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!

Musical Context; Praetorius

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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In other news: Praetorius! | Prakticello!

Yes He Kahane

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

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:

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)

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

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

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

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?

Psalm, er, 151

Our psalmody professor (whom Notre Dame recently lured away from Princeton) has a sense of humor, it seems. One of our examples on the final exam today was some Anglican chant (click the image for a better view). "Heed not the prayers of those other Protestants; for their prayers are silly ones." Indeed. Of course, it's much more funny if you happen to know what Anglican chant is supposta sound like.

Olivier Messiaen

Eighteen years ago today Olivier Messiaen died (or, if you prefer, 'went to his reward'). His example as a church musician cannot be easily overstated. There was some talk of making him our patron saint here at the Notre Dame MSM Program; I certainly would support the idea. Here's some idea of his work for organ (played by the inestimable Marie-Claire Alain):

And then, a wondrous setting of "O Sacrum Convivium":

Washington Irving, or, Irving Washington

The vicissitudes of my schedule this semester are such that I have very little to do on Fridays. (Indeed, Friday is my Sabbath, of sorts, as that whole church-music career thing precludes worklessness on Sundays.) This is the day, then, when I have time to try and remember what it's like to be a real human being, instead of a grad student: I can prepare myself actual meals, make my bed properly, indulge my peripatetic nature in walks 'round South Bend, &c. I also attempt to do some reading. Today, while my lunch was cooking, I finally began my volume of Washington Irving stories. (Lunch, incidentally, was a success: pierogies and haddock. The pierogies have a funny way of inflating in the oven, and Charity, Paul says, is not puffed-up; ergo, Charity is not a pierogi.)

There's a reason Washington Irving was so immensely popular: he's a fine writer, with an admirable sense of humor.

[Rip Van Winkle] was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient, hen-pecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain-lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.

The modern reader, I suppose, is struck by the vocabulary level, especially considering that Irving's education was negligible. (Save for some law training, his formal education was complete by the age of sixteen.) How many college freshmen today can comprehend, let alone write, such prose? Sigh. Well, at least we have television! Take that, literate forebears!

Regarding Lawn Ornaments

Upon several months of observation, I have concluded that lawn ornaments in Michiana tend to fall into one of several categories:

• Animal: deer, rabbits, and those ubiquitous geese (often dressed up).
• Religious (primarily Catholic): angels, Francis with his birds, Mary.
• Unimaginative: rocks, sometimes with the family name or a Notre Dame logo.

While the habitats of these different groups rarely overlap, there are occasional instances where one can spy both rocks and concrete deer, or a smartly-dressed goose sharing a yard with the Virgin Mother of God. Kitsch, it seems, is inherently democratic: it is the great leveler.

Someday, when I am a home-owner (and thus, probably, more conservative, a good deal more in debt, and more likely to shout at children to get off my lawn), I think I might get one of those geese. (I have a high opinion of the Theotokos, mind you, but I have no desire to display her in my yard.)

Oyez, Oyez, Oyez!

See that, there? That is an advertisement, of sorts, for an upcoming musical event of great import. (Isn't that font great? I got it here, in case you were wondering. Typography is one of those things that people simply don't appreciate enough, if you ask me.) You may click the image to view it in fuller splendour.

I post this partly as a reminder, and partly as an excuse: if'n I won't be a-postin' as frequently as usual, it's because I have this-a-here recital to be practicin' fer.

Easter, George Herbert

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen.  Sing his praise
                                                  Without delayes,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
                                                  With him mayst rise:
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
                                                  With all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name,
                                                  Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
                                                  Pleasant and long:
Or, since all musick is but three parts vied
                                                  And multiplied,
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.

I got me flowers to strew thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The Sunne arising in the East,
Though he give light, & th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we misse:
There is but one, and that one ever.

Quid est Veritas?

Of all the actors in the Good Friday story, I've always felt a certain kinship with Pilate. (And this is not—only—because I've been playing a lot of Caesar II, which, incidentally, is quite a solid game.) Alone among the characters in the Passion narrative, it is Pilate who most closely approximates the modern man. He is a reluctant bureaucrat, loath to involve himself in some petty squabble of the Jews he was sent by Rome to rule. It is only when the crowds question his loyalty to Caesar that he finally relents and allows Christ to be crucified. Religiously speaking, Pilate has no horse in this race; at least, he's not aware of one. He questions the Nazarene about his purported kingship, and hears his reply:

³⁷You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.

