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.
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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.