Yesterday I found myself mulling over the people whom I currently serve as choir director. It encompasses an fascinating variety of people. I was sitting at church chatting with two of them, an ordained Methodist Minster and the woman who is studying organ with me who has a doctorate in comparative studies (of literature and opera I believe) and is fluent in German and has studied oboe.

The Methodist Minster dude was interested in learning more about the Deacon’s role in the great Liturgical masterpiece, the Exultet. I had shown him a resource book to help him (Marion Hatchett’s Commentary on the Prayer Book which is quite good).

Other people in my choir include a professor of nursing, a full time pediatrician, a physical therapist (very popular at back rubs), a retired law professor, a retired English professor, a retired symphony musician, a nurse, a retired librarian (that would be Eileen) and a woman with a doctorate in liturgy who is a priest in an offshoot Catholic church.

It’s quite a crew when I think of it. Fifteen people total, many with doctorates and wide life experiences. We even have a token young person in the Bass section.

I guess this is another area of my life where I am lucky.

As a whole, this group is very patient with me as a director and follows my instructions in my attempts to help them sound better as a choir.

The one studying organ with me left me some funny pictures on my music stand yesterday.

I posted them without comment on Facebooger because my phone wouldn’t let me put comments on them and just shot them into cyberspace. In this one, my student echoed our conversation about how organ technique actually works (one turns pipes off with active release returning them to a state of rest, this is sometimes called “playing in sympathy with the instrument.” I got the idea from Craig Cramer.) My student compared it to jumping off a diving board, the release being the upward motion of the dive itself in the air. Not bad.

My daughter Sarah “liked” these on Facebooger. I’m not sure they make much sense without any explanation. But I know Sarah and I both appreciate drawings like these.

These were stuck all over the score of my postlude for Sunday which was sitting on the organ music stand. It gave me a smile as I settled down to practice yesterday.

I have my Saturday morning free, but this afternoon I am accompanying for Joffrey Ballet auditions at 1 PM and have a funeral to play for at 4 PM.

Yesterday, Eileen began working on taxes and discovered that we made too much money last year to receive the subsidy we were getting on our health care. Bad. It looks like we owe an extra 7K to the government (over our usual tax bill).

Needless to say, she freaked. Worse, we are not sure if we should continue attempting to purchase our insurance through the Affordable Care Act. We have been having trouble with them since the beginning of this year when we signed up for a second year and ended up with two policies, twice the billing, through no fault of our own.

I’m mostly concerned that Eileen is feeling very bad about this. Inevitable, I guess, but I hope she recovers soon.

(Editorial note: I just had Eileen read this section in an effort to be appropriate and not say anything she didn’t want public.)

I composed some drafts on the B sections of my two ballet pieces (Which Witch and Sweet but Dark) yesterday. My cellist and my violinist have been having physical stuff and canceling our weekly trio rehearsal. I hadn’t heard from either one, so I arrived a bit after our scheduled time to find my cellist putting her cello away.

She stayed and we played Bach for a while. Amazing music in my opinion.

I was practicing organ when Eileen texted me upset. I jumped in the car and spent the rest of the evening with her.

I don’t actually believe in money or health insurance on any of that kind of stuff. I’m more concerned that the people I care about are okay. That we all have what we need (food, shelter) and are able to having fulfilling lives.

I still think my life is good. I hope Eileen’s comes back to being good soon.

Wow. Google Analytics shows I had over 70 hits a couple days ago. I didn’t dig any deeper into it to find out stuff like where people are located who are visiting nor how long they lingered, but it was definitely a change in traffic.

I only had the church stuff yesterday which was very nice. By the time choir rehearsal rolled around I was more rested and had more energy than usual. This means I didn’t have to fake it as much.

We are learning some pretty cool music. I notice that I have inadvertently scheduled a lot of pieces in Latin: Ubi Caritas by Duruflé and Crucifixus from Bach’s B Minor Mass.  I worked these two pretty hard last night, mostly teaching notes. I went a few minutes late something I rarely do. In those few minutes we ran the entire Crucifixus.

As an undergrad, I was sort of a teaching assistant to the choral conductor when we learned and performed the B Minor Mass. It was a great experience for me.

Even now, understanding myself as not a typical believer, I find this work very moving and spiritual. This morning as I was cleaning the kitchen and making coffee I played a few movements from it on Spotify.

I’m glad that Spotify continues to carry recordings of historical music as well as popular music. There must have been a dozen recordings of the B Minor Mass available on it. I availed myself of these when the second movement arrived (Christe Eleison) because I am so picky about the sound of women soloists. I prefer a clear sound with only a touch of vibrato.

Of course I love Billie Holiday’s sound. Not sure how that fits into my predilections for “natural” voices singing Bach solos.

I googled and found one fix for my Windows 8 yesterday. My cursor has been freezing up more and more frequently. The suggestion to turn off some sleep settings in devices seems to have worked for now.

Eileen replaced the fan in the other laptop, but it’s still overheating. There is another part coming. She is hoping that installing it will fix things, but we’ll see.

As you can probably tell, I’m a bit tired this morning and basically rambling.

I successfully installed the church software we use, RightStuff, on this computer yesterday. I am hopeful that it will enable me to just cut and past pointed psalms, instead of making them from scratch with my music notation software. Boy would that save some wear and tear on the old guy.

Well, if you have read this far, I thank you and will try to have a more interesting blog tomorrow.

over and out.

As Republicans Concede, F.C.C. Is Expected to Enforce Net Neutrality – NYT

This is hopeful.

The net neutrality movement pitted new media against old and may well have revolutionized notions of corporate social responsibility and activism. Top­down decisions by executives investing in or divesting themselves of resources, paying lobbyists and buying advertisements were upended by the mobilization of Internet customers and users.

Prince: Convert HTML to PDF with CSS

Had to install this PDF reader in order for RiteStuff 2.0 (the church’s software) to function. I have never heard of it, but am hoping it will help to use the recommended software.

VICE NEWS

I am increasingly unimpressed with Radio and TV news. Vice News seems to be quietly breaking new ground in how news is covered. They seem to have people on the ground filming magnificent shots of breaking events. Voice over is so much more pleasant than watching a rich news anchor. The immediacy of the video (plus its pertinence) is so much better than NPR.