But Pilate, the Modern, will have none of it: "what is truth?", he asks. What, indeed, can this provincial Jew, some carpenter's son, have to offer a man whose vision of the world has no absolutes, save self-interest?

Pilate is a compelling character not because he is a particularly good or wicked man—though I like to think of him as a secular but virtuous type, like Marcus Aurelius—but because he is the closest thing to a dispassionate spectator in the whole saga. Christ, the "bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus", then as now, inspires great love, or great revulsion, but Pilate is unmoved.

The Insidious Mastery of Song

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

—from "Piano", D.H. Lawrence

The most frightening thing about music is that, unasked and unanticipated, it can provoke entirely illogical reactions in us. I shall give you a personal example. Today in choir we rehearsed, for the first time, This Is the Feast, a hymn I associate closely with the Lutheran services of my childhood. (We'll soon be performing it at the Paschal Vigil.) Though the Papists didn't know it very well, and—lacking proper Lutheran zeal—sang it too slowly, it was still enough to bring tears to my eyes. And this in the middle of choir, even though I knew beforehand that we'd be singing it. How is it that the very act of singing can incite such Sehnsucht? What is it about a melody that draws forth such powerful emotion?

More importantly, why is it that sacred music so rarely elicits such a response? I suspect it is a problem, like so many other problems we have, of community and continuity. How many Christians are fortunate enough, nowadays, to have grown up with a consistent corpus of well-written, well-performed hymns? And how many of those lucky few have developed a real connection to these songs, one nourished by ties to a real church community? Our mobility has cost us, among other things, a sense of our heritage. The deeper meaning with which music can be invested only comes with the genuine experience of something greater than ourselves, be it communal or even divine.

(Mind you, I don't mean to suggest that older is necessarily better. Why, This Is the Feast was written less than a decade before I was born; I'd understand if it simply doesn't have the same effect on my elders, since they didn't grow up with it. But they grew up with their own standard hymns, the best of which I know as well. As a church musician it is my duty to ensure that only the best new music is added to our unofficial, yet widely agreed-upon, canon. Lutherans, as long as they retain any sense whatsoëver, will always have Bach; it's just a matter of finding other things to fill out the hymnal.)

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In other news: What makes art "Christian"? (Or Krustian, for that matter?) And, for Holy Week: famous last words.

Flannery; Sebastian

The more of Miss Flannery O'Connor I read, the more I realize how rich her works are. Presently I'm making my way through Everything That Rises Must Converge, and enjoying it thoroughly. Her stories are at times hilarious, and at times horrific. Sometimes it's hard to tell which. If there's a unifying characteristic of her main characters, it's that they're terribly unaware; the arc of each story is generally one in which this complacent ignorance is shaken apart. Grace is a fundamentally discomfiting, if not violent, undertaking.

"Well, I've never read O'Connor, but I'd like to start", you might say. "Should I then presume? And how should I begin?", you might continue, if you have a penchant for quoting Prufrock. The novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away, are excellent, but the short stories may be better to start with. I'll recommend my favorites (so far): "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", "The Artificial Nigger", "Good Country People" and "Greenleaf" are particularly good.

In other news, another thing I've been making my figurative way through is George Ritchie's complete Bach organ works. (They're not quite complete, though; I noticed that he's missing the chorale partita on Christ, der du bist der helle Tag.) The nice thing about these discs, other than the fine musicianship and recording quality, is that Ritchie has used a variety of American instruments, two of which are by Paul Fritts, who built our organ here at Notre Dame. (This reminds me: come, if you like, to my recital on April 18th—at 5:00pm, Eastern.) One could listen to Bach every day and still only understand a tiny bit of his genius, I think. Heck, one can play Bach every day and still only understand a tiny bit of his genius.

The Promise of Living

The promise of living with hope and thanksgiving

Is born of our loving our friends and our labor.

The promise of growing with faith and with knowing

Is born of our sharing our love with our neighbor.

The promise of living, the promise of growing

Is born of our singing in joy and thanksgiving.

No, that there's no verse by Mr Berry, though the sentiment is certainly akin. (He doesn't care to rhyme that much, anyway.) It's from The Tender Land, Aaron Copland's unfortunately neglected opera. It's sung to an original countermelody against the revivalist tune Zion's Walls, which he also arranged. (It so happened that I conducted that arrangement today in class; it's solid.) I wonder if the lyricist who wrote those words happened to believe them; can it be that intellectuals once had that sort of optimism, that sort of trust in the goodness of the human spirit? If so, what has changed?

