Every time fam visits, I once again realize how unusual it is for me to sit in a room and have so much in common with people in it. I was surprised last night that my family visitors seemed to understand why I liked some of the videos I embedded in yesterday’s post. Daughter Sarah commented on yesterday blog and I couldn’t quite tell what she thought of Chandelier and Beyoncé. But I think the people last night might have been slightly bemused to find me, the family curmudgeon, showing them a Beyoncé video.  I know they liked the Chandelier video.

So my brother, Mark; his wife, Leigh: their kids Ben and Emily; and their respective partners, Tony and Jeremy are all visiting for one night. Eileen, Mark and Leigh went over to say hi to Mom after they arrived. The rest of the group arrived later in the evening. I skipped the Mom visit in order not to spread my illness from which I am gradually recovering. It looks like Mom may be released from her care facility back to her assisted care place tomorrow. No one asked, but I guess it’s assumed we are her ride home. That should work fine.

Last Saturday a friend of mine ended up in ER in an induced coma in hypothermia. Apparently he suffered some kind of a cardiac event and was rushed there. His dad has been posting updates on Facebooger. His name is Ken Thevenet and is a working church musician in Louisiana.

I knew him in grad school as a sweetheart of a guy who worked his ass off to be a good musician. I hope he pulls through and am following the updates.

In North Dakota, a Tale of Oil, Corruption and Death – NYTimes.com

This report is amazing. The embedded video and story work together nicely to form a top rate piece of new journalism.

In Ferguson by Darryl Pinckney | The New York Review of Books

Another good piece. On the ground in Ferguson the night the grand jury announced it was not going to indict. Vivid and eye opening.

Still a bit shaky, but I seem to be feeling better. Good thing, since my fam is arriving today for a brief visit.

I have been finding myself using visual distractions more than usual. Yesterday I watched several videos. The dance in the one above is a work of art. I barely noticed the bland music but was captivated by the choreography and execution of this amazing piece. A bit embarrassing that the dancer is a reality TV show star, but what can I say? I think it’s excellent.

I do find myself less and less interested in commercial popular music. I keep poking around looking for new things to listen to, clicking on things recommended by friends and fam. I made a spotify playlist of the albums in a recent NYT article about music in  2014 by Jon Carmanica.

I found a few things so far in the NYT article that I sort of like. The Vince Staples album above for example and Girlpool below.

Perhaps like so much of my personal taste not for everyone but my first impressions of these two albums is that they are doing music not just a bland bid to go viral in the age of the interwebs. I’m gradually working my way through the rest of the list.

Speaking of popularity, I was surprised to find myself attracted to the Beyoncé video below.

This entire piece draws me in. It uses the stark smile of the beauty contest contestant and the ritualized waving to make a deep critique of the objectification of women in our society and the pressure put on them. I find it particularly heartbreaking at the end when Beyoncé reaches into her own actual past to play a clip of her as a child receiving an award. Damn.

Anyway, I think it’s good.

I thought about putting these two videos up on Facebook and soliciting responses. I did in fact link the original Rolling Stone Article of the best videos of 2014 there. So far no one responded. I grow weary of the crowded paper thin world of algorithms and manipulation. Fuck it. I’ll put up what I think here.

And what I think is that I continue to find things of interest in popular culture, just not the most popular stuff, I guess. It is difficult these days to find stuff because there’s just too much of it and there are fewer and fewer coherent curators to guide me.

Eileen and I have been watching the series, “The Story of Film,” on Netfflix. It has drawn me back into the idea of film in a very good way. It is a savvy look at the entire world of film, not just commercial films from the West. I am finding it very educational and making notes of what movies I might want to look at. Plus the sardonic voice of Mark Cousins is delightful.

The Best Non-required Reading of 2014 was on sale as a Kindle book yesterday. I bought it and read the first article, an artful piece of fiction called On The Study of Physics in Preschool Classrooms: Pedagogy and Lesson Planning by Matthew Schultz

Good fun. The sterile voice of the non-fiction self help manual is employed nicely. “Perhaps, if the work warrants such a reaction, fall to your knees and let your head become heavy with new insights.” Schulz has his narrator say. I admire that sentence and this phrase: “anything true is impossible to fit inside your head.”

I am recovering from my illness. Today is the first day in several days that I have no fever. However I still feel like shit.

Sunday’s are hard for me when I am feeling better. Yesterday I barely got through playing for the service. My boss has also been ill. I told her I almost called it in. She said they could have made due but “it wouldn’t be pretty.”

When I’m feeling low physically it’s easy to feel low mentally. It was particularly encouraging that a woman named Helen Duggan commented on the usefulness of my compositions recently. I reflected to Eileen that it is sufficient if I get a hit like that once every two or three months. I do seem to do so, so that’s nice.

I was reminded of my Alzheimer’s fantasy of being weepy not angry when I lose my brains yesterday. I was chatting with Eileen and suddenly became very weepy. Oy. I thought to myself “this is what it will be like.”

I have a goal for myself to submit the music for Sunday this morning before the secretary arrives at 9:30. This means preparing a psalm and compiling all the info she will need. I am thinking of doing some William Byrd for the prelude and postlude. Yesterday I was playing through a pairs of Pavannes and Galliardes from my Fitzwilliam virginal book. I do love this music. I have given up on restoring my own crappy harpsichord in the near future. And I have decided that the piano allows subtleties of interp that the harpsichord doesn’t. So I’m thinking of scheduling a Pavanne and Galliarde for next Sunday’s prelude. They are often performed in the pairs in which they were conceived, so there’s that.

I think I could pick a third piece for the postlude this morning. Something goofy from the same source that would be easy to pull off.

Man, I am ready to be better.

I have a student coming today for our first run through of her Solo and Ensemble piece. I will email the student’s Mom so she will be aware that she is bringing her kid into a house that has recently had illness. I will offer to meet them at church instead or just cancel.

I am planning to use some recently acquired stipends (funeral from over a month ago, ordination fee) to tune my fucking piano. I have been putting this off since we are sort of on an austerity budget. However hosting a student who is preparing a piece for Solo and Ensemble makes me aware of how badly out of tune the piano is.

First thank you to Helen Duggan for leaving me a comment on my Free Mostly Original Sheet Music Page.  I was just puzzling this morning as I was listening to an archival choral evensong from the BBC as to why the local college choir director never saw fit to comment on my choral setting of Psalm 146 for SATB and organ (link to pdf). As I was listening to lovely compositions by Kenneth Leighton and Howard Howells, I couldn’t help but speculate that this choral setting wasn’t that bad. The only reason I haven’t used it with my choir is that it would be a bitch to play and conduct.

