It looks I did the right thing when I ordered the Cliff Eisen editions of Mozart’s violin sonatas. This morning after doing my Greek (and unsuccessfully searching the house for my Greek flash cards…. they are here somewhere!),  instead of turning to my biography of Cranmer by MacCulloch or my philosophical treatise, The Secular Age by Charles Taylor, I chose instead to examine volume 1 of the three volumes of Mozart violin sonatas I received in the mail yesterday (unfortunately too late for my weekly meeting with my violinist).

Eisen bases the first volume of his edition (K. 301- K. 306) on photocopies of Mozart’s original handwritten manuscript (“privately owned in Switzerland”) and the published first edition which apparently contains many errors. I love the way Eisen thinks about the relationship of music to performance. He notes that Mozart continually revised his works. It’s not possible to make a definitive edition when thinking like Eisen does. Instead he provides as much clarity as he can in the text.

He points out that Mozart wrote no accents in these works. Instead he uses a stroke which seems to serve as both an accent and a staccato mark. When a stroke occurs over a long note it can hardly mean staccato (although after a cursory look in this volume I could not find one of these). Also he notes that in addition to two dynamic markings (the traditional P and F) Mozart also writes out “pia” and “for” in places. Eisen makes a good case that Mozart might have some crescendos and decrescendos in mind at these points.

He also notes carefully where Mozart write differing articulations for the piano and the violin. In one passage in particular the piano and violin are playing the same notes in octaves and Mozart seems to have deliberately written different slurs for them.

In Eisen’s words: “It is difficult to credit these differences to sloppiness or oversight.” I quite like that and the result in performance is fascinating to me.

I also liked Eisen’s observations on Mozart’s approach to his music: “As for consistency of articulation, the notion that the ‘classical style’ represents a model of symmetry, balance and clarity is for the most part a 19th-century fiction, an attempt to rationalize a musical discourse—an exemplary ‘absolute’—-in a world that was perceived as fundamentally irrational. As such it has little to do with Mozart’s actual practice, which is based primarily on variety of both content and articulation.”

Finally I was amused to find an error in Eisen’s own English version of the preface I have been quoting:

After comparing the French translation I can find no reason for the second “one” above.

I totally love that there are errors in an essay discussing different readings including previous errors of a manuscript!

The new version of RiteStuff, the denomination software my church uses, turns out to be a very complicated revision.

It is like new software to me. I began yesterday morning by using the registration info the church secretary provided me. My idea was to do my morning tasks using the new software. Yikes. Picking my way through it turned out to be confusing. At the same time I could see new possibilities in how I could possibly use it once I learned it.

I looked for tutorial information online about RiteStuff 2.0. Finally in the afternoon (after I had managed to accomplish my tasks despite the new software) I found the User Manual tucked away at the bottom of the web page. Even though I couldn’t get the dang thing to stop loading online I did manage to read some of it and could see that it would be a key for me to understanding how the software might work.

The church secretary wisely kept the old version on her computer even as she had installed the new one. My boss and I agreed our task this summer is to look at this software and decide how we will use it.

The choir at church is stumbling along. People are skipping rehearsals and Sundays, scheduling other stuff in these times. Last night I had to cancel an upcoming anthem when three of my five  men indicated they were not planning to attend on Sunday, June 1. It will be relatively simple to come up with a substitute anthem for this Sunday, but I am disappointed we won’t be able to sing Healey Willian’s lovely “God has gone up with a shout.” Oh well. Yesterday I had picked a prelude and postlude by Willan for this Sunday. Maybe I’ll still perform them. Willan is an important Anglican composer and I do enjoy preserving his status by using his music in this setting.

I worked hard on vocal production last night. In such a small ensemble it is essential to continue to emphasize good vocal sounds. We have a new soprano. I hadn’t thought that it would be so evident that joining this late in the season would present a difference in vocal production in the newbie. I do emphasize vocaleses throughout the choir season, spending as much as ten or fifteen minutes on exercises. We had a spectacular sound on Good Friday. I like to think my doggedness in persisting with vocal exercises had something to do with that.

In the meantime, I can’t really work on choral sound with such differing groups of singers (different people at rehearsals and performances). I have to triage the sound the day of the performance. I can however, work on individual vocal production and make sure people know their parts as well as possible. That’s what I did last night.

I feel pretty good about not succumbing to discouragement as a conductor in the face of these difficulties. I think that choristers enjoy the  rehearsal despite these obstacles and leave feeling good about being a choir member.

Fuck the duck. Toujours gai, Archie!

I realized yesterday that it is this Saturday that I have a wedding. My boss is not the priest for this wedding but she still handled all the musical choices. This is definitely not a churchy type wedding. I am playing three pop songs  instrumentally on the piano. This is good time for me. I didn’t really want to learn these three far in advance so I would have to keep them in my fingers.

