasting God" is perfect.
In scholarship it feels a bit too on-the-nose to find a composer's complete ethos summed up in his own words, but we find this very thing in Gibbons's introduction to his First Set of Madrigals and Mottets (1612): "It is proportion that beautifies every thing, this whole Universe is measured by it, and Musicke is measured by it, which I have endeavoured to observe in the composition of these few Ayres..." Gibbons's fixation on proportion was perfectly in keeping with prevailing thought of his time. Consider George Herbert's notion of Christ making the redeemed Just: the just man "tunes" the three parts of his soul (reason, appetite, and a mediating spirit), just as music is "but three parts vied and multiplied". (The whole thing goes back to Plato, of course.) The best music reflects the underlying proportion of the universe, just as does the rightly-tuned soul. Church musicians sometimes like to think that the right music is not just aesthetically edifying, but morally so.
Is Gibbons "better" than Bach? Good heavens, who on earth cares? Indeed, the idea of ranking composers is absurd, anyway, though I'll still maintain that there are objectively good and bad composers. I'll leave you, dear reader, with one of my favorite musical finds of the past year: the Magdalena Consort, along with Fretwork and His Majesty's Sagbutts and Cornetts, have released the first volume of a projected set of CDs featuring the pre-Restoration English verse anthem, and it's all Gibbons pieces. The title of the album, In Chains of Gold, comes from the introduction to Morley's famous Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practical Musick: music ought "to draw the hearer, as it were, in chains of gold by the ears to the consideration of holy things."
The first misconception one must needs clear up is the lingering denigration of English music. Heinrich Heine, whose distaste for the English in general is well-documented, had the misfortune to hear English music at its early-Victorian nadir, and wrote: "These people have no ear either for rhythm or music, and their unnatural passion for piano playing and singing is all the more repulsive. Nothing on Earth is more terrible than English music, except English painting." (Heine's opinion of J.M.W. Turner, to my mind one of the finest painters of his age, or perhaps of any age, is not recorded. Certainly their concerns overlapped in works like Turner's The Slave Ship and Heine's Das Sklavenschiff.) In 1904 the now-forgotten German critic Oscar Schmitz condemned England as das Land ohne Musik ("the land without music"), and the sentiment has stuck. But whatever the state of British music in the two centuries after the death of Purcell (for, you see, we are apparently obliged to treat Handel as merely a foreign import), the music of the English Renaissance was every bit the equal of that on the Continent. (It's a bit harder to argue that the revival in English music at the turn of the twentieth century produced works of comparable quality to European music of the time, but Elgar and Stanford remain underrated, to say nothing of Vaughan Williams, Howells, and Britten.) And yet the average music-lover has heard of perhaps three English Renaissance composers: Tallis, Byrd, and Gibbons.
Tallis, while perhaps the closest to achieving a vision of the divine (in either his Latin or English works), can be so austere as to distance the listener. Byrd, though the best contrapuntalist, is off-putting to me as a performer because he willfully ignores any constraints of instrumentation or technique. Consider the ranges of his vocal parts: what other Renaissance composer regularly expects two-and-a-half octaves? One gets the sense that Byrd's music, like Bach's, was written to be performed by angels rather than mortals. Perhaps we can come close at times, but there is inevitably a sense of disappointment. Weelkes and Tomkins deserve far more recognition than they are given, but their pieces rarely achieve the internal logic achieved by the big three.
And this, really, is what so distinguishes Gibbons from most composers: his innate sense of proportion. (It is for this reason, incidentally, that Handel is on the same tier of composers as Bach: Handel's sense of proportion is marvelous, which can't always be said of his Thuringian contemporary. It's why Mozart is among the very best composers, and why Mozart's innumerable imitators rarely could produce much worth hearing. There are also certain lesser composers, like Widor, whose sense of proportion saves their works from complete oblivion.) Gibbons had a command of counterpoint as learned as any Englishman between Byrd and Purcell, but it is the underlying structure and balance of his works that make them so very fine. Listen for the precise internal logic of "Behold, thou hast made my days", or "Great King of gods" (with its magnificent "Amen", perhaps the best in all English choral music), or the Short Service, or even the deceptively simple-sounding hymn tunes. (Regrettably, the hymn tunes are marred by the lamentable poetry of the texts for which they were originally compiled. Fortunately, later hymnographers have paired them with better texts.) Very few composers can be said to have composed a perfect work, but Gibbons's anthem "Almighty and everlasting God" is perfect.