Recently a reasonably well educated seventy something man told me he doesn’t read the New York Times. I can’t help but wonder where people are getting their information. I use a number of sources, including now Reddit.

I am having a luxurious morning despite rising early as usual. No classes. Julie canceled two of them because dancers are involved an upcoming dance concert called Dance 41. 41 stands for the number of years they have been offering this concert. She’s showing the third class a movie, so I have a day where all I have to think about is one of my jobs (church). Excellent.

Feeling the lack of pressure, after Greek I began my morning looking at the poetry of George Meredith. Christiano Rizzoto a young Brazilian organ virtuoso finishing up his doctorate at the University of Oklahoma posted a poem by Meredith on Facebooger yesterday.

I quite liked it and realized I wasn’t that familiar with Meredith’s poetry. So I pulled out a couple of anthologies and read some Meredith this morning.

Then I decided was interested in him and read up on him ultimately putting a free copy of his novel, The Egoist, on my Kindle.

I continued my morning reading with MacCulloch’s Silence which is brilliant and Smitth’s bio of Vierne.

I came across a particularly interesting passage in Vierne’s autobiographical section of Smith’s book this morning.

… The musician in particular is surprised that, in a relatively short time, his ear becomes accustomed to the sound of chords, timbres, and combinations against which he honestly rebelled before that first hearing.

Art, whose principal aim is to take us by surprise, is then presented with a challenge; even eccentricities that astonished us most when we first heard them now seem rather childish and no longer have the power to disconcert us. For the immense majority of people the emotions are still the criterion for the intrinsic value of Occidental music. ” Vierne quoted in Smith’s book on him

I couldn’t help but wonder about my own recent infatuation with Romantic music in this regard. Previously, I had little sympathy with the majority of music in that style (not all, of course). But lately I have been drawn to the French romantic organ school.

And I love the phrase about Art’s principal aim is to “take us by surprise.”

I have decided to perform Vierne’s “Postlude Quasi fantasia,” the last piece in his “24 Pièces en style libre, Op. 31 as a postlude Sunday. I meant to bring it home to work to rehearse sections on the piano. Yesterday when I went to do this, I discovered I had brought the wrong volume of this work home.

But we live in the age of the interwebs and within minutes I had printed up a copy to practice from at home.

I love that.

Interestingly this will be my third time using Vierne’s “Postlude quasi fantasia” for a church service over the years, all on shitty organs of course.

Similarly this morning I was intrigued by Vierne’s description of the musical abilities and style of his student,  Augustin Barié, “Audacious harmonies, rich polyphony, elegance of thought, poetic detail—these were [Barié’s] special qualities.”

Although Vierne is describing Barié’s improvising, Vierne goes on to say that due to an early death Barié left only three pieces. They are all sitting online at IMSLP. I pulled them up and am going to look more carefully at them later this morning. They do look interesting.

Finally, I put the A sections of my two pieces for Ballet class into Finale. I have temporarily entitled them “Which witch” (pdf) and “”Sweet talk with a dark side” (pdf) (Links in case you want to look at them or even print them up for playing)

Playing through them yesterday (rehearsing them actually… performing is not quite the same as composing), I could hear in my head a pretty cool piano trio arrangement of them. How about that?

This morning I ordered a paperback copy of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch a book I have read in Kindle format. I am planning on rereading the book in its paperback form for the reason that I think certain books work better for me in book form instead ebook.

I am reading MacCulloch’s lovely little book on silence.

Before purchasing a copy of it (in book form), I listened to most of it (dozing on and off as I do with audiobooks) online. As I read I am shocked by the difference of the two experiences. Mostly the omission of footnote references in the audiobook.

While this makes sense, reading Silence: A Christian History has helped me understand the value of holding a book of footnoted nonfiction in ones hands to read. MacCulloch has a charming habit of cross referring in his books. He did this Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. Unfortunately he did it with page numbers with which my Kindle version did not correspond therefore rendering his wonderful scholarly nonlinear references inert.

In his rendering of Vierne’s autobiography in Louis Vierne: Organist of Notre Dame Cathedral,  Rollin Smith goes so far as to reserve the entire left page for footnotes. This makes tons of sense since Vierne’s autobiography is riddled with factual errors about time, date, place and people.

Smith boxes in the left page and labels it “Annotations.” I have no idea how you would do this on a Kindle. I am convinced that the ebook needs lots of improvement before it will become as functional as books one holds in one’s hand, especially footnoted books.

Having said that, I do love my Kindle.

I love its portability and how quickly I can access material sitting in my living room.

So once again it’s a question of “both/and” for me.

I had an interesting day yesterday. The 8:30 class was spent entirely on my presentation about the relationship of music to ballet combinations (as they call the exercises they do to refine technique).

Although I did a lot of talking it was basically a conversation and a fascinating one for me. Julie, the teacher, chimed in and eventually took over asking students how they had experienced teaching in relationship to the manner in which instructions were given (this is a critical part of how music fits in).

I began by clarifying for the students that I was not faculty but staff. I thought this was important both for them and me. For me, I have less and less faith in organized education. While it is still probably the best way to learn stuff as a young person, it is failing to teach people essential ideas much less flights of intellectual wonder in so many areas.

Or at least students and teachers often seem shockingly ignorant to me.

Anyway, I felt like this class worked very well and was satisfied to be asked to do this even though in reality my official status is the same as the janitor and hired gun accompanists in the music department (Hi Rhonda!I.

I don’t think Julie fully understood that I wasn’t faculty as she questioned me about my status after class. “So you aren’t adjunct?” she asked. Nope I said. At that point I realized that I might have some ethical problems becoming adjunct at Hope, since they insist that all teachers subscribe to a Christian vision in their mission statement.

After that class, I worked on two little compositions for the next class.

This was fun also. Then I worked with two groups of dancers, showing them the music and then adjusting it if necessary. In each case, I had managed to compose an A section which will need a B section before next Monday.

You know, my life is pretty damn good.

Review: Trinity Wall Street and Julian Wachner Play Carnegie Hall – NYTimes.com

This is a review of a performance given this last Saturday. Beforehand Wachner sat down at the piano and led a hymn sing to help people understand the Ives piece he was about to perform. How bout that?

