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I spent a lot of time at the organ yesterday. Not only was I rehearsing stuff for this Sunday and next Sunday, I began learning the organ accompaniments to a couple of bigger anthems coming up.
While doing so, I discovered that the arrangement of “Happy and Blest are they” from Mendelssohn’s St. Paul op. 36 is a pretty lousy one. I decided to do my own arrangement of this movement from the large chorus and orchestra setting. I’m reducing it to organ and cello and essentially leaving the chorus parts the same. We will sing it in English.
The arrangement I was working from was what they call a vocal score. That means the vocal parts are correct but the accompaniment is playable on organ or piano. The notes are squinched into two staves. The arrangements are often not that keyboard friendly asking the player to work through intricate reductions of voice leading.
So this is what the first version looks like:
And this is what my version will look like:
I was taught that when I play and conduct a piece I should carefully prepare what I was going to do and plan out when to play the accompaniment as written and when to reduce it and allow a hand to come up and direct.
This is a matter of learning this approach to a score pretty thoroughly. Hence my work yesterday.
The other piece was by Bach. It’s the first movement of Cantata 139, “Wohl dem, der sich auf seinen Gott.”
This arrangement was slightly more user friendly. But after studying the Mendelssohn vocal score I am tempted to look at the full Bach score and see if it can be arranged more clearly. This one I want to sing in German.
All of these scores are well out of copyright and available free online.
I have been embracing the notion that what I do as a church musician is practice my art.
Encompassed in this art is the leading of congregational song. John Ferguson, the very fine organist and conductor that I admire and aspire to emulate, urged American Guild of Organists types to always remember that despite their fancy degrees and abilities on the organ, their first job as a church musician is to lead the song in church.
This reflects the late 20th century understandings of many liturgical churches. Participation of the assembly or congregation was very important to these reforms.
But in addition to this, I’m realizing how much satisfaction I am getting out of my preludes and postludes. I’m also enjoying revisiting the scholarly considerations of hymnody.
I have maintained a scholarly interest in musicology, music history and theory for most of my adult life. This is one reason I am so tickled to have good online access to academic journals and resources.
This week alone I have connected with two interesting online articles. One I mentioned in yesterday’s post (Leon Botstein’s “Recording and Reality: The Musical Subject” Musical Quarterly Spring 2012). I put up a discussion starter regarding this article on LinkedIn’s Classical Musician group. So far no has responded.
But I also am reading David Yearsley’s article, “Death Everyday: The Anna Magdalena Bach Book of 1725 and the Art of Dying” in Eighteenth Century Music/vol 2/Issue 02/ September 2005, pp 231 – 249. Again this is only available via my college’s online subscription, this time to Cambridge journals.
I found Yearsley when someone posted one of his books on Facebook organists. I interlibrary-loaned a couple of them.
Then I went on Yearsley’s Cornell Faculty page and found a citation to this article. Looked it up and downloaded the pdf to read.
On the Cornell journal page there was a button to send articles to your Kindle. I fussed about with this last night and this morning. I think it only works with real Kindles and not Kindle for PC (which is what I use).
Speaking of the art of church music, I once again have chosen organ music for this weekend which is requiring copious preparation.
Prelude: Andante from Third Sonata for Organ by Francis Jackson (b.1917)
Postlude: Fanfare by Tony Hewitt-Jones (1926-1989)
This are a couple of Anglican dudes. I have long admired Jackson’s work.
Couldn’t find a YouTube of his piece to share.It is however on Spotify. Not sure if that link will work. Tried to embed it, but it kept disappearing. It’s a recording by Francis Jackson himself who apparently is still alive.
Tony Hewitt-Jones on the left,
I found recording of the Hewitt-Jones piece on YouTube. It was well played but on an electronic organ and pretty much sounded like shit. So I didn’t embed the video.
Thinking of my work as an art has a calming affect on me.
This was a link shared by a family member. The author, Mike Lofgren served 16 years on the Republican staff of the House and Senate Budget Committees. He has just published The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted.
The article linked seems to be a conservative analysis that is a bit more dispassionate than the noise in the Republican right now.
In the 2012 Spring issue of Musical Quarterly, there is an article entitled “Recording and Reality: The Musical Subject” by Leon Botstein. I stumbled across this citation of it recently online. Frustratingly it is only available online to people who have access to subscriptions to journals.
Yesterday I utilized the Hope College access and finished reading this article this morning. Unsurprisingly, Botstein bemoans the idea that recordings are now the primary way people think of music. This especially bothers him about classical musicians.
Leon Botstein, noted musician and conductor
He draws a parallel to teaching art history in which music comes up short. In art, students do not mistake the reproduction for the experience of being in the presence of the actual painting or sculpture. In fact they often find it a revelation to experience the art in person.
He then goes on and points out that in the world of music the listener is more likely to spend time with recordings than live performances or even score study. He thinks this dulls and dilutes the experience.
He may be right. But in my life, recordings have provided me a delightful access to so much music that it’s hard for me to think of it as a negative thing.
Like most listeners there are certain recordings that have imprinted themselves in my mind and ears as sort of the definitive type of the music involved. But as I have matured I have resisted this notion consciously, preferring to experience music I am interested in first hand via playing it on the piano or organ or studying the score.