Yesterday I made a playlist of them on Spotify and listened to them a bit while treadmilling.

The three tunes this couple has chosen are:

Come Away with Me by Norah Jones

A Thousand Years by Christina Perri

A Beautiful Day by U2

I requested that the couple purchase the music and get it to me. They of course bought Vocal/piano versions. If I were to play just the piano part they would wonder where the melody is. The last one is the only one I’ll have to practice to adapt it to piano solo. The other two are pretty simple. It never fails to amaze me how people define their relationship to church musically. At least these people don’t seem to be part of our regular worshiping community. I would hope that the way we sing and pray might influence someone’s preferences when choosing stuff to get married by. But what do I know?

A box of used organ music I purchased from my old teacher Craig Cramer arrived recently. Yesterday I sat at the bench and went through a lot of it. Most of it was by living or recently deceased composers. Some of this was vaguely interesting, some pretty boring. At this stage of my life, craft doesn’t hold my attention by itself. There are slew of church music composers who write well crafted stuff that puts me to sleep.

I also ordered a bunch of different editions of Buxtehude and Sweelinck from Craig. These ranged from Dover and Kalmus editions of the former to a beautiful old Barenreiter edition of the latter.

It was these not the contemporary stuff that grabbed me yesterday. I played through some bicinium of Sweelinck and the Ciacona in C minor (BuxWV 159), Ciacona in E minor (BuxWV 160), Passacaglia in D minor (BuxWV 161) and several Preludiums of Buxtehude. This is such fine music and a joy to play even on  my old Moller.

The secretary at church purchased the update for the church software so I now I have registration number. This should allow me to do my work today.  Onward and upward for the old guy.

I am experiencing a sort of mental relaxation.

I am forcing myself to do tasks like practice. My predilection is to goof off. I did go practice yesterday. But even as I did so, I preferred to stay at home and do nothing. I guess that’s a good sign.

And I’m not really doing nothing. I continue to read and study my Greek. I played a great deal of Mendelssohn’s piano music yesterday. I continue to find him rewarding and fun to play. I even treadmilled to a recording of his piano music. What’s up with that?

Tried to reinstall the software my church uses that contains all the hymnals of the Episcopal Church (in America), RiteSong or RiteStuff. Of course it didn’t work. Unfortunately it looks like the version my church was using is no longer available for download online. The church secretary told me she hadn’t done the update yet. In the meantime I am without this handy piece of software. It’s only inconvenient, not completely detrimental.

Eileen took me up on my offer to keep her company on the ride to her Weavers Guild meeting in Grand Rapids. I took the car and found a Meijer’s gas station nearby (the Guild meets in a more rural area where there’s much else around). Bought a diet peach tea, an egg salad sandwich, some fruit and a bag of sunflower seeds. I sat and ate and read while Eileen’s meeting went on. It got out after 9 PM.

Came home exhausted and fell into bed. My brain seems to be on vacation.

1. Inventing a Failure – NYTimes.com

Krugmann is critical of how far the right is taking the rhetoric of distortion.

2. ‘James Madison,’ by Lynne Cheney – NYTimes.com

One of three interesting book reviews in Sunday’s NYT. Yes, she is that Lynn Cheney, the one married to Darth Vader.

3. ‘Decoded,’ by Mai Jia – NYTimes.com

A spy novel from China. Cool.

4. ‘The Word Exchange,’ by Alena Graedon – NYTimes.com

Futuristic novel where computers infect humans with a virus that makes them forget words and substitute gibberish. Looks like fun.

5. The Education of a Public Man – NYTimes.com

Not really thinking of reading this book, but I enjoyed the tile and the article.

6.Exposing the Hypocrisies of the New York Liberal – NYTimes.com

I am on the far left in the political spectrum, but I enjoy this kind of critical thinking especially when directed at policies which with I am basically in sympathy. It provokes thought.

7. Embrace of Atheism Put an Indonesian in Prison – NYTimes.com

Woah!

I continue to put up half ass pictures on Facebooger. My Dad left behind thousands of slides. I would like to have them in digital format. I am currently using my phone and a slide viewer to convert them.

This is a lame procedure I know, but I haven’t decided how to approach this process in a more effective way yet. That will probably involve some poking around on line which I haven’t gotten around to.

It is fun to throw up pics on Facebooger and get immediate feedback from viewers (mostly but not all family).

I had an interesting reconnection with a person yesterday. His name is Tim Pertler.

