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.)