Trying not to take work too seriously

I have noticed that my daily life is a bit more relaxed if I manage not to take church too seriously. I didn’t get a chance to blog before church this morning. So I thought it might be a good opportunity to see if I could still write a paragraph or two here about not taking work too seriously on a Sunday afternoon.

It is on Sunday afternoon that I am liable to give in to what I have been thinking of as my mild pathology, that is being a tad too quick to blame myself for stuff or feeling like I have failed when in fact I haven’t.

 Lord, we beseech thee

This morning the high point of church for me was the choral anthem. “Lord, We Beseech Thee” by Adrian Battan. The anthem occurred where we usually do it, right after announcements, during the collection. This morning, they plugged the musical we will be doing to night at the Ocktober fest, “Stewardship, the Musical.” They had several of the characters speak in costume. As you can imagine it was kind of a funny moment  with lots of good-natured giggling and laughing..

I was pleased that we pulled the group back into a more meditative mood with a solid performance of this beautiful anthem.

Jupe the old man on Sunday afternoon

So, now I have done a service and a post service rehearsal (of the musical for tonight). I walked  home exhausted. I wonder how I will muster doing Sunday afternoon concerts after we get our organ. Maybe I will need to either rethink offering recitals at this time or make a point to baby myself after church until it’s time to go play.

Designing concerts

I have strong ideas about putting together programs at my church. I want to get away from the stodgy idea that one has to perform all movements of a composition or that different styles of music do not sit well in the same program.

This morning we went right from the lovely anthem into my Jazz mass setting of the Holy Holy. I have been taking more liberties with this music since we have been singing it for a while. I felt the movement from Renaissance to hokey pop worked.

When I played coffee house I often went from “classical” to “folk-rock” to other stuff. It always seemed logical to me. I especially like the idea (which i stole from an organ dude whose recital blew me away) of thinking carefully about the melodies in different (otherwise unrelated) pieces and matching them. This takes some cleverness. But the idea of using hymn materials (as so much instrumental church music does), opens up some possibilities.

Matching music themes

Just thinking randomly, the tune, Westminster Abbey, to which we usually sing “Christ has made the sure foundation,”

moves like the main theme of  Beethoven’s  3rd symphony, the Eroica.