"The Chill of Death"

"He who can," George Bernard Shaw observed, "does. He who cannot, teaches." It is, though not entirely unfounded, a rather cheap comment. It is an undeniably false comment with regards to Strunk and White. Anyone who doubts the advice given therein need merely read the essays of E.B. White: they are exemplary. Skim One Man's Meat, an essay collection of his, and you'll happen upon any number of fine passages.

On priorities: "We teach our child many things I don't believe in, and almost nothing I do believe in. We teach punctuality, but I do not honestly think there is any considerable good in punctuality, particularly if the enforcement of it disturbs the peace. My father taught me, by example, that the greatest defeat in life was to miss a train. Only after many years did I learn that an escaping train carries away with it nothing vital to my health. Railroad trains are such magnificent objects that we commonly mistake them for Destiny."

On church music: "The organ makes a curious whine, sentimental, grandiose — half cello, half bagpipes. ... Praise God from whom all blessings flow ... hesitatingly the assembled voices, embarrassed at the sudden sound of their own once-a-week excursion in piety, the too weak, the over strong, praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

On poets: "We would all like it if the bards would make themselves plain, or we think we would. The poets, however, are not easily diverted from their high mysterious ways. A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring."

In "Once More to the Lake", perhaps White's best essay, he dwells on the confusion, the duality, he experiences in taking his son to the same lake he visited as a boy. He is, at once, the boy he was and the father he has become — taking the place of his own father. White is too fine a writer to try and draw some greater conclusion from this. (He is not inclined, in any of the essays, towards tiresome moralizing.) He does not claim that it is a good or necessary thing for society that a man should know what it is to become his father. All the same, I cannot help but think it. I then wonder: what of those who cannot, or will not, have children? (To say nothing of the many who certainly should not.) Are they to always remain the child, and never the parent? Is it necessary to have one's own offspring in order to fully mature as a person? Or, rather, perhaps, is it necessary that one take responsibility for those placed into one's care? (Surely you know teachers and other mentors, without children, who have nonetheless served you as parental figures.) It is, in any case, worth thinking about. Can we only truly confront our mortality — as White does — by observing those who we once were?

Admirable Words, Vol. VIII

1. Diapason
   
2. Lambic
   
3. Naufrage
   
4. Paddock
   
5. Pate
   
6. Quaff
   
7. Samovar
   
8. Sinecure
   
9. Ucalegon
   
10. Ugsome

A Few More Preludes and Postludes

26 May (Trinity):
J.S. Bach: Fugue on Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, BWV 716
Niels Gade: Aleneste Gud i Himmerig
31 May (Visitation):
Girolamo Cavazzoni: Magnificat octavi toni
Johann Pachelbel: Meine Seele erhebet den Herren, P.362
2 June (Corpus Christi, observed):
Olivier Messiaen: Le banquet céleste
Alexandre Guilmant: Strophe sur l'hymne Pange lingua
(On the evening of the 2nd of June I will be presenting an organ-and-voice recital in observance of Corpus Christi, mind you.)
9 June:
Jean Langlais: Suite Médiévale - II. Tiento
J.S. Bach: Nun ruhen alle Wälder, BWV 756

For further reference, please consult past entries:
March 2013 - May 2013 | January 2013 - March 2013 | November 2012 - January 2013 | September 2012 - November 2012 | May 2012 - August 2012 | April 2012 - May 2012 | February 2012 - April 2012 | January 2012 - February 2012 | November 2011 - December 2011

June 11th through July 4th I will once again be in Europe, as it happens. This year's itinerary includes a bevy of Luther and Bach sites, mostly in Thuringia, and then Hamburg, Stade, Lübeck, Magdeburg (with a concert in nearby Niederndodeleben), and Prague.

A Recital for Corpus Christi

Last year an organist friend of mine presented what I somewhat derisively called a "Eucharistic Piety Concert". I suppose he'll take some satisfaction in seeing that I am now doing the same, this upcoming June 2nd (which is the Feast of Corpus Christi, observed). So as not to bore the audience too terribly by playing only organ music, I have invited a very talented soprano friend of mine, a Miss Katie B., to join me for some selections. You are, dear reader, as ever, most heartily invited.