In scholarship it feels a bit too on-the-nose to find a composer's complete ethos summed up in his own words, but we find this very thing in Gibbons's introduction to his First Set of Madrigals and Mottets (1612): "It is proportion that beautifies every thing, this whole Universe is measured by it, and Musicke is measured by it, which I have endeavoured to observe in the composition of these few Ayres..." Gibbons's fixation on proportion was perfectly in keeping with prevailing thought of his time. Consider George Herbert's notion of Christ making the redeemed Just: the just man "tunes" the three parts of his soul (reason, appetite, and a mediating spirit), just as music is "but three parts vied and multiplied". (The whole thing goes back to Plato, of course.) The best music reflects the underlying proportion of the universe, just as does the rightly-tuned soul. Church musicians sometimes like to think that the right music is not just aesthetically edifying, but morally so.
Is Gibbons "better" than Bach? Good heavens, who on earth cares? Indeed, the idea of ranking composers is absurd, anyway, though I'll still maintain that there are objectively good and bad composers. I'll leave you, dear reader, with one of my favorite musical finds of the past year: the Magdalena Consort, along with Fretwork and His Majesty's Sagbutts and Cornetts, have released the first volume of a projected set of CDs featuring the pre-Restoration English verse anthem, and it's all Gibbons pieces. The title of the album, In Chains of Gold, comes from the introduction to Morley's famous Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practical Musick: music ought "to draw the hearer, as it were, in chains of gold by the ears to the consideration of holy things."
30 December 2017
On New Music
The classical music canon needs little defending. Time has the effect of weeding out bad music, which is why nearly everything we hear from the seventeenth century is so good: the forgettable composers have been justly forgotten. We may tweak that Auden quotation about books to make it relevant here: some music is undeservedly forgotten, but none is undeservedly remembered. This also goes some way towards explaining why so much new music is tedious, pointless, or asinine: time hasn't distanced us from it yet. (As for whose music is tedious, pointless, or asinine? Well, the task of filling up the blanks I'd rather leave to you. / But it really doesn’t matter whom you put upon the list, / For they'd none of 'em be missed.)
So there is reason to mistrust one's senses when appraising new music. (Why do I doubt my senses, you ask? Because a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. John Rutter may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.) Current broad popularity is no indication of lasting value. Indeed, even things that I like may prove less than durable. We are, all of us, susceptible to novelty, which blinds us. Like every chorally-inclined high-schooler in the year 2004, I liked the works of Eric Whitacre, which I now loathe. (Add him to the list of cheap purveyors of artless unprepared dissonance, a club he shares most prominently with Morten Lauridsen and the late Stephen Paulus.) Seven years ago it was Nico Muhly, about whom the word Wunderkind was tossed about with wearying regularity.
My current new-music infatuation is with the music of Caleb Burhans, which — for now, at least — I enjoy quite a bit. He's of the same New York classically-trained Radiohead-listening crowd, which sets off several alarm bells. But I find his Jahrzeit striking: it is more than the tiresome timbral experiments that comprise most new composition, though of course it does employ extended techniques. Burhans' Magnificat and Nunc dimittis are charming, and practical enough that I would actually consider using them in a liturgy. (That's another bone I have to pick with so many composers: music does not need to be difficult to be worthwhile. Indeed, it takes a more skillful composer to write defensible music that can be performed by the average parish choir than to write music for a professional ensemble, where in theory there are few constraints imposed by the performers.) But what will I think in five years? I simply don't know. One always must assume one's own tastes are unimpeachable, I suppose.
So there is reason to mistrust one's senses when appraising new music. (Why do I doubt my senses, you ask? Because a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. John Rutter may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.) Current broad popularity is no indication of lasting value. Indeed, even things that I like may prove less than durable. We are, all of us, susceptible to novelty, which blinds us. Like every chorally-inclined high-schooler in the year 2004, I liked the works of Eric Whitacre, which I now loathe. (Add him to the list of cheap purveyors of artless unprepared dissonance, a club he shares most prominently with Morten Lauridsen and the late Stephen Paulus.) Seven years ago it was Nico Muhly, about whom the word Wunderkind was tossed about with wearying regularity.
My current new-music infatuation is with the music of Caleb Burhans, which — for now, at least — I enjoy quite a bit. He's of the same New York classically-trained Radiohead-listening crowd, which sets off several alarm bells. But I find his Jahrzeit striking: it is more than the tiresome timbral experiments that comprise most new composition, though of course it does employ extended techniques. Burhans' Magnificat and Nunc dimittis are charming, and practical enough that I would actually consider using them in a liturgy. (That's another bone I have to pick with so many composers: music does not need to be difficult to be worthwhile. Indeed, it takes a more skillful composer to write defensible music that can be performed by the average parish choir than to write music for a professional ensemble, where in theory there are few constraints imposed by the performers.) But what will I think in five years? I simply don't know. One always must assume one's own tastes are unimpeachable, I suppose.