I have recently heard or read that blogs are a thing of the past now. This means that I have posted online throughout the entire life of this phenomenon. My original goals remain. To attempt to spark conversations, learn from others and make my compositions available to interested parties.

I am still pretty shaky this morning. I do feel a bit better, however, and am planning to do the church service. It helps that the choir has the Sunday off and my string players are coming to help with the prelude and postlude. I figure I will get enough of an adrenaline rush to get me through.

I continue to be impressed with Diarmaid MacCulloch. I finished listening to his book on Silence. But before I did I had already ordered me a copy. I find that listening to books is a poor substitute for actually absorbing them.

However I did learn lots just listening to this recording. For example, MacCulloch points to the very low emphasis on Mary in the libretto for Handel’s Messiah. I had never thought of that before. But of course it’s correct. The Prots were trying to figure out what to do with Mary. Quite an accomplishment really. To write a long libretto on the birth of Christ that de-emphasizes Mary’s central role.

Also I  found MacCulloch’s observations about the homeo erotic aspect of the Oxford movement very informing. I had not put together that John Cardinal Newman was gay (MacCulloch says if it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck and looks like a duck…).

An interesting outgrowth of this is that in the sixties when the Roman Catholic abandon the old liturgy, the oxford movement types are left hanging. I of course have thought of that, but MacCulloch sheds some new light for me.

The book is about silence in many ways including the larger sense of absence. Time and time again I thought to myself that I would like to see the footnotes for the books and ideas he is talking about. Hence the purchase of the book.

I have noticed lately that once in a while I need to have a book in my hands and not an ebook.

This happened to me recently with James Joyce. I have Ulysses as an excellent ebook with good footnotes, but as I was thinking about it and reading it I found myself scrutinizing my book collection (which is still in disarray from having moved many shelves of books from the first floor of our little house to the second floor.) I was very happy to find one of my old copies of Ulysses. It is now sitting by my chair.

Another very clever thing I learned from MacCulloch was the practice of wild tracking. Apparently when one does a radio interview, at the end of the interview the engineers requests several moments of silence so that they can record it. This recorded silence will be used to patch up odd sounds in the interview. Is that cool or what? And now a moment of silence.

The last 24 hours have been miserable for me. I have body aches and have not been able to rest. I don’t feel too bad right now. I hope this is lifting.

I have been experimenting with reading my New York Times a bit differently. If I use their “Reader” option (as opposed to reading it online, I think I can skim better.

The online paper consists of headline links. These are the old style headlines which are written more with the idea of clever attraction than being clear what the story is about. Written thus because the headline hovers over the story and with a quick skim one can see what it’s about.

But if one has to click on a dubious headline to find out more, the speed of the computer can be an impediment to browsing.

The “Reader” obviates this. But it means that in order to bookmark a story, read comments and highlight sections it’s necessary to keep both the “Reader” open and the online edition of the paper open. This is dumb. But it works.

This morning I skipped Greek and went right to reading the paper and drinking coffee. I don’t know how long I can comfortably sit up. Yesterday the body aches were so bad that I couldn’t read. I lay in bed and listened to Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Silence: A Christian History.

Then Eileen and I watched Newshour on the computer and I went to bed. I chose another book on Hoopla to listen to: 10:04 by Ben Lerner. I have been burned more than once by audiobooks online via library access. Sometimes the books are very badly written. I suspect that they may be self published. This is especially true of Blackstone Audio.

I haven’t been using Hoopla very long. Both Blackstone audio and Hoopla are available online via our local library. Yesterday on Hoopla there was a list of the best audiobooks of 2014. 10:04 was the first one. I have to admit it’s not bad.

Unfortunately, I do doze off and miss stuff. But that’s not all bad.

I’m planning to baby myself today, staying in bed, gathering strength for tomorrow’s service.

There is a retired prof at my church who loves to proof texts. This can be handy when there is an error. But unfortunately like so many academics this dude has an overwhelming trust in his own accuracy. In other words, some things just look incorrect to him.

This morning I got up and tried to find out if, indeed, there is a comma in “Jeanette, Isabella,” in the title of the carol, “Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella.” We are playing a little arrangement of it (along with three other carols) this Sunday as the prelude. The original arrangement was for viola and piano by Katrina Wreede. My cellist brought in a cello version of a book of arrangements by this composer. We (I) liked them enough to schedule four of them on the choir’s off Sunday. I added a viola part by looking carefully at Wreede’s arrangements.

In the flurry of activity this week, the prof emailed his corrections to this Sunday’s bulletin to the executive secretary at church and copied me on to it. He did find some errors. He caught the omission of the last verse of the psalm. Good and easily verifiable. He also mentioned that there should be a comma between Jeanette and Isabella in the title of the piece we are performing.

The executive secretary and I both said we always thought is was one person with two names. Anyway, not easily verifiable. The composer does not put a comma there.

So this morning I pulled out some reference books to see if I could figure it out. I was disappointed that this carol was not in the new Oxford Book of Carols under “Bring a Torch..”

I poked around in some other books and couldn’t find it.

So I went online. My favorite response was a tweet that asked if it took two people to get a torch. Very witty.

I then went to the Groves Music Dictionary online and found that the melody is by Charpentier. In the Groves they write “Jeanette-Isabella.” This makes sense.

However when I looked up the French title of the carol in my New Oxford Book of Carols, it has a comma with no explanation.

The hyphen makes more sense to me. But leaving it out is not obviously incorrect. Good grief.

I have to say that this prof has taught me stuff with his corrections. Like the word, “err,” rhymes with “her,” not “air.”

But he has also taught me to verify his contentions.

Earlier I watched an online discussion on the Organist’s Facebook group about the lack of time signatures in the Hymnal 1982.

Here’s another little question I couldn’t resolve: “When and why did 20th century hymnal editors begin routinely omitting time signatures in hymns?”

I also learned that in an ecumenical discussion of The Hymnal 1982, a lot of people hate it.

I thought that was very interesting but also very odd.

I tend to think of it as a photograph of what was pretty definitive about many tunes and texts at that point. Plus I tend to think denominations should use their own material.

I should say here that one of the fun parts of the late Christmas service for me was that it was singing congregation of Grace. Much more fun when people are taking part like that!

Eileen has given me her cold. I am achy and coughed through the night. I dreamed that Eileen came in a room and sat down to watch TV with me. In my dream, I sarcastically thanked her for the cough.

