Late August Miscellany

1. I've been listening to that Sufjan EP some more. It is baroque stuff, and by "baroque" I use the definition Borges gave us in his second preface to the Historia universal de la infamia:

Yo diría que barroco es aquel estilo que deliberadamente agota (o quiere agotar) sus posibilidades y que linda con su propia caricatura. ... [Y]o diría que es barroca la etapa final de todo arte, cuando éste exhibe y dilapida sus medios.

This overreach—and yes, I do consider it overreaching—cannot last forever. Once given resources are exhausted and the artist finally realizes it he must make drastic reductions or cease creating altogether. Either Sufjan will follow this EP (and the recently-announced new album, which sounds like similar stuff) with a pared-down release, or he will burn out by making increasingly busy and opaque music.

2. File under coincidences, ecclesiastic: just this evening I received an invitation to play a noontime concert at the Episcopal Cathedral in Indianapolis (following the Friday noon Eucharist, sometime in the next few months), where I attended this past July when I was in that city. They have two fine instruments (I can't speak for the third, the little one), but I'm leaning towards the Taylor & Boody, as I believe I'd like to do an all-Buxtehude concert...

3. Cantoring at Mass tomorrow; you may watch it on the internets, if you insist. I get to wear me a surplice! Will inform if it has lace.

Contra Academicos

I worry, as I am wont to do (despite certain advice to the contrary). Lately, I've been worrying about the MSM program at Notre Dame (among other things). Are we students wise to commit ourselves into the hands of a group of people—that is, professors—who have dedicated themselves to the life of the mind? How many of my professors know where their food comes from? (They need not know how to prune an apple tree, or plow a furrow, but ideally they'd know people who can.) More importantly, how many of them live within an hour's drive of their families? How many of them have a real sense of place? (I don't mean to besmirch any of my teachers, mind you. I respect and admire them a great deal. One must think about these things, is all.)

I wonder about the future of the program. I don't mean to say that churches don't need qualified musicians; indeed, I'd like to think that sacred music is a ministry of great importance, one that should have well-trained ministers. But I wonder whether we students are being trained for real jobs. The organists, I suppose, should be able to find some work: nearly all of us can sing and conduct, even if we're not very good at it. I worry, though, whether those students being trained in singing or conducting alone will be able to find churches that can support them if they cannot play organ (or even piano) well enough to lead a congregation. (And the program is being expanded to include more of them! Where are all these churches big enough to hire a full-time choral conductor? As for full-time cantors, well, I don't know if there is such a thing.) Perhaps I'm just being pessimistic. I just hope that the goals of the program are grounded in reality—as grounded, ideally, as the teachers should be.

Regarding New Acquaintances

Well, school is about to start again here at Notre Dame. The bevy of preparatory activities includes several events designed to help the sacred music students better get to know each other. (It being only a two-year program, we lose half the people we knew last year and must acquaint ourselves with the newbies. That is the technical term, "newbies", correct?)

I find meeting new people to be an intimidating prospect. People you know are at least used to your foibles; with established acquaintances there is the illusion of knowing each other. With new people there's no set of attributes you can comfortably attribute to them (easily, or fairly, anyway). I am, of course, pessimistic that any two people can really know each other in a deep sense, but it is disarming nonetheless to not have even the impression of knowing someone. There is some consolation in the fact that organists tend to be good-natured (if eccentric) types.

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In other news, it seems Sufjan Stevens has released a new EP in a sneaky manner: he hadn't announced he was working on it or anything. You may give it a listen (or even purchase it) here. I rather wish Mr Stevens would move away from all those artsy types in Brooklyn and move back to the Midwest. Need one live a bohemian lifestyle to produce art? I certainly hope not.

On Drink, and Drunks

I have decided that I am willing to give Riesling another try. (Heretofore my opinion of it was much the same as my opinion of diesel, the taste of which I had not considered dissimilar.) My next step, I suppose, is to obtain some unobjectionable examples of said wine. I therefore ask your advice, dear reader: if you happen to have particular Riesling preferences, I would like to know them.

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As a college student I have learned far more about drunks than I ever intended. It had never occurred to me, however, to create a taxonomy of drunks. It did occur to Thomas Nashe, who includes one in Pierce Penilesse his Supplication to the Divell. I present it here, without commentary and with only the slightest editing; one hopes you can manage the Elizabethan spelling.