"O Sacred Banquet": A Recital for the Feast of Corpus Christi
4:30pm Sunday, June 2nd
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Dixon, Illinois

• J.S. Bach (1685-1750): Prelude and Fugue in D Major, BWV 532
  
• Mode V: Adoro te devote
  
• Gerald Near (b. 1942): Prelude and Four Variations on "Adoro te devote"
  
• César Franck (1822-1890): Panis angelicus, Op. 12, Mvt. 5
  
• Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992): Le banquet céleste
  
• Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904): "God Is My Shepherd", Op. 99, No. 4
  
• Harold Darke (1888-1976): Meditation on "Brother James' Air"
  
• Mode V: O sacrum convivium
  
• Louis Vierne (1870-1937): Carillon, Op. 31, No. 21

Arthur Schopenhauer, Fanboy

Alex Ross (whose The Rest Is Noise you should read. Go get it) alerts us to an account (related in David Cartwright's biography) of Schopenhauer and his musical idol, Rossini:

In 1856, Rossini came to Frankfurt, Schopenhauer's home town, and was seen dining at the Englischer Hof, the philosopher's favorite spot. Alerted in advance, Schopenhauer arranged with the management to be seated near the composer. But he did not rise to say hello; instead, too shy or too proud, he lingered in Rossini's vicinity for the duration of the meal.

That Schopenhauer, that titan of Teutonic seriousness, should be so infatuated with the rather silly music of Rossini, is curious. To be certain, Rossini has his moments; the man could write an overture. But one doubts that his musical idiom was really conducive to expressing the full range of human experience. His Stabat Mater is a particularly egregious example. The depth of the despair of the Theotokos, whose heart was pierced also, is expressed as an hour-long overblown extroverted operatic tour-de-force. I heard the tenor aria "Cujus animam" at a recital once, and was hard-pressed to keep from laughing at the incongruïty.

And yet it is satisfying, somehow, that Schopenhauer took a dim view of Wagner (who, in turn, idolized him, regardless). De gustibus non est disputandum, at any rate.

There Is but One, and That One Ever

Allow me to present a first in the history of this-a-here web-log: a repost. There is no other Easter poem I like better than George Herbert's "Easter", and Ralph Vaughan Williams's setting of it (from his Five Mystical Songs) is very fine indeed.


EASTER, +George Herbert (1593-1633)

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.

Spy Wednesday

There is a tradition for calling the Wednesday in Holy Week "Spy Wednesday", though I am not certain how widespread this usage is. At first I thought it might be exclusive to certain Romans (among whom, indeed, I first heard it), though I am informed that Anglicans also use the term. In any case, I like it: it is certainly more evocative than "Holy Wednesday", just like "Maundy Thursday" is better than "Holy Thursday". (Though I have found multitudes of people who pronounce Maundy as "Maun-day", as if it were some sort of bastardization of "Monday". The name probably comes from the Latin mandatum, referring to the new commandment Christ spoke of, shortly after washing the disciples' feet. This is the sort of thing people should know.) The name "Spy Wednesday" presumably comes from the trouble Judas Iscariot was getting up to, agreeing to betray Jesus to the chief priests. (So Judas was a spy, I guess? Expect to see my screenplay, Judas Iscariot: International Man of Mystery, any day now. I'm sure there's a clever tagline for that to be written. A Bond pun, perhaps? Or something about thirty shekels?)

It is no surprise that the character of Judas should be a matter of some fascination for modern man. What could drive someone to betray Jesus? Doubt? Disillusionment? Mere greed? No single reason really seems sufficient.
Borges addresses the idea of Judas in a pseudo-scholarly article (or, perhaps more accurately, a scholarly pseudo-article), Tres versiones de Judas. The work is short enough that I recommend you go ahead and read it presently. If you are accustomed to Borges, it is a deliciously characteristic article.

(An aside: Borges writes that

Judas buscó el Infierno, porque la dicha del Señor le bastaba. Pensó que la felicidad, como el bien, es un atributo divino y que no deben usurparlo los hombres.