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More devout readers, or at least the more liturgically inclined, will note that today is the Feast of the Annunciation. Over at the Episcopal lectionary I frequent, a Mr James Kiefer has written a fine meditation for this day.

Endurance (and Lemons)

One of the most interesting things I learned about mostly from PBS is polar exploration. I'm not entirely certain why the story of men (and their sled-dogs) trying to get to an arbitrary spot on the top or bottom of the map should be so compelling, but it is. (And yet I find the stories of Everest-climbers to be quite dull in comparison. Perhaps it is a matter of latitude. Or perhaps it is because the poles are the closest thing to a real conspiracy of cartographers.) Scott, Amundsen, Peary, Franklin, Shackleton... they're all fascinating. The failures are often more interesting than the successes; the 'successful' failures moreso. Shackleton's expedition, for example, failed utterly in its objective, but the way they managed to survive is far too good a story to make a decent movie: it beggars belief.

But I digress, as I am wont to do. What I really meant to do was provide a link I think you might find neat: Scott and Scurvy. How is it that a disease that was cured in Napoleonic times ended up perplexing doctors well into the twentieth century? It's a case of science gone awry—with deadly consequences.

A Threnody for Naperville

Is it possible to feel nostalgia for a time one has never directly known? For that, I suspect, may be what I feel every time I commute past the suburbs of Chicago. (I drove home yesterday for my Spring break, you see.) In my mind I can see the farmsteads and villages and acres and acres of woods and fields that once occupied that region. The strip malls and McMansions there now represent the death of all that went before: anything that was unique, or particular, or even praiseworthy is now overwhelmed in this monotonous sameness, this standardization.

Even the farmsteads, it must be admitted, represented a sort of death, for before them was nothing but prairie and virgin forest, mile upon mile, century upon century. But that first death was reversible; field passes swiftly enough into prairie. This second death is far more permanent. What hope is there for Naperville now that it is committed to a world defined by Wal-marts and highway off-ramps? It is a blessing, at least, that this world cannot long endure. I am an optimist in the sense that I know there is a sort of justice in the long term. Even if the world continues to run on oil after I am gone, I know that it cannot do so forever.

"These times we know much evil, little good / to steady us in faith." Indeed.

Oh, those magical Christians

I've been thinking, lately, about the "magical" elements of Christianity. And lo, in an article in the Jewish Review of Books ("It's not just for Jews anymore!"), I read this:

To put it crudely, if Christianity is a fantasy religion, then Judaism is a science fiction religion. If the former is individualistic, magical, and salvationist, the latter is collective, technical, and this-worldly.

The article, incidentally, was quite interesting; it asks, and attempts to answer, why there have been no great Jewish fantasy writers. But I digress: I'm wondering about the characterization of Christianity as "magical", which, I think, is not inaccurate. There are certainly elements of the religion that defy any sort of conventional logic (viz., transubstantiation, parthenogenesis, trinitarianism, &c.). In recent centuries, various sects have attempted to excise those elements that have proven increasingly baffling to modern man. The end result of this process is, I suppose, Unitarianism. My favorite Unitarian joke, if you must know, is this:

Q: How do you get a Unitarian family to leave town?
A: Burn a question mark in their front yard.

Last night while I was trying to fall asleep it occurred to me that, should one remove all the "magical" elements of Christianity, one is left without any sort of physical manifestation of the Divine whatsoëver. The Real Presence in the Eucharist? Out. The Incarnation? Nope. Miracles? Well, of course not. A de-magicized Christianity is, in fact, a good deal more "spiritual" and a lot less material.

Here I shall make an argumentum ad verecundiam: Wendell Berry says we need to be a good deal more cognizant that we are creatures of matter, so it must be true. (The implications of this are fodder for a great many other posts, but I shan't delve into that here.) I wonder, however, how a Unitarian, or a Jeffersonian agnostic, or certain Episcopalians, can back up this sentiment without recourse to that absurd idea that matter itself has been made divine.

From "Christian Discourses", Søren Kierkegaard

Father in Heaven, well we know that it is Thou
that givest both to will and to do, that also longing,
when it leads us to renew the fellowship with our Savior and Redeemer,
is from Thee. Father in Heaven, longing is Thy gift.

But when longing lays hold of us, oh, that we might lay hold of the longing;
when it would carry us away, that we might give ourselves up.
When Thou art near to summon us,
that we also might keep near to Thee in supplication.
When Thou in the longing dost offer us the highest good,
oh, that we might hold it fast!