But having said that, I do find myself using recordings these days to study other performers interpretation or even choice of rendition (oddly enough there are often musical choices to be made about the actual notes one plays).
Also when I taught music appreciation at the college level, I began each semester sitting at the piano and performing a piece of repertoire before saying a word to the class. This was a deliberate act of putting music (and in this case live music performance) first into the ears of my students.
Also as students attended the required live concerts, it was satisfying to read about their surprise and delight at experiencing live music. Having the experience that Botstein is unhappy about, that is experiencing music primarily through recordings, these students were like the art students when they went from recorded music to live music.
I always thought it helped that I encouraged them to attend student concerts. Watching and listening to their peers make music had to be part of the delight.
Anyway, I think Botstein is off base in not expanding his notion of music (via the ideas in Christopher Small’s book, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening) to include the ideas of not only recordings and scores as being part of what a piece of music but also performances, listeners and indeed everyone who has contact or made some sort of contribution to the process (this would include instrument makers and even people who set up chairs for concerts).
When I think of music in this way, the dominance of recordings is not as daunting or troubling to me.
Editorial that points out that the government that so many people abhor and are intent on reducing provides essential assistance and protection to people in the path of a storm like Isaac.
The author of this article argues that the spirit of adventure and exploration are basic to being human. To pull back from exploring Mars reduces our humanity.
While I was on vacation, I composed a draft of a choral setting of the the text, “Ride on, ride on” by Henry H. Milman. I haven’t had time to put it into a Finale file and do some rewrite on it. Not sure I will actually perform it with my choir, but was interested in the text. The Hymnal 1982 Companion describes it as “one of the best hymns in the English language.” This intrigued me so I worked with the text a bit and came up with some choral musical ideas.
Yesterday was an amusing day of stops and starts. I had set for myself the task of finalizing all choir recruitment letters to send out to a list of adults and children at my church. Each letter was to be personalized at least with the name of the recipient. In many cases I further added a paragraph specifically for the person the letter was addressed to. In addition I had two versions of the letter for the adult choir: one for people who had previously been in the choir and one for people who would be new to the choir if they chose to accept my invitation to join.
After a morning of cleaning house and putzing about I finally sat down to work on these letters. I altered the first one and printed it up. Yikes. My printer needed ink. I decided to pop off to the grocery store and pick up a few groceries and get printer ink.
I returned home and installed the new ink cartridge. Then as I began to work I realized that the internet was down. I do all my work online so this was a revoltin’ development.
Undeterred I jumped in the car and drove to work to finish the task. I began using my boss’s computer (she was out of the office) and immediately ran into trouble again because her browser (Internet Explorer 8 ) didn’t seem to be able to talk to the networked printer.
After many attempts to correct this I found out from the secretary that Google Chrome was newly installed on my boss’s computer and was the browser of choice recommended by the IT guys. Good to know.
After that it was clear sailing for two hours and I finished this stage of the project. The secretary gave me mailing labels, envelopes and stamps. Today I finish off this project by stuffing the letters into prepared envelopes and mailing them.
Speaking of computer fuck ups, my online bookmarking service refused to bookmark links for me yesterday as well. I have a folder in my browser called “When diggolet doesn’t work.” This is where I bookmark sites when the silly thing fails.
I have joined several LinkedIn groups. This and the next link come from the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Group there. I did not know the story of Starbucks mermaid/siren. Haven’t finished this article yet.
Dennis Aubrey and P J McKey have made a beautiful web site. They are photographing historic churches in Europe and write eloquently about the legends surrounding them. Very very very cool.
My prelude and postlude yesterday were both drawn from issues of the Wayne Leupold’s “The Organist’s Companion.” I purchased several back issues of these monthly anthologies from Craig Cramer recently (he sends out emails regularly of used music he is offering for sale).
The prelude was “Communion” by Peter A. Togni. I chose it because Sunday was the last of the course reading of John 6 in the lectionary. This is a lengthy discussion of “I am the bread of life” stuff. Togni’s little piece was dedicated to his mother and father and is sort of easy lyrical slightly dissonant movie music. At least that’s how I heard it.
I think this is Togni.
For the postlude, I chose a Toccata by Flor Peeters.
Flor Peeters 1903 - 1986
I used to do Peeters music more when I was working for the Roman Catholics. He comes from that tradition.
The piece I played yesterday was a flashy little piece mostly for manuals.
I deliberately chose it so I could rehearse it on vacation on my electric piano. I ended up throwing in some extra fancy pedal work to balance out the manuals in couple of places.
After the postlude, there was a bit of response from the people standing in the church. A bravo and some scattered applause.
It was slightly embarrassing because this piece is pretty much all flash: sextuplets in the right hand, sort of a poor person’s Widor Toccata.
Later a colleague who is usually pretty critical of me complimented me.
This summer I made up my mind to be friendly to all those professionals who attend my church.
I’m thin-skinned and I know it.
Easily bruised. Makes me crazy.
So yesterday I connected with a “good morning” and a smile to people I think disrespect my work or don’t even know it exists. This totally worked. Everyone smiled back. That’s when I got the surprising compliment as well.
As I contemplated my work this summer I found myself calming down around issues of respect from colleagues. I kept thinking to myself, “Whatever!”, when I found myself rehearsing slights and snide comments. This “Whatever” was not the valley girl “Whatever.”