25 December 2017
Robert Herrick: "A Christmas Carol"
What sweeter music can we bring,
Than a carol, for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the voice! Awake the string!
Heart, ear, and eye, and every thing
Awake! the while the active finger
Runs division with the singer.
Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honour to this day,
That sees December turned to May.
If we may ask the reason, say;
The why, and wherefore all things here
Seem like the springtime of the year?
Why does the chilling winter's morn
Smile, like a field beset with corn?
Or smell, like to a mead new-shorn,
Thus, on the sudden? Come and see
The cause, why things thus fragrant be:
'Tis He is borne, whose quick'ning birth
Gives life and luster, public mirth,
To Heaven, and the under-Earth.
We see Him come, and know him ours,
Who, with His sunshine, and His showers,
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
The Darling of the world is come,
And fit it is, we find a room
To welcome Him. The nobler part
Of all the house here, is the heart,
Which we will give Him; and bequeath
This holly, and this ivy wreath,
To do Him honour, who's our King,
And Lord of all this revelling.
Than a carol, for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the voice! Awake the string!
Heart, ear, and eye, and every thing
Awake! the while the active finger
Runs division with the singer.
Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honour to this day,
That sees December turned to May.
If we may ask the reason, say;
The why, and wherefore all things here
Seem like the springtime of the year?
Why does the chilling winter's morn
Smile, like a field beset with corn?
Or smell, like to a mead new-shorn,
Thus, on the sudden? Come and see
The cause, why things thus fragrant be:
'Tis He is borne, whose quick'ning birth
Gives life and luster, public mirth,
To Heaven, and the under-Earth.
We see Him come, and know him ours,
Who, with His sunshine, and His showers,
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
The Darling of the world is come,
And fit it is, we find a room
To welcome Him. The nobler part
Of all the house here, is the heart,
Which we will give Him; and bequeath
This holly, and this ivy wreath,
To do Him honour, who's our King,
And Lord of all this revelling.
25 July 2017
An Introduction to Freely-Composed Organ Works
In my former treatise, I explained the chief difficulty of the average organist: (s)he is not an organist at all, but rather a confused and irritable pianist. In the second part of this series, I here recommend a number of freely-composed organ works that should be somewhat accessible to beginners. Links to IMSLP are given, whenever possible.
(attr.) J.S. Bach: Little Preludes and Fugues, BWV 553-560
These eight prelude-and-fugue pairings are most organists' introduction to the freely-composed works of Bach, which is a bit odd, because compositionally they don't resemble much else he wrote for the instrument. Nobody is really quite sure whether these were actually intended for the pedal harpsichord, or written by one of Bach's students, or what. The point is, their textures and proportions suggest that... something's up. Questionable provenance notwithstanding, they are useful pieces, and the counterpoint is generally good, even if not obviously Bach's. Difficulty: easy to moderate
Paul Benoit: Elevations
Dom Paul Benoit was not a major composer, but his harmonic language (akin to Debussy or Ravel, at times) is pleasant, and these pieces are quite useful for service playing, particularly during Communion. I use them regularly.
Difficulty: easy
Edward Elgar: Vesper Voluntaries, Op. 14
It is a pity that Elgar wrote only a few organ works, for these voluntaries are both charming and admirably succinct. (As anyone who's heard The Dream of Gerontius knows, Elgar has his longeurs.) They work nicely as a set in recital, though most can also be easily excerpted. They were originally written for harmonium, and thus require little or no pedaling. Difficulty: easy
César Franck: L'Organiste
Franck is one of the giants of French Romantic organ music, but his larger pieces are far beyond the capabilities of the average church organist. Happily, he also wrote this indispensable collection of short pieces for harmonium. Difficulty: easy
Adolf Hesse: Easy Preludes
Nineteenth-century German organ music has a reputation for being, if contrapuntally correct, perhaps a bit stodgy and uninspired. Better composers of the era, however, wrote some perfectly serviceable music. This collection by Hesse is a good place to start, being designed with students in mind. (The fingerings and pedalings in this collection, by the way, are good: you should use them!) Difficulty: easy