Retailers Try Offering Expertise Online Along With Products – NYTimes.com

I think the idea of providing content with advertising is admirable and actually an older way of thinking about what advertising is actually for: to inform. Silly me.

With Memories of a Comic Comrade, Margaret Cho Helps the Homeless – NYTime

I didn’t know about Robin Williams’ charity work for the homeless. I do admire Cho. After reading this, Eileen and I watched about an hour of one of her stand ups on YouTube. She does rock!

Your new PC needs these 22 free, excellent programs | PCWorld

Getting a new PC is a mixed blessing. There are always tons of inconveniences to changing computers. Here are some programs many of which address that problem.

BY ROBERT SOUTHWELL, SJ

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,

Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,

A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;

Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed

As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.

“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;

The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,

The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,

For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,

      So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”

      With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

The Jew at Christmas Eve

by Karl Shapiro

I see the thing bell-ringer standing at corners
Fine as a breath, in cloth of red,
With eyes afar and long arm of a reed
Weakly waving a religious bell,
Under the boom of caroling hours
I see the thin bell-ringer standing still,
Breasting the prosperous tide on the Christmas pave.

I see the thing bell-ringer repenting himself
From corner to corner, year to year
Struggling to stand beneath the windy blaze
Of horns that carol out of walls.
He would attract a crying waif
Or garrulous old woman down-at-heels
Or a pair of lovers on the icy pave.

Whom do you summon, Santa of the spare?
Whom do you summon, arm of the reed?
Whom do you cheer with ringing and whom chide,
And who stops at the tripod at your side
And wishes you the time of year?
A few who feed the cauldron of the unfed,
The iron cauldron on the fireless pave.

I see the thin bell-ringer as a flame
Of scarlet, trying to throw the flame
With each sweep of the bell. The tide pours on
And were the ringer in cloth of red
And parts around the ringer of flame
With eyes afar and long arm of a reed
Who shakes the fire on the snowy pave.

Christmas in the Elgin Room

by Thomas Hardy

British Museum: Early Last Century

” What is the noise that shakes the night,
And seems to soar to the Pole-star height?”
— ” Christmas bells,
The watchman tells
Who walks this hall that blears us captives with its blight.”

” And what, then, mean such clangs, so clear?”
” — ‘Tis said to have been a day of cheer,
And source of grace
To the human race
Long ere their woven sails winged us to exile here.

” We are those whom Christmas overthrew
Some centuries after Pheidias knew
How to shape us
And bedrape us
And to set us in Athena’s temple for men’s view.

” O it is sad now we are sold —
We gods! for Borean people’s gold,
And brought to the gloom
Of this gaunt room
Which sunlight shuns, and sweet Aurore but enters cold.

” For all these bells, would I were still
Radiant as on Athenai’s Hill.”
— ” And I, and I!”
The others sigh,
” Before this Christ was known, and we had men’s good will.”

Thereat old Helios could but nod,
Throbbed, too, the Ilissus River-god,
And the torsos there
Of deities fair,
Whose limbs were shards beneath some Acropolitan clod:

Demeter too, Poseidon hoar,
Persephone, and many more
Of Zeus’ high breed, —
All loth to heed
What the bells sang that night which shook them to the core.

1905 and 1926

Moonless darkness stands between

by: Gerard Manley Hopkins

Moonless darkness stands between.
Past, the Past, no more be seen!
But the Bethlehem-star may lead me
To the sight of Him Who freed me
From the self that I have been.
Make me pure, Lord: Thou art holy;
Make me meek, Lord: Thou wert lowly;
Now beginning, and alway:
Now begin, on Christmas day.

So now I can divulge some of the Christmas secrets from Monday. For security reasons, my bank decided to block my online purchases in the United Kingdom on Amazon.uk. Earlier in November, I was annoyed when a purchase I had made for  my quasi-son-in-law Matthew was quietly denied. The bank never did inform me. Instead Amazon.UK  did. Of course it was several days later and I had once again waited until the last minute to get Matthew his birthday gift and missed the date. Ay yi yi.

So Monday I was on the phone with my bank (actually on hold plus I hate hate hate automated phone trees).

I did finally manage to confirm my new online purchase for both Matthew and Sarah the daughter. And yesterday Sarah sent me pics confirming that they had a couple gifts from Eileen and me under their Xmas tree which were dropshipped through Amazon.UK.

Although of course there are Xmas secrets I am NOT divulging here, the other thing that was consuming a lot of my time and energy was a gift for my friend Rhonda Edgington. Eileen inspired me with the home made gifts she has made for people (secrets). The main thing I can make is music. I was inspired by the notion that Rhonda’s name is sort of in the hymn tune, Cwm Rhondda.

So I made a fakey little organ piece for her.

I was especially proud of the new lyrics I wrote for the tune:

I’m glad Rhondda lives in Holland
That is why I made this song
Not sure why we both live in Holland
sometimes seems it’s just plain wrong.
Those we love are from around here.
Plus the churches, Hope and Grace,
help us live in this crazy place.

Rhonda and her lovely husband, Mark, invited us over for a family meal last night. That was my deadline and I made it. It was by the way a lovely evening (Thanks Mark and Rhonda!). I am grateful that these two gentle intelligent people reach out to Eileen and Me! It’s fun to watch thier kids Isaac and Esther blossom.

I added this new composition to my page, Free Mostly Original Sheet Music, this morning. Here’s a link to the PDF as well. I hope someone lets me know if it doesn’t work. I have changed how I put this stuff online. I now attempt to publish pdfs with the Google Drive but I do find their URLs a bit confusing and hope I copied the right one.

How a Cuban Spy and His Wife Came to Be Expectant Parents – NYTimes.com

Fun to imagine US state department officials ensuring the delivery of sperm.

The Subtle Sensatio ns of Faith – NYTimes.com

I’m probably getting soft in the head but I found myself running down a religious book recommended by David Brooks in this article.

The book is Meditation of a Modern Believer by Christian Wiman. I put it on hold at the library yesterday.

The Slaying of 2 Officers in Brooklyn – NYTimes.com

This is a link to letters to the editor about this recent tragic incident. Like the letter writer, Marjorie Forbes, I was appalled at the rhetoric coming out of the mouth of the Police Union guy, Patrick Lynch. I admire her observation that he was himself escalating a situation when in fact it is the opposite skill that is needed (and practiced) by the better rank and file policemen. Here’s the letter writer’s way of saying it:

How can the cop on the beat learn anything from him [Patrick Lynch] about de-escalation and seeking solutions when he is showing such childish but dangerous tendencies himself?

