Further Adventures in Good Drinkery

My most recent favorite drink, if you must know, is of course gin-based. (Gin remains at the top of my hierarchy of liquors. Second is rum, though much of the time it is overtaken by whisky. Down at the bottom are vodka and tequila, which I find pointless and loathsome, respectively.) It is rather more complicated than my standard gin-and-tonic, but it is correspondingly more satisfying when prepared properly. The drink is known as a "Red Cloud". I offer here my recipe for it:

• 1.5 measures Gin (New Amsterdam's almost-citrus flavor works nicely)
  
• 3/4 measure Apricot Brandy
  
• 1/2 measure Lemon Juice
  
• 1/4 measure Grenadine
  
• two dashes Angostura Bitters

My experience suggests one ought not to err on the side of sweetness. The charm of this particular drink is in its subtle tonality (if one may misappropriate musical jargon), the interplay of the juniper (and, depending on the brand, citrus) of the gin with the herbal notes of the angostura bitters. The apricot and lemon flavors, though necessary, are by no means dominant, and the grenadine is more for color than overwhelming sweetness.

Cursory research has not revealed whether the drink has any connection to the Oglala Sioux chief of the same name. Another possible connection is to that bit of weather lore from the Gospel of Matthew (16:1-3):

The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven. He answered and said unto them, "When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?"

A Word or Two About the Harmonium

As it so happens, this Sunday the Episcopalians of Dixon will be celebrating the holy mysteries out at St. Peter's chapel in Grand Detour. (The name of that town, like so many American town-names, is not pronounced the way you think it is. Locals are wont to pronounce it as one word, with the accent, improbably, on the first syllable. Thus, in IPA: ['gɹæn.diˌtɔ˞].) Rather than have Mass out in the "cheap showiness of nature" (as Reverend Lovejoy once called it), we'll be inside the little limestone building, which has a reed organ in the back. It will be my job to play this thing, and I thus selected appropriate repertoire for such an instrument: a Franck piece from L'Organiste and one of Elgar's Vesper Voluntaries. Both were originally written for the harmonium, which I mistakenly assumed is just a more fancy name for the reed organ. As it so happens, that is not quite the case: one operates with a suction bellows, and t'other with a pressure bellows, apparently. But, not being mechanically-minded, I am not particularly interested in what seems like a pedantic detail.

Browsing the literature composed for the harmonium, it appears it was widespread about a century ago, much like the piano. (On my more pessimistic days I believe the piano will probably follow the harmonium into obsolescence; certainly it is nowhere near as common as it once was in middle-class households, and in this age of decline the state of music education is only getting worse.) Much of the repertoire is charming, and little-heard (at least in its original instrumentation) nowadays. A favorite set, which I hope to someday perform with some string-player friends, is Dvořák's Five Bagatelles, Op. 47.

Dvořák, Op. 47, Nos. 1-3:

Dvořák, Op. 47, Nos. 4-5:

Whither Mainline Protestantism? (Part I)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that mainline Protestantism in the United States is in no good health. Simply put, every mainline Protestant denomination is losing, if not hemorrhaging, members. (It is less acknowledged, though equally true, that Roman Catholicism's numbers would be no better were it not for the many Latino immigrants to this nation. Though the reasons, and perhaps some of the solutions, for this are much the same, it is beyond my purview at this time.)

Much of the decline is due to two factors that we can do very little about:

1. Demographic changes, i.e., plummeting birth-rates in the white middle-class and the decline of the American small town. I have experienced the latter first-hand. (Incidentally, my birth-rate has been, and will remain, as steady as it ever was.) Real communities have been under assault by a mentality of hyper-mobility that seized us in the years after the Second World War and has only worsened. The great majority of both the congregations I serve in Dixon are members 55 years of age, or older, because their children have moved elsewhere, be it the suburbs, the Southwest, or somewhere else equally unpalatable. (Mr Wendell Berry speaks eloquently on the "boomers" and "stickers" of America.) Solving this particular problem requires more moral character than our society is capable of, at least at this time. We will, eventually, be forced to confront the problem of hypermobility, when we finally reap the consequences of an economy founded on improvidence. But that may be decades, perhaps generations, in the future.
2. Unprecedented disillusionment with all social institutions, cultural and religious. Consider the numbers of unions, of bridge clubs, of the Knights of Columbus: every group with a notion of "membership" — an extraordinarily important and rich concept in Christianity that is almost never adequately emphasized — has seen its numbers decline. This is only exacerbated by advancements in technology, which have served to make each man bound in a nutshell (though, he might believe, king of infinite space). Society is atomized, a state from which it will not soon recover.