More like a “whatever shrug” feeling then move on.
This morning as I did my morning reading on the history of Hymnody I was pretty amused.
Watson has a section introducing Victorian Hymnody he calls “Hymnological Darwinism.”
In this section he talks about the hymn explosion of the 19th century and how it’s proliferation and eventually weaning resembled Darwin’s ideas in Origin of Species with generous quotes from Darwin.
He then mentions the hymn, “The church’s one foundation,” written by Samuel Stone. He says it exemplifies the environment of controversy that beset the Anglican church during this time.
Stone wrote his text in response to the ideas of Bishop Colenso. Unfortunately Colenso sounds like a 21st century Episcopalian. According the Hymnal 1982 Companion, he questioned the historical accuracy of the Bible and a whole range of “traditional views of scripture.”
Bishop John Colenso (1814-1883)
Colenso gets kicked out of the church. “The Canadian Anglicans called for a pan-Anglican conference to be set up so that the Church as a whole could resolve this and other controversies.” This ends up being the first Lambeth conference of 1867.
At the main services, Stone’s “The Church’s One Foundation” was the processional that set the reactionary tone against Colenso and his ilk.
The Hymnal 1982 Companion comments that this included Darwinism and Liberalism. Watson’s use of Darwin to talk about this period is deliciously ironic.
Facebook missed me anyway. Heh. Eileen and I had a relaxing few days at the beach. I did a lot of reading and not much else.
After my last post from the Montague book shop, I got up and walked around. Sure enough, they had the first Game of Thrones novel. The silly book owner didn’t show me the display.
I didn’t return the one had sold me (A Feast for Crows). I rationalized that I would possibly buy it anyway. Bought the first volume (have now read several hundred pages in it), a tee shirt for Eileen and some other stuff. I was trying to find things I to buy to support this charming little shop. Despite the owner’s obliviousness to me as a customer, I still thought it was a pretty neat place. They had a stage with a baby grand piano on it and a wine bar. My kind of bookshop.
Eileen and I got up early yesterday and cleared out the cottage where we had been vacationing. Barb rents it, but she had to leave the night before. We drove a few miles to Eileen’s Mom’s house. I cut up watermelon and musk melon in her kitchen and made a fruit salad for the Family Reunion/Aunt Vera’s 100th Birthday Party.
Then I walked over to the park nearby where they were having the celebration and helped get it ready. I helped clean outdoor tables, ran stuff back and forth between the house of Dorothy (Eileen’s Mom), helped sweep up the pavilion, put plastic on the tables and whatever I could do to prepare.
The celebration went off well. I got to see some people I don’t usually get to see because family came in from all over.
Afterwards we returned to Holland. I went over to the church to post hymns, make page turn photocopies of the postlude and register the prelude.
By the end of the evening I was pretty tired. But I think I had some good vacations this summer: California, the Grayling cabin in the woods and the Montague cottage by Lake Michigan.
I have a ton of work beginning tomorrow getting out recruitment letters. Ballet classes start Tuesday. I guess I’m back at it.
I had trouble with the New York Times offline reader. It kept deciding my priorities so I was unable to read the back issues I was counting on despite having checked them to see that they were loading probably when I was online. Stupid stupid stupid.
I did manage however to find some interesting articles to link:
This review of this book by James Traub has some good synoptic Iranian recent history in it.
Finally, I am totally losing my mind these days. I spent a good portion of my vacation reading J. R. Watson’s The English Hymn and the correlating his ideas with the Hymnal 1982 Companion.
This morning I downloaded a copy of John Julian’s Hymnody. (Volume I (A–O) pdf, Volume II (P–Z) pdf ) and John Keble’s The Christian Year.
The latter was recommended in the Hymnal 1982 Companion. In his biographical entry on Keble (Vol II of the Companion, p. 493) Louie Weil described it: “… [A] collection of his [Keble’s] religiouis poetry and the source of several hymns based on those texts. The collection is regarded as a classic—the expression of a rare and refined sensibility, imbued with the spirit of both Scripture and the Book of Common Prayer.”
This morning I sat in the early morning darkness, listened to Lake Michigan, and read my computer. Life is rough.
Eileen and I are staying in a cottage a stone’s throw away from Lake Michigan. Yesterday we sat on the beach. Eileen worked a crossword puzzle while I read An Instance 0f the Fingerpost by Iain Pears.
I’m almost halfway through this book which is as long as the other one by him I read, Stone’s Fall. However, it’s not as good.
Interestingly there is some overlap between Pears’ novel, An Instance of Fingerpost, and the reading I have been doing in Hymnody. Thomas Ken (the 16th century cleric who wrote the words to the omnipresent “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow) is a murder suspect in Pears’ historical mystery. But it’s moving much slower than the Pears’ other book.
Today I drove into town to get my Internet fix. I’m sitting in a nice little book cafe in Montague Michigan near where we are staying.
I bought a coffee and A Feast of Crows by George Martin.
I wanted to spend a little money in this shop. My grandson (and other people I know) are enamored of George Martin’s Game of Throne series. They only had the latest one in hardback and this one which number four in the series.
I’m going to have to purchase them to read them because they are always checked out at the library, so I thought what the heck.