Who Loves America? – NYTimes.com

I am appalled at Guiliani and his right wing cohorts who are trumpeting they believe that President Obama doesn’t love America. Great Baldwin quote at the end of this article.

As James Baldwin put it, “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

What Would Malcolm X Think? – NYTimes.com

I have always admired Malcolm X. He was a musician as well as a brilliant thinker. 

This article is one of his daughters. She seems pretty sharp as well.

As it is, today’s protesters often act like they are starting from square one. This disconnect cannot be dismissed as the hubris of youth; it is a symptom of our failure to teach this generation about black history and the way our economic and social systems actually function.

I’m running late this morning. I got up and made pasta salad for staff meeting today. My blood pressure has been running a bit high lately. I’m seriously considering making a doctor’s appointment as I promised her I would. Of course, it dropped this morning weakening my resolve to do this. But I probably still will.

I think my BP rise is a combination of factors. Probably I am trying to do too much. I am cutting down some of this, but maybe not enough. I know I am burned out, but I do love and enjoy everything I spend my time doing. I am not losing weight. In fact, it’s creeping up a bit (like the BP… hmmmm). Also I have to consider my age. The body does wear out.

So there’s that.

Speaking of doing too much, after church yesterday I made a handout for the 8:30 AM ballet class this morning. Julie, the teacher, asked me to co-teach a mini workshop on the relationship of music I improvise to dance combinations. I wanted to make a cool little handout with cartoons because I think they help us learn. But I didn’t really have time.

Eileen helpfully proofed it for me. I emailed it to Julie. Then Eileen and I went and said hi to my Mom. Dropped Eileen off back at home and went to church to practice a bit, stalling to see if Julie would respond. I was stalling in case I screwed something up on the sheet or she just wanted me to change something.

About an hour later she texted me it was okay.

In the meantime, I was supposed to have done some compositional sketches for today’s Noon pointe class. I emailed Julie and told her I didn’t know if I would get to this in time. She said that would be okay.

I was in a very foul mood yesterday (probably feeling failure at life due to bad Blood Pressure and other things). I was exhausted. However, at the end of my organ practice I sat down and sketched out two musical ideas for the two dances the pointe students are supposed to collaborate with me on.

Came home, exercised, made a martini and Eileen and I binge-watched “Nurse Jackie” season 1. We haven’t looked at this before so that was fun.

Church went well. I played the hell out of the Buxtehude  pieces (although I’m not sure anybody noticed besides the usual choir members who have been staying through my postludes lately). The choral piece was a clever little setting by Erik Meyer with a prominent organ part that I have been working on. I pulled it off and the choir sounded pretty good.

I seem to have lost my cursor in Windows 8. I can goof around and get it to appear but then when I tap the tap pad it doesn’t respond the way it did yesterday. Good grief.

Oh, since I’m being negative (Hi Rhonda : ) ) I screwed up one of the two descants yesterday. We were doing a text from one of our hymn supplements. It used a tune from the Hymnal 82 (O quanta quanta) for which I have written a descant. I glanced quickly and assumed that the harmonization was the same and quickly made an adaptation on Saturday. It was very similar especially at the beginning. But unfortunately not the same.

I was pressed in the pregame to get everything prepared with the singers and didn’t have time to double check when an alto said that she thought her part was different. Damn. She was right. It didn’t work. I immediately went over to the soprano section (who looked like they felt they had failed) and told them about the error. My error.

Sheesh.

My friend, Rhonda, was kind enough to provide comp tickets to Eileen and me for a concert given by the Holland Chorale and Holland Christian High School. Rhonda is the accompanist for the Chorale.

As usual I had mixed reactions to the concert. First of all, it was a pretty good one especially considering it was a local community choir and high school. I especially appreciated the clever choices of repertoire all centering on texts by Shakespeare.

Rhonda played well which she has a tendency to do.

Since I think a lot about choral blend I found myself listening to this aspect of the choirs quite a bit. In the pieces by the chorale alone, I was struck by the lack of overall blend of the choir. The men blended well with themselves and had a solid sound for the most part (an unusual feat). But the upper voices especially the sopranos didn’t seem to ever quite gel.

I was also struck by how the choral conductor conducted Rhonda in her solo piano passages and also the violinist in the one piece (Serenade by Vaughan Williams…. a fine piece). This felt very old school prima donna to me: conducting a colleague. It diminished a possible collaborative performance into one of self expression of the conductor. This struck me as an example of the myopia I was writing about yesterday.

The conductor conducts well. But her singers were not prepared vocally so the result was mixed. I know I’m being critical, but I always think of the great choral conductors I admire (Robert Shaw to name one).

It always boggled my mind how a good conductor can get a splendid sound from a group of amateurs singers. I use this concept to spur myself on to get any choir I conduct to sound as excellent as I can.

For my money, the conductor of the high school choir is a much finer conductor. High school choirs have their own problems. Young people can never sound as mature as their elders, vocally. The young men especially. The Holland Christian High School choir is huge, around a hundred singers. Their blend was much better than the chorale.

I have been wondering about this. I think some of it might have been the acoustics which were not extremely chorally friendly. The high school choir performs regularly in that room I’m sure.

At any rate, the high school choir had much more consistent blend and vowel sounds than the community chorus. I always remind myself that school choirs meet much more often than church or community choirs, usually several days a week. I think that makes a difference.

Also the high school conductor was much more respectful of her accompanist and the result felt much more collaborative and musical. I say “musical” because I am captive of the notion that music is a verb not a thing.

As Christopher Small insisted we are all part of the dance of the verb of music. I believe that notion.

Finally they ended the evening with combining the choirs. A hundred fifty singers is usually a good sound. The more singers, the more “forgiveness” of rough edges and the more individual voices become merged into a blend. This combined choir was no exception to that rule. Unfortunately their fortes drowned Rhonda’s fine playing. This was made up for when the piano played alone (carefully conducted by the conductor, ahem) and the playing was stellar.

I found it very interesting that the two choirs complemented each other’s weaknesses and strengths so well.  The men of the chorale gave the high school choir its needed maturity. And the blend of the women of the high school helped with the sound of upper voices of the chorale.

