It’s been a bit of a marathon since Sunday.

Drove to Chicago Monday evening to pick up Sarah the daughter at O’Hare International. Tuesday I had to get my Mom to two doctor appointments. In the evening I had a rehearsal with church instrumentalists. Yesterday we ended up in Grand Rapids so my Mom could pick out new glasses at Pearl Vision (Google was wrong. There is no Pearl Vision at the mall in Holland.) I took along work for church and found myself sitting outside Pearl Vision in the mall with anthems spread all over the floor. Also somewhere in there I put an anthem into Finale so I could transpose it down for easier singing.

This morning I got up and worked on the bulletin article for this Sunday. I got stuck on the origin of the African American Spiritual “Do Lord, Remember Me.”

Researching this, I found out that there seems to have been a multi-generational family of black musicians named John Work.

It intrigued me and distracted me from my task. At least two of the men taught at the reknowned Fisk University and were associated with the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

One of them was dismissed at Fisk because he was too interested in “Negro Folk Music.” I would be fascinated to find out more about this musical family.

So yesterday was an interesting day. My violist showed up to play the service and I quickly adapted the Ferguson setting of “We’re Marching to Zion” I had planned for the organ prelude to include her. It improved it I think. I almost always like to add an instrument to the organ if I can in that kind of a piece. It breathes life into it.

The congregational singing was strong yesterday. My boss did a last minute switch on the opening hymn to “Earth and All Stars.” I think the familiarity of this great tune matched with that text really worked. Good call. I kept doing the repeated sections of the verses (“sing to the Lo-ho-ho-ho-ord a new song!”) in octaves without harmony, prepping the group psychologically for dropping out entirely on them on the next to the last stanza. I like to do that sort of thing. It feels like an antiphonal moment between the accompaniment and assembly. Improvised a fancy last stanza accompaniment.

The sequence hymn was “Will you come and follow me?” John Bell’s text is matched with a tune that outshines its purported Barry Manilow (shudder) model and moves through the words much more quickly than the Scottish folk tune (Kelvingrove) I have seen paired with it. The violist joined me on this hymn and was very musical with my stretching of the ends of phrases. This stretching made the congregational singing seem more natural to me.

I got a little wicked on the offertory. I had scheduled “I have decided to follow Jesus.” I had a guitar player and a violist and decided to do this tune more country. So my viola was a fiddle for a song. I let them do the intro without piano. Then when the cong started singing I did my best Charley Pride licks and we had a hootenany moment. Admittedly those are rare in the Anglican worship, heh. I told the other musicians if I nodded my head on the second stanza we would stop and let the cong sing alone. I did and they did. It worked okay. I was disappointed that no one started clapping in rhythm as they sang. I suppose they need to prompted to such outbursts. Heh.

Both of the communion hymns were from the Hymnal 1982. I have had a couple comments that some parishioners are missing traditional/heritage hymns. I’m not sure exactly what this means. It could be they glance up at the hymn board and count the hymns from the “real” hymnal (1982). In which case we came in with three hymns out of six from the Hymnal 1982. I don’t think that’s too bad.

But actually all of the hymnody was far from traditional and heritage based. “Earth and All Stars” is a 20th century tune and text. It originates in the Lutheran practice. “Will you come and follow me?” is from the Scottish Iona community text wise with a tune by a collaboration between an Episcopalian priest and musician (Roger Douglas, rector of St. Philip’s in the Hills, Tucson and his musician John L. Hooker).  “I have decided to follow Jesus” was purportedly penned by a Christian from Northern India named Sadhu Sundar. It is taken from the dreaded (by the traditional/heritage camp) African American Hymnal of the Episcopal Church: Lift Every Voice and Sing II. And to top it off we did it in a quasi country/blue grass style. The other two communion hymns from the 1982 were “Let us break bread together” and “Now the Silence.” The first entered American mainline Christian churchs’ hymnals in the 60s (believe it or not). The second comes from the pen of the talented hymnwriter Jaroslav Vajda and matched to the  tune written for it by Carl Schalk. Both of these men are also Lutherans.