I’m trying to download a few more New York Times into my Times Reader. I find this interface notoriously clunky after initially really liking it earlier this summer. I was surprised that it let me read so much while we are the beach house since when we were in Grayling it consistently screwed up and didn’t have what I thought it had downloaded.
I was surprised that I missed the Internet. It was mostly a matter of wondering what was happening in the news. I must be a newsaholic.
But while I’m here I checked to see what the heck the word “fingerpost” means.
Apparently it’s one of those signs that point in various directions like this one.
How about that? I did not know that.
Well it’s time to jump back in Eileen’s Mini and go back and sit and read some more.
Tomorrow we leave the cottage and go to a family reunion, then back to Holland. The cottage visit has been very relaxing. I asked Eileen if she was missing her Internet and did she want to come in with me to get an Internet fix. She said she was fine.
Finished reading this book yesterday. Even though I am busy, waiting for my Mom while she is in doctors’ appointments has the pleasant side benefit of making me sit in one place for an hour or so. Perfect time to read.
I admire Pears ability to plot out almost 600 pages of fiction and keep me guessing right up until the end how the plot will come out. This is no mean feat.
I was intrigued with the temporal outline of the book, moving as it does from from a 1953 funeral in Paris to London in 1909 then to the 1860s in Venice. Pears draws the reader in easily beginning with the funeral of an elderly interesting woman and the story of the mysterious death of her husband a few years earlier, the main character, John Stone.
Somehow he had fallen out of a window to his death from his office at a critical time in his international financial affairs. Did he jump or was he pushed? Could it possibly have been an accident?
At the 1953 funeral, the first of several narrators in the book begins to remember how he is connect to these two people. “Many years earlier” the widow had asked him to investigate her deceased husband’s surprising stipulation in his will that a large sum be given to a child of his that no one knows anything about.
The book is a kind of mystery. It is very historical. The prose flows easily and the author is obviously in love with learning and the surroundings of his story (London and Venice). Great read.
Recently, my brother and my nephew’s partner both mentioned that they buy diazepam from thailand found large books less daunting in ebook form. Eileen bought this book in ebook form last night for vacation for this very reason.
Speaking of vacation, I leave this afternoon for another internet fast. So probably no posts until next week.
I am so far behind in my NYT reading. I have been doing my usual treadmill reading of it daily. But due to a new interface (Times Reader) I am better able to coherent browse and choose articles to read. So I am reading more of it. Takes more time. This interview was from last Sunday.
“[An]… airport decided on a new approach: instead of reducing wait times, it moved the arrival gates away from the main terminal and routed bags to the outermost carousel. Passengers now had to walk six times longer to get their bags. Complaints dropped to near zero.”
I have always been oddly fascinated by the hymn, “There is a fountain filled with blood.”
Such a bizarre image.
I grew up singing this hymn in the Church of God.
I couldn’t find an authentic sounding YouTube video of it. This comes close to the way I remember singing it.
It was written in the 18th Century by William Cowper. R. J. Watson has helped me understand this hymnist and poet better.
He refutes notions of the hymnist, Erik Routley, about it and explains it this way.
The language, although taken from various scriptural texts, is shocking because it exploits the metaphor (found, for example in Revelation 7:13-17, where those in heaven ‘have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’), pushing it towards the literal. The original metaphor of cleansing through blood is made more immediate, more vivid: the shock comes from being asked to contemplate a fountain of blood, with bodies immersed in it. It carries the pictorial representation of soteriological doctrine to an extreme, into a kind of evangelical baroque: and its justification is not, as Erik Routley would have us believe, that you need to be tough to be a Christian… but rather that it invites a fresh response even a shocked one, to the familiar ideas of salvation and communion….”
R. J. Watson, The English Hymn: A Critical and Historical Study p. 295
Cowper also wrote other famous widely sung hymns: “Sometimes a light surprises the Christian,” “O for a closer walk with God,” and “God moves in a mysterious way.”
These three are in the Hymnal 1982 but not “There is a fountain.” It is however in Lift Every Voice and Sing II, the African American Episcopalian Hymnal.
I suggested to Eileen that this might mean that this tradition is a bit more visceral. I known that I am often drawn to the more earthy expressions found in this tradition of hymns and blues.
My teacher, Craig Cramer, told me once that at every performance he gives, he “goes up against the wall” or something of that nature. Since he is a professional concert giver this is quite a sweeping statement. He also told me that when he performs it is like riding a roller coaster and nothing like rehearsing the music.
I have discovered that when I put my all into a performance (which is something I try to do every time I perform) it exhilarates and drains me. At church this means I need to give my self a bit of conscious space between an intense prelude or choral piece and the next thing I do.
This summer I played a very intense prelude and played it pretty well. I plunged into the opening hymn and made some pretty silly and obvious mistakes. I think I was still recovering from the performance.
Since then I have been trying to work with myself a bit better than that. Yesterday was an example.
At ten minutes before the hour I decided I would begin the Stanford piece. When I timed it this week, it varied from 10.5 minutes to over 13 minutes. I worked over some of the sections before service yesterday, playing them carefully and well under tempo. I knew that I might play under tempo in the performance (if I kept my head on straight as I performed) and that this might affect the length of the piece.