Felix Mendelssohn: Six Sonatas, Op. 65
One can say, without any hyperbole, that Mendelssohn was the greatest German organ composer of his century, and that these six sonatas represent the summit of his output for the instrument. They are terribly useful for recitals — they work on just about any kind of instrument — and nearly all of the individual movements can be excerpted for use as service music, too. Difficulty: easy to difficult
Gustav Merkel: Twelve Organ Pieces, Op. 102
Much like the works of Hesse, I don't find these to be especially inspired, but they are easy enough, short enough, and compositionally sound. Merkel's other collections of organ music are much the same. Difficulty: easy
Johann Pachelbel: Preludes, Toccatas, Fantasias, Fugues, and Ricercars
These selected freely-composed works are a good assortment of pieces suitable for preludes or postludes. In the context of American liturgies, the more serious contrapuntal works (particularly the ricercars and longer fugues) serve well as preludes; the toccatas, in particular, can make for short, showy, and effective postludes. Difficulty: easy to moderate
Max Reger: Twelve Pieces for Organ, Op. 59
Reger is not a particularly accessible composer for inexperienced organists, but this collection has all his best freely-composed pieces for beginners. The Benedictus (No. 9) may be Reger's most-performed work, while the Toccata and Fugue (Nos. 5-6) are probably Reger's easiest prelude/fugue pairing. Difficulty: moderate to difficult
Josef Rheinberger: Twelve Trios, Op. 49
These pieces are a good place to start if you're new to playing trio textures, and they can work as pleasant, short preludes or postludes. Difficulty: easy to moderate
Charles Villiers Stanford: Six Short Preludes and Postludes, Op. 101
Stanford is a notoriously fiddly composer: I find it difficult to play anything he wrote fluently without a good deal of work. (Perhaps this mirrors his difficult personality.) But these six pieces are well-worth the effort. No. 2 of the collection is a rousing postlude, and No. 6 (based on St. Columba, "The King of Love my Shepherd Is") suggests Stanford's lyrical side. Difficulty: moderate to difficult
John Stanley: Voluntaries, Opp. 5, 6, and 7
For some reason Stanley is pooh-poohed by many serious (read: academic) organists, but I find his output to be both practical (it is all manuals-only, and generally quite thin, texturally) and compositionally defensible. These are some of the very first pieces I would recommend to beginning organists looking for service music. Difficulty: easy
Louis Vierne: Twenty-Four Pieces in Free Style, Op. 31
This charming selection of pieces, originally composed for harmonium, is an invaluable resource: Vierne's harmonic language provides welcome variety, and the pedaling in this collection poses few, if any, challenges. I particularly recommend the Berceuse (No. 19), Arabesque (No. 15), Lied (No. 17), and Carillon (No. 21) — which is one of my favorite postludes. Difficulty: moderate
The above suggestions are a good place to start, but there is scarcely a limit to the variety of organ repertoire one might suggest. Consider also Buxtehude praeludia (which vary widely in length, complexity, and difficulty), or some of the easier Bach preludes and fugues (BWV 533 or BWV 549, to start). Jean Langlais has a variety of organ compositions, of varying quality, but you could start with his Organ Book, Op. 91. The English keyboard school (Byrd, Gibbons, Tomkins, in particular) offers much in the way of manuals-only voluntaries. The charms of French classical organ music, on the other hand, are so heavily reliant on the particular colors of the French classical organ that I cannot in good conscience recommend the genre for most American organists.
(attr.) J.S. Bach: Little Preludes and Fugues, BWV 553-560
These eight prelude-and-fugue pairings are most organists' introduction to the freely-composed works of Bach, which is a bit odd, because compositionally they don't resemble much else he wrote for the instrument. Nobody is really quite sure whether these were actually intended for the pedal harpsichord, or written by one of Bach's students, or what. The point is, their textures and proportions suggest that... something's up. Questionable provenance notwithstanding, they are useful pieces, and the counterpoint is generally good, even if not obviously Bach's. Difficulty: easy to moderate
Paul Benoit: Elevations
Dom Paul Benoit was not a major composer, but his harmonic language (akin to Debussy or Ravel, at times) is pleasant, and these pieces are quite useful for service playing, particularly during Communion. I use them regularly.