Oddly enough, our closing hymn could have been the most traditional/heritage/historical because it used part of the Cornish melody for “Tomorrow will be my dancing day.” The words come from a Hymnal for Children. I wonder if these words qualify for the adjective both my brother the priest and my parishioner the retired English prof use for some hymns: “Thin theology.”

Anyway. The setting only uses the first half of the carol. I perversely added the rest of it in an interlude on violin and organ. This worked nicely since it only has two stanzas:

1.The church is wherever God’s people are praising,
singing in thanks for joy on this day.
The church is wherever disciples of Jesus
rember his story and walk in his way.

2. The church is wherever God’s people are helping,
caring for neighbors in sickness and need.
The church is wherever God’s people are sharing
the words of the Bible in gift and in deed.

Theologically thin? Certainly simple.

Sorry to regale readers with blow by blow, but this is what I’m thinking about this morning, trying to clear my head for this evening’s drive to O’Hare International to pick up my youngest daughter, Sarah.

After church was our annual kick-off picnic. I worked the crowd after eating a bit (of food not the crowd. Ahem.). Had some good conversations.

Later Eileen and I drove to Muskegon and did a birthday party for her Mom. yesterday was her 85th. Eileen’s Dad died not too long ago and her Mom is still working on getting her equilibrium back. She looked good yesterday and seem to enjoy herself. Her only regret seemed to be not being able to have a beer with her meal in the restaurant due to the meds she is taking.

Mark and David,

My recent conversations with Mark have caused me to seek the roots of my own philosophies and understandings of Church Music as a Pastoral Art. Here are some:

“In the recitative of the cantata (No. 51) for soprano and orchestra, Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, Johann Sebastian Bach sings: ‘We praise what God has done for us, Though our feeble lips must mumble of his wonders, Yet simple praise may nonetheless please Him.’ We agree with Bach that our lips are much too feeble to sing to God the praises due Him and that, therefore, even the most artistic music will, before God, never rise above the level of a ‘simple’ song of praise. Heinrich Schutz’s motto from Ecclesiasticus (43:30-32) expresses this idea most appropriately: ‘When ye glorify the Lord, exalt him as much as ye can; for even yet will he far exceed; and when ye exalt him, put forth all your strength and be not weary; for ye can never go far enough.’ Here, too, these words of Holy Writ apply: ‘When you have done all that is commanded you, say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty” ‘ (Luke 17:10). Unfortunately there are also many people who are of the opinion that these words of the Savior do not apply to artists within the church; they need not exert themselves, and indeed it is even hazardous if they do. God is satisfied with ‘simple’ praise–simple not only in the ears of God but also of man. And then ‘simple’ is taken to be synonymous with ‘modest’ or even ‘mediocre.’ That the tones always ring true is not so important as that the heart is pure through its song of praise. Indeed, the church patriarch, Jerome, even feels impelled to invalidate all artistic standards: in his commentary on Ephesians 5:19, he extols one whom others dub a kakophonos—a miserable singer—as a good singer before God so long as his conduct is good; the servant of Christ should sing in such a manner that not the voice but the words bring forth pleasure (Patrologia Latina, edidit Migne, XXVI, 528). But even if one does not go this far, the opinon is nevertheless widely prevalent that the performance of music in church is principally a matter of the heart, of inward participation, and it is asserted that this inner participation is brought into question if the singer or instrumentalist concentrates on an artistic result.

“Now it cannot be denied that there is a type of virtuoso for whom the worship service or musical vespers is merely a coveted opportunity to display his voice and to whom it is completely immaterial what he sings. Not only is such a virtuoso an abomination to our ears in a place of worship, but he is also unworthy being considered an artist. For only he is an artist who subjects himself completely to his art with mind, body and soul. Therefore one should be cautious of setting the heart against art.”