Usually I tell my boss how long I expect the piece to last and she tells me when to begin. She likes to leak the prelude into the service time as people are still gathering at that point.
She was no where to be seen at ten to so I started.
I played the piece quite well. I finished at one minute after the hour. This often happens that I play a bit more quickly in performance since what I am thinking about is more interpretation or the music itself. I committed sins of omission rather than commission in a section or two and left out a few notes in some chords rather than ruin the lovely music. It’s a bit of a cop out, but I prefer it to screwing up a composer’s ideas entirely.
Stanford’s setting of his hymn tune Engelberg ends with a majestic statement of the melody as a climax of the entire piece. It was a great way to prepare the congregation to sing the opening hymn.
I finished the piece and realized I was feeling very deeply emotional and drained. I gave myself a moment to gather my thoughts and emotions before looking to my boss for her signal to begin the opening hymn. This helped.
I find this sort of thing pretty satisfying, playing a decent piece of music well.
I should mention I had some nice compliments. One parishioner thanked me for the music. This is pretty usual on a Sunday morning. I’m never sure quite what it means but try to be gracious and friendly.
Another young college age musician commented on the service music I have written. He said he saw the “Jenkins Jazz Mass” portions of the service coming and felt skeptical that the congregation could sing “jazz.” He reported being pleasantly surprised.
His father mentioned that both he and his son had been conversing about how well I played the organ. He did clarify that he meant my improvisations.
Yesterday at the wedding the one person who spoke to me said he liked the music I played when they signed the Marriage Certificate (an unusual addition to the ceremony). I thanked him and replied the melody I had been playing was an old hymn tune (Holy Manna) and I was just goofing around with it.
Once Jean Pierre Rampal was performing in a church situation which forbade applause. At the end of the concert, he left the playing area. When someone urged him to do an encore despite the lack of applause, he refused saying how did he know whether they liked it or not.
Jean Pierre Rampal (1922-2000)
If someone of his ability and genius has that reaction, I think that in some small way I am justified when I assume that people don’t necessarily appreciate my work. But I do also remind myself that I receive my share of comments and compliments. Some do appreciate what I do. I need to remember that.
I’m a bit behind in my online news reading. I have been using a different interface with the New York Times which allows me to browse articles better. This is slowing me down a bit. I like what this author says about learning from adversity and using it as an opportunity.
Even though the paper in question was written when the official was at school seven years ago, it still has insights for an evolving situation in Egypt.
An obviously propaganda approach to news expanding. It fascinates me. Helpful to understand how much propaganda I am bombarded with in a freer press situation.
Up early banging away on my prelude and postlude on my electric piano with my headphones on. I had wanted to spend some serious time on this stuff yesterday. Instead I managed to finish off filing most of the choral music in the choir room. All that is left is a stack of single copies. These are not as critical as getting multiple copies back where they belong.
I did get some time at the organ yesterday. But since there was a wedding, I vacated the church from about 11 AM on. I used the postlude at the wedding so it kind of got practiced. It’s a goofy little thing by David Cherwien based on the closing hymn. It sounds like a loud improvisation. Most of his work strikes me as improvisations worked out on paper. They do fine for a postlude or a prelude once in a while.
I especially like what I am doing today which is basing the prelude on the opening hymn and the postlude on the closing.
It’s not always easy to find material. It’s even harder to choose stuff that is not basically crap.
I think this morning I have some respectable stuff (especially the prelude). Unfortunately I would like a couple more days on the prelude. Instead I worked over my page turns (it’s nine pages long) and some of the tricky manual sections this morning. I will go in early enough to do some work at the organ between services.
This piece by Stanford based on his hymn tune Engelberg has been clocking in from 10 to 13 minutes. It’s a long prelude. I got in the habit of long preludes working at the Roman Catholic church. At my church I feel like the prelude and postlude are mostly ignored so what the heck, I play good stuff and try to ignore the noise.
That’s what happened at the wedding yesterday. I sat down and played all three movements of Mozart’s piano sonata in C major K. 279 as people were seated. I think Mozart captures the joy and love of life that is present at a lot of weddings. People talked loudly but at least not to me as I was playing. I try to immerse myself in what I am doing despite this. It usually works. It did yesterday. I totally nailed this piece.
Unfortunately when I opened the envelope at home to record the fee amount (I keep track for taxes. I’m a boy scout.) it was only a hundred dollars.
I have been sneaking up the fees pretty much unconsciously. I emailed my boss and asked her if the church could make up the difference and pay me $150. She agreed noting that the amount used to be $125 but that we would raise it to $150 (the amount I have been paying subs for a while).
That’s nice.
My grandson is trying out for piano in his 7th grade jazz band. He and I chatted back and forth online yesterday about it. He is getting to be a respectable pianist for his age. Not a prodigy mind you, but still he loves to play and he loves to improvise.
I walked him through scanning in the music for me so I could see it. So now he knows how to do that.
He could very well get chosen. The tryout music involves repetition of just a few simple jazz chord patters. The right hand is written, but the tryout sheet says to play with both hands. I mentioned he could play the note name of the chord with his left hand, preferably in octaves and it would sound good.
He also is playing trumpet in the school band.
I suddenly remember that when I was his age exactly I had about the chops he has on piano and trumpet.