Difficulty: easy
Edward Elgar: Vesper Voluntaries, Op. 14
It is a pity that Elgar wrote only a few organ works, for these voluntaries are both charming and admirably succinct. (As anyone who's heard The Dream of Gerontius knows, Elgar has his longeurs.) They work nicely as a set in recital, though most can also be easily excerpted. They were originally written for harmonium, and thus require little or no pedaling. Difficulty: easy
César Franck: L'Organiste
Franck is one of the giants of French Romantic organ music, but his larger pieces are far beyond the capabilities of the average church organist. Happily, he also wrote this indispensable collection of short pieces for harmonium. Difficulty: easy
Adolf Hesse: Easy Preludes
Nineteenth-century German organ music has a reputation for being, if contrapuntally correct, perhaps a bit stodgy and uninspired. Better composers of the era, however, wrote some perfectly serviceable music. This collection by Hesse is a good place to start, being designed with students in mind. (The fingerings and pedalings in this collection, by the way, are good: you should use them!) Difficulty: easy
Felix Mendelssohn: Six Sonatas, Op. 65
One can say, without any hyperbole, that Mendelssohn was the greatest German organ composer of his century, and that these six sonatas represent the summit of his output for the instrument. They are terribly useful for recitals — they work on just about any kind of instrument — and nearly all of the individual movements can be excerpted for use as service music, too. Difficulty: easy to difficult
Gustav Merkel: Twelve Organ Pieces, Op. 102
Much like the works of Hesse, I don't find these to be especially inspired, but they are easy enough, short enough, and compositionally sound. Merkel's other collections of organ music are much the same. Difficulty: easy
Johann Pachelbel: Preludes, Toccatas, Fantasias, Fugues, and Ricercars
These selected freely-composed works are a good assortment of pieces suitable for preludes or postludes. In the context of American liturgies, the more serious contrapuntal works (particularly the ricercars and longer fugues) serve well as preludes; the toccatas, in particular, can make for short, showy, and effective postludes. Difficulty: easy to moderate
Max Reger: Twelve Pieces for Organ, Op. 59
Reger is not a particularly accessible composer for inexperienced organists, but this collection has all his best freely-composed pieces for beginners. The Benedictus (No. 9) may be Reger's most-performed work, while the Toccata and Fugue (Nos. 5-6) are probably Reger's easiest prelude/fugue pairing. Difficulty: moderate to difficult
Josef Rheinberger: Twelve Trios, Op. 49
These pieces are a good place to start if you're new to playing trio textures, and they can work as pleasant, short preludes or postludes. Difficulty: easy to moderate
Charles Villiers Stanford: Six Short Preludes and Postludes, Op. 101
Stanford is a notoriously fiddly composer: I find it difficult to play anything he wrote fluently without a good deal of work. (Perhaps this mirrors his difficult personality.) But these six pieces are well-worth the effort. No. 2 of the collection is a rousing postlude, and No. 6 (based on St. Columba, "The King of Love my Shepherd Is") suggests Stanford's lyrical side. Difficulty: moderate to difficult
John Stanley: Voluntaries, Opp. 5, 6, and 7
For some reason Stanley is pooh-poohed by many serious (read: academic) organists, but I find his output to be both practical (it is all manuals-only, and generally quite thin, texturally) and compositionally defensible. These are some of the very first pieces I would recommend to beginning organists looking for service music. Difficulty: easy
Louis Vierne: Twenty-Four Pieces in Free Style, Op. 31
This charming selection of pieces, originally composed for harmonium, is an invaluable resource: Vierne's harmonic language provides welcome variety, and the pedaling in this collection poses few, if any, challenges. I particularly recommend the Berceuse (No. 19), Arabesque (No. 15), Lied (No. 17), and Carillon (No. 21) — which is one of my favorite postludes. Difficulty: moderate
The above suggestions are a good place to start, but there is scarcely a limit to the variety of organ repertoire one might suggest. Consider also Buxtehude praeludia (which vary widely in length, complexity, and difficulty), or some of the easier Bach preludes and fugues (BWV 533 or BWV 549, to start). Jean Langlais has a variety of organ compositions, of varying quality, but you could start with his Organ Book, Op. 91. The English keyboard school (Byrd, Gibbons, Tomkins, in particular) offers much in the way of manuals-only voluntaries. The charms of French classical organ music, on the other hand, are so heavily reliant on the particular colors of the French classical organ that I cannot in good conscience recommend the genre for most American organists.
24 July 2017
Lincoln in the Bardo
When it was published this past winter, I made a mental note that I wished to read George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo. The reviews, to be certain, were rapturous, and the subject represents a confluence of several of my interests (Lincolniana, postmodern literature, melancholy). I just finished the book, and highly recommend it. Here's the gist: the body of Abraham Lincoln's son Willie has just been interred in Oak Hill Cemetery, and his soul lingers there, instead of passing on ahead to — whatever follows. The story is related by the souls of the dead men and women of the graveyard, those who have also refused to leave, over the course of a single night in 1862. Narratively, then, Lincoln in the Bardo resembles the transcript of an audio play, for the dozens of characters interrupt, contradict, reinforce, argue. Some readers have found the narrative effect disorienting, but I liked it very much. (Apparently the audio book captures the spirit of the book very well, as it is narrated by an appropriately large cast of voice actors.) To say Saunders is a terrific writer is a feeble understatement. I'll simply quote, here, one of my favorite passages in the book. (It's lightly edited for flow, as the original is narrated by two of the main characters. I've condensed it into two paragraphs.)