Oskar Sohngen, “Church Music as Art” (I have a photocopy of the whole essay)

“It is a fundamental goal of the church musician to approach music as an act of theology. It is better to use theological categories than musical ones. To be a liturgical musician is to be a practical theologian. In practical or pastoral theology, we often find power issues permeating our considerations. It is tempting to frame these considerations in terms of leveraging what we think is good and we think isn’t good. But when creating theology it’s better to be aware of what kind of theology we are creating. So I propose a method to do so. One can think of it as a participant-observer approach. Social sciences teach us something here even as we realize we are not doing science. In order to achieve the data we need we can wed performance with anthropology. The ethno musiciologist gathers data and then attempts to make good judgments on it. The current thinking is that the best evaluations and understandings occur from within community.”

Ed Foley, my lecture notes from a 1997 lecture. Foley goes on to mention the idea of lex orandi, lex credendi (the idea that the law of prayer is the law of belief) and quotes the Eucharistic theology Louie Bouyer: “It’s not because we believe that we sacrifice, it’s because we sacrifice we believe in God.” This is a fundamental notion of my understanding of my own belief and how liturgical prayer can work. Foley continues to publish work about liturgical musicology.

I have also been highly influenced by the writer Paul Hoon in his excellent book, “The Integrity of Worship,” which I read right out of grad school. In it, he writes, “In these essays, then, it will become evident that i take the professional theologians with a degree of realism even as I liberally draw from them. I think that some of them—and certain historical theologians and devotees of the liturgical movement in particular—have bypassed some important matters the pastor understands better than they do. In fact if I were to tip the scales one way or another in making a judgement on how we best enter into liturgical truth, it would be in favor of the parish minister.” I think that we (you, Mark, and you, David, and I) are parish ministers.

Hoon actually puts forth some liturgical principles worth considering. It would probably be best if you read him, but here’s a quick synopsis. Under the second in his book called, “The Contribution of Art,” he divides the principles into two groups. Unity and Vitality.

I. Principle of Unity:
includes principles of style
principles of proportion

II. principles of vitality
include principles of truthfulness, movement, rhythm and concreteness.

He takes twenty pages to flesh these out.

In his introduction to the book, “Leading the Church’s Song,” Paul Westermeyer puts forth seven basic suggestions for seeing the forest of church music,not the trees (hey it’s his metaphor). Again it would be better to read his words but here’s the reader’s digest version:

1. Leaders should know as many liturgical and musical styles as possible
2. You and your community can sing far more than any of you individually can imagine
3. We are called to be stewards of the musical resources and idioms God has graced creation with
4. we learn to lead by leading and sing by singing
5. the song of the church is for the long haul
6. the goal is not complexity
7. it is tempting to reduce our choices to stereotypic menus,but we need to resist inaccurate and discriminatory bifurcation

Anyway, there’s an attempt to provoke some thought and maybe start a bit of a conversation around these ideas. Let me know if you are interested in pursuing any of this.

Steve

I finished re-reading Anthony Burgess’s two volume autobiography last night. It was with a small sadness that this brilliant articulate man is no longer around. His widow died recently.

But we do have the books and I’m forty pages into his first work: Time for a Tiger.  I hope someday to get access to his compositions. I’m afraid I won’t like them quite as much as his fiction and essays, but what the heck.

The session with John Canfield the consultant yesterday went okay.

We basically reviewed the working draft of the mission statement and strategic plan the parish team has been working on. I continue to find myself shut down in my relationships with other workers. Probably not that bad a thing but a bit depressing.

Night before last, I dreamt of guitar playing.

I haven’t been playing my guitar so much in the last year or so. In one of the dreams, my wife, Eileen, was the lead singer (this is totally out of character for her) and I was backing her up. First on banjo. But then a string was unraveled and there was no time to put on a new one. We were about to perform my song, “Candle.” So I grabbed my Martin. The upper three strings were badly out of tune. I managed to quickly tune them (this was a dream, remember?). Then I noticed that the lower string was tuned to an open D instead of E. I began tuning it up. That’s the last I remember.

