Muppets, Ordered and Chaötic

Recently it was brought to my attention that every single person can be classified as either an order muppet or a chaös muppet. (This idea is several months old, but it was news enough to me.) Such a bold statement was apparently formulated on the basis of years of observation of supreme court justices, which seems as reasonable a way to glean profound insight into the human condition as any. Upon some reflection, I suggest that I am an order muppet, while many of the people I work with (especially at the newest job) are chaös muppets.

It should probably be emphasized that this dichotomy is not, really, based on the intent of the individual person (or, er, muppet): rather, it just seems that people are accompanied by order or chaös wherever they go. To be sure, certain behaviors conduce to certain outcomes. Perhaps we are not always the most aware of the consequences of our habits.

Honest Work

... et operam detis ut quieti sitis, et ut vestrum negotium agatis, et operemini manibus vestris, sicut praecepimus vobis.

I.Th 4:11

There's something immensely satisfying about having a real job, one where you work with your hands, build things, see tangible improvements. I realize this, now, because I recently obtained such a job (in addition to my church-organist duties): I have been hired to help install a 1904 Verney tracker organ in a local performance venue. Much of organ-buildery is carpentry, which, as my boss has noted, is not my métier. But there are also all sorts of fiddly-work (especially considering this is a tracker instrument), which I find surprisingly rewarding. And I appreciate very much the opportunity to learn how pipe organs actually work. (Perhaps organists can be forgiven some measure of ignorance about their instruments, as the things are just so deucedly complicated. But I think a deeper knowledge of the mechanism by which we produce our art can only improve our production.)

Shortly after beginning this new job (only three days ago), it became quite apparent that it fulfills a need of mine that I had not before recognized: the need to do actual work. Academe and the arts, the only fields in which I have real experience, leave me endlessly questioning whether I have, in fact, done my job well. That way lies madness. How does one know if one's scholarship or musicianship are actually good? One can only listen to the other inmates in the asylum. To build something of value, however, is to obtain concrete justification for one's endeavor.

Musical Glossolalia and Divine Play

Why Catholics Can't Sing is one of those books that's been on my radar for several years, during which time I've kept telling myself I should read it. Now, having been lent the book by our new Anglican priest (a good sign, I should think), I have finally begun to read it. It is quite instructive. Any Protestant who's ever been to a Roman Mass in the ordinary form of the rite has noticed the anemic singing and shoddy hymns. Why, not even Notre Dame is exempt from the let's-pretend-folk-music-is-church-music phenomenon. The insight of Thomas Day (the author, you see) is not just to recognize this, but to provide a plausible explanation for why it is so, and why it is so far removed from the true spirit of liturgy.

I can't review the compleat book yet, as I'm only fifty pages into it. But two points, especially, have caught my attention:

• Song, or chant, is our equivalent of speaking in tongues. This is a very attractive notion.

  Anyone who has ever attended a Latin High Mass in an old-fashioned Benedictine monastery has really attended a charismatic event. This style of worship makes us realize that the early Christian church had taken the wild fires of charismatic zeal and compressed them into the intense flame of monastic chant. ... Through the medium of music, the monks become "filled with the Spirit". They are madmen, breaking out in a focused, unified, musical glossolalia.

  Indeed! Chant is not some dry, dead thing that smothers the stirrings of the Holy Spirit; it is the authentic expression of that joy that comes from the Paraclete. Likewise, the great sacred music of the ages, from Josquin to Bach to Pärt, is glossolalia, given structured direction and form. It is no less spiritual because it is meant to be sung by professionals. Anyone who condemns professional music as antithetical to spiritual experience only reveals their own philistinism, their own impoverished view of spirituality and culture. (I probably need not reïterate here that many of my most profound experiences have been in listening to music.)
  
• Ritual is play; liturgy is divine play. This, properly speaking, is not Thomas Day's idea, but that of Johan Huizinga, whose concept of Homo ludens is worth examining. This is not to denigrate ritual, nor is it to suggest that it is somehow less real than "reality" (or whatever the things that take place outside a church building can be called).

  Ritual "is seriousness at its highest and holiest", and yet a form of play; play is fun; true ritual is supremely serious, solemn, earnest fun. In religious ritual the beautiful and the sacred can come together. Ritual (the medium) can become the divine game and from it people can become conscious of their role in the divine order of things (the message).