I thought that was pretty cool.

I have been studying Greek now for a year or so. It is coming but slowly. I keep trying to refine my approach and adding resources. 

I began this study with the idea I wanted to read Homer in Greek. This is still a goal. But of course along the way there are many other benefits.

Since I am not a person comfortable with strongly identifying myself as a CHRISTIAN it’s slightly embarrassing how useful Greek is in my work and study for church.

So I have a little Greek New Testament, But lately I have been using a website which I find very helpful if I want to look at passage.

I like how this site uses hyper links. There are five lines: The top line has two links for each word to Strong’s Greek. I think the two links there are to online versions of Strong’s Greek Concordance and Strong’s Greek Dictionary.

The next line renders the Greek alphabet in the English alphabet.

Then comes the Greek word. Then the short translation. Finally an indication of the grammatical function for each word.

I think this is a really fine approach to the Greek New Testament and could make it easier for people who want to connect with the original Greek but aren’t fluent (This describes many priests and ministers).

But my  main takeaway is that it’s helped me design my next step in studying. I have read the first 15 pages of the Greek text over and over many times, reading one section a day usually. This is probably about 15 sections. I say probably because the two editions I own divide the same prose up into different sections.

Lately I have realized that my grammatical understanding is not as good as I want it to be. I can read, pronounce and translate these sections pretty well. But I am going to a little deeper by copying a sentence a day and identifying each word’s meaning and grammatical function.

Sort of like the Biblehub.com site.

I would love to find a site like this for Homer once I get a bit more fluent.

College, Poetry and Purpose – NYTimes.com

I have been thinking about learning and my relationship to others. In the article above,  Frank Bruni quotes Anne Hall, a teacher he had. She laments changes in the way the humanities is taught in US colleges now.

Then I had a conversation yesterday with a former teacher who surprised me when she said she had found another person’s feminism offputting.

A little probing (after confessing to her that I was more of a feminist than a believer in God) showed that she was talking about what Frank Bruni’s teacher had been commenting on, namely changes in academic curricula and the loss of fundamental learning.

With that I can agree.

This made me wonder about the pervasiveness of an absence of what Frank Bruni’s teacher called “the muscle of thoughtfulness.”

College’s mission… “is for developing the muscle of thoughtfulness, the use of which will be the greatest pleasure in life and will also show what it means to be fully human.” Anne Hall quoted in the Bruni article linked at the beginning of this blog.

I am wondering how this might all fit together in my own life. I have witnessed a shocking lack of simple empirical breadth and curiosity in many college trained people in the last thirty years. Living in Holland, I have sometimes come to the conclusion that it is me that is eccentric in being interested in learning and nailing down ideas not confined by an institution of any kind.

But maybe it’s also something else. We are so specialized in our training. With this specialization comes a loss of what a study of humanities is for:  true pleasure in living and being fully human as Hall says.

So when I am surprised that people are not interested in books and music that seem to me to be the stuff of life, it may be that I am simply fortunate to have the curiosity and learning I have.

I need to hasten to add that I do not feel particularly well educated. And that though others appear to me to be narrow I know that this is not an accurate understanding of them. Rather there permeates in our society an ignorance that is subtle but has changed us as a country.

Ignorance is a harsher word than I want to use. It’s more like how can we expect people to use muscular thinking when they have skills and understanding, but it doesn’t extend as far as it could and probably should. It’s a kind of myopia or nearsightedness that misses more than it sees.

I have spent my life working on my own myopia. I continue to find diminishing my own ignorance very fulfilling. Plus there is so much of it. Heh.

But when I feel like people don’t see me clearly, sell me short especially professionally, it might help me to remember that while they are clearly skilled in one area, they might miss things that I think are clear and important simply because it doesn’t occur to them and their “muscle of thoughtfulness” works only in their chosen situation.

This could be a helpful insight for me.

Lynching in America: A Grim History – NYTimes.com

There is a letter to the editor at the above link which changed my mind. Gaen Murphy who teachers in Vermont describes the surprise and horror of her tenth grade students when she explains what “lynching” is. Her foil for this is teaching To Kill a Mockingbird which was our “community read” last year which left me with an odd taste in my mouth. I saw the book as frustrating since the innocent black man ends basically killing himself in prison and the guilty white guy who killed the bad guy goes free. But Gaen Murphy helps me understand the value of the book again.

Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer – NYTimes.com

This is a brave and clear eyed announcement of his own impending death and how he intends to live towards it. He swims a mile a day at age 81. Sheesh.

Unlikely Cause Unites the Left and the Right: Justice Reform – NYTimes.com

This coalition of vastly different organizations sees itself as showing politicians how to work together. I certainly applaud that and justice reform.

Although yesterday was Ash Wednesday, a significant day in the church year, ballet was on my mind a bit more than usual.

Julie divided the morning class into five groups and asked each group to come up with a combination. Then each group talked to me about the music they wanted for it. I took notes. This involved a bit more interaction with students than I usually get. It was kind of fun.

At the end of class she gathered them around the piano to talk about a “workshop” she and I will give them Monday endeavoring to answer questions and clear up confusions about how music works in ballet class.

In the hour between classes, after I had prepared the Psalm for Lent II and sent an email to the office with all the information for that Sunday (except prelude and postlude), I sketched out some ideas for this session on Monday.

I am thinking seriously of making a handout. I wrote most of it during this time. I envision that it would be illustrated by little cartoons.

Since I only get one shot to teach these dancers about how music is working in their classroom, I think cartoons would be a good idea.

It’s my understanding that sketched line pictures help retention of information. I got this idea from Larry Gonick.

In the second class, Julie once again gathered the students around the piano. This time she divided them into two groups and asked each group to think about a creating a short dance. Then each group talked to me and brainstormed how the music might go. Last year I ended up writing a little waltz for a class doing this. This time I think they want two pieces. I promised to have some musical  ideas ready for Monday for them to hear and decide on.

After this class I worked with an individual dancer who has been dancing a famous solo dance called Esmeralda. I have been playing the music for her practice. She eventually wants to make a video of it. She promised me that she would let me see it on YouTube. If she agrees, I will probably embed it here.