Dies Cinerum

One of the small pleasures of attending such an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic university as Notre Dame is that people don't look at you funny for walking around with a smudge on your forehead today. (Of course, Lutherans and other saner Protestants also distribute ashes, but an ostensibly Lutheran school like Augustana is basically secular.)

It is a remarkable thing, this wearing of ashes. No other day of the year do we so boldly proclaim our identity as followers of that Jesus fellow. And how could we? Indeed, how can we, even for one day, presume to represent the moral teachings of Christ? We fail miserably, and are (rightly) judged as hypocrites. And yet God suffers this (or, at least, is content to let it continue). I suppose it is right that we are permitted to persist in our striving towards sanctity.

O-lim-picks

Christopher ("Christ-bearer"! Ha!) Hitchens may be an intolerable blowhard, but he happens to have some interesting thoughts on the Olympics (which, I understand, are going on now).

Have you ever had a discussion about higher education that wasn't polluted with babble about the college team and the amazingly lavish on-campus facilities for the cult of athletic warfare? Noticed how the sign of a bad high school getting toward its Columbine moment is that the jocks are in the saddle? Worried when retired generals appear on the screen and talk stupidly about "touchdowns" in Afghanistan? By a sort of Gresham's law, the emphasis on sports has a steadily reducing effect on the lowest common denominator, in its own field and in every other one that allows itself to be infected by it.

As usual, Hitchens has overstated his case in his rush to be "controversial", but there's something to be said about the sports-mania that afflicts our society. It is certainly obvious that international sports have very little, if anything, to do with promoting goodwill among nations. Bread and circuses, I say. Bread and circuses.

"Moral Luck"?

I'm not a regular reader of The New Yorker, but if I happen upon it (i.e., if I find it unused in the common kitchen area of the house), I'll give it a look-see. In an article on Van Gogh, there's a digression on Gauguin—who, like Wagner, happened to be a generally terrible man who made extraordinary art.

[Bernard] Williams points out that Gauguin's is a prime real-life case where doing the wrong thing—abandoning your wife and children and betraying your friends—appears to be morally justifiable, since the art made was, as it happened, great. Moral assessment, Williams suggests, has a strong component of sheer contingency and chance. You run a red light and no one notices; I run a red light and hit an old lady and I'm the worst guy in the world.
...
Gauguin is the original of the type, of whom Picasso is the most famous realization, of the artist as gambler—the solitary risk-taker, indifferent to anyone's welfare but his own and therefore capable of acts of independence and originality unknown to timid, orderly, nice people, acts that thrill and inspire new acts a century later. It is the goal of that kind of modern artist to run the red light and hit the old ladies—the old ladies of custom and convention. Where art since the Renaissance had attempted to limit luck in a system of inherited purpose and patterns, modern art demands that you press the pedal as hard as you can, and pray.

So that's what's wrong with modern art: the urge to upset people enough to be remembered for it by future generations, and the rejection of "inherited purpose". The great myth of modern art (of modern man, come to think of it) is that the artist is an autonomous individual whose actions, however abhorrent, may be justified by the acclaim of people unknown, or unborn.

It is far to easy for me to sit back in my armchair and complain, though. Let me talk of something I may be a bit more qualified to discuss: music. We see the same type among composers, as well: Wagner, Schoenberg, perhaps even Mahler(?!). But the world would be a far worse place without the music of these men. (For those uncertain about Schoenberg, I suggest you try his Gurrelieder, or Verklärte Nacht. Gorgeous pieces.) Would their great art have been possible if these men had not been egotistical bastards? I don't know.

Carcassonne

Distraction, as Mr Berry tells us, is inimical to discipline. (One assumes it is inimical to disciprine, as well.) This is unfortunate, as I recently have discovered a new source of distraction. Perhaps you are acquainted with that methodical German board game, Carcassonne? Well, I discovered that it is possible to play this game online (though it is not exactly the real thing; the online version is named after a different walled provençal city, Toulouse). If you happen to know how to play, perhaps we might play together sometime, eh?

Of course, I do feel a bit guilty, what with the distraction and inimicity to discipline. For my penance I intend to visit a local bookstore and buy the real thing, which I have espied in the window of said bookstore. I will then be able to play Carcassonne with real people, which I'm sure will be far more satisfying, anyway. (I'll continue to insist that people make that "doot-do-do-dooo" trumpet sound when claiming a city, though...)