Realistically speaking, we must accept that the Church will be smaller. Never again will it have the cultural and moral influence on American society it has enjoyed for centuries. I am optimistic that this will be beneficial for the Christian faith, as it will at least reduce that dangerous tendency towards complacency, towards an imagined sense of security.

(Here it is worth remembering Rudolf Bultmann: "The world's resistance to God is based on its imagined security, which reaches its highest and most subversive form in religion." — Das Evangelium des Johannes, tr. G.R. Beasley-Murrary [Oxford: Blackwell, 1971], p. 267)

But there is a third reason for the precipitous drop in church membership, one that should concern us very much and which we can work to amend. Simply put, the mainline Protestant denominations have lost their justifications for existence. Why do we go to church? It is not for entertainment, for better entertainment can be found elsewhere. It is not to solve social problems, for there are far more efficient means of effecting social change. It is not to socialize, for there are surely other groups of people far more tolerable than any given parish. (I admit, of course, that people do in fact attend church for these reasons. Indeed, they are not bad reasons. But they are not sufficient reasons to justify the Church's existence.) We go to church because it is our bounden duty and our joy to praise and serve God; because we draw strength — indeed, our very reason for being — from the twin sources of Word and Sacrament. Any church, of any denomination, that has forgotten this has no business remaining a church.

I wish to examine this further, but I dare not exhaust my reader's patience. That is to say: to be continued.

Mark Your Calendars:

One must keep busy, you know. To that end, I will be performing a recital in Elkhart, Indiana on Sunday, 15 July, at 7:00pm. It shouldn't be terribly long; it's about fifty minutes of music. You, dear reader, are of course invited.

Recital on the Fowler organ, Op. 28, at St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church, Elkhart

Dieterich Buxtehude (c.1637-1707):
        Praeludium in G minor, BuxWV 149
Jehan Alain (1911-1940):
        Variations sur un thème de Clément Janequin, JA 118
        Litanies, JA 119
Johann Valentin Görner (1702-1762):
        Chaconne in B minor
Dieterich Buxtehude:
        Erhalt uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort, BuxWV 185
Louis Vierne (1870-1937):
        Berceuse (sur les paroles classiques), Op. 31, No. 19
Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654):
        Ballo del Granduca
Edward Elgar (1857-1934), arr. William Henry Harris (1883-1973):
        Nimrod (from the Enigma Variations, Op. 36)
J.S. Bach (1685-1750):
        Prelude and Fugue in G Major, BWV 541

Nothing much out of the ordinary, as you can see. There is actually more variety than I would prefer, as the instrument, being an American eclectic one, is designed to play all things equally poorly. But I am optimistic that great literature is still worthwhile, even on less-than-ideal instruments.

Oh, and for you pedants out there, a note on the Scheidt: many still attribute the variations on Ballo del Granduca to J.P. Sweelinck, as they are ascribed to him in the only surviving manuscript. But I think Pieter Dirksen makes a convincing case that they are by Scheidt, who studied with Sweelinck in Amsterdam in his early twenties. (There is some infelicitous voice leading that makes much more sense coming from the pen of the young Scheidt than from the mature Sweelinck.)

Scandinavia; Return

Two days ago I returned from the temperate summer of Europe to this uninhabitable (ten months of the year, anyway) climate. I am not yet sure whether I would advise two-and-a-half weeks in Europe to anyone. It was, for the most part, a wonderful experience, but I have hardly begun to process it. Real travel, the kind that necessitates closer inspection of a society and people than one can get from the train window, requires a good deal of careful observation. I am not altogether certain that I was worthy of the task. But let us dispense with such quibbles. Allow me to describe Scandinavia, in my deficient manner.