Nor haue we one or two kinde of drunkards onely, but eight kindes:

(1) The first is ape drunke; and he leapes, and singes, and hollowes, and daunceth for the heauens.
(2) The second is lion drunke; and he flinges the pots about the house, calls his hostesse whore, breakes the glasse windowes with his dagger, and is apt to quarell with anie man that speaks to him.
(3) The third is swine drunke; heauie, lumpish, and sleepie, and cries for a little more drinke, and a few more cloathes.
(4) The fourth is sheepe drunke; wise in his own conceipt, when he cannot bring foorth a right word.
(5) The fifth is mawdlen drunke; when a fellowe will weepe for kindnes in the midst of his ale, and kisse you, saying, "By God, captaine, I loue thee. Goe thy wayes; thou dost not thinke so often of me as I doo of thee; I would (if it pleased God) I could not loue thee so well as I doo;" and then he puts his finger in his eye, and cryes.
(6) The sixt is Martin drunke; when a man is drunke, and drinkes himselfe sober ere he stirre.
(7) The seuenth is goate drunke; when, in his drunkennes, he hath no minde but on lecherie.
(8) The eighth is fox drunke — when he is craftie drunke, as manie of the Dutchmen bee, that will neuer bargaine but when they are drunke.

All these species, and more, haue I seen practiced in one companie at one sitting, when I haue been permitted to remayne sober amongst them, onely to note their seuerall humours.

(Yes, of course, Nashe, you were only there to observe...)

Opinions; Home

It is the singular misfortune of conciliatory, or cowardly, men—and honesty compels me to include myself among their ranks—to be paralyzed in most matters of opinion. This is not to say that we are devoid of opinions; no, indeed. But to strongly voice almost any opinion is enough to make enemies with someone, and the coward seeks to avoid this. Among the irreligious, therefore, one opts not to voice any excess of spiritual conviction; among the liberally-minded one cannot risk being perceived as reäctionary; among the Lutherans it is wise to downplay Catholic sympathies. But the reverse is also true: mention not your doubts among the devout, nor your questions among the conservative, nor your Lutheran tendencies among the Papists. Perhaps it would be an easier matter if I were fundamentally on one side or t'other. It's safe enough, I suppose, in either opposing camp, but dangerous to venture in the no-man's-land between them. Now, here I thought adulthood was a time for solidifying one's prejudices; perhaps that means I'm not an adult yet.

Ah, but perhaps there is one issue where I'm content to be disagreed with. Allow me to elucidate. For a young person my age, with college education (and mind you, I am inclined to put the word "education" in quotation marks), the inevitable topics of conversation with people I haven't seen for a good while are What I Have Been Doing With Myself and What I Plan to Do With Myself. The answers, of course, are that only a year ago I received a degree in music, and that I intend to complete my masters in sacred music. Inevitably next in the conversation comes the question of where I intend to move away to in order to find work. I'm quite tired of this assumption. (Interestingly, it is perhaps most prevalent in rural communities, where the permanent leaving of the educated young is more regular than the return of the swallows to Capistrano.) Let it be known henceforth, then, that I do not subscribe to the idea that I need to move away in order to make something of myself. I disagree, yes, I disagree with this notion, and I wish to disabuse people of it. I want to stay home. Home, in this sense, is not my parents' house—which would drive me to madness, if not parricide—but rather the area I've known all my life: patria mea.

The difficult thing about unpopular convictions, besides the alienating effect they have on those with differing (that is, wrong) ideas, is that they must be reflected in one's own life, lest one be branded a hypocrite. I can only hope this staying-at-home thing works out, eh?

"The Wish to be Generous", Wendell Berry

All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.

Summer Work

South Bend, three quarters of the year, is a generally unpleasant place to live, what with the near-constant cloudiness and not-too-great traffic and general urban decay. But in the summer, oh, the summer, South Bend is a veritable nice place to live. This is no doubt due to the weather, which is as sunny as the rest of the year is cloudy, the time zone, which means the sun sets here at nearly ten in the evening, and the lack of Notre Dame students, who made roads and Fiddler's Hearth altogether too crowded. Yes, life is good, for the moment, in South Bend. I'm keeping busy, what with five hours of classes daily and cantoring for evening prayer in the Ladychapel nightly. Indeed, there aren't enough hours in the day to really finish all of my homework. Spirits are high, though: I am too busy to be unhappy.