By this time my head  was spinning. I got confused and forgot I had one more class to go. We had been experiencing a snow storm all morning. I bundled up and left the building. As I was leaving I ran into Julie. We chatted for a bit and I told her to check her email between now and Monday and I would send her a copy of my handout for her to read and proof. We said goodbye (!) and I jumped in the car, stopped by the house to grab a sandwich Eileen had made for me.

She looked at me funny. “One o’clock already?” “Later than that,” I replied as I jumped in the car to rush to church. We had a staff meeting scheduled immediately after my third class. On the way to the church I looked at the clock in my Subaru. It said 12:07. That’s odd, I thought. The clock is wrong. Then I mulled it over for a minute and realized I hadn’t done my third class. Yikes!

I turned the car around in the snowstorm and headed back to the ballet studio.

I can see that Julie is asking a lot of me with these extra things. It’s quite a bit for a “staff” person to do who is getting paid something like $28 or $29 dollars an hour. On the other hand its all stuff I like and the music department doesn’t see me as a local resource.

This way I can help some students, actually do a little team teaching with a teacher I admire and some composing to boot.

I’m sort of sneaking through the back door to touch a few lives over at Hope.

This is probably inevitable at a time when the entire country is so conservative, fearful and basically uneducated. Holland is definitely as conservative if not more so than the rest of the USA.

So I was flustered at ballet yesterday. AND I had a staff meeting. AND an Ash Wednesday soup supper to attend. AND a pregame rehearsal with the choir and then the service.

Needless to say I am feeling tired and chagrined this morning.

I have fallen into a routine of preparing a psalm for an upcoming bulletin on Wednesdays in between my 8:30 and 11 AM classes. This means I have to load up some information on my laptop from my exterior hard drive before leaving for work.

And that means less time for reading and blogging. So this will probably be short.

This evening at the Ash Wednesday service I am using some organ music that I use every year for this service. Since the pieces are classics, I think this is a good idea as well as an effort saving device.

The two pieces are “Ich ruf zu dir Herr Jesu Christ” BWV 639 and “Alle Menschen müssen sterben bwv 643 by Bach. They are the prelude and postlude respectively.

I needed to come up with a prelude and postlude for the first Sunday Lent. I thought it would be cool to use pieces based on these same chorales by Buxtehude. Unfortunately I could only find a Buxtehude setting of the first one. But it is lovely.

I did find a nice one for the postlude, “Von Gott will ich nicht lassen.”

This is also one I have performed before.

I am feeling a bit stressed lately and don’t know exactly why. It’s probably burnout. It usually is.  Eileen and I are talking about getting out of town sometime for a few days. Unfortunately, this costs money and it’s a bit tight right now. But we could take off for Thursday and Friday evening somewhere. Maybe that would lower my stress.

Even though I can see that I am stressed, I am filling my time with things I love doing. Weird.

Lesley Gore, Teenage Voice of Heartbreak, Dies at 68 – NYTimes.com

Lesley Gore was gay. I did not know that.

Inequality Has Actually Not Risen Since the Financial Crisis – NYTimes.com

Some counter intuitive information. Not new stats, but new understandings of them. I like that.

George Washington, Slave Catcher – NYTimes.com

For president’s day. While I am in total sympathy with revealing shit like this, it seems to me that many people are incapable of not reading our present morality and understandings into the past. Christopher Columbus is another one who suffers from this. At any rate, in both cases it’s better to have facts straight.

How Brian Eno managed to piss in Marcel Duchamp’s famous urinal, 1990 | Dangerous Minds

I love this story. I hope it’s true.

I’m very excited about the organ music that came in the mail yesterday.

Here’s the list.

 ———————————————————————–

I’m especially excited about the Mendelssohn volumes. Volume 1 is being sent separtely so I started examining Volume II this morning.

I didn’t know that Mendelssohn had written more than his Preludes and Fugues and his Sonatas for the organ until recently when Rhonda scheduled one for a recital.

The William A. Little edition seems very thorough and scholarly. I look forward to studying these pieces and possibly performing some of them.

I was also intrigued by Pamela Decker Tangos for organ and look forward to examining them.

i am able to purchase all this music due to the fact that I have an annual allowance from the church for music and books. One year instead of a raise I asked for this. It’s $500 and is non taxable and does not carry over from year to year.

Despite having all this wonderful music I spent my two hours at the organ yesterday slowly reading through music. I carefully played several Bach pieces including my beloved D major fugue (BWV 532).

I have a funny history with this piece. While an undergrad student I undertook to learn and perform this piece at my church in Trenton. I was serving in a Roman buy diazepam online in the uk Catholic church which worshiped in a converted gymnasium. The organ was an awful electric complete with rhythm section (which I never used). Somehow I found out that I was known in the organ studios of U of Michigan as the organist working in a converted gymnasium.

After I left this church I was ironically replaced by a U of M student. This leads me to think that though they ridiculed me behind my back they may have envied the decent salary I was pulling in.

Anyway, I thought I was ready to perform this fugue. In the concert itself I panicked and played the entire piece on manuals leaving out the difficult pedal part.

This is actually no mean feat and I have wondered how I pulled it off.

When I went to study at Notre Dame in South Bend I asked if Craig would teach me this piece. He did so and I performed it well on a graduate recital.

It came back into my consciousness reading about Widor’s experience of playing it for Lemmens and Lemmens’ comment about quick tempos.

One day when I was twenty years old I played for Lemmens the D major Fugue [BWV 532] at a ridiculous speed. He dampened my enthusiasm with the simple word, “Nul!”  [Worthless!]. That was enough for me. I thought it all over and soon realized that polyphony does not permit rapid playing, which only confused it, making it sound breathless, a caricature of itself.

These are strong words reported by Vierne. Widor immediately qualified this a bit by saying that Bach’s organ fugues in D minor, C, D, and G major can be played “briskly” the others “require moderate and even rather slow tempos.”  He does however say this:

The organ is almost always played too fast. Young people easily yield to the desire to dazzle the audience by this means.

These quotes are from Vierne’s autobiography in Rollin Smith’s book on him.

When I was a bar musician we referred to dazzling audiences in this way as flashing.

Now I know that I am not a virtuoso particularly and even weirdly enjoy playing music slowly, much slower than many organists.