  Ritual, of course, is not the sole province of High-Church Anglicans. No, every form of Christian worship has its own ritual, even down to the Krustians meeting in their warehouse "praise and worship center" in the suburbs. Performed well, ritual enhances our understanding of the world and God's designs for us therein. Performed poorly, it is merely so much padding.
  

Good Christian Artists

Heretofore, chief among my failures as a church musician has been the failure to communicate why good church music is just so important. (I harp on such thoughts on this-a-here web-log perhaps because I find myself unable to express them effectively to the people whom I serve as organist and/or choir director.) My mind returns again and again to Ratzinger's notion of the best apologia for Christianity being its art and its saints. The best Christian art is that which is both unequivocally Christian and unequivocally art. There is much that is undoubtedly Christian but lacking artistic merit, and there is much that is artistically powerful but of questionable Christianity, and there is far too much posing as Christian art that is neither distinctly Christian nor of any artistic value. I shall leave these three unfortunate categories for my reader to populate, but I would laud artists like Bach, or Giotto, or Flannery O'Connor, who have produced works of the highest quality and theological truth.

Consider the Pange lingua of Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest hymns of the Church: it not only clearly sets forth complicated theological claims, but also does so in quite excellent poetry (in Latin, anyway; I've never been satisfied with any metrical English translation). And these words are coupled with a chant melody both memorable and beautiful. That would be enough (and indeed, has been enough). But I'll refer you, finally, to an organ composition by Nicolas de Grigny (1672-1703). Non-organists may be forgiven for not knowing that, in French classical organ music, verses chanted by a choir were performed alternatim with verses played on the organ. (By this time, apparently, everyone knew the text so well that it made little difference whether the actual words were sung or not.)

Nicolas de Grigny: Pange lingua gloriosi
performed by Sven-Ingvart Mikkelsen (on the Isnard organ at Saint-Maximin)
and the Ensemble Vox Gregoriana

1. Pange lingua; Nobis datus
   
2. In supremae nocte; Verbum caro
   
3. Tantum ergo; Genitori, genitoque; Amen

(I purchased this particular CD in Hillerød from Mr Mikkelsen himself; he's an excellent player, and seems a very nice fellow to boot. He was kind enough to let us play the 1610 Compenius, which I still dream about.)

Such art has sustained me many times when my soul was disquieted within me; it is sometimes my primary reminder of the mercy and goodness of God. It is to my great distress that the quality of such art is not self-evident to all Christians, for it is so closely bound to my faith. Indeed, my reader may not understand why on earth this music would inspire such feelings. Perhaps I must resort to Kierkegaard's notion of the subjectivity of faith. Some wag may rightly point out that Kierkegaard and Aquinas make strange bedfellows. The same wag may also note that I misconstrue Kierkegaard to claim, as I might like to, that aesthetic experience can be related to actual religious experience. Søren was quite clear — well, as clear as he gets — that the aesthetic and the religious are nowhere near each other. I shall let this thought trouble my sleep tonight.

Autumnal Organ Preludes and Postludes

2 September:
attr. J.S. Bach: Prelude and Fugue in F Major, BWV 556
J.S. Bach: Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 1105
9 September:
Dieterich Buxtehude: Praeludium in G minor, BuxWV 149
Johann Pachelbel: Magnificat sexti toni
16 September:
attr. J.S. Bach: Prelude and Fugue in G minor, BWV 558
Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer: Fugue in G Major
23 September:
Louis Vierne: Arabesque, Op. 31, No. 15
Pierre du Mage: Fugue (from Suite du premier ton)
30 September:
Marcel Dupré: Te splendor et virtus Patris, Op. 38, No. 15
Louis Marchand: Fond d'orgue
7 October:
J.S. Bach: Fugue in G minor, BWV 578
J.S. Bach: Erhalt uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort, BWV 1103
14 October:
Jehan Alain: Ballade en mode phrygien, JA 9
Nicolas de Grigny: Plein jeu (Deo gratias)
21 October (St. Luke, observed*):
Leo Sowerby: Prelude on Deus tuorum militum
Edward Elgar: Vesper Voluntary No. 2, from Op. 14
28 October (Reformation):
J.S. Bach: Prelude in C Major, BWV 547a
Johann Nicolaus Hanff: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott
4 November (All Saints, observed):
Olivier Messiaen: Apparition de l'église éternelle
Johannes Brahms: O wie selig seid ihr doch, ihr Frommen, Op. 122, No. 6

* A saint's day, of course, cannot usually take precedence over a Sunday, but a patronal feast can. And St. Luke the Evangelist is patron of the Episcopal church in Dixon.

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.