I wonder about this. Industriousness is to be praised, innit? The saying is that "hell is full of the talented, but heaven is full of the hard-working". But I wonder whether all this work is a distraction, eh? Well, let's hope not. In any case, I don't have time to think much about such things, anyway.

Worship as Idolatry

The Ten Commandments give an admirable sense of the priorities of ancient Jewry. The first (or first and second, depending on your reckoning; I am inclined to use the numbering of Lutherans and Papists) is that we are to have no gods before God, nor shall we make graven images. In many ways this commandment sums up the set: God is to be our chief desire.

The great danger to religious sorts (and I hope it is fair to include myself among those of a religious bent) is that one's vocation, or theological dispute, or worship itself, can become an idol, supplanting God from God's rightful place at the Center of Things. I may maintain, in my correct opinion, that Thomas Tallis is vastly superior to Marty Haugen, and that the Roman Catholics' attempts at translation pale in comparison to the peerless language of Cranmer, and that, all things considered, ad orientem is probably a better way of celebrating a Mass, but the moment that any of these opinions distracts me from the Charity which is the heart of God, I have committed idolatry. We forget, in our attempts to perform good music for the rite, that the rite itself is no substitute for God.

Recently I've been reading C.S. Lewis's quite sensible (though not particularly scholarly) essays on the Psalms. While I'll recommend the whole book to you, I'll only quote a relevant passage:

[N]o sooner is it possible to distinguish the rite from the vision of God than there is a danger of the rite becoming a substitute for, and a rival to, God Himself. Once it can be thought of separately, it will; and it may take on a rebellious, cancerous life of its own. ... Worse still, [rituals] may be regarded as the only thing [God] wants, so that their punctual performance will satisfy Him without obedience to His demands for mercy, "judgement", and truth. To the priests themselves the whole system will seem important simply because it is both their art and their livelihood; all their pedantry, all their pride, all their economic position, is bound up with it.

The frightening thing for a church musician, of course, is that we are just as susceptible as priests to this sort of distortion. It's enough to make one wonder whether we really need professional church musicians at all.

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In other news: Praetorius! | Prakticello!

Yes He Kahane

I sometimes whether wonder I've heard enough music. That is, I wonder whether any new discoveries I make are merely further distractions, when indeed I have heard more music than anyone can really appreciate in a lifetime. And then I find something new. (Novelty is a seductive mistress, though short-lived.)

The latest discovery is Gabriel Kahane, who was born in the same decade as I, and who writes what I believe is called "chamber pop" music, inflected with influences ranging from Bach to Appalachian folk to Schoenberg. Here's a gadget by which you can listen to his self-titled album:

Indianapolis

Greetings from Indianapolis, capital of Indiana, seat of several dioceses, city of broad streets, numerous beggars, limited green space and, at least on the Fourth of July, lots and lots of traffic. I was here to play a wedding (it went well enough). Yesterday I attended church with the Episcopalians downtown, which was pleasant: excellent instrument, choir (all-male! one doesn't hear that sound much anymore), and sermon.

Indianapolis is a nice enough place to visit, but I wouldn't live here. It's too big: urban areas of a certain size inspire me with neuroses. Modern life in these United States, and urban life in particular, requires a profound amount of trust in people one does not know: architects, elevator-builders, policemen, food safety standard-setters and inspectors of many sorts, motorists, even fellow pedestrians. In the city one must count on everyone else not to be crazy. This confidence is sometimes misplaced.

At the same time, I think it's important that the Church is present in the city. There's enough emphasis in the Bible on helping the poor that it is more than negligent to avoid them. (Are you ever bothered by thoughts of your sins of omission? I certainly am. I'm banking on the idea that this "God" fellow is the merciful sort.) I had planned to attend a Lutheran church yesterday, but there is not a single Lutheran congregation, ELCA or LCMS, in downtown Indianapolis: they've all moved to the suburbs. Where would Jesus live, I wonder?