Kirchenmusik

You may have noticed that there are awfully many different kinds of "church" "music", nowadays. That is to say, there are awfully many kinds of noise produced and listened to in churches. (I could've written "sacred music", but that's not quite a broad enough term to cover it all.) I'm almost certain that you could find all of the following within a fifty-mile radius in the lower 48:

1. The "average" Protestant, if there is such a thing, is accustomed to a hymnal, and to singing hymns out of it. There is, doubtless, a particularly American corpus of hymns that just about every Protestant knows, irredisregardless of denomination. Many Roman Catholics know some of these, too.
2. Taizé services, which tend to be ecumenical in nature, are characterized by simple, repetitive songs designed for a sort of meditative effect.
3. Post-Vatican II Catholics have their own body of hymns: some of these are borrowed from Protestants, but a good many were written in the last forty years. Marty Haugen and David Haas are the primary movers and shakers, here. Recently, Protestants have begun to use some of this stuff as well.
4. A few R.C.s have opted to stick to pre-conciliar music, namely, Gregorian chant. I suspect this has been gaining in popularity.
   
5. Then there are Eastern Orthodox forms of chant, which are something else entirely.
6. On the other end of the spectrum is happy-clappy Christian rock, which is a staple of evangelicals. It has also found some use among mainstream Protestants, and even some R.C.s. Its symptoms include guitars and drum sets.
7. Like unto this are Christian country, Christian rap, what have you.
8. A Methodist church in South Bend has weekly Celtic music services. Any hymn can be made "Celtic" if you put it in Mixolydian mode and add recorders...
   

Often, all of these forms can be found in the same church, with the exception of the Orthodox. But people tend not to enjoy all sorts, so churches will have different services featuring different genres. We're thus free, as largely passive consumers, to choose whichever kind most appeals to us. Of course, when I put it that way, it's clear that this isn't a particularly good thing.

In the great American marketplace of religions, music has become another commodity, along with theology and social values. As a sacred-musician-in-training, this concerns me (in both senses of the word). We can't dictate by fiat What Sort of Music Will Be Played in Church, now can we? If non-musicians can't appreciate what is genuinely good music, if they have no emotional or theological attachment to it, then we're not really serving the congregation. But at the same time, life's too short for bad music.

If congregations were real communities, each would have an established body of music that everyone learned from their grandparents; we'd at least have some sort of attachment to it, then. (This would also rule out, conveniently, the happy-clappy stuff.) In this increasingly-fallen world this is largely not an option. What, then, are we to do? Give people what they want? I'd be especially interested to hear what ordinary parishioners think.

A Gracious Sabbath, Wendell Berry

A gracious Sabbath stood here while they stood
Who gave our rest a haven.
Now fallen, they are given
To labor and distress.
These times we know much evil, little good
To steady us in faith
And comfort when our losses press
Hard on us, and we choose,
In panic or despair or both,
To keep what we will lose.

For we are fallen like the trees, our peace
Broken, and so we must
Love where we cannot trust,
Trust where we cannot know,
And must await the wayward-coming grace
That joins living and dead,
Taking us where we would not go–
Into the boundless dark.
When what was made has been unmade
The Maker comes to His work.

from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997

Ave, Patria

This past week I've been back home in the Quad Cities. After waiting months to get back, keeping this return in mind as my goal throughout all the busi-ness of graduate study, I must say it's a bit disappointing in some ways. Places change, even in a few months' time. Trees are cut down; concrete is poured. Even the potato soup at the Belgian Village was rather sub-par yesterday (though I remain hopeful that the clam chowder will be good this weekend). We nostalgize places, and they disappoint. People, it is true, can also disappoint; but so far they haven't. It has been reuniting with friends that has been most rewarding about this homecoming.

I'm still not entirely certain what one's relationship to a place should be. One can admire a place. But should one claim to love a place? I know that this particular corner of Illinois/Iowa is not the greatest place in the world, except by virtue of it being mine, and of me being its. "We admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons", Chesterton reminds us. I sometimes wonder whether love ought be reserved for people: only the heartless choose their friends with reason, and families are of course beyond one's choice. But then, our homeland (patria, a fine Latin word: the land of one's fathers) is also given us. Only those few born in a place like Vienna, or Madison, or Moab, can love their place for reasons. The rest of us, born in a world of places that are indeed quite mediocre when judged by their objective merit, must love our place without reasons.

In any case, it's good to be home.

Remembrance of Websites Past

I should probably remind you that my ol' website will be no more this coming Monday. So if you'd like to visit it, I'd suggest you do so sooner than later. It was a fine website, if I do say so myself. (Five years! That's a fourth of the total age of the internet!) Memento mori, dear readers.

Dispatch from South Bend

Here in South Bend all the nicest-colored autumn trees are turning, which is pleasant. Now it's long-underwear weather, a development in which I rejoice.

I've made a habit of dining at Dagwood's Sandwich(e) Shop(pe), not too far from campus. It's overpriced, and I'm not entirely comfortable with its association with a mediocre comic, but the food isn't bad. I always order a chicken caesar wrap, which neatly removes the one thing I dislike about eating salads (viz., using a fork. I have always found eating lettuce with a fork to be a needlessly inefficient enterprise). A few more weeks of this, and I'll be able to walk in and order "the usual" and the sandwich artisans will know what to make. The fountain drink dispenser at this particular restaurant, in case you were wondering, emits a drone at the pitch of the G above middle C.