His [Lincoln's] mind was freshly inclined toward sorrow; toward the fact that the world was full of sorrow; that everyone labored under some burden of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took in this world, one must try to remember that all were suffering (none content; all wronged, neglected, overlooked, misunderstood), and therefore one must do what one could to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact; that his current state of sorrow was not uniquely his, not at all, but, rather, its like had been felt, would yet be felt, by scores of others, in all times, in every time, and must not be prolonged or exaggerated, because, in this state, he could be of no help to anyone and, given that his position in the world situated him to be either of great help or great harm, it would not do to stay low, if he could help it.
All were in sorrow, or had been, or soon would be. It was the nature of things. Though on the surface it seemed every person was different, this was not true. At the core of each lay suffering; our eventual end, the many losses we must experience on the way to that end. We must try to see one another in this way. As suffering, limited beings— Perennially outmatched by circumstance, inadequately endowed with compensatory graces. His sympathy extended to all in this instant, blundering, in its strict logic, across all divides.
29 July 2016
Further Adventures in Lincolniana
As happens every year or so, I've been on another Lincoln kick. Last summer I revisited the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, as well as various other places, including his house, his tomb, and the church he attended (which has a fabulous Brombaugh organ I was permitted to play).
Why should one particular historical figure prove so persistently compelling? This post provides sufficient explanation. One gets, in Lincoln, the sense of a truly moral man, perhaps the closest thing to a saint that secular American society has produced.
An aside: though the evidence suggests that Lincoln could not really be considered a Christian in any orthodox sense, his language owes an incalculable debt to the Authorised Version. We, in this age of literary and spiritual decline, are much impoverished for not being a referential culture. (Or, if we have broadly-shared references, they are generally from popular movies and other light entertainment.) Discourse in the nineteenth century was permeated with references to Scripture, and Lincoln's speeches are no exception. In losing any societal sense of a shared literary or religious corpus, we are cut off from the conversation with the dead that must inform real conservatism (in its original and best sense).
I'll recommend here an instructive book: Lincoln in Photographs. In my more optimistic moments, I like to think that Lincoln's face is iconic not merely because it is on our currency, nor because it so strikingly homely, but because we can intuït on it the markings of a great soul — melancholic but confident, resigned but determined, defined by a generous sense of humor and an iron will.
Oh, and spare a thought, kind reader, for Mary Todd Lincoln. Much-maligned, temperamentally unable to perform her prescribed rôle, marked by tragedies both minor and cataclysmic, hers was in many ways an unenviäble life. She went insane, but for very good reasons.
An aside: though the evidence suggests that Lincoln could not really be considered a Christian in any orthodox sense, his language owes an incalculable debt to the Authorised Version. We, in this age of literary and spiritual decline, are much impoverished for not being a referential culture. (Or, if we have broadly-shared references, they are generally from popular movies and other light entertainment.) Discourse in the nineteenth century was permeated with references to Scripture, and Lincoln's speeches are no exception. In losing any societal sense of a shared literary or religious corpus, we are cut off from the conversation with the dead that must inform real conservatism (in its original and best sense).
I'll recommend here an instructive book: Lincoln in Photographs. In my more optimistic moments, I like to think that Lincoln's face is iconic not merely because it is on our currency, nor because it so strikingly homely, but because we can intuït on it the markings of a great soul — melancholic but confident, resigned but determined, defined by a generous sense of humor and an iron will.
Oh, and spare a thought, kind reader, for Mary Todd Lincoln. Much-maligned, temperamentally unable to perform her prescribed rôle, marked by tragedies both minor and cataclysmic, hers was in many ways an unenviäble life. She went insane, but for very good reasons.
26 July 2016
An Evensong for Bach, Handel, and Purcell
The Episcopalian sanctorale, to the extent that it is observed at all, is a higgledy-piggledy affair. But it is gratifying, nonetheless, to note that three very good composers — J.S. Bach, G.F. Handel, and Henry Purcell — have their very own commemoration on July 28th. (That this day happens to coïncide with my birthday is merely gravy.) I am not prepared to argue for any particular sanctity of these three men; indeed, sources suggest their moral failings were as plentiful as anyone's. But theirs is some of the best music the Christian tradition has produced. In thanksgiving for this, and for sacred music in general, we at St. Luke's, Dixon put on a nice little Evensong this past Sunday, the musical selections of which I share here.
Organ voluntary: Dieterich Buxtehude - Praeludium in D Major, BuxWV 139
Hymn 432 "O praise ye the Lord!" Laudate Dominum
Preces (by William Smith)
Psalm 150 (Tone VIII, by Basil Kazan)
Magnificat (by Thomas Tallis, from the Dorian Service)
Nunc dimittis (ibid.)