I knew him when my Dad was pastor at West Court Street Church of God, Flint Michigan. He is four years younger than me. He sent me a “friend request.” (I do abhor this debasing of language but whatchagonnado?) I usually connect with anybody who tries to reach out to me (assuming they are real people and I have some kind of connection with them).

It turns out that Mr. Pertler is interested in the history of my Dad’s denomination and specifically the church in Flint. I put up some pics that I otherwise didn’t think would interest anyone with Mr. Pertler in mind.

Although I have little interest in this denomination I do think history and the keeping of history is interesting and would assist this dude however I can. My father and his father were both involved in the history of the Church of God. I have tons of info sitting around that might be pertinent to historical endeavors and would be glad to share. But we’ll see. Often people flirt with ideas and stuff and then let it go.

I finished Murakami’s 1Q84 yesterday. It is more tightly plotted than I remember some of his other novels being. I think I would classify it as romantic surrealism.

I am nearing the end of two other books I am reading: Cranmer by Diarmaid MacCulloch and A Secular Age by Charles Taylor. I am enjoying both of them, but the latter seems to speak directly to issues I think about regarding how we live now. Taylor is careful to examine issues of morality and belief and nobelief as even handedly as he can. That he even tries to do this is a breath of fresh air for me.

I’m closing today’s blog with a lengthy quote. I encourage you to read it. We live in a time of hate and division. Taylor helps me understand both people I agree with and disagree with as well as myself.

A third pattern of motivation…  this time in the register of justice ….  [we can see it] today with the politically correct left, as well as the so-called ‘Christian’ right. We fight against injustices which cry out to heaven for vengeance. We are moved by a flaming indignation against these: racism, oppression, sexism, or leftist attacks on the family or Christian faith. This indignation comes to be fuelled by hatred for those who support and connive with these injustices; and this in turn is fed by our sense of superiority that we are not like these instruments and accomplices of evil. Soon we are blinded to the havoc we wreak around us. Our picture of the world has safely located all evil outside of us. We must never relent, but on the contrary double our energy, vie with each other in indignation and denunciation….

“Another tragic irony nests here. The stronger the sense of (often correctly identified) injustice, the more powerfully this pattern can become entrenched.  We become centres of hatred, generators of new modes of injustice on a greater scale, but we started with the most exquisite sense of wrong, the greatest passion for justice and equality and peace.

“A Buddhist acquaintance of mine from Thailand briefly visited the German Greens. He confessed to utter bewilderment. He thought he understood the goals of the party: peace between human beings, and a stance of respect and friendship by humans toward nature. But what astonished him was all the anger, the tone of denunciation, of hatred towards the established parties. These people didn’t seem to see that the first step towards their goal wold have to involve stilling the anger and aggression in themselves. He couldn’t understand what they were up to.”

I have been thinking about the title of the memoir my Dad left behind, Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares. I don’t understand why he chose this title. Although he begins with a Forward and a little Introduction, he doesn’t indicate why he chose that title.

It makes me wonder because although I know that Dad struggled with life, I don’t know what “dangers, toils and snares” confronted him. As I see  it, he had a pretty good life. Starting from a modest background as the youngest son of a preacher of pretty new religious movement (The Church of God), Dad goes on to emerge as one of the golden young ministers. He sang in the quartet from the church college which both sang on the church’s radio show and toured the United States in effect advertising the faith.

He was known as a Youth Minister and gave revivals and led youth camps.

He made that dang 1959 trip to Europe and the Middle East. He and Mom were “delegates to the World Convention of the Church of God.” He says they borrowed $2,750.00 to make the trip and that it didn’t make sense to “just” respond to the invitation to be delegates. Rather that making “an extended trip to the middle East and Europe was very enticing.”

I am intrigued that Dad was “enticed.” I have to conclude that he was an adventuresome man even though I didn’t always see him that way.

I experienced my father as kind of secretive. He didn’t easily confide in me. It was difficult for him to say that he loved me. But I didn’t really think of him as tortured by “dangers, toils and snares.”

In 1963 he moved the family from Tennessee to Michigan accepting what was in the confines of the small eccentric denomination a significant church in Flint Michigan. West Court Street was significant because he was following one of the preeminent preachers of the church, Herb Thompson, as pastor.

I remember Herb visiting us in Greeneville Tennessee and giving a “revival.” This means that he stayed with us a week or so and preached at a service every evening at my Dad’s church. It sort of feels like he was looking to Dad to carry on his work in Flint and in the national church (such as it was).

However, Dad found himself in an increasingly complex situation both in the local Flint church which was made up about half educated teacher types and half factory workers and in the country at the time which was reeling from the death of JFK and well on its way to the turbulent sixties.