Last night’s dream was unusual because it found me re-assuring my dream daemons instead of them helping me (more the usual case).

The first person was a drummer I was playing with. He wasn’t a very friendly person particularly. He was a bit stout and had grey hair and a fake smile. I began telling him why I enjoyed playing with him, giving him support I knew he needed but was unable to ask for.

The other person was a dance instructor. Someone had been found dead in the small pool that somehow figured into her classes. She was traumatized. She was also oddly hanging upside down.

I was talking with her. I asked her if there was anything I could do for her. She thought for a minute (upside down remember) and then said she needed a hug. So I awkwardly hugged her upside down. Then she said that it didn’t take to do it again. I did. Then I began telling her how much I liked her and respected her work and personal strength. She asked me why I was doing this (i.e. suddenly telling her how I felt about her)? I replied I didn’t know but that it just occurred to me say it to her.

Today is once again filled with church business. I have a 10 Am with a woman who has asked to meet with me to teach me how to address my shortcomings of dealing with people.

I am hoping that my skepticism will be dampened as it was yesteday in the staff meeting. (But I don’t think so).

A worship commission meeting this afternoon. These are often a source of ambush for the music guy. All done with the nicest  smile. Good old church work.

Yesterday I picked out music for the organ for the choir’s first Sunday (at least I think it might be their first Sunday….. we’ll be revisiting all of this on Thursday at their first meeting).  I am planning to play two chorale preludes by Buxtehude. One on Vater unser in its entirety and excerpting his extremely long piece on the Te Deum.  Nice stuff.

I have been working hard on church stuff. This morning my brother called and we had a long conversation about his new musician. I ended up emailing him an article called “Looking at Hymn-tunes: The Objective Factors”  by John Wilson.

Yesterday I bit the bullet and started preparing anthems for my church choir even though it’s not clear what form this group will actually take this year. Several members disagree strongly with my request that they skip services if they miss rehearsals. I am considering dropping the weekly rehearsal. It doesn’t seem fair to me that people opt out of it so much. There’s the little problem of the quorum in a small group. In a group of about ten singers, there is much more impact when one or two people are missing than in a group of twenty or more singers. Not mention silly things like developing a blend.

Anyway I have a two-track strategy ready (three counting dropping the choir altogether for a while…): One track is the usual series of SATB anthems. The second would be instant anthems. These would be clever unison 2-part settings or even hymns.

I have a staff meeting today at which we meet and talk to the consultant our church has hired to help with strategic planning. I am dreading this. My boss is happy with this guy, so I feel like as a team player I should dampen my own misgivings about business theology and stay quiet.

In the meantime, if you are (god forbid) curious about what I’ve been doing, here’s some links and stuff.

FINAL VERSION OF THE ORGAN PIECE I WROTE AND THEN PERFORMED THIS SUNDAY: pdf

FALL CHOIR Schedule of stuff at Grace Episcopal Church, Holland Michigan

week of 9/10 1st choir rehearsal
9/20 – Song of the Shepherd Boy SATB pdf by J.F. Brown 1989
*10/4 Youth Choir only Anthem TBA
10/11 O Vos Omnes SATB Croce pdf or De Victoria setting pdf
*10/18 Youth Choir only Anthem TBA
10/25 I have longed for Thy saving Health by William Byrd pdf
11/1 And Lo, A Great Multitude SATB and organ by Stanford
11/8 Give Alms of Thy Goods by Christopher Tye pdf
11/15 *Ah how weary, ah how fleeting (Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig) BWV 26 pdf J.S.Bach Jenkins arr pdf

Wierd. Suddenly my software would not let me cut and paste a paragraph, so I had to construct the stuff at the top a line at a time. Time to quit.

Ahhhhh. I’ve treadmilled and showered and am feeling relaxed, sipping coffee. Listening to “Play this at my funeral” by “Hello Citizen” CD released yesterday. Click below on their logo to download their free MP3s yourself. I’m only minutes into the first cut, but like it fine so far.

I’m trying not to think too much about what looks like a sub-theme for next week: the theology of business.