He also likes to read as I did.
Weird.
Long distance connections.
It is a pleasure I gladly embrace to connect with him (and my other two grandkids as well).
Eileen joined me yesterday morning at church and helped me sort a box of old choral music. I have a box and a half left to go. This is working out as I hoped, since I have run across several pieces of music that I have tucked away to factor in when I begin final decisions about this upcoming season.
This church has a pretty extensive choral library. I forget how extensive sometimes. I was surprised to find a choral setting of psalm 96 by Sweelinck.
Our version has an English translation which I will probably avail myself of if I choose to use it this year.
Harold Darke seems to have been a colleague and friend of C. V. Stanford and is a familiar name to me as a choral conductor. At least Stanford has dedicated one of his organ sonatas to him (as he also did to Widor and “to the great country to which he belongs.” This is an surprising expression of affection from an Irishman to the country of France. (I have found more antipathy than sympathy back and forth between the British Isles and France in my reading and experience.)
I have done this anthem before, possibly even with this choir. But it bears repeating.
Thomas does excellent Choral arrangements of gospel and spiritual tunes. We own several but this is one I haven’t done with this group.
I also stumbled across some very valuable material on St. James Music Press. My church subscribes to their entire online catalog. They have two entire curriculums for children choirs, one for K-2 and one for 3-6. The latter grouping is the one I am thinking of for my attempt at starting up the children’s choir at Grace (my boss prefers Kids Choir so that’s probably what it’s going to be).
I have joined the Facebook group Organists Association.
I mention it because I have been able to have little discussions with other organists there about hymnals and hymnody and organ music. This is a long time dream of mine: to be able to have content conversations online with other people.
This writer (and the one in the previous link) seem to be coming a bit from the right. I like that she is talking about her personal experience of being fired in an academic situation. I agree with her that open and honest dialogue is basic to the university.
I just realized yesterday that Eileen and I have one more vacation time planned next week. We are meeting our friend Barb at a cottage north of here she rents every year around this time (pictures above and below from last year). It was a very relaxing time last year. This year however I am feeling pressed with church job related duties like recruitment letters and filing years worth of choral music. The only way I can justify going away is if I can bear down and get a bunch of this stuff done before we leave next Wednesday.
I can’t believe I forgot this was coming. I’m planning on sheepishly taking up my lovely wife’s offer to help me file music on her day off.
Yesterday I got hung up on Charles Stanford’s music. I downloaded and printed up his “Ballade” for piano. Lovely stuff. As I have been learning his Fantasia on Engelberg for Sunday I have been struck with the skill with which this piece is written.
Yesterday I learned that he was renown in his time and was a friend of Brahms (whom he outlived) and the famous violinist Joachim. Apparently he was accused of being too much under Brahm’s influence as a composer.
I am struck by the lyricism I found in his Ballade.
I made up a playlist of a few of his works to treadmill by.
His Irish Rhapsody number four was on the list. This music doesn’t really strike me as Brahmsian. There are a few minutes in the piano Ballade which are reminiscent of Brahms, but I think that Stanford is his own composer.
He wrote some piano trios which I am looking at for possibly playing through with my trio.
This article made me think of my other weird attraction this summer. I guess the Bard Music Festival tries to perform music that isn’t on the playlist of most orchestras or classical music groups.
I wonder if they will do a Stanford festival sometime. Probably not.
I was thinking this morning about musical prejudices. When I was first getting to know the Episcopal scene I remember an influential leader who was on the Hymnal 1982 editorial board disparaging the work of Alec Wyton. She said something like I do love “Alec” but his music….. (significant pause and arch look).
I thought of this as I looked at Alec Wyton’s hymn tune he wrote for “Where is this stupendous stranger.” He named the tune Kit Smart after the author.
I was looking at a congregational hymnal which only has the melody. I noticed that it seemed to be in the Lydian mode.
I pulled out my accompaniment edition and noticed that nowhere does Wyton leave this pitch set. A friend of mine used to criticize my compositions when I didn’t leave the key. Heh.
I think Wyton’s a pretty good composer. I met him once before he died. I drove him to the airport after a workshop. He was charming and could keep up with my gab easily. We talked murder mysteries (Josephine Tey) and music composition (how difficult it was to write hymn tunes). I even yelled at him about what I thought of as “crap” he and others put in the then newly published Hymnal 1982. I have since changed my mind about most of this music and use it with a clear conscious.
Wyton died a few years ago after succumbing to Alzheimers.
Spent a little over five hours yesterday afternoon finishing up my first draft of possible choral anthems for the entire upcoming season. I finished off with Pentecost 2013. When I looked up from the computer I felt more dazed than triumphant.
For each Sunday and high Holy Day I chose from around five to ten possible anthems.
My plan is to now straighten the choir room and file several years worth of choral music. Having my hands on the music and physically being in the room seems to always lead to a few more ideas of material to use.
I also found time for a good chunk of working on the Stanford organ piece I am going to perform Sunday.
During the Wednesday Eucharist I vacated the organ bench so as to not disturb the worshipers since the chapel sits right under the organ pipes. I used this time to file anthems in the choir room.
A visit to the farmer’s market brought fresh tomatoes, peaches, chevre and corn.
I was just a busy little beaver yesterday.
