Christ ist erstanden

"The Resurrection", from Matthias Grünewald's stunning Isenheim Altarpiece. This is the primary reason I want to visit Alsace.

Lutheran Worship, the old blue hymnal we used to use, had its flaws — and they were numerous — but one thing I liked very much about it was its pairing of two particular Easter hymns, Christ lag in Todesbanden (#123) and Christ ist erstanden (#124), on facing pages: it's a grand thing to go from one great melody to another. (They're both based on everyone's favorite sequence, Victimae paschali laudes, anyway.) For your paschal edification, here are settings of each hymn:

J.S. Bach: Christ lag in Todesbanden, chorale, the second movement of BWV 4.


Michael Praetorius: Christ ist erstanden, from Polyhymnia Caduceatrix et Panegyrica (1619).

Media vita in morte sumus

In the midst of life we are in death:
of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord?

Recently I've been looking into Tudor church music, especially the sort written during the reign of Mary I. (Foxe's Book of Martyrs notes that "Mary, having succeeded by false promises in obtaining the crown, speedily commenced the execution of her avowed intention of extirpating and burning every Protestant." So you see, children, propaganda is not so modern an invention as we sometimes think.)

The casual listener of classical music may know the name Thomas Tallis, but it is far less likely he knows that of John Sheppard (c.1515-1558), who also wrote music at about the same time. (Oh, the vicissitudes of musical popularity!) Sheppard's work is every bit as impressive as that of his better-known contemporary. Chief among his compositions is a remarkable six-voice setting of the text Media vita, the antiphon for the Nunc Dimittis at Compline on major feast days in the two weeks before Passion Sunday. Though in the one surviving source for this motet (Oxford: Christ Church Library, Mus. 979-983) the tenor partbook is missing, there are several reconstructions, including one by the Tallis Scholars.

Listen: John Sheppard - Media vita,
performed by the Tallis Scholars (dir. Peter Phillips), available here

The word "poignant", like the word "unique", is terribly overused these days, but I daresay that this motet is poignant; in any case it is well-suited for Lent. It may not even be hyperbole to say that Sheppard's Media vita is one of the most important works of English polyphony.

Music Links Round-up

• Click the squares: Wondering why there are no dissonances? 'Cause it's a pentatonic scale!
  
• Nokia fugue: Not bad fugal writing, really. The motivic derivations are not quite as tight as Bach (cf. BWV 547), but there are nice little surprises. (Look for the inversion, for example.)
  
• Compleat organ works of Bach, available for free download
  
• Arvo Pärt Information Archive
  
• Bizarre Musical Deaths
  
• Our Polyphony Class Web-site: with recordings of Renaissance polyphony by our professor's (pretty good) ensemble, Pomerium
  

And, for good measure, some web-logs concerning matters musical:
Chantblog
Magister Perotinus
Pipe Organs (dormant, but its archives are worth giving a look-see)

Humor and Religion

It has been a general guideline of mine, for years, now, not to trust anyone without a sense of humor. Humor is a good and worthwhile thing, and I will have no truck with anyone who insists on doing without it. (Perhaps there are some people who never acquired a proper sense of humor; if so, these are wretches to be pitied. What I am chiefly concerned with, here, is the sort of person who has a sense of humor and seeks to stifle it.) The particular misconception of the humorless is that lightheartedness somehow contradicts the effort to take things seriously, that humor is somehow the opposite of earnestness.

I am sorry to say that there are a great many religious people who feel (and act) this way. Many of them are convinced that religion is A Very Serious Thing Indeed, and that any attempt to acknowledge the inherent humor of certain things (dropped thuribles, outlandish lectors, ridiculous vestments) would be to detract from the dignity and reverence and decorum due to the Mass.

(An aside: it's always about the dignity and reverence and decorum of the Mass, in some Roman Catholic circles. What is dignity and reverence and decorum, anyway? Is it a Mass where nobody smiles, or acknowledges the presence of others? Is proper reverence so easily confused with catatonic rigidity? Mind you, I shudder as much as the next person at the thought of those horror stories of post-Vatican II liturgies — beach balls at Mass, rainbow vestments — but one can acknowledge the human dimension of the liturgy without resorting to such excesses. In any case, it might be worth pointing out that regrettably varicolored vestments are not the sole province of hippies and Franciscans.)

But where was I? Oh, yes, humor. Would you believe, like St. John Chrysostom — or Jorge the monk in Eco's The Name of the Rose — that Christ never laughed? I certainly hope not; there's enough to be construed as humor in the Gospels to suggest that he did. (Roman Catholics may take particular satisfaction in that the Church was founded on a pun.)

In any case, if you would associate with religious types at all, I would suggest the sort with a sense of humor: most Anglicans, for example. Avoid the dire sort of fundamentalists (of both Protestant and Papist persuasions). As for me, I shall be having a Life of Brian viewing party next Sunday.

Miscellaneous Links:
A Joking Matter: And Jesus Laughed
On the Second Book of Aristotle's Poetics (his lost treatise on Comedy)
Umberto Eco web-site

The Venice Baroque Orchestra

This evening I attended a performance by the Venice Baroque Orchestra. It was quite good. The program included concerti by Albinoni (yes, he of the famous Adagio. Except that that particular Adagio was not actually written by him), Galuppi, Tartini, and of course Vivaldi. The popular insult for Vivaldi is that he wrote the same concerto five hundred times; indeed, in mediocre performances this often comes across as accurate. But in a really good performance — like the one I heard tonight, fortunately — the music sounds much more inspired. (The key for the performer, I suspect, is to become aware of the improvisatory nature of the music. Paradoxically, one must work far harder to make music sound as though it were improvised.) When it is performed well, one can understand why Bach thought so highly of the music of his contemporary.

Incidentally, I think I might look into becoming a theorbist. Surely the demand for skilled players of the theorbo is great, is it not? (Not every over-eager high schooler with some slight skill at playing the theorbo is deciding to do it for a living — now is he? — unlike the case in certain other instruments, the blogger added, insultingly.) And the fellow who played it tonight looked to be having an awful lot of fun.