Yesterday I played some of Bach’s monumental works slowly. It was very enjoyable. I don’t think I would ever inflict that slow a tempo on listeners, but I sure enjoy rendering Bach accurately.

This morning I dragged myself out of bed a bit early remembering that the kitchen needed cleaning only to find that Eileen had done so before coming to bed last night. A nice surprise.

I was also pleasantly surprised at how well my postlude went yesterday. It was a little piece by Herbert Murrill on the tune of the opening hymn, “O Wondous Type! O Vision Fair,” Wareham.

I had been sweating bullets over Murrill’s marking of Allegro to this counterpuntal piece in which twos against threes alternated between manuals and pedals. Finally two days ago I resigned myself to performing it under tempo and more accurately and not  butcher it faster.

Wickipedia quotes the Groves about Murrill: “Writing in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Ronald Crichton says that Murrill’s affinities were Francophile and mildly middle-Stravinskian, both influences tempered by an English take on neo-classicism.”

Here’s a screen shot of the entire entry:

The “mild Stravinsky” reference might explain both the rhythmical innovations as well as the sparseness of the setting I performed. I like that he was a “Francophile.” Unusual in a Brit.

A couple of choristers congratulated me on my prelude which they were sure was based on our Nigerian Anthem, “Jesus, we want to meet.”

I examined both the anthem and the organ piece and decided they were mistaken, but the two melodies are definitely similar.

The prelude was  “Ijo Ore” (Dance Offering) Yoruba folksong arr. by Godwin Sadoh

I purchased a book of Sadoh’s compositions and throw one in once in a while. I like his use of rhythm and the way he writes for the organ. It makes a nice compliment when we sing something African especially Nigerian.

I just sent him a friend request on Facebooger. Here’s a link to his website.

Spealing of friend requests, I sent a bunch this week. I have had a few acceptances. Hard to know what it means when I don’t get an acceptance. The local organ prof I think is ignoring me on purpose. This may be true of some of the others. However, it can also be ascribed to lack of savvy with Facebooger or even not accessing it very often.

It is interesting who responds quickly both locally and nationally. The composer, Charles Ore, responded almost instantly. He is another organ composer I like and perform.

I also improvised a loud organ piece after the gospel based on the tune Salzburg we had just sung. I was tempted to do an interlude in it, but I am mindful of the chorister who told me that she thought organ interludes were basically me just showing off. Maybe she will changer her mind when the organ sounds better (after we get the Pasi). Maybe not.

Why Movie ‘Facts’ Prevail – NYTimes.com

Science backs up what I have noticed in my own head for years: movies supercede history even when lived through.

India Blocked an Activist From Traveling to Britain – NYTimes.com

Image is all. Blocking an activist from speaking internationally. Bad for business.

Guest Post: Why Beethoven Is Not Enough, by Curt Barnes | Prufrock’s Dilemma

Poking around online yesterday I found some interesting articles. This one is by a “visual artist.” He comes up with 14 interesting things to think about music being written now.

Useful questions (1) | Sandow
Useful questions (2) | Sandow

Sandow is teaching a class at Julliard on the future of classical music. He emails his students questions. I admit I haven’t read these or Barnes above carefully yet. But I am very interested and plan to.

Devotions on Hymn of the Week

A Concordia College in Chicago seems to be posting meditations on hymns matched up their lectionary. Hmmmm.

The last movement of Vierne’s third symphony for organ which I have been practicing very slowly is beginning to reach the next stage of learning. Yesterday I photocopied the entire movement to help me work on sections easily without page turns. I have been attacking the piece a bit differently this week. Previously I had been going through the entire piece at least once slowly and accurately. This week I started working in sections beginning with the ending which I find tricky.

So yesterday I worked on sections of the movement at different speeds, some quicker because easier, others slower to maintain accuracy.

All unjustified movement is harmful because it is a waste of time and strength. Before deciding that a movement is inevitable its usefulness must have been ascertained during the period of slow practice. That period should be lengthy. Charles-Marie Widor, as reported in Vierne’s autobiography (Smith p. 69)

I’ve also been reading through Widor and a bit of Franck. I cannot get my head around Franck. I have long admired his personality as described in historical accounts. I think he was probably a sweetheart of a dude. But I am not attracted to his music at this point.

Oddly I am becoming interested in Widor. Some of this interest in both men stems from reading Vierne’s autobiography present in its entirety in Rollin Smith’s Louis Vierne: Organist of Notre Dame Cathedral from which I quoted above. Franck died tragically from the results of a carriage accident while Vierne was studying with him. Widor (about fifteen or sixteen years older than Vierne) was appointed to take Franck’s class of young organ students.

Vierne meticulously writes about Widor’s pedagogy as he experienced it at this point in his life. I read this section this morning and was startled at how familiar (and on target) Widor’s approach was.

I mean to transcribe most of Widor’s words as rendered by Vierne’s memory into a doc  for future reference.

It’s interesting to me that at my age and mostly without much connection to other musicians and organists, I find myself working so hard on my own technique. This began after I quit my Roman Catholic church job about fifteen years ago. Since then I have completely changed my practice habits, refining them. I find that I have improved considerably as at a player at a time in my life when I no longer have close touch with many other musicians working at this level. Yesterday I went through our local American Guild of Organists directory looking for people to connect with on Facebooger. I included national and regional people. I have already had some of them respond. But of course many of them won’t

.

It has occurred to me that the way I experience distance (even willful rejection) from most of the local musicians (not you, Rhonda!) might be related to nonmusical considerations like my appearance, my age, and my identification with groups of people like the poor, the outcasts and people of color.

At any rate, I am finding my musical development satisfying at this point.

Another point of satisfaction I have experienced recently is that I have tamed my Windows 8 to be more Jupe friendly. Yesterday I googled some questions and managed to turn off my lock screen and log in screen. This is a relief for me. Silly I know, but it makes my experience at the computer better.

So we took our sick laptop to Best Buy since we had aready been conned into signing it up for the Geek Squad service package at some point. When we told the Geek dude that we were unable to successfully replace the fan, he politely explained that by opening up the case we voided the Geek Squad service package. And furthermore they couldn’t service the computer at all after it had been opened up.