Responses (by William Smith)
Pater noster (by Robert Stone)
Anthem: Henry Purcell - An Evening Hymn, Z.193
Hymn 24 "The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended" St. Clement
Organ voluntary: Herbert Brewer - Carillon
Organ voluntary: Dieterich Buxtehude - Praeludium in D Major, BuxWV 139
Hymn 432 "O praise ye the Lord!" Laudate Dominum
Preces (by William Smith)
Psalm 150 (Tone VIII, by Basil Kazan)
Magnificat (by Thomas Tallis, from the Dorian Service)
Nunc dimittis (ibid.)
Responses (by William Smith)
Pater noster (by Robert Stone)
Anthem: Henry Purcell - An Evening Hymn, Z.193
Hymn 24 "The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended" St. Clement
Organ voluntary: Herbert Brewer - Carillon
25 March 2016
John Donne: Upon the Annunciation and Passion Falling upon One Day.
1608
Tamely, frail body, abstain to-day; to-day
My soul eats twice, Christ hither and away.
She sees him man, so like God made in this,
That of them both a circle emblem is,
Whose first and last concur; this doubtful day
Of feast or fast, Christ came, and went away.
She sees him nothing, twice at once, who’s all;
She sees a cedar plant it self, and fall,
Her Maker put to making, and the head
Of life at once not yet alive, yet dead.
She sees at once the Virgin Mother stay
Reclus'd at home, public at Golgotha;
Sad and rejoic'd she’s seen at once, and seen
At almost fifty, and at scarce fifteen.
At once a Son is promis'd her, and gone;
Gabriel gives Christ to her, He her to John;
Not fully a mother, she’s in orbity;
At once receiver and the legacy.
All this, and all between, this day hath shown,
Th’ abridgement of Christ’s story, which makes one
(As in plain maps, the furthest west is east)
Of th’ angels Ave, and Consummatum est.
How well the Church, God’s Court of Faculties,
Deals, in sometimes, and seldom joining these.
As by the self-fix’d Pole we never do
Direct our course, but the next star thereto,
Which shows where th’ other is, and which we say
(Because it strays not far) doth never stray,
So God by his Church, nearest to him, we know,
And stand firm, if we by her motion go.
His Spirit, as his fiery pillar, doth
Lead, and his Church, as cloud; to one end both.
This Church, by letting those days join, hath shown
Death and conception in mankind is one;
Or ’twas in him the same humility,
That he would be a man, and leave to be;
Or as creation he hath made, as God,
With the last judgment, but one period,
His imitating spouse would join in one
Manhood’s extremes; He shall come, he is gone;
Or as though one blood drop, which thence did fall,
Accepted, would have serv'd, he yet shed all,
So though the least of his pains, deeds, or words,
Would busy a life, she all this day affords.
This treasure then, in gross, my soul, uplay,
And in my life retail it every day.
[See also the excellent article at A Clerk of Oxford]
Tamely, frail body, abstain to-day; to-day
My soul eats twice, Christ hither and away.
She sees him man, so like God made in this,
That of them both a circle emblem is,
Whose first and last concur; this doubtful day
Of feast or fast, Christ came, and went away.
She sees him nothing, twice at once, who’s all;
She sees a cedar plant it self, and fall,
Her Maker put to making, and the head
Of life at once not yet alive, yet dead.
She sees at once the Virgin Mother stay
Reclus'd at home, public at Golgotha;
Sad and rejoic'd she’s seen at once, and seen
At almost fifty, and at scarce fifteen.
At once a Son is promis'd her, and gone;
Gabriel gives Christ to her, He her to John;
Not fully a mother, she’s in orbity;
At once receiver and the legacy.
All this, and all between, this day hath shown,
Th’ abridgement of Christ’s story, which makes one
(As in plain maps, the furthest west is east)
Of th’ angels Ave, and Consummatum est.
How well the Church, God’s Court of Faculties,
Deals, in sometimes, and seldom joining these.
As by the self-fix’d Pole we never do
Direct our course, but the next star thereto,
Which shows where th’ other is, and which we say
(Because it strays not far) doth never stray,
So God by his Church, nearest to him, we know,
And stand firm, if we by her motion go.
His Spirit, as his fiery pillar, doth
Lead, and his Church, as cloud; to one end both.
This Church, by letting those days join, hath shown
Death and conception in mankind is one;
Or ’twas in him the same humility,
That he would be a man, and leave to be;
Or as creation he hath made, as God,
With the last judgment, but one period,
His imitating spouse would join in one
Manhood’s extremes; He shall come, he is gone;
Or as though one blood drop, which thence did fall,
Accepted, would have serv'd, he yet shed all,
So though the least of his pains, deeds, or words,
Would busy a life, she all this day affords.
This treasure then, in gross, my soul, uplay,
And in my life retail it every day.