Yesterday was a day of Christmas preparations. It is entirely possible that one or two of the recipients of my work yesterday number among the sporadic readers of this blog. Hence, I will not be describing them here for a bit.

Unsurprisingly, I was very fatigued after the busy weekend. I had an attack of common sense and changed the late Christmas eve postlude tomorrow.  decided to do Bach’s wonderful “Der Tag, der ist so freudenreich” from the Orgelbüchlein (Little organ book). I will also be using it as the postlude for the kid’s Christmas service. My reasoning is that people aren’t listening that closely so why not play something excellent that I like that fits the season. I used it last year as the postlude for the kid’s service. I like repeating pieces at certain times of the year so maybe this piece is settling in to be my Christmas postlude.

Also when one is both the organist and choir director, it is probably smart to ease up a bit on what you expect of yourself at Christmas and Holy Week to help one get through it respectably.

This is not to say I won’t challenge myself as an organist at these times of the year. Last year I used a Handel organ concerto movement for the postlude at the late Christmas Service. Not too hard, but respectable and it did require more prep than the Bach will this year.

I uncharacteristically skipped treadmilling yesterday. It seemed like the thing to do. Tonight, Eileen and I are having supper with the Edgington family. It should be a pretty low key day.

My daily visit to see my Mom is helping her. It makes me wonder if I should drop in on her more often when (or maybe if) she returns to her nursing home.

It’s raining in Holland Michigan, but I think we’ll have snow on Christmas eve.

Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses – NYTimes.com

I am surprised to see this much sanity on the pages of a national newspaper. Realistically, this would heighten the partisan rancor. In fact, right wingers will (with some justification in this case) already see the “Gray Lady” taking a left winger stance. For my part, I would support this move, but would be very shocked if it happened.

Dick Cavett: By the Book – NYTimes.com

I like to read articles about what others are reading. Some memorable quotes in this one. Talking about the dismal likelihood that some writers would be recognized by young people these days, Cavett calls them the

know-little-if-anything-before-your-birth, tweeting and Facebooking and iPhoning “awesome”-addicted young:

On rereading books:

“Huck” (leberry Finn) is a great illustrator of “Vlad” (I didn’t actually know him) Nabokov’s admonition that there is no such thing as reading. Only rereading. Try it with a book you read and think you know. It’s as if the thing’s been rewritten and filled with gems that you missed the first time. Try it, even with a few pages you’ve just read. We’d all have been better off to have read half as many books. Twice.

Finally on the censoring of the word, “nigger,” in Huckleberry Finn:

“Nigger Jim” is the moral center of the book. Can’t those nitwits see that?

Who Suffers Most From Rape and Sexual Assault in America? – NYTimes.com

“Women in the lowest income bracket, with annual household incomes of less than $7,500, are sexually victimized at 3.7 times the rate of women with household incomes of $35,000 to $49,999, and at about six times the rate of women in the highest income bracket (households earning $75,000 or more annually).”

Dancing to the Beat, and Feeling ‘Normal’ – NYTimes.com

A case of acquired M.S. doesn’t affect the fluency of his dancing, only everything else.

Pierre Cox – NYTimes.com

This is one of those celebrity profile puff pieces, but it is chock full of interesting stuff.

Speaking of visiting his mother in France: “She is 91 now and she still plays the piano, and she played pieces by my father. It was very moving.”

Cox enjoys coming up with anagrams in his spare time: “such as “astronomers” that reads “no more stars,” or the anagram of “listen” is “silent.”

Chinese Court Sides With Gay Man in ‘Conversion’ Suit – NYTimes.com

I find this story counter intuitive, but pleasant!

Glyn Johns on Recording Rock Greats – NYTimes.com

The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimmi Hendrix, and more.

A Vermont Senator Asks, Why Not a Socialist President? – NYTimes.com

Oh no. I would seriously consider throwing my vote away on this dude.

Resolve Hardened by Massacre at School, Pakistani Forces Kill Dozens of Militant

Evil begets evil.

I found myself doing quite a bit of improvising in yesterday’s Advent Lessons and Carols. I racked my brains to come up with different accompaniment sounds from my organ and harmonizations to add variety to the many carols in this service.

We sang all eight verses of “O Come, O Come, Emmanual” as usual. I have previously set it up so that different groups sing different stanzas (men, women and children, choir), but my boss doesn’t go for that so much any more. I think she feels that I am taking verses away from those who don’t sing. At any rate, attendance was a tad sparse yesterday so it probably wouldn’t have worked to do that. I did vary the accompaniments. This tune is one that is full of potential for the improviser. The Hymnal 1982 has two versions for the organist. The second one is actually a handbell arrangement by the late Richard Proulx. I always use it on at least one of the verses. Proulx seems to have a large impact on this hymnal despite his renegade status as a deserter to the Roman Catholic church.

When I think of him now, I remember the appeal to the organist community after he collapsed on an airplane and was rushed to the hospital. Of course he had no insurance. So we all kicked in bucks to help pay for his health care.

I met him at a workshop. He was a corpulent good humored man who was very dedicated to church music.

I played the Stanley prelude from the Ordination as the Postlude.  Several choir members stayed the entire eight minutes to hear it.  Yesterday they were in the commons during the prelude and one or two of them complained to me that they didn’t get to hear it. I told them I was doing a twofer and they could hear it the next day. I played it better yesterday than on Saturday.

During the prelude the adult altar servers were standing near me talking loudly. Eileen observed that when I began the prelude they talked louder. I told her it was like playing in a bar and that my bar work had probably been good prep for my church experiences. All this is to say it was just another day at work.

I felt kind of silly when just before we sang our anthem, I discovered that “The Huron Carol,” is actually in The Hymnal 1982. It’s supposedly the first Canadian Christmas Carol and is based the work of a Jesuit missionary to the Algonquin Tribe who tries to evoke Native American imagery. I just now discovered that the English version was done in 1926 by a man named Jesse Edgar Middleton. Not all of his cool imagery is retained in the 1982 Hymnal. I came home and read the Hymnal 1982 Companion info, but it didn’t address the substitution of “God the Lord of all” for “Mighty Gitchi Manitou.” The wikipedia article on this carol says that  “The original lyrics are now sometimes modified to use imagery accessible to Christians who are not familiar with Native Canadian cultures.”

I think it feels very 80s to make that change.

I turned to Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps by Art Spiegelman yesterday for a little sane Sunday afternoon reading.

Although much of the print is very very tiny, I did manage to read and enjoy a great deal in it.

I especially liked this rejected submission for the Christmas cover of The New Yorker mag.

Here’s one they didn’t reject that is equally appealing to me.

