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.

Organ Preludes & Postludes through Laetare

5 January (Installation of Fr R.):
J.S. Bach: Prelude and Fugue in G Major, BWV 541
Jean Langlais: Pasticcio, Op. 91, No. 10
6 January (Epiphany):
Johann Pachelbel: Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, P.46
Louis Vierne: Carillon, Op. 31, No. 21
13 January (Epiphany I, Baptism of the Lord):
Anonymous (from the Lüneburg Tablature): Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam
Gerald Near: Omnes qui in Christo
20 January (Epiphany II):
Niels Gade: Allegretto, Op. 22, No. 2
Gustav Adolf Merkel: Allegretto, Op. 102, No. 1
27 January (Epiphany III; Septuagesima):
Marcel Dupré: Invention, Op. 50, No. 2
Alexandre-Pierre-François Boëly: Fughetta in D minor
2 February (Candlemas):
Marcel Dupré: Élévation (Très modéré), Op. 32, No. 2
Marcel Dupré: Herr Gott, nun schleuss den Himmel auf, Op. 28, No. 31
3 February (Epiphany IV; Sexagesima):
Charles Villiers Stanford: Prelude in Form of a Minuet, Op. 88, No. 1
Max Reger: Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier, Op. 138a, No. 14
10 February (Transfiguration; Quinquagesima):
Paul Hindemith: Sonata No. 2 - I. Lebhaft
Friedrich Wilhelm Zachau: Herr Jesu Christ, wahr Mensch und Gott, LV 32
13 February (Ash Wednesday):
Jeanne Demessieux: Attende Domine, Op. 8, No. 3
Gottfried August Homilius: Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott
17 February (Lent I, Invocavit):
J.S. Bach: Christus, der uns selig macht, BWV 747
J.S. Bach: Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten, BWV 690
24 February (Lent II, Reminiscere):
J.S. Bach: Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639
Friedrich Wilhelm Zachau: Ach Gott vom Himmel sieh darein, LV 16
3 March (Lent III, Oculi):
J.S. Bach: O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß, BWV 622
Michael Praetorius: Sinfonia
10 March (Lent IV, Laetare):
J.S. Bach: Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 610
Max Reger: Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin, Op. 79b, No. 5

St. Stephen's Day

Per multas tribulationes oportet nos intrare in regnum Dei.

Actus Apostolorum 14:21

The life of a church musician being unmitigated misery and self-loathing in the days leading up to Christmas, it really is quite a relief when the last note of music ceases to resound after the last Mass of Christmas Day. (Honesty compels me to admit that I exaggerate, slightly. But this year I anticipated Christmas Eve as the sinner anticipates the Day of Judgement: waiting to be consigned to the eternal fire, to eat nought but burning-hot coals and drink nought but burning-hot cola. I must somehow learn not to worry on behalf of other musicians, or I shall have to find some other vocation.)

Ah, but now, now it is Christmas, at least until Twelfth Night. (I have plans for Epiphany, as the Bishop is visiting, but preparing solo organ music inspires me with comparatively little dread.) And today is Boxing Day, or the Feast of St. Stephen the Protomartyr, if you prefer. Diplomacy was not Stephen's forte, to be certain. It takes a certain foolhardiness, or perhaps blissful unawareness, to, when facing a crowd quite ready to stone you, address them thusly:

Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.

It is curious that Christians should so honor a man who pretty clearly brought his martyrdom upon himself. There must be a line, somewhere, between willingness to profess one's faith and eagerness for martyrdom. Perhaps that is the same line I must learn to draw between doing one's job and suffering for one's job. Hmm.

In any case, permit me to wish you, dear reader, "a wonderful Christmastime" (as Paul McCartney so catchily and irritatingly put it).

Inward Digestion

Yesterday a phrase was running through my head: "to read, mark, and inwardly digest". I recognized that it is a perfectly Cranmerian phrase, but knew not where I had last heard or read it. A cursory search reveals that it comes from the collect for Advent II:

BLESSED lord, which hast caused all holy Scriptures to bee written for our learnyng; graunte us that we maye in suche wise heare them, read, marke, learne, and inwardly digeste them; that by pacience, and coumfort of thy holy woorde, we may embrace, and ever holde fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast geven us in our saviour Jesus Christe.

Now, that's all well and good, but, regrettably, I had not heard this collect in either of my churches this past Sunday. (Pity the poor ELCA, which has quite obviously given up any pretensions to beautiful language in its published liturgies. The Episcopalians should know better, I think.) The Revised Common Lectionary collect for Advent II is an insipid affair:

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

There's no comparison: Cranmer's has an immediacy, not to mention a memorable quality, that the newer one utterly lacks.