[See also the excellent article at A Clerk of Oxford]
12 August 2015
Acetaria Caesaris apud Juliam
Among culinary innovations of the last century, there are few as widespread, or as variable, as the Caesar salad. Rather like the sandwich or the cocktail, it is the sort of thing that seems so obviously correct that it is difficult to imagine a time before it existed. (And yet for millennia we did without it!) The popularity of the Caesar salad has been, perhaps, its undoing: any food so ubiquitous is bound to suffer a thousand iniquities by way of stale or cheapened ingredients and incompetent preparation. A local establishment here in Iowa City, billing itself as a "salad company", is content to call anything a Caesar if it has enough of the nominal dressing (pre-made, mind you) on it. I have been asked whether I want a Caesar salad with spinach. I do not. (An aside: how does one register as a "salad company"? It is anything like a "salad factory", where assembly-line workers clad in gray overalls each add one ingredient to a salad? Are there "salad mines" where, when the whistle blows, the miners emerge from the earth after a twelve-hour shift, smeared with ranch dressing instead of coal-dust?) Perhaps even worse — or at least more expensive, and less forgivable — are the culinary horrors of fusion cuisine. Does anybody really want a Caesar salad with curry, or wasabi? I submit to you that they do not.
The fundamental uncertainty of Caesar salad can be traced to its inception. Or rather, it can't be traced anywhere, since we can't even agree on where or when the salad was invented. The leading theory is that it was first made in the twenties at Caesar Cardini's restaurant in Tijuana. (Tijuana, Mexico: "the happiest place on earth", according to Krusty the Clown.) Julia Child, la grande dame herself, recounted visiting the restaurant with her parents and watching raptly as Caesar prepared the salad in front of them. She later would get the recipe from Caesar's daughter, and presented it in From Julia Child's Kitchen, an invaluable resource that I consult from time to time. In one of those acts of impassioned pedantry that make the Internet truly worthwhile, somebody has copied this account in its entirety on a website titled simply There are no anchovies in Caesar Salad. The recipe as Julia gives it contains all the wonted ingredients, without the accretions (anchovies, shrimp, chicken, bacon) that would later muck it up. It is worth noting that the original version was served on whole romaine stems, eaten with the hands. (This is a bit odd, but not unpleasant.) But the most jarring quality of the Ur-Salat is that the olive oil, lemon juice, coddled eggs, and Worcestershire sauce are not mixed beforehand! I found this to be most unsatisfactory, as without an emulsified dressing, each bite tastes of whatever liquid happened to fall upon it. In my first bite of an "authentic" Caesar salad, I must've had all the Worcestershire sauce in one go, for that was all I tasted. Subsequent mouthfuls tasted of oil, or lemon, or eggs, but nary a bite tasted like a harmonious union of the whole.
So much, then, for authenticity. I find a much better result is possible when one mixes the dressing together beforehand, and then applies it to the romaine. The only downside is that this method lacks the panache of mixing all ingredients at once in the salad bowl. But then, ours is an unglamorous and unimaginative age.
The fundamental uncertainty of Caesar salad can be traced to its inception. Or rather, it can't be traced anywhere, since we can't even agree on where or when the salad was invented. The leading theory is that it was first made in the twenties at Caesar Cardini's restaurant in Tijuana. (Tijuana, Mexico: "the happiest place on earth", according to Krusty the Clown.) Julia Child, la grande dame herself, recounted visiting the restaurant with her parents and watching raptly as Caesar prepared the salad in front of them. She later would get the recipe from Caesar's daughter, and presented it in From Julia Child's Kitchen, an invaluable resource that I consult from time to time. In one of those acts of impassioned pedantry that make the Internet truly worthwhile, somebody has copied this account in its entirety on a website titled simply There are no anchovies in Caesar Salad. The recipe as Julia gives it contains all the wonted ingredients, without the accretions (anchovies, shrimp, chicken, bacon) that would later muck it up. It is worth noting that the original version was served on whole romaine stems, eaten with the hands. (This is a bit odd, but not unpleasant.) But the most jarring quality of the Ur-Salat is that the olive oil, lemon juice, coddled eggs, and Worcestershire sauce are not mixed beforehand! I found this to be most unsatisfactory, as without an emulsified dressing, each bite tastes of whatever liquid happened to fall upon it. In my first bite of an "authentic" Caesar salad, I must've had all the Worcestershire sauce in one go, for that was all I tasted. Subsequent mouthfuls tasted of oil, or lemon, or eggs, but nary a bite tasted like a harmonious union of the whole.
So much, then, for authenticity. I find a much better result is possible when one mixes the dressing together beforehand, and then applies it to the romaine. The only downside is that this method lacks the panache of mixing all ingredients at once in the salad bowl. But then, ours is an unglamorous and unimaginative age.
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