It’s the back to school Guns of September issue September 13, 1993.

There are some very witty moments in this anthology. Spiegelman does things with Maurice Sendak.

And pages and pages of tribute to Charles Schulz.

I checked it out of my local library. If you can get hold of a copy, I highly recommend it.

Eileen and I walked over to church yesterday morning for the Ordination Service. We arrived early to give me time to put my music in order. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of choristers who showed up for this service. I had asked them to sign out if they couldn’t make this extra service. When only three people signed out, I suspected people were neglecting to do so. That’s nice.

I was surprised at Wednesday’s rehearsal when so many people seemed not to know the anthem for the Ordination (“Vito’s Ordination” by Sufjan Stevens). I spent more time than I had anticipated at that rehearsal working with the singers. Then I came home and emailed everyone in the choir a pdf copy of the anthem and a link to Sufjan Steven’s recording on YouTube.

They did seem a bit more secure on it yesterday. So that’s good.

In a big gathering of diverse Episcopalians one never knows who’s in the room. There are so many different (and often unforgiving) ways I have seen Episcopalians behave and think. I definitely do not feel part of a community of Episcopalian church musicians in Western Michigan. So I figure my church antics offend and alienate as many worshipers in a community of this kind as it enables.

It was nice that my friend and colleague Rhonda came to this service. I look forward to hearing her critique of my work. I asked her to keep it in mind and share it with me at a later date otherwise I might have to cry.

I do find myself in a weird vulnerable place when I try to make music. It’s not a time for critical analysis.

The response of the congregation varied wildly in the service. Some hymns were enthusiastically entered into, others not so much. Puzzling over this, I wondered if my community might be unique in its use of the supplemental hymnals. A couple of hymns came from them yesterday and they were the ones that people didn’t sing as much.

Anyway, that happened.

I had very nice compliments from many of the visiting clergy involved including the bishop, the preacher and the two people who were ordained.

One can only hope that the service worked for those to whom it mattered.

For my part, I continue to admire people who can enter so deeply into faith. It doesn’t seem to be my gift.

I do like doing the music, however.

Eileen’s throat is still bothering her so she chose not to accompany me on my daily visit to Mom in the Care Facility.

Though I was exhausted, I returned home and did my treadmilling and then made Johnny Cake.

Eileen and I finished up watching the TV series Fargo last night.

I was a bit disappointed, but I think my hopes soar when viewing a Coen brothers work for the first time. Easy to expect too much.

So this morning I’m catching up on sharing recent links.

‘A Great Moment’: Rover Finds Methane, a Clue That Mars May Harbor Life – NYT

“an oh my gosh moment”!

Family of Former Marine Held in Iran Issues Plea for Obama Not to Forget Him – 

” Amir Hekmati” from Flint Michigan.

Tortured by Psychologists and Doctors – NYTimes.com

This Op Ed piece is where I learned details of the two shrinks who devised torture methods for the CIA and based it on the concept of “learned helplessness.” This is unspeakably immoral.

Arnaldo Momigliano – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

David MacCulloch mentions this man and commends him as a historian. I bookmarked this to remember to check him out.

Bill Withers Might Play at Hall of Fame Induction | Rolling Stone

Wow. For some reason I thought Withers was dead. Bookmarked this interview to read. I keep going back this man’s music.

Review: D’Angelo’s ‘Black Messiah’ – NYTimes.com

Must remember to “Spotify” this music.

Dodd-Frank Damaged in the Budget Bill – NYTimes.com

The Masters of the Universe, it turns out, are a bunch of whiners. But they’re whiners with war chests, and now they’ve bought themselves a Congress.

The Internet, Not the Labels, Hurt the Music Industry – NYTimes.com

Not entirely convincing, but still interesting and informative.

America, Who Are We? – NYTimes.com

Charles Blow puts in a powerful pitch for active citizenship.

What People Buy Where – NYTimes.com

A report on a study of how purchases reflect personal understandings of one’s social status regionally. It turns out that where you live makes all the difference.

Shortly after I wrote my blog yesterday I received another email from the chorister who objected to singing “from” Jordan in an anthem. He thanked me for my “extensive explanation,” but persisted in seeing the word as a fundamental error made by all concerned. He confided that if we did sing it this way he would grate on him every time he sang it.

i didn’t reply. I don’t have to decide for a while since we won’t be rehearsing on the next two Wednesdays (Christmas eve and New Year’s eve this year). I am thinking seriously of giving since in the final analysis it just doesn’t matter.

He made the suggestion (which had already occurred to me) that we substitute “flume,” the original word for “from.” This is probably what I will do.

I am reminded something my beloved teacher, Ray Ferguson, once told me.

We had just spent an hour listening to a speaker discuss the pros and cons of performing a Bach flute sonata in two different ways, finally endorsing one of them.

I would often walk Ray to his car in the parking lot (if he invited me to) so we could have a bit more time to chat. On this walk, he smiled and said to  me something about the whole debate was one that just didn’t actually matter at all.

I feel that way about “from” and “flume.”

I bogged down at work yesterday.

I still haven’t found a postlude for Christmas eve. I pulled out several possibilities and ran through them. I spent a good deal of time searching for music. I have decided to do a postlude based on a Christmas carol that people will recognize. In years past I have sometimes insisted on a decent classical selection like a Handel organ concerto movement. This year, my heart is just not in it.

As usual, the last choir rehearsal before Christmas eve was poorly attended. I took the opportunity to talk to the group about how volunteerism has changed in the last forty years. I told the story about the chemist who played trumpet well enough to play in the church brass ensemble. He told me that he wanted to be in it again one year. I told him that would fine but there was one stipulation, he would have to show up.

He was indignant. He was a high ranking supervisor in a national pharmacy company which at that time had a large plant here in Holland. He was not used to being spoken to in this way. I mused privately that it was hard to understand how one was in an organization and did not intend to attend its meetings.

However that is the state of volunteerism at this point. It’s the “Bowling Alone” effect. When one joins a volunteer organization such as a church choir, it is with the unspoken stipulation that one will show up if it’s convenient.

I told this story as gently as I could to my choir Wednesday. I then said to them that they were exceptional for being there.

It was a feeble attempt to improve the morale of a bunch of tired dedicated people.

After working at church yesterday I was exhausted. I looked up at the end of my time there and realized I had spent several hours dithering about what to play on Christmas Eve.  I was surprised at how much time had passed. No wonder I was tired.

Last night one of my choristers was quite insistent that we were singing a typo in an anthem I was introducing. Despite my clearly outlining that we would address the text in a tertiary manner after learning notes and rhythms of this piece I was just introducing.