After finishing the choral music task, I treadmilled. As Eileen was getting home I was breaking out the grill to cook up the last of the brauts she bought on vacation along with a generous helping of veggies (carrots, potatoes, onions and poblano peppers).
This morning I was reading about the hymns from the great eccentric English poet, Christopher Smart. He has always been a favorite of mine ever since reading his poem, “For I will consider my cat Jeoffry.”
I own a beautiful two volume set of his works published by Oxford. I remember purchasing them at a college library sale in Flint, Michigan. Apparently they have been superseded by a later edition. I remember wondering why a library would be discarding such beautiful books by a great poet. The later edition dates from 1983 which is much later than I purchased the books so they were not discarding them for that new edition. Hopefully they were duplicates.
I don’t think the Brit J. R. Watson factors in the American Hymnal 1982 when he writes about the use of Smart’s poems as hymns to be sung in worship. He says that a scant one or two of them were included in hymnals. I count six of them in the Hymnal 1982. A little reading shows me that one of the people who helped with the American collection (F. Bland Tucker) was a Smart aficionado and cobbled together at least one new hymn from Smart’s work. I haven’t gone through all six of the hymns in Hymnal 1982 yet but will probably do so.
I recognize the writer of this article, David Stockman, as an influential member of Reagan’s economic team who fell splendidly out of favor when he was quoted at length in an article in the Atlantic. I like his notion that a realistic reform of the “welfare state would require a sweeping, income-based eligibility test, which would reduce or eliminate social insurance benefits for millions of affluent retirees.”
And of course he doesn’t hesitate to point out the inconsistency of Rep Ryan’s voting record on fiscal issues.
Despite my good intentions of scheduling easy organ music for this Sunday, I decided to learn “Fantasia (In Omnia Festum) by C. V. Stanford.
It’s based on his hymn tune, Engelberg.
This is our opening hymn Sunday and I couldn’t resist. Unfortunately it’s about 10 minutes long and will require some rehearsal. But Stanford (though Irish) is thought of by Americans as an Anglican treasure so it’s sort of an Episcopalian thing to schedule him.
Calvin Hampton has written a piece on this tune as well. I own it, but couldn’t lay my hands on it yesterday. Probably just as well. It’s likely to be even more involved than Stanford’s setting. (Incidentally, this piece is available online: link)
I chose a postlude based on the closing hymn, “Praise the Lord, rise up rejoicing.” It’s a David Cherwien arrangement.
Cheriwen sort of took up the mantle of Paul Manz organ composition.
Academic organists love to look down on these guys. But their music is accessible and hymn based. I schedule them, learn them and perform them.
Both of their compositions for organ are largely improvisational like. They tend to be a bit flashy at times and this setting is like that.
Booksellers gathered. I love these guys. Finally an article that explains that McMurtry is not shutting down his store entirely, only reducing it from four buildings to one.
I’m always interested in the discussion of public honesty and dishonesty. Lots of cynicism in the reactions here.
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Thank you to Sarah for pointing to this video. It’s a good quick synopsis of the artistic critique of the concept of intellectual property.
He has made a four part more in depth series on the same subject. It’s available (I think) at his website: Everything is a Remix
I tried to coast through yesterday in preparation for increasing flurries of activity as I prepare for the next year. It seemed to work. I feel rested and relaxed this morning.
I will choose organ music for Sunday today. I have been thinking of easing up a bit on myself here so that I have more time for other work tasks like writing recruitment invitations, choosing choral music and sorting and filing several years worth of anthems sitting around the choir room.
The weird and pleasant thing is that I enjoy all of these tasks (including of course preparing and performing organ music for each weekend). It’s just a matter of balancing my time and energy (“This is your energy pie.”)
I have received my class assignment for this fall for ballet accompaniment. It is a bit lighter (for which I am thankful). 6.5 hours of classes a week is not too bad or at least it doesn’t seem like it at this point.
My motivation for this work has changed to include a larger appreciation of the access to online resources I gain as staff. Since I actually use them pretty much daily (I have already done an author search this morning on Jstor), I am getting increasingly dependent on this perk.
I have joked that if I lost my ballet accompaniment job I would try to get a menial job at Hope College just so I could continue to consult the OED and look up and read scholarly articles.
I have always found it amusing when people apply some sort of literary purity standard to the use of hymns. The history tells us that hymns are always at the service of the community that sings them. They are constantly reworked to fit the group that is using them. Phrases are altered or omitted. Entire stanzas dropped due to being unfit for a particular theology.
All is forgiven when the little abbreviation “alt.” (altered) is appended to the citation.
But this morning reading about the hymns of Charles Wesley I was struck by the absurdity of the modern notion of sole authorship and ownership of created texts. Wesley seems to have been an astute editor and transformer of what he absorbed from his own reading. He then used it in his hymns in a startling patchwork manner.
When I looked up his hymn, “O thou, who camest from above,” in the Hymnal 1982 Companion, there was at least one Biblical citation sometimes two for each one of the sixteen lines of the hymn.
Wesley like Bob Dylan took his world and rewrote it using the phrases and ideas that made up his intellectual world. There would be no Wesley without Milton, Pope, and the King James Bible as there would be no Dylan without folk music and newspaper articles.