This resonates curiously with something else I have been pondering, the idea of Christian happiness. I sent a spoof comparing horrible prosperity theology to Schopenhauer to a correspondent, who wrote back with some salient points about the nature of Christian suffering. Apparently, in her essay collection The Sovereignty of Good — which I must needs pick up sometime — Iris Murdoch writes that the idea of Christianity's emphasis on suffering as the chief end of human life is a misconception, brought about by Enlightenment thought. Borges had read his Schopenhauer, to be certain.)

Anyway, Borges presents an altogether not-unsympathetic view of Judas, though, as always, it is difficult to determine how sincere he (Borges) is. It is all absurd heresy, anyway. I suppose Borges delighted in the thought.

Dante, of course, places Judas in what is presumably the very worst part of hell, being eternally eaten by the most unpleasant of the three mouths of the devil. In other literature, however, Judas is afforded some small mercies. In the Navigatio Sancti Brendani, St. Brendan and his explorers find Judas sitting on a miserable rock in the middle of a storm-tossed sea. Yet this is in fact a respite compared to the torment he suffers in hell: Ego sum infelicissimus Judas atque negociator pessimus, he says; non pro meo merito habeo istum locum sed pro misericortia ineffabili Jhesu Christi. (In an oddly specific listing, Judas is spared on Sundays, between Christmas and Epiphany, from Easter to Pentecost, and on the feasts of the Purification and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.) Even for the worst sinner, the "ineffable mercy of Jesus Christ" applies. We might take some comfort in this.

Organ Preludes and Postludes through Whitsunday

17 March (Lent V, Judica):
Flor Peeters: Audi, benigne Conditor
Johann Philipp Kirnberger: Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten
24 March (Palm Sunday):
Jehan Alain: Litanies, JA 119
28 March (Maundy Thursday):
Gerald Near: Ubi caritas et amor
30 March (Easter Vigil):
Théodore Dubois: Toccata in G Major
31 March (Easter Sunday):
Johann Pachelbel: Christ lag in Todesbanden, P. 58
Théodore Dubois: Toccata in G Major (reprised)
7 April (Second Sunday of Easter):
Jean-François Dandrieu: Offertoire sur «O filii et filiae»
Joseph Renner: Victimae paschali laudes, Op. 33, No. 6
8 April (Annunciation, transferred from Holy Week):
Dieterich Buxtehude: Herr Christ, der einig Gottes Sohn, BuxWV 191
Max Reger: Wie schön leucht't uns der Morgenstern, Op. 135a, No. 29
14 April (Third Sunday of Easter):
Johann Pachelbel: Jesus Christus, unser Heiland, P. 218
J.S. Bach: Erstanden ist der heilge Christ, BWV 628
21 April (Fourth Sunday of Easter):
Harold Darke: Meditation on Brother James's Air
Max Reger: Christ ist erstanden, Op. 79b, No. 8
28 April (Fifth Sunday of Easter):
Horatio Parker: Revery, Op. 67, No. 2
J.S. Bach: Heut triumphieret Gottes Sohn, BWV 630
5 May (Sixth Sunday of Easter):
Joseph Jongen: Chant de mai, Op. 53, No. 1
J.S. Bach: Jesus Christus, unser Heiland, BWV 626
9 May (Ascension):
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Bryn Calfaria
Marcel Dupré: Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g'mein, Op. 28, No. 58
12 May (Seventh Sunday of Easter):
J.S. Bach: Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele, BWV 654
Johann Heinrich Buttstedt: Christ lag in Todesbanden
19 May (Pentecost):
Dieterich Buxtehude: Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott, BuxWV 199
J.S. Bach: Komm, Gott Schöpfer, heiliger Geist, BWV 667

Pure and Costly Nard

(Or "pure and costly nardus", as Coverdale puts it; "and the house was full of the savoure of the oyntment.")