Later, martini in hand, I checked out his complaint and was a bit vindicated in sticking to the written text.

The anthem was “The Baptism of Christ” by Micheal Bedford which I think is a charming little thing.

It combines some Gregorian chant with a sort of modern take harmonization of some English text as well. As you see above the only reference for this text given was “Medieval Text.”

My chorister assumed that the English was a bowdlerized translation of the Latin or something despite the English translation of the Latin given below the text.

Here’s the part he was talking about.

Now, Jesu, as thou art both God and Man,
And were baptised in from Jordan,
At our last end we pray thee, say then:

He was certain that “from” was a typo. I tried to tell him that sometimes texts were pasted together in ways that were practically incoherent in Medieval music.

This morning I received an email from him in which he insisted that we had a responsibility to change the text because it was a “complete violation of English grammar.”

Here’s  my reply to him:

“I too checked the OED as well as a number of other sources looking for the Medieval text.

I hesitate to change a text in a composition unless it’s clearly a mistake. In my way of thinking this is not a mistake since these words have also been set by two fairly important English composers Peter Hallock and Peter Maxwell Davies both of whom use “from” at this point in their composition.

Hallock even went so far in his treatment of this odd macaronic Medieval text to retain the usage “The Fadyr voys” as the odd sounding “The Father Voice” not the Father’s voice as Bedford and Warlock apparently chose to do.

My guess is that all three men were working from a reference book which changed the medieval text in this way.

So three composers intentionally chose to use this part of the original text they were working from as is.

My solution is not to change the composition, but to provide a note in the bulletin that it is intentional and why I have chosen to perform it as set by the composer. My purpose in writing this note is not to avoid the risk of “being a laughingstock.” People who react this way are often revealing their own ignorance (as they would be in this case, in my discernment). Instead I would be adding a bulletin note for the sake of clarity (something I value).

I would probably include in my bulletin explanation of my artistic choice to retain the word, “from,” the idea that music is not poetry. In music written in the time we live, it is often the sound of words that is more important than their literal meaning. (e.g. “Einstein on the Beach” by Phillip Glass or the random pastiches of words set by John Cage). Hallock, Warlock and Bedford are well aware of this idea. Indeed, the notion exists in early music melismas in which a single syllable of a word becomes a mini-masterpiece of music.

DIGRESSION (Jupe note: still quoting from this email)

Coincidentally, this morning I was reading William Tindall’s commentary on Dylan Thomas’s poem, “I see the boys of summer. I came across this beautiful passage which seems pertinent to me:

“(By dissonance I mean an approximate rhyme in which vowels disagree and consonants agree, e. g. goat-gate, thrash-flesh. By assonance I mean an approximate rhyme in which consonants disagree and vowels agree, e. g. rake-pain.) Yet this order of disagreements (SJ note: i.e. the way Thomas uses words in this poem), we must agree, offers an experience like nothing else—and a good experience, too. Maybe, prizing that, we should take the dazzling thing as, if ignorant of music, we take something by Bartók, without inquiry.

“But poetry, made of words, is not music, whatever these arts have in common.”

from A Reader’s Guide to Dylan Thomas by William York Tindall,

I think it’s cool that Thomas had told Tindall that Bartók was the composer for him (i.e. Thomas).

END OF DIGRESSION (and end of quoting from email)

I ended by thanking the writer and copying the whole deal to another choir member who suggested she would research this as well.

In his book Silence: A Christian History, Diarmaid MacCulloch points out how being a young gay man prepared him for his life as an historian.

He says “the first sort of silence I encountered in my life was primarily an absence…. that of humans failing to make public or explicit the full range of patterns around which they were thinking and leading their lives.”

This morning I failed to get the U of M radio to stream properly. I tried several things since I wanted to lay in bed for a while and rest.

But finally I was confronted with the instruction that if THIS didn’t work email us.

Ah. No.

So I thought I would try Hoopla through my local library. I noticed last night that Hoopla has audiobooks as well as videos and  music. So I logged on via my local library card.

I spotted MacCulloch’s new book and immediately checked it out and listened for an half an hour or so thus managing to lay in for that time and rest more.

Several things struck me about MacCulloch’s book. The first was the absence thing above.

I struggle with people who do not make explicit the full range of their thoughts and being. I have come to accept that doors are closed to me where many if not most are concerned. This is okay.

Moreover MacCulloch’s next point about how being a a young gay man “proved to be a great blessing for an historian,” namely “the historian’s other essential quality, a sense of distance: an observer status in the rituals required for a heterosexual society…”

As I listened to this being read I realized that my own concept of being an outsider could be enlarged into this idea of distance. It explains a lot to me about myself. I am definitely an observer in most of my walks in life. I quietly observe at church and at the college. I observe ranges of patterns of behavior and thought (in MacCulloch’s phrase). Many times I wonder how self aware others are about their range. I wonder this about myself as well.

But mostly when I think about how they see the world that we all live in, I often reflect on how differently I see it.

I have been thinking a lot about the echo chamber effect. Recently I clicked through on a Facebooger link to an article recommended as a good analysis by a conservative friend. I read the article. Looked closely at the web site and realized that the site and the article were not exactly dedicated to clarity and truth of analysis. Instead (fairly enough) they were looking to shape (literally “educate” according to their mission statement) people into being conservative.

This is at odds with my understanding of clear analysis which at least attempts some logic, coherence if not objectivity. However, I also have to factor in that the echo chamber effect means that you see the flaws in what you disagree with but at the same time when you  are reading something closer to your own understanding and/or prejudices, it only seems “fair and balanced.”

It’s a trap.

Listening to MacCulloch’s audiobook this morning I was struck when he quoted from the famous thirteenth chapter of Corinthians.

You know the one where if one doesn’t have love (agape), not much else matters, good works, offering oneself as a martyr.

MacCulloch says these ideas are the “wash behind the painting in this book.”

I like that. I know that compassion and clarity trump most things in my head. I also think the agape thing is a good critique of our ongoing lack of civilization in America and the world. As long as we fail to see each other with compassion and some accuracy as well as the distance of observing closely, we are like noisy gongs or clanging cymbals.

Yesterday I mentioned that I thought Gregorian chant should be accompanied lightly. I usually do a minimal amount of accompanying, keeping it much simpler than most of the harmonizations one sees.

I had to laugh last night when I realized I was asking my drummer to add sounds to the Veni Creator when we sing it. Oops.