“We can’t just pay you to fix it?” Eileen asked. The young man politely said that this was true.

It is to laugh.

I think Eileen is planning to give it another try. I told her maybe she should take some time off and do her fun stuff for a while, like weaving.

I’m blogging late today. I got up the usual time, but after I made coffee and did a bit of Greek, I jumped in the car and went to Meijer to both grocery shop and buy Valentine surprises.

We in the midst of a nasty little snowstorm.

We are getting a few inches but the real nasty part is the wind which is driving wind chill temps that are predicted to hit fourty to fifty below zero this evening.

Valentine surprises are a bit harder with Eileen retired. I meant to pick something up for her yesterday, but by the end of day I had forgotten to do so. Hence the morning trip to Meijer.

Eileen and I have just returned from my Mom’s Valentine Day Visit. I bought both  her and Eileen roses, gold ones for Mary and red for Eileen. I purchased a box of chocolates for Mom, since she is so into candy these days. For Eileen and me I purchased some sweet rolls one of which was in the shape of a heart.

Eileen is outside snowblowing. I will have to go out again to practice organ and prepare for church tomorrow. Brrrrrr.

Hillary Clinton and Bill Frist on Health Care for America’s Kids – NYTimes

While I think it’s cool and healthy that Clinton and Frist support something worthwhile in a bipartisan fashion, I’m not convinced that Clinton will really help the country the way I would like. I remember becoming disenchanted with her husband’s move to the right. Now the whole fucking country has moved that way.

Sorry if you see a Net Neutrality popup and it annoys you. I support the concept while expecting the Internet to probably go away just like Napster did.

Spent quite a bit of time yesterday working with Finale.

I am putting Rejoice in the Lord by Steffani in it with the idea I will then ask Finale to transpose it down. I do it that way because it’s so easy to transpose once it’s in the software and also I enjoy trying to replicate exactly the original music with Finale.

Gerald Near the composer said he was originally drawn to composing because of the beauty of making manuscript by hand.

Both he and I lived through the transition from pen and ink to computer.

I remember in under grad school learning music calligraphy and my teacher telling me in a few years the whole skill would be moot. We would all be using software. He was certainly right about that.

I miss the romanticism of making manuscripts. But I appreciate the clarity of printed music especially for my people at church.

I put all of the notes of the anthem in yesterday. I feel a bit obsessive about church work and organ lately. My anxiety is probably higher since my boss has been in the Caribbean for about two weeks. Vacations for bosses are always good for the situation in my opinion. But I do notice that I am less able to put work aside.

I was exhausted physically and emotionally yesterday. (Maybe you could tell from my goofy blog post) Today I feel a bit more rested. The fan that Eileen ordered for the smaller laptop did not fit. She broke it accidentally so we won’t be returning it. We have decided to take the stupid thing to the Geek Squad since I had to subscribe to its service on this machine once. This probably doesn’t mean anything. I’m expecting them charge me exorbitantly but am hoping to spend less than a hundred bucks. The machine is overheating according to the software installed on it.

Daughter Elizabeth shared this video with me on Facebooger yesterday.

I just put this video up in response.

I believe it was Jeremy (husband of Elizabeth) who originally turned me on to Post Modern Jukebox. I think Morgan James and Scott Bradlee give a better performance of this tune than the original.

Neuroscience – Law – The Brain on the Stand – Jeffrey Rosen – New York Time

FINDINGS – The Voices In My Head Say ‘Buy It!’ Why Argue? – NYTimes.com

These are a couple of links I looked up from footnotes to The Myth of Choice: Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits by Kent Greenfield.

Greenfield writes in a chatty easy to read style. He also makes some clear points about how we choose. So far I’m understanding that to choose well one must use deliberation, reflection and emotion all at once and presumably consciously.

I’ve been thinking about my recent infatuation with some romantic music.

I wonder if it might have something to do with my improvising for ballet class. Basically the music I make up marks off the systematic movements called a combination. These can be a  rather long and complex series.

The music must be in strict 4 measure phrases, working in 8 measure units. This is how the teacher and the student are dividing up the series of movements.

Depending upon the skill level of the group, I make the music simple or complex to try to help them keep their place. I almost always use pretty simply harmonic progressions, usually in one key, but sometimes wandering to a related key.

This is fine with me. I like simple AND complex in music.

At the same time, I pay close attention to the melodic nature of what I am making up. Though they are beating in 4s and 8s, it is often the melody dancers are dancing to.

So elegant melodies are what I’m shooting for.

It is the main melody in Vierne’s Final (3rd symphony) that attracts me to it.

Romantic music often has melody. I suspect that this is a large part of my recent infatuation.

Choir rehearsal went well last night. Often the rehearsal after a shaky performance can be a killer on the morale. But either choristers were in the mood to move on or I managed to distract them.

I had planned the rehearsal carefully and for once I followed the plan closely in execution.

I also worked my ass off this weekend choosing and stuffing six new anthems and three new psalms.

In addition we went through the Great Litany in its entirety. It’s kind of long, but I insist that cantors (self selected from the choir) sing it entirely at least once before performing it.

I’m feeling a bit smug this morning because it looks like I downloaded and successfully installed a driver to enable me to use my MIDI interface on the new crappy laptop. The fan came yesterday for the old better one. I got up early this morning and copied files from the old laptop to my external H drive to preserve some of my work which I had been carrying on it.

Eileen defragged her little Acer yesterday and it is working better for her.

We’re quite the modern couple.

I had another relaxing morning yesterday. In the afternoon I went to church and scoured the extensive choral library for selections for us to sing in Holy Week.

This took several hours. I ended up choosing the following.

Palm Sunday – “That Virgin’s Child” by Thomas Tallis

Maundy Thursday – Ubi Caritas by Maurice Duruflé

Good Friday – Crucifixus by Bach

The Easter Vigil – Ye Songs and Daughters by Erik Thiman

Easter Sunday – two anthems

Now Christ is Risen by Martin Plüddeman

 Thou Sweet and Hallowed Morn from Three Easter Carols by Whitehead

One of the reason I’m putting pics up of these is so you can see how old and yellowed some of them are. The English composer Thiman and the Whitehead represent more what choirs were singing in the middle of the last century. I think they are still solid choices. Thiman in particular seems to fit in the Episcopal situation.