As sometimes happens, I found today's Gospel reading to be interesting. John's account of the woman with the alabaster box — we presume it is the same story as that related by the synoptics (Matthew 26:6-13 and Mark 14:3-9; Luke has an account of a sinful woman anointing Jesus, but it takes place in a Pharisee's house, so I will leave discussion of that story for another time) — adds some notable details. John identifies the woman as Mary, whom we take from the context to be the sister of Martha and Lazarus. Rather than merely pour the ointment on Jesus' head, the woman in John's account anoints his feet, wiping them with her hair (a messy detail that always stuck in my mind; how does one get nard-and-foot-dust out of one's hair?). In all three accounts, disciples protest the extravagance of spending 300 denarii (nearly a year's wages) on perfume, but in John the complainer is none other than Judas (who is said to be embezzling from the apostolic purse). Now, on the face of it, this seems a rather reasonable objection, given Scripture's emphasis on providing for the poor (and orphans and widows and whatnot). But Jesus dismisses the idea: leave her alone, as she anointing me for my burial. In Matthew and Mark he foretells that the (here unnamed) woman will be known the world over for her act. In all three versions the scene ends rather abruptly. In the synoptics it is followed by Judas going to the chief priests to agree to hand over Jesus. (And yet Judas, in relation to the ointment-incident, is only mentioned in John. But it is tempting to connect his rebuke and his decision to betray Jesus, isn't it?) In John it is immediately followed by the Palm Sunday account.

What are we to make of the woman with the alabaster box? She is, like the Magi, a saint whose offering to the Lord appears unnecessary. Such saints offer a measure of hope to those of us whose profession is, ultimately, quite useless. The world needs its Marthas, to be sure: they are the people who accomplish the real and quite necessary work that needs to be done. But it is also acceptable to God — apparently — that we should, from time to time, sit at his feet. The Benedictine ethos sums it up quite nicely: we are to work, yes, but also to pray. Devotion — expressed in its various useless guises of art, music, verse; the bow before the altar, the incense arising, the overpriced perfume anointing the Lord's feet — is no less necessary.

Lenten Impatience

Lent, for all its inconveniences, is quickly becoming one of my favorite seasons. (Ah, well, the idea of a "favorite season" is less than useful. Advent and Christmas and Easter are also some of my favorite seasons. One might observe, I suppose, that the tempus per annum is less interesting, except for its various feast days, many of which are regrettably overlooked.) I appreciate Lent because it is a time in which we are encouraged to change.

Change, though perhaps uncomfortable, is preferable to stasis. I grow most melancholy when I feel myself trapped in the same patterns — of incuriosity, of inefficiency, of sin — and unable to change them. Not for nothing is Dante's hell a place of eternal immutableness: its denizens are forever trapped in the state they have chosen. We may, therefore, be eager — indeed, impatient — to better ourselves, to improve our situation. And yet the higher power that orders our personal change is not beholden to our impatience. In the great majority of cases, we only notice personal changes after a length of time, if at all. I suppose we must learn to wait for such things.

The other day an acquaintance posted a germane poem (on, sigh, Facebook). I'll let the Jesuït speak for himself.

Patient Trust, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

Admirable Words, Vol. VII

1. Calumny
   
2. Escutcheon
   
3. Harquebus
   
4. Mumblety-peg
   
5. Poltroon
   
6. Rumbustious
   
7. Sobriquet
   
8. Suzerain
   
9. Turves
   
10. Usufruct

Transfiguration, Observed?

This evening St. Luke's observed the Feast of the Transfiguration with a chant evensong. I am pleased to report that it went well. (And anyway, I appreciate any excuse to use incense and vest properly for evensong — it is one of the few occasions when I am permitted to wear my academic hood over my cassock and surplice.) I adapted the order of worship myself, drawing on both the vespers office from the Liber — which has a lovely series of antiphons drawn from Matthew's account of the Transfiguration — and the BCP (Rite I, of course).