Copenhagen did not make an ideal first impression, as the train station is directly across from Tivoli Gardens. (I have, once or twice, seen people quite literally "falling-down drunk" before, but that was always on a college campus, where one, unfortunately, has come to expect such a thing.) Having read about Tivoli as a child, I pictured it as more of a city park with some attractions; in fact it is simply an amusement park, and I find such places to be tacky and loud, even in the best of circumstances. I suspect the atmosphere in the city owed much to the time of year, for it was right around St. John's Eve that we were there. (I did, in fact, observe that odd Danish custom of burning an effigy of a witch on a bonfire. The men in charge of lighting our particular bonfire were incompetent, and resorted to spraying the feeble flames with lighter fluid. I don't know whether the Danes have a custom of keeping burn-unit nurses on hand at such events.) Roskilde and Hillerød were both far more pleasant, and both have remarkable historic instruments. The 1610 Compenius at Frederiksborg Castle, in Hillerød, is especially stunning.

It appears that the Danish language is, in fact, a conspiracy perpetuated by the entire nation, for nearly every Dane speaks flawless English. Danish has but two phonemes, the glottal stop and the schwa, and these bear no relation to orthography. How anyone manages to speak, much less understand, the language is a most vexing matter.

After less than three days in Denmark, it was on to Sweden. Stockholm appears to be a very pleasant city, if one can judge a place by its smell. Every city has a smell, you know. Many American cities stink chiefly of polluted air, be it from factories or from our all-too-beloved automobiles. Vienna's smell, as I remember it, has an earthiness — perhaps that is the Wienerwald — atop which is a mixture of other, more acidic, smells: cigarettes, the Danube... I cannot identify all the components. Czech and German and Danish cities have their own smells. Stockholm is perhaps the nicest-smelling city, for more than anything else one smells Lake Mälaren. Perhaps it is different at other times of the year, or when the wind is from other directions. Unlike the Germans (who, as far as I saw, are utterly incapable of dressing up), the citizens of Stockholm dress well. The city is particularly expensive, though I suppose it was the height of tourist season this past week.

Uppsala, though it perhaps does not smell as nice, was far more agreeable to my tastes, being far less busy and with far fewer tourists. The city is dominated by the Domkyrka. (A note on Swedish orthography, which is at least a bit more sane than Danish: it appears that, after nasal consonants, "k" becomes an unvoiced post-alveolar fricative, that is, "sh". Thus, domkyrka comes out something like "domshirkah", as I am not in the mood to look up the IPA exactly.) In most respects it is a college town, which is perhaps what appealed to me, besides the cathedral. The Church of Sweden, though now it is just as empty on Sundays as any other European church, at least had the good sense not to dispense with all high-church frippery. (Apparently this is due largely to Laurentius and Olaus Petri.) The dom-museum in Uppsala has an impressive collection of vestments, altar-ware, and other historical churchy artifacts.

Perhaps appropriately, the very last place to visit was Leufsta Bruk, a tiny village at what feels like the end of the world. Leufsta Bruk is a surreal place: here, in the taiga of northern Uppland, is a perfectly preserved eighteenth-century settlement, with manor house, workers' quarters, and a church. It is the church that is of primary interest, for it houses a virtually unaltered 1720s Cahman organ.

Is it worth even attempting to describe what makes certain instruments so much better than others? I fear it is not. I could not have understood it myself before hearing, and playing, a historic instrument. Suffice it to say that, on historic instruments, the music makes sense in a way that it does not make sense on modern instruments. Sweelinck, and Buxtehude, and Bach, and all the great geniuses of organ composition, knew their instruments and wrote accordingly for them: everything, from touch to phrasing to registration, just seems to work on a historic instrument. There are difficulties, of course. Historic pedalboards are all flat, of course; that is not really a problem. (My teacher at Notre Dame notes that a curved AGO pedalboard conduces to "cookie-cutter interpretations", and I think he's right.) But historic pedalboards are also not standardized. Most have considerably shorter compasses, and many are wider — that is, the space between pedal notes is wider — which can be quite disorienting. The winding of certain instruments is downright difficult. These problems (and several others) notwithstanding, it is very much worth it to play historic music on historic instruments.