Looked at like this much of the controversy about intellectual property seems pretty lame and self defeating to me. How can someone insist on their sole ownership of a creation made up of the materials they have been given or stumbled across in their lives?
This is not to say that there is no such thing as creativity or authorship. Just that creativity relies on community and history not some sort of impossible magical alchemic process where something springs from nothing and has never been seen or thought of before.
Once again a death inspires me to read an author. I admire this guy quite a bit but have only heard him on “This American Life.” Maybe I’ll read him too.
I’m easing back into my schedule. This morning I got up and did my usual reading, but desisted when my brother got up. They followed us back from Grayling yesterday and stayed an evening so they could see Mom before heading off to Plymouth for the rest of their Michigan Adventure.
I was a bit frustrated when I realized that my Sunday off was basically our drive back from vacation. Usually I like to put my Sunday off in the middle of two weeks off. This is more difficult with Eileen’s schedule at work. She does a lot of programs. When she takes off she has to prevail on her co-workers to cover for her. This means more work for them. She hesitates to take loads of time off (unless of course it means seeing her kids or grandkids).
Eileen’s back at work today.
I don’t have anything scheduled today. But tomorrow it’s back to the grind.
Daughter Sarah mentioned the music at the Olympics in the comment on the previous post. More info here, but dated of course. These are my bookmarks from the last days in vacation.
I experimented with the New York Times Reader while I was on vacation. I think it would probably be a bit better for me than doing it strictly on their website. The headlines are often obscure and I tend to skip over things I don’t get. This way I can more easily browse and read the first paragraph of an article. The most problematic thing is that it doesn’t book mark easily.
So this is working out pretty well. I’m getting in lots of rest and relaxation staying at the Hatch family cabin in Grayling with extended fam. We have been seeing deer galore starting from the first evening. We now have eight people and three dogs at the gathering. There is a second building with extra sleeping we call the “bunkhouse.” The last to arrive ended up sleeping there and it seems to be as comfortable as the beds in the main cabin.
Eileen and I have been walking together everyday. I am counting this as my vacation treadmill time. I have been getting up and reading every morning. Continuing to read the books on Hymnody and history of Christianity.
Yesterday I was pretty silly. My nephew Ben and his partner Tony finally arrived. The rest of the crew was waiting for them so they could go to Traverse City. Eileen and I had opted out of this visit thinking we could hang behind and continue to relax. After Ben and Tony got there everyone immediately began gabbing and then all at once the Traverse City party had to go.
So they all jumped in their cars. Eileen, I and the dogs watched. The dogs were unhappy they were being left behind. I suddenly felt left behind as well.
Eileen told me I should just go. She definitely didn’t want to. So I did.
Goofy me.
I did get some conversation with fam, connect with the internet and have a nice meal at my niece’s favorite restaurant, The Happy Pumpkin.
Unfortunately my brother had a phone call from his secretary. She couldn’t do the work he left her in time. So we got up this morning and drove in to Grayling so he could remotely access his computers at church and do some work. Some vacation. I went for as much moral support as I can provide.
I’m really disinterested in this year’s Olympics for some reason. Tomes has some interesting observations on the pervasiveness and use of music in the coverage.
The relaxing on vacation is going great. Getting lots of reading and resting in. Unfortunately, there is no internet out in the boonies where we are staying. Very beautiful. Have seen many deer and fauns.
Mark and I drove into Grayling for supplies and a quick buy msj valium uk internet fix, hence this post.
Eileen and I have been walking for about forty minutes each day. I am counting this as my treadmill. It is more fun walking and talking to Eileen next to beautiful Michigan forests I must say.
Since I’m not sure how much access I will have to the internet for the next week, this might be my last blog until a week from Monday.
I spent yesterday madly trying to do all the things I needed to do before driving away today. I have to play service this morning so that included a time of sitting at the organ bench rehearsing. In addition I bought a bunch of fresh food at the farmer’s market: Heirloom tomatoes, chevre, cherries, blueberries, melon, arugula, basil, feta and an interesting local cheese called Tomme de Deux Laits Cheese.
Then I came home, put stuff away, and went grocery shopping. After grocery shopping I had lunch with Eileen. Drove back with her and parked her car in reserved employee parking since the annual “art” festival, “Art in the Park,” pretty much takes over the downtown and library area parking.
I went in and looked for Christian romances to tide my Mom over while I’m gone. This took a while. Then dropped them off with enough Hershey bars to last her a week.
It was then I went to church and practiced. Came home and made pesto to take with me today for use as a meal at the cabin. Treadmilled. Danced with the TV (Just Dance Exercise video I try to use). That was it for me. I was exhausted. I showered, sipped wine, ordered pizza and awaited beautiful Eileen who came home exhausted and hungry (good thing I had pizza waiting).
This morning I was up before five packing clothes and foodstuff. A bat greeted me in the kitchen but obliging quickly flew out the open back door with a little coaxing.
I plan to blog intermittently if I get easy access to the Internet. If not, I will console myself with conversation, reading, studying, practicing, eating and drinking.
So, no Postal Service bill. You can’t deal with every single thing, and the House had a lot on its to-do list, such as voting to repeal the Obama health care law on 33 separate occasions.
It’s hard not to see a lot of the inaction of the government as related to the instant post election resolve to unseat that guy Obama.