There are, however, several questions about the observance of this particular feast. The Transfiguration was observed in the East by the 4th or 5th century, but is not mentioned in Western sources until around 850. As, of course, different dioceses had their particular calendars, the date of the feast was not consistent. Many observed it on August 6th, but it was also celebrated on July 27th (England and Gaul), March 17th (Meissen), and September 3rd (Halberstadt), among other dates. The feast was not universally authorized until 1456, when Callixtus III instituted it in commemoration of the defeat of the Turks at Belgrade. The date of the feast was established then as August 6th, the day the news of the Christian victory reached Rome. But the siege of Belgrade was lifted on July 22nd, which is of course the feast of Mary Magdalene. And why, one wonders, did Rome not already observe August 6th as the feast of St. Dominic, who died on that date in 1221 (and was canonized only thirteen years later)? There is no satisfying answer. Many early Reformers, being by nature a suspicious breed, viewed the feast as a too-recent innovation, and removed it from the calendar. (It has gradually crept back in.) Add to this confusion the modern custom of observing the Transfiguration on the last Sunday before Lent (the Sunday formerly known as Quinquagesima), for reasons that are not entirely clear. The Revised Common Lectionary has transfiguration readings for that Sunday every year in the three-year cycle, while the current BCP has transfiguration readings for that Sunday in Years B and C. (It was thus fortuitous for our purposes at St. Luke's that this is Year C.) The Romans have placed transfiguration readings on the second Sunday of Lent, but are, apparently, still keeping the feast on its (somewhat) original August date. Those Lutherans lucky enough to be using the historic one-year lectionary — oh, to be able to hear Bach's cantatas in their proper context! — observe the Transfiguration during the Epiphany season, on the Sunday before Septuagesima. (This year, for example, the feast was January 20th.)

All of this confusion probably stems, in part, from the difficulty in placing the Transfiguration in context in the life and ministry of Jesus. Just what, exactly, does this particular miracle mean? Is it the culmination of his early years, or just another event in his ministry? And, what's more, should that matter? To what extent should the liturgical year mirror the life of Christ? I would suggest that attempts to change the calendar to fit the order of events in the Gospels (like the moving of the regrettably under-observed Feast of the Visitation) are not particularly helpful. But then, I am terribly conservative, if not reäctionary, in my liturgical tastes.

For some more information (and a kindred spirit in matters liturgical), I'll refer you to Fr A, who muses on the (neat) custom of blessing grapes at Transfiguration and addresses the awkwardness of a second feast.

Bring Up the Bodies

People will insist on lending me books. I disappoint most of them, as I rarely find myself able to devote the time needed to properly digest a book, but I find it flattering, nonetheless, that people consider me someone to lend books to. The most recent loan, however, I have been reading with some vigor: Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies. It is a sequel to Wolf Hall, which I liked very much, and apparently it is the second in a projected Cromwell trilogy.

For anyone with a passing knowledge of Tudor history, the book should have little suspense: we know, after all, how all of the characters end up. (In both Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies there are, at the beginning of the book, lists of characters with descriptions, a sort of dramatis personae that eliminates the need for tiresome exposition.) For every character we know it is just a matter of counting down the years, the months, the days, until their demise (usually violent, in that time, it seems). And yet Mantel is a fine enough author to make it all gripping. We know Anne Boleyn's fate, of course, and Catherine of Aragon's, and Thomas Cromwell's, but it is still fascinating to read about them as Mantel has written. She has managed to make us root for a man of questionable integrity. As she writes it, Cromwell is a modern man who happens to have lived in the late Renaissance. But it's not so hacky as that might sound; he is a man of unsure religious conviction, a moneylender (which is to say, capitalist), lawyer, extortionist, possibly a murderer. But he is sympathetic, as she writes him.

It is also helpful that Mantel is capable of simply stunning prose:

When he sleeps he dreams of the fruit of the Garden of Eden, outstretched in Eve's plump hand. He wakes momentarily: if the fruit is ripe, when did those boughs blossom? In what possible month, in what possible spring? Schoolmen will have addressed the question. A dozen furrowed generations. Tonsured heads bent. Chilblained fingers fumbling scrolls. It's the sort of silly question monks are made for. I'll ask Cranmer, he thinks: my archbishop.
...
He sleeps again and dreams of the flowers made before the dawn of the world. They are made of white silk. There is no bush or stem to pluck them from. They lie on the bare uncreated ground.