That's the news from South Bend, where all the women are strong, all the men are unemployed, and most of the children are considerably below average.

Even the French Like 'Em

Do you have a half-hour to spare? Why not spend it listening to this jam session with Mr Bird and another one of my favorites, St. Vincent?

Church Community, cont'd

Either Peters has been reading the comments of this-a-here web-log or there's something in the air. In the midst of a discourse on writers and place, he drops this gem:

It can hardly be a matter of bewilderment to anyone who has read O’Connor’s work, especially the letters and the lectures, that this woman of formidable intellectual abilities was fiercely loyal to the Church Universal and stubbornly committed to attending daily mass at the local parish, where gossip was sure to be high and intelligence low. O’Connor knew that although we participate in universals we don’t inhabit them.

We must make do with a particular place, with all its annoyances. Yes. But I wonder whether this is a defense of one's local church (Flannery was born into Catholicism), or a defense of the Church Universal?

Herbsttag, R.M. Rilke

Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los.

Befiel den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
gib ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein.

Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird Es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben.

-----
Rilke, they say, is impossible to translate. But that's not to say people haven't tried...

Creed and Community

A little while ago I was pondering the Church Divided. There's certainly no shortage of choices for the discriminating prospective churchgoer; we Christians have proven ourselves better at division than charity. But before discussing these choices I'd like to back up and analyze, if briefly, what constitutes a "Christian".

What, or who, is a Christian? In the broadest sense—that of the census, for example—one's status as a Christian is decided merely by self-appellation. But this is problematic enough that I'd rather ignore it and move on to the next sense, that of creed. Let's agree, for argument's sake, that there is a set of beliefs expected of Christians. (In a better age than this one we could've agreed that said beliefs were articulated in the Creeds of the Church; such is not the case nowadays. I will not, however, go so far as to exclude those who would deny, for example, the Virgin Birth: perhaps it is a matter of integrity for them.) Etymologically speaking, our word "creed" comes, of course, from the Latin credo, "I believe", the first word of both the Nicene and the Apostles' Creeds. You will note that it is singular. (It is curious that the Roman Catholics altered this to "we believe" in their current English translation; however, the new translation coming out soon will correct this.) Belief, then, is a personal decision: though we express the creed communally, it is by its nature an act of an individual. The Protestants are generally more insistent about this. Kierkegaard, for example, emphasized that we relate to God as individuals, we attain truth as individuals, we are judged and saved as individuals. There's a good deal to be said for this.

But at the same time, no man is a church unto himself. The sacraments—let's also assume that Christians have those, shall we?—are by their nature administered communally. Paul, in his first letter to Corinth, insists that we are baptized into the mystical "body of Christ": we cannot exist as independent individuals and remain a part of this unity. Once we have established that to be a Christian is to belong to a community, we must then ask ourselves what constitutes a community.

The Sage of Kentucky calls a community a "membership", a term he borrows from Paul (whom, he adds, he doesn't always approve of!). This implies that an individual is not only accepted by the community, but also that he knows himself to be a part of it. Elsewhere we are reminded that community is necessarily local, even though it belongs to a larger order of things:

A healthy community is a form that includes all the local things that are connected by the larger, ultimately mysterious form of the Creation.

(That's from Berry's Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, by the way. It's worth a look-see.) Very well, then: when we say Christians belong to a community, it is necessarily the particular church they attend, with all their fellow congregants—the people who, in better times, we could've assumed are all neighbors anyway. Here, then, is the first problem with Christianity in these United States: a Christian "community" no longer need be defined by close proximity. That is to say, it is no proper community at all.

But how, you may ask, can we balance the imperative for a real community with our personal integrity: that is to say, should I attend the nearest church possible, regardless of its doctrinal errors? That's the question. It's late; let's continue this some other time.

Andrew Bird

This past weekend I visited wonderful Madison, Wisconsin, for a concert by Mr Andrew Bird. He is an absurd scarecrow of a man; the cut of his jeans suggests they are supposed to be tight, but they are baggy on him. He frenetically juggles instruments — violin (bowed and pizzicato), guitar, glockenspiel — often singing, or whistling, at the same time. While performing, he gesticulates like a third-rate Hamlet: he'll turn his extended hand over and over upon itself, or tilt his head to the side. (Unlike the bevy of third-rate Hamlets out there, though, the gestures are not affected; they seem to flow out of him along with the music itself.) His lyrics are at times maddeningly obscure, perhaps irrational. "We'll fight," he sings, "we'll fight for your music halls and dying cities". He tells us of "malarial alleys where the kittens have pleurisy", and "fake conversations on a nonexistent telephone". For much of the music Bird effectively accompanies himself, recording a pattern, transmuting it, and then adding another: his is a contrapuntal mind, always considering the ins and outs of a harmonic landscape and the melody he will build upon it. The music swerves from classical etudes to Appalachian waltzes to electronica to bossa nova; at times it simply dissolves in a series of loops. It is a thinking man's music, ill-suited to those who prefer the stale and and the comforting. It can make you weep.

All in all, it was a good weekend.

Links:
Andrew Bird Official Website
MySpace Page (music samples)
Daytrotter Session (streaming, downloads)