Well, running out of time. Have to stop.

Yesterday was a luxurious day for me. My ballet class schedule includes an 8:30 AM class on Mondays. But the college is on winter break, so no classes! Excellent. So I was able to goof off a bit. For me, this meant carefully playing through Brahms’ first three Hungarian Dances for piano.

I seem to be evolving another way of learning music or at least going through it: slow careful practice with the addition of listening both analytically and with pleasure to the composition. So, it’s not just notes and rhythms that I’m aiming for, but understanding and pleasure.

Brahms is good practice for this because I find him difficult. My pianism is not as developed as I would like.  Or as an ex-friend once said, I play better than I have a right to. Hah. My octave playing is not as easy as I would like. And at 63, my small hands are susceptible to arthritic twinges.

Later at the organ I gave the same treatment to some Bach and the first movement of Vierne’s third symphony. Very satisfying.

Another good and surprising thing that happened yesterday was the ease with which I was able to install another working copy of Finale on this stupid stupid Windows 8 nightmare of a laptop.

I thought I would use a bit of leisure time to approach the task. I was hoping that if I went at installing software without a pressing task I would be more patient. But patience was not really required. I simply put the CD in the computer and installed and authorized the software. I was amazed. I had anticipated that since Finale would see this as a third installation (the second one is on a dead desktop) that it would need some tinkering and even possibly a phone call.

I put a message up on the Facebooger group, Music Notation Software Forum for Church Musicians (How’s that for a specialized helpful conversation?). Someone responded that they had never had problems installing multiple copies of Finale. I figure that “someone” is probably much younger than me and not been tangling with Finale as long as I have. Maybe Finale has changed its policy.

Whatever the cause, this made my day. I now have two working copies of Finale, so my little laptop can have a meltdown (which it may) and I can still get my work done.

I admit that I expect glitches with Finale on Windows 8.

But what the heck.

The Muslims of Early America – NYTimes.com

So this imam dude was praying over horses and riders at a Texas rodeo. Other Texans got pissed off. The writer of this article uses this as a springboard to teach a little history. Muslims have been Americans for a long time. Plus the concept of rodeo is not indigenous to the USA. Heh.

Pipedreams 1505: Getting Near

“Near” as in the composer “Gerald Near.” I listened to some of this show early Sunday morning. As I listened to performances of Near’s work I realized that I am losing interest in clever counterpoint that is not interesting or beautiful. (But I still love Bach and Buxtehude and others including Hindemith).

I have performed a good amount of Near’s music. It is solid and well constructed. But lately as readers of this blog might have noticed I am including a wider range of romantic music in my areas of interest. And Near’s music is not as attractive to me as it once was.

Someone once told me that he had found Near a bit of a downer in person. At the link above there is also a 17 minute live interview with him. I listened to it this morning as I cleaned up the kitchen and made coffee. He doesn’t seem like a downer  in this interview.

Unsurprisingly, Near had very good connections in the organ world. He studied with Robert Glasgow. His music makes more sense to me now, knowing how academic and institutional his background is. He confesses that his early fugues were assignments that Glasgow deemed playable.

He also says that composing is about luck. I think he meant stumbling onto good ideas. But unfortunately it probably also applies to being in the right place in the right time.

I pretty much nailed my Rheinberger pieces yesterday. It’s no wonder since I spent extra time with them, especially the lengthy toccata. I had a few faithful choir members and at least one parishioner suffer through the entire eleven minutes of the postlude. The parishioner I am thinking of is the former organist, Joy Huttar. I was thinking of her when I scheduled this music. She is one organist I have met who has also learned some Rheinberger. She was very complimentary afterwards.

The choral anthem for the day, however, was another story. We had a major train wreck. We were singing Tu Solus Mirabilius by Desprez which is a lovely renaissance piece with some fascinating alternating stylistic sections. These include a direct steal of a chanson phrase by Ockeghem. When the chanson section occurs the piece goes (at least in my interp) from the stereotypical beautiful choral lucid sound to more rhythmic chanson style.

We also made it through the first few chanson sections.

It was in the final one, where I believe the soprano section double timed the rhythm.

I immediately tried to follow them (since they were singing away), doubling the other parts on the piano a bit louder. It was too fast.

I said to the choir, “C!”, as in letter C where the train wreck occurred. Later I learned that no one heard me give this instruction. Unfortunate Letter C and the next phrase were very similar. We continued to flail a bit until we gathered together at Letter D.

We then managed to end the performance creditably.

I tried to reassure the sopranos that what we had done was okay (“More good, than bad.”) But they were upset. I don’t buy real valium online uk think they heard anything I was saying. They were only smarting under having given not that great a performance.

I started the service off balance because a chorister was weirdly querulous about where her chair was to be for the service (she wanted to move it away from the rest of the choir to make a pathway).

After church I sought out the choristers who were still at coffee hour and talked to them about the performance, citing the cardinal rule that it helps to start beautifully and end creditably. I think this helped a few of them.

After I got home, I emailed the choir. I included some interesting information about the piece that we had performed. Desprez wrote the piece for the Glory of God, but he also had his eye on his patron who was going to possibly fire him. Interesting stuff. I also sent the choir a copy of Ockeghem’s chanson and a link to a YouTube performance of it. I found a YouTube performance by the Hilliard Ensemble (whom I usually admire) of the “Tu Solus” but I didn’t link it in because I think our interp (despite the train wreck) was actually better and more interesting.

I also included a line about the cardinal rule mentioned above.

Morale of volunteer or amateur music organizations can be tricky. I have a challenging group with some strong personalities and talented singers. I hope I was able to help them a bit with this experience. Who knows?

How to Be Invisible – NYTimes.com

Some wisdom for jupe.

Health Law Case Poses Conundrum for Republicans – NYTimes.com

When I was talking to Jeremy about this, I wondered what the Republicans would do if they succeeded in repealing Obamacare. He said they would blame Obama for the mess. They have already started.

Greek Austerity Spawns Fakery: Playing Nurse – NYTimes.com

Faux health workers wandering the halls of Greek hospitals. Weird.