Except I think it will be cool. Years ago I wrote a little setting of the Veni Sancte Spiritus melody which utilized a contraption I had made of flimsy wood with as many wind chimes on it I could get hold of. Same idea. Holy Spirit. Wind.

I asked Brian Coyle the drummer guy to begin with wind chimes before I introduce the melody and key. Insert wry comment here about my own lack of consistency.

I’m pretty happy about having Brian and his wife Debbie on oboe playing along on the Sufjan Stevens tune the Barons have requested for their ordination. I quite like getting husband and wife together to make music. I also love having a drum kit for certain styles. I wish I had someone to play regularly for them on Sundays.

I was also pleasantly surprised Sunday when a parishioner told me I had inspired him to read Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain by sharing a little post about it on Facebooger.

I tried not to act to excited to find someone at coffee hour actually talking about something that interested me.

Later this dude told me that a prof from Hope had warned him about how difficult Mann can be. I just shrugged and quoted an old friend to him: “In order to love Mann, you have to love bullshit.” I will be interested to see if this common reader likes Mann despite having been warned by a stupid stupid academic. Sometimes these people make me crazy.

My collection of JACT (Joint Association of Classical Teachers) new edition of Greek Texts is now complete. The World of Athens: an Introduction to Classical Athenian Culture arrived in the mail yesterday.

So now I own and use this book,

a book of Greek texts to study,

a book of grammar and an independent study guide.

Plus a pronunciation CD.

All of these cross connect and cross refer. I started doing the background reading yesterday. I have also started over at the beginning of the texts for the third time in order to deepen my understanding of Greek grammar and the way the words change to reflect meaning (morphology I guess they call it).

Rev. Dr. William Barber II on Today’s Protest Movements – NYTimes.com

I believe we are living in an increasingly uncivilized country. We have abandoned the ideal of democracy and traded striving for a representative government and any sense of public morality for profit and fear and misinformation.

The Talk: After Ferguson, a Shaded Conversation About Race – NYTimes.com

The talk is interrupted when the kid wants to know why he shouldn’t just tell people he’s white since he’s light skinned.

Our Unrealistic Hopes for Presidents – NYTimes.com

Though this article leaves out a bit one (presidents are not kings and cannot just make shit happen), it gets a lot  right including this quote from Chris Rock.

 In a recent interview, he (Rock) described how George W. Bush adapted to this new political environment, saying Mr. Bush “only served the people who voted for him.”

“He literally operated like a cable network,” he added, while Mr. Obama is “a network guy.” He explained: “He’s trying to get everybody

I am constantly amazed how partisans on both right and left operate in an echo chamber which omits the other person’s right to be an American either implicitly or even explicitly. Sad stuff.

This morning is one of those mornings when I hesitate between this public venue and my private journal which I turn to from time to time to express myself without restraint and a bit more clearly than I do here for fear of over stepping appropriate boundaries.

Nevertheless if you are reading this I probably haven’t written privately this morning but have sought a way to put my thoughts down here.

I seem to be feeling some complex stuff. Partly, I realized that though I love my job, the content of it, what I think of as the theology or the meaning, leaves me indifferent.

Liturgical understanding attracts me with its coherence and deeply rooted history. I have consistently pointed out to my friend and boss Jen that some of our prayers during the Advent season contradict what I have been taught. We pray as though Jesus is coming to be born among us. Jen has chosen seasonal prayers which confusedly pray for the coming of Christ, but not in the eschatological sense of the end time, but more of being born in our hearts.

This is just the stuff that leaves me indifferent and bored. The curates seem to share this theology. I know that many in the congregation seem to be mostly interested in a comforting and comfortable religion.

For me it provides a cloying annoying counterpart to the overwhelming commercialization of this time of year.

There’s more I could write that demonstrates how off balance I feel. I find myself rejecting most of what religion has to offer. I do love the music and poetry of it. But only what I think of as the good stuff. And in order to be good in my mind, it needs to make some sort of basic sense.

Also, I’m not at all satisfied with my skills in church music. Yesterday I felt that I had failed to prepare the choir for the anthem. Granted there were extenuating circumstances of people hung over or just plain absent due to partying. Also sporadic attendance at rehearsals hurt us. After the anthem I could see that singers were disappointed in their performance. i tried to make reassuring honest and comments to them. But I am haunted by the notion that if anyone can make a choir better it is usually up to the conductor to find strategies to do so.

My solo organ playing yesterday wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. Rhonda’s recital restored my faith in the genre. She played some pieces that I knew pretty well and I especially enjoyed the Distler.

The local reformed tradition seemed to be more in touch with the theology of Advent I understand. They included a reading from Matthew about the end of the world. And of course readings and collects in the Book of Common Prayer are clear about that. The use of the O Antiphons and the vigorous organ accompaniment of Gregorian Chant along with the unusual use of the solo voice on it (nicely sung by John Hoyer) struck me as curious.

Not sure what people think the “O Antiphons” actually are. Possibly they associate them with the images in the hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” which is derived from some of them.

Rhonda played her chant accompaniments well (Hi Rhonda!) if a bit fast for the congregation to pick up, but I realized that I couldn’t use that big a sound on the genre. And my understanding is that solos in chant are historically very rare pretty much limited to the Exultet and an occasional psalm verse.

But I’m guessing I get more eccentric and out of touch with each passing year. I admit to being baffled when I try to understand the church in the present much less where it is going. 

I heard a rumor once that the great Episcopalian liturgist, Marian Hatchett forbade any discussion of the weekend Eucharist celebration until after Monday. The idea that stuff in the ritual being done badly was usually so disturbing to him that he needed to calm down first.

So maybe I won’t write about this morning yet. Not that I’m upset but I do have a few comments.

I used my usual morning blogging time this morning to finish up some string parts so that I could give them to the violist this morning at church. We have a rehearsal tomorrow evening so I was feeling pressed. It’s only been since last Thursday after meeting with my cellist that I have thought it would be doable to have her and her lovely sister the violist play at some upcoming services.

In order for this to work, I had to devise parts of the viola.

It threw my morning off. Actually I had enough time but the stupid stupid stupid computer that is hooked up the printer was weird. First google drive couldn’t make itself go online. (“you cannot do that offfline”) Then as I tried to print up the copies of the parts it went sooooooo sloooooow that I barely made it on time for the 9:15 pregame.

I continue to observe that devises seem designed to fuck with me and you. How many times a day are you staring sympathetically at a clerk or waiting on the phone someone’s computer to work?

Anyway this might be the whole deal this afternoon, since I have to go say hi to my Mom at the Care Facility and then listen to the excellent Rhonda Edgington play her Advent Recital.