Broken German

Perhaps the first thing any tourist must overcome is the fear of being seen as an utter fool. (I use the word "tourist" in the sense of a person who wishes to visit a foreign culture — not just hang around with other insufferable Americans at a resort; if there were a lower genus than "tourist" I should assign such cultural troglodytes to it.) Irredisregardless of how well one knows the language and mores, one will make mistakes. Foolish mistakes. In a larger city, like Vienna, they are at least accustomed to having ignorant tourists frolicking about, but in the hinterland the things we do can come across as genuinely peculiar.

The chief barrier to communication is, of course, the language. While I have taken a German course in college and spent ten weeks previously in Vienna, my German is still, one might say understatedly, inelegant. My vocabulary is limited, yes, but far more limited is my knowledge of German grammar and syntax. The greatest problem posed by the German language to the amateur speaker is not (only) the word order but mostly the articles. German, as you may know, has three genders, with corresponding articles. It also has declensions, and while some nouns are declined, it is mostly the articles that bear the brunt of this process. It is thus difficult to even represent the sort of mistakes the English speaker is likely to make in his forays into German. There are two options for the ignoramus who would nonetheless have himself understood: (1) omit articles entirely. I suspect this comes across a bit like cave-man language. Or (2) attempt articles with the knowledge that most of them are incorrect. This was my strategy, and, though my sins against the German language were many, it seemed I got my point across. A good many conversations have been conducted in both broken German (on my part) and broken English, for while English is spoken by some Germans, they learn it a bit like Americans learn Spanish: for a few years in school, perhaps, then to be mostly forgotten. It is work, maintaining a language.

Grinzing

Sie sind uns nur voraus gegangen,
und werden nicht wieder nach Hause verlangen.
Wir holen sie ein auf jenen Höh'n
im Sonnenschein, der Tag ist schön,
auf jenen Höh'n.

It being an overcast and rainy day, I opted to go out to Grinzing. (A note about rain here: like everything else in Vienna, it is far more polite than back home. Perhaps less extreme weather conduces to a more civilized people.) It's a pleasant enough ride by the excellent mass transit system (take the U-4 to its end at Heiligenstadt and get on bus 38A; for variety's sake I took the Straßenbahn back into town), and thanks to the weather neither Heiligenstadt nor Grinzing were overrun by groups of Americans or Japanese visiting Beethoven's house (as if there were only one; he moved constantly) and stumbling out of the more touristy Heurigers.

I had not come for Beethoven, anyway, but for Mahler. Up the hill, pretty clearly marked, is the Grinzinger Friedhof, one of Vienna's smaller cemeteries (certainly much smaller than the Zentralfriedhof). Mahler is buried there. After some searching (for there was a small map by the gate, but it would be poor taste to label only famous graves, I suppose), I found the grave. Nearby were two other tourists come to pay their respects, as I had. (They had a Vienna travel guide in English, but neither their faces nor their accents suggested they were native speakers.) We shared a few kind words. I believe they were genuinely kind. For a short moment, at least, we shared a kinship, united in the love of the works of Mahler, this man who died more than a century ago. Music speaks to the souls of those who hear it; some souls respond. It is gratifying to meet a like-minded soul: "Ah, so I was not the only one!"

Vienna

Greetings, dear reader, from Vienna! We arrived here late last night, after a full day of travel. "Life is a journey", it is said, tritely. People say this to remind us that it is not so much the destination that matters as what happens along the way. I do not entirely agree with this. The destination matters quite a bit. In our case the travel was far less pleasant than the arrival. After a transatlantic flight, we had a layover of six hours in Copenhagen's Kasterup Airport. The Danish are an exceptionally attractive people who speak a barbaric tongue not fit to be understood by man or beast. While Kasterup is pleasant, as airports go (it has a sort of streamlined Scandinavian aesthetic), six hours in an aiport is about five-and-a-half hours more than I wish to spend in an airport. We finally reached Vienna around ten, after a much shorter (albeit delayed) flight. (We flew over Germany's Baltic coast, but couldn't see most of the country due to heavy clouds beneath us. Fortunately, it's fairer weather down here.) At the airport I managed very efficiently to get us lost, having to rely on the worst sort of German: discomfited American tourist German. ("Bitte, wo ist der Zug?") We did finally find the CAT (City Air Train), making it to Landstraße-Wien Mitte, and thence to the Kolpinghaus, finally getting to bed after midnight.