Dad experienced a change in Flint. He found himself questioning a lot. In 1968 hiss transformation from the mantle bearing young conservative minister of his denomination to one of the farthest left wing factions of his own Dad’s church was probably completed by his taking a course in Chicago from the Urban Training center.  He has written and spoken about this time in his life as culminating in an “identity crisis.”

So maybe from his point of view this time in his life was one of “dangers, toils and snares.” Hard to say.

Yesterday I had some time to myself while Elizabeth and Eileen were in Whitehall.  At one point I messed with some of my Dad’s old slides. Elizabeth had pointed out that it would be cool if we could find a slide of my Mom and Dad in Paris so that Emily my niece could at least see them as she heads off to join her husband Jeremy who has been in France for a while plugging French versions of his graphic novel.

After a bit of looking earlier in the week I did find this picture of Mom and Dad in Paris in 1958.

Since Emily is leaving in a few days, I wanted to somehow get the slide into a jpeg format. I went to Walgreens and found out that the store in Holland didn’t do this but the store on the north side would overnight it for me to do it.

I found a $99 contraption at Meijers that purported to turn slides into jpegs, but wasn’t ready to risk the bucks on it. I thought of Kinkos and looked online to see if I could expect to walk in the door and do this task. It wasn’t clear to me if that was possible.

Finally I broke down and started taking pictures with my phone of slides on a viewer. That’s what these are.

I’m probably five or six in the picture above. The man is Benjamin Jenkins, my Father’s father. The picture has a sliver of my Grandmother on the left.

Mark was one and I was eight when my Mom and Dad took most of the summer and went to Europe. According to my Dad’s family memoirs they visited Canada, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Syria and Lebanon.

Anyway that’s all I have time for this morning. Gotta skate. More later.

1. You Must Enter Singing

A blog I ran across recently that is “a forum dedicated to the engaging of ideas at the intersection of the arts and the Christian faith with particular attention to music.” It seems a bit conservative but educated.

2. A Bad Death in Oklahoma : The New Yorker

Back when I subscribed to the hard copy of the New Yorker I looked forward to reading this guy’s articles.

3.

My friend Amy and I played through three violin sonatas by Mozart yesterday (K. 395, 303 and 306). Dang this is cool music. It is mature Mozart. I performed from an ancient crumbling used copy of the piano part I own and printed up violin parts from the internet for Amy. I decided that today I will order us a new printed edition so that our parts will match. I’m planning on purchasing a Cliff Eisen edition if I can find it.

I ordered from Zingerman’s on Wednesday. I had a discount coupon that expired on April 30. I ordered olive oil, a loaf of bread and some cheese. It came yesterday. Over night, that’s pretty quick. I purchased another loaf of bread from Meijers and some cheese and that was our meal together last night. Elizabeth whipped up a salad. Mmmmm.

Today Elizabeth and Eileen are off to Whitehall to taxi Eileen’s Mom around. Elizabeth gets on a plane tomorrow. It has been delightful having her around.

1.Outrage Across Ideological Spectrum in Europe Over Flawed Lethal Injection in U.S. – NYTimes.com

Before Choir rehearsal last night, Elizabeth pointed out that we had had contact with 14 Jenkinses that day. Lunch with Mom and my brother, Mark’s fam (5), video phone call with Sarah in England and Matthew off camera  (2), video phone call with California fam (4) and Eileen, Elizabeth and me (3).

I have chosen to learn Bach’s Orgelbüchlein setting of Christ ist erstanden for performance as the prelude a week from this Sunday. This will be the tune of the opening hymn that day.  This setting of Bach’s is the only example of a three part setting of a chorale in the Orgelbüchlein. It follows the three verses of the original hymn and is so marked Versus I, II, III in the original manuscript.

I love it that the composition in Bach’s handwriting is available online.

I’m one of those crazy musicians who will actually look at manuscripts and compare them to printed editions. I have learned to do this because of changes editors make, sometimes one I would prefer not to make, to the original composition.

Also performing a movement from Harald Rohlig’s Fantasy on the same tune as the postlude:

The third Vers 3. 

These two pieces (Bach and Rohlig) will keep me busy for the next week and half. I do enjoy learning music this good.

Well, Elizabeth is visiting so once again I’m bringing this to a close. Life is good. Fun to have her around.

1. Amid a Revived East-West Chill, Cold War Relics Draw New Interest – NYTimes.com

Russian museum.

2. Justices Appear Divided on Cellphone Warrants – NYTimes.com

Hard to rule on subjects you don’t exactly understand I would imagine.

3. Voter ID Is the Real Fraud – NYTimes.com

Judges beginning to understand the underlying partisan nature of this controversy? Maybe.

4. Cli-Fi Books

 New term for me. Climate Science Fiction. I understand that Margaret Atwood’s latest trilogy falls into this category.