It is with some amusement I note that the number of daily visits to this blog is going down. Yesterday I had 22 hits which is a low. Also my spam has gone down as well. Averaging around 800 hits in the last week.

I do wonder who would be interested in reading my daily observations. I keep doing this partly out of habit formed when I was attempting to connect online with people who share my interests in ideas, books and music and would converse with me about them.

I also do this partly out of the fact that most of the people I care about are miles and miles away and might be comforted to be able to check up on how I was doing. So I guess my main audience is my three adult kids (Hi David! Elizabeth! and Sarah!).

I can understand their mild curiosity to know that my day yesterday was a bit nuts. Despite having time off from ballet classes, I am finding myself pressed. Some of this is the upcoming ordination and Christmas services. Some of it is the fact that my Mom is temporarily in a care facility for recuperation from recent illness. Some of the stress here is that we were unable to fine a local facility of this type which had a good overall reputation. So we are staying pretty vigilant and visiting her everyday (unannounced).

She seems to be getting some of her strength (and personality) back.

I managed to emulate the energy in Eileen’s family yesterday, what I call the Energizer Bunny effect when I see the way they go from one intense task to another. I’m think of Eileen’s Mom here. But she has this in her as well.

Me, not so much. My self image is one of bum/grasshopper not the ant.

Despite this when asked recently by the ballet teacher in a class discussion how I would define my relationship to music the first word that popped to mind was “discipline.”

I met with the cantor for upcoming ordination yesterday. She was delightful and sang very well. We had an intense discussion of our relationship to the Episcopal church. After this, I waited at the console for my organ student who did finally arrive though a little late. Lunch and then off to pick up Mom’s car from the mechanic and drop in on her at the care facility.

Eileen remained and did Mom’s nails (something she does pretty regularly…. Energizer bunny). I went to church and nailed down material for upcoming services. This took hours. But I have now submitted the information for Advent IV and nailed down what I will do at the ordination the day before.

I have reverted to one of my favorite John Stanley voluntaries. I think it’s probably his best one. It takes eight minutes for me to perform it. I’m hoping that will be acceptable for the prelude for the ordination. I will confer with Jen. I don’t really know what I will do if she thinks it’s too long. Possibly substitute one of the five or so settings of Veni Creator by De  Grigny that I have been looking at.

It is one of these settings I plan to use as the postlude at the ordination. I have also scheduled the Stanley as the postlude for Advent IV, so it’s twofer.

I have been uncharacteristically chafing at the limitations and poor sounds in my organ.

I find that I have to choose music whose worth and quality shines through rendering it on a poor instrument. Bach almost always does this. The Stanley I have scheduled also does this well. The De Grigny I plan to use is not quite the same, however the setting I am doing uses the pretty familiar tune in the pedal with long loud notes. That should be perceptible to anyone bothering to listen.

I’m figuring that we will be packed and the people there will probably barely notice the postlude. No matter.

Comet Data Clears Up Debate on Earth’s Water – NYTimes

Cool.

It’s Cruel. It’s Useless. It’s the C.I.A. – NYTimes.com

The CIA designers of the torture had no experience as interrogators. The shame continues.

One of my sopranos complained Wednesday that I had not given her enough notice about the upcoming ordination service. When I told her that I informed the choir as soon as I knew it was invited, she said I should have been told sooner.

I replied with a quote from Lenny Bruce that has guided my life: “What should be is a dirty lie.”

Whenever I quote Dr. Lenny about “what should be,” I like to tell the story of saying this to a young Roman Catholic priest I was working with in Detroit. He physically jerked and said, “That’s not true! That’s not true at all!” He is now a bishop.

Despite my defense, I think my soprano was correct. More notice would have been very helpful.

We only nailed down the hymns on Wednesday. Yesterday I spent an hour or two going through possible organ music for the prelude and postlude for the ordination on Dec 20 and Advent IV on Dec 21. I found some very cool pieces. Margaret Sandresky has a passable Toccata on “Veni Creator.” I find her writing a bit dry but the piece is loud and fast. It would be perfect as a postlude for an ordination.

However the only way it would be ready next Saturday would be if I spent a few hours a day on it between now and then. I decided lying in bed this morning that this is probably a dumb idea when I think of all the other stuff I will have to do for my church job in the next couple of weeks.

Dang.

I also looked at a Toccata by Andrew Carter on Veni, Veni, Emmanuel. It’s a similar case. The piece is within my capability but would need some serious practice before Advent IV.

Again I keboshed this lying in the dark this morning, not sleeping.

So my search yesterday left me with two other possible pieces for these services. Margaret Sandresky also has a little piece on Veni Emmanuel. It’s not that great, but I do like performing living composers especially women. It would make a good prelude for Advent IV.

I found a little piece by Andrew Carter on Veni Creator which might work for a prelude at the ordination. However the jury is still out on this one, since I am anticipating a rather packed loud hall for the prelude.

A better choice might be a rousing John Stanley voluntary. I have one in mind. Using this for a prelude at the ordination might be a good idea. I could also use it as the postlude for Advent IV. This morning in my bleary eyed way, I’m thinking that’s the better choice for those two slots.

That leaves me looking for a postlude for the ordination. Here again I have found an interesting setting of the tune of the closing hymn, Abbot’s Leigh. It’s Passacaglia, Fughetta, and Finale on Abbot’s Leigh by Austin C. Lovelace. I would need to work some on this one, but not nearly as hard as I would on the Carter and Sandresky Toccatas.

One of my hesitations is that I am going to have to prepare several viola parts for some instrumental music on Christmas Eve and the Sunday after Christmas.

My cellist brought some Christmas music to our rehearsal yesterday. We played through all of Katrinaa Wreede’s little volume of “Christmas Carol Fantasies for Cello and Piano.” Four of them weren’t too bad. I was happy that this fine player was indicating she would be willing to play some of them around the upcoming services.

I asked her if she would play two on Christmas eve. Then if she would return on the first Sunday after Christmas to play all four for the prelude. She readily agreed even though the choir has that Sunday off.

She then pointed out that her sister who sings in the choir and also is a pretty good violaist would appreciate being asked to do something sometime.

I didn’t miss a beat and asked if she minded if I worked out viola parts to these four pieces. My cellist seemed happy with this. So that’s what’s happening.

I need to get them done today. Also I am meeting with the cantor for the ordination (a singer from St. Mark’s Grand Rapids) today to go over the Litany for Ordinations and some of the choir parts scheduled for the ordination.

Whew! It’s enough to make you lie in bed in the dark on a Friday morning and plot how you will get everything done.