Today we first walked around the Ring a bit, making it into Stadtpark, over past Café Prückel (which I am resolved to visit tomorrow), and from the Stubentor stop on the U3 over to the Zentralfriedhof. I'd been there already, the last time I was here, but it's a much more pleasant place to visit in the summer. I noted with some satisfaction that more flowers were placed on Brahms's grave than on Schubert's, though Beethoven had them both beat. Schoenberg, rather unfairly, had none. (No accounting for taste, I suppose.)

Back in the city, we went to Doblinger's, where I purchased several books of chorale preludes by obscure Viennese composers. (My rationale is that I should purchase things published by the Doblinger press, as they're a local product and I may not find them elsewhere.) I had Schnitzel-King for lunch, and it was glorious beyond words. And yet, just as no man steps in the same river twice, no man eats the same Döner sandwich twice. I don't remember there being cucumbers in it before, but I think they make a fine addition.

Into Relative Silence

I'll refer you to this article, about the lives of Trappist monks. The questions the author asks of the monks are not particularly good (and he erroneously describes Trappists as "the only Western-based monastic order that still actively practices the 'vow' of silence"; what about the Carthusians, next to whom Trappists are a bunch of chatty Cathies?), but he is wise enough to let them speak for themselves. When asked if silence is a sacrifice, one monk answers:

I would not speak of the “sacrifice of words” except in relatively rare instances when a passion moves me to speak and I struggle to hold my tongue. The silence which is my natural habitat is not created by forcibly sacrificing anything. When a man and woman meet and fall in love they begin to talk. They talk and talk and talk all day long and can't wait to meet again to talk some more. They talk for hours together, and never tire of talking and so talk late into the night, until they become intimate—and then they don't talk anymore. Neither would describe intimacy as “the sacrifice of words” and a monk is not inclined to speak about his intimacy with God in this way. Is silence beneficial for all people? I would say the cultivation of silence is indispensable to being human.

Travel, Memory

When, in a few days, I leave for Europe, I am sure I'll be very excited. But for the meantime I am still rather apprehensive about it. This stems mostly from the number of things I still must do before I can depart (in peace, anyway). Experience suggests that most things are better anticipated than experienced, but I suspect that this is not the case with travel. I look forward to travel with a sort of dread. Perhaps this is because I have developed such an ingrained distaste for being late: the idea of missing a connecting flight or a train distresses me as few (ultimately) trivial things can. And on this particular journey, there are an awful lot of trains one can miss.

Nevertheless, I am optimistic that travel may yet improve me (despite the many ways in which it probably will not). Playing historic instruments will be instructive. We've spent several months trying to line up time on various organs, and it appears we'll be playing instruments in Tröchtelborn, Magdeburg, Niederndodeleben, Hildesheim, Gifhorn, Clauen, Schellerten, Norden, Roskilde, Frederiksborg Castle, Leufsta Bruk, and Östhammar. Besides organs, we have set aside several days to explore Vienna, Prague, Magdeburg, Hannover, Roskilde, and Copenhagen. I hope to write about things on this web-log as much as is practical; while I hate the idea of spending an entire vacation trying to remember said vacation (taking pictures — which still strikes me as asinine, especially in churches — and writing web-log posts), I suppose I should produce some evidence of travels.

This makes me wonder about the nature of memory. Why would anyone devote so much time and effort encasing experiences in amber? Well, pictures and words, in one way, have a sort of sacramental aspect. No, then again, they don't at all: a sacrament is by its nature a tangible object, whereas images and words are the opposite of tangible objects, unless I engrave them like Job. (19:23-24: "Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!") Pictures and words on the internet, are, I guess, a sort of memorialist understanding of the past: we recall times gone by, but we lack the Real Presence, as it were.