The question does arise: why should a phrase from the Advent II collect come to mind, quite without my conscious awareness of its origin, the day after the second Sunday in Advent? I can only suggest that this is one of the most important justifications for being well-read: that we should have inwardly digested meaningful turns of phrase. How can a English-speaking man claim to partake in Western Civilization without a thorough knowledge of the Authorised Version, of the Book of Common Prayer, of Shakespeare? (One might continue this litany, but the further towards the present one goes, the more contentious the listing.)

On a related point, I stumbled across (or acrost, as some are wont to say) an article on epigraphs today. It quite rightly recognizes that, in the use of epigraphs, we place ourselves in a living tradition of thought, a conversation with the quick and the dead.

"Patron Saints of the Unnecessary"

For some time now, I have been interested in the Magi, among other New Testament characters (e.g. Pilate, the three women on Easter morning). And lo, I encountered an interesting observation about the Magi in an article (of uneven quality, but worth a look-see, I think) on Evelyn Waugh's Helena, which I have not read but hope to read someday. The Magi, "attended by what outlandish liveries, laden with such preposterous gifts" (except the gold, perhaps), represent, in some way, all of us artists who offer our gloriously useless gifts: of music, of art, of words. Helena, the title character, addresses the Magi: "For His sake who did not reject your curious gifts, pray always for all the learned, the oblique, and the delicate." That's not a bad prayer, I think. Certainly we learned, oblique, and delicate sorts need prayers as well.

(My dear reader will forgive this blog-post better suited to Epiphany, I hope, even though we are not yet even in Advent. The church musician is always planning ahead, anyway. I have music planned through the new year, and am feverishly envisioning an organ recital for Transfiguration Sunday.)

Something Rich and Strange

I have succumbed and already begun listening to Christmas music. Well, not just any Christmas music. I had the great fortune of finding that recording of the Praetorius Mass for Christmas Day (by Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort, recorded in Roskilde Cathedral, which I can attest is a remarkable space) in a used records shop in Iowa City, and I simply had to buy it. It may be one of my ten favorite records. (I couldn't tell you the complete list, though I should say the Klemperer recording of the Brahms Requiem is always on it.) There's something about the music of that era (Praetorius's, that is) that is simultaneously quite familiar (we still sing some of the hymns — In dulci jubilo and Wie schön leuchtet, for example) and yet wonderfully strange. (McCreesh's recording accentuates the strangeness, in a way, by using period instruments. Shawms and krummhorns and sackbutts and all.) It is therefore an excellent fit for the Christmas season, I think.

It strikes me that we don't often recognize how strange the principal feasts of the Christian year are. Consider, for example, Christmas. How bizarre that God, this divine, omnipotent, sempiternal being, should take our flesh! How bizarre that a virgin should conceive and bear a son! This, this is the solution to the string of catastrophes that is human history: this profoundly strange plan that God should become incarnate in order to die. Christians, especially those raised in the faith from an early age, become desensitized to the very oddness of it all. (This is one reason why I am not altogether unhappy that we are rapidly losing any sense of being a Christian society: in a world permeated by Christian belief, one can discount Christian doctrine without the inconvenience of actually considering it. In a society that is materialist by default, Christianity may present a viable alternative.)

I think that the liturgical musician, in planning Advent and Christmas music, should take this into account. The hymns of the Christmas season are undoubtedly the most familiar in all the repertoire: even non-Christians are acquainted with them, thanks to that horrible custom of blasting Christmas music in public spaces from the day after Thanksgiving until December 25th. We church musicians must provide some measure of comfort, of course. I could not countenance a Christmas without Es ist ein Ros entsprungen or In the Bleak Midwinter. But I suggest that it may be beneficial to throw in, occasionally, a lesser-known hymn. Try Quem pastores, or the Huron Carol. (Perhaps the latter is quite common in Canada. But it isn't here.) We all need reminding that religion is not merely a source of thoughtless platitudes: it should discomfort and challenge us, at times, as well.

Attention Anglophile Organists:

The other day an Orgelbauer friend of mine had an excellent idea that I feel compelled to disseminate. We were watching Midsomer Murders and he commented that its theme would make an interesting basis for a chorale prelude (or, rather, a television programme theme music prelude, as it were).

To wit: I humbly suggest that all interested Anglophile organists select theme music from a British television show and compose a chorale prelude upon it. I shall accept all entries, Finale-ize them, make a very pretty title page and table of contents, and send a pdf copy of the compleat collection to anyone who might want it. To any interested dear reader, I entreat you: please feel welcome to forward this prospectus to anyone you know to whom it might appeal. You might leave a comment on this-a-here web-log, if you wish to express interest. Rather than have duplicates, though, I suggest we each claim a particular show's theme. As for me, I have selected the theme from Blackadder.

(I suppose we might open the idea up to all television shows of any origin, not just British ones. But for some reason the prospect of limiting the project a bit appeals to me. You needn't pay me any heed, though.)

Since organists are, in general, busy folks, I therefore suggest this might be a long-term project, lasting, perhaps, years. Oh well. I offer it for your consideration.