Reading twitters is pretty fascinating. I tend to follow people in the music business. I prefer the people themselves but many of them have developed elaborate constructs that don’t even pretend to be people.

Like http://twitter.com/funmusicco which is actually an Australian music Teacher…. or http://twitter.com/ClassicalFocus whose url to their website seems broken.

Twitter seems to highlight the problems of self-promotion versus connecting and sharing stuff. It’s pretty easy to determine when a twitterer is basically only trying to sell you something.

But the other stabs at self-promotion can be sad to read. Only trying to point you to their web site without being clear what it is they are sharing. In fact they are probably not sharing  but selling.

Which brings me back to my quandry of theology of business. This week, my church staff meets with a business consultant. I’m only glad that my boss didn’t hire a church consultant because my experience is that they are even worse than business consultants.

In my decades of church work I have watched how business metaphors have replaced community metaphors inherent in coherent human communities. What I mean by this high falutin’ language is that everyone assumes it’s our goal to raise money and numbers of people in the pew. When in fact, that’s not exactly the goal.

What is the goal? Well that’s where I usually try to get people to start. What goal are implicitly espousing? Is it the goal of the community? Is it the accurate goal? Ah well. Fuck the duck.

This brings me to another troubling email I read this morning. A parishioner has emailed me that my approach to the music program is all wrong (this is something I’m willing to admit for sure) and that with just an hour of my time she will help me with my leadership skills, something she does for a living.

I will meet with this person of course. But I can’t dampen my skeptism. She sounds very much like she’s selling me something before she understands my leadership goals and background.

Praise the lord and pass the stock options. Oh well. This balances off the morale boosting conversation I described in yesterday’s blog with the local violin teacher guy.

Finally I’m most of the way through Krugman’s article in yesterdays NYT Sunday mag: “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?” It’s a lay person guide to the theories behind some economic thinking of the last hundred years and of course how it has totally fucked everything up.

What struck me was the division of U.S. economists in Saltwater and Freshwater schools. This seems to economic talk. The Saltwater group are new-Keyesnians. I take this to mean that they are not totally free market believers which is the other group, the Freshwater school. The Freshwater school has dominated public policy for quite a while.

What struck me is Krugman underlying thesis that both of these schools are more related to each other than Keyes’ ideas. It hit me like the Democrats and Republicans. Both parties seem very similar to me and far from doing any coherent problem solving (pace Obama-ites). It’s seemed this way to me for quite a while.  Since I realized Bill Clinton usurped the Republican agenda for Welfare Reform and continued the travesties around the world of U.S. military agression and intervention.

Anyway, I recommend Krugman’s article. I especially like his invocation of Dr. Pangloss from Voltaire’s Candide….. “We live in the best of all possible worlds.”

While I am very proud of Eileen’s recent accomplishments with her new loom, this picture Eileen took of me yesterday modeling her first finished product sums up my recent take on this.

fuck the duck

Instead of blogging this morning, I cleaned the kitchen. Last night I made some good food: BBQ chicken for my carnivore, homemade potato salad, roasted veggies and Jasmine Rice. But I was too lazy to clean up afterwards.

At church this morning, the local college violin teacher chatted me up quite a bit. I admit that this raised my sagging morale a notch. He and I seem to have quite a bit in common in how we look at music even though he has to be ten or more years younger than me.

The closing hymn was the gospel tune, “Sweet Sweet Spirit.” This is one of those tunes where I play gospel piano on and it’s quite showy.

He began by complimenting me on that. I told it was a relief to hear that he wasn’t offended. He looked surprised. I didn’t tell him that some of his colleagues had expressed the idea that sometimes my piano playing is more about itself than the music whatever that means.

Actually I figure that means they think I’m overplaying it when my intention is to play within a certain style. One that I’m not sure my critics know that much about.

Anyway, Mihai (that’s the violin teacher’s name) is apparently not one of them.

After we chatted for twenty minutes or so about Debussy (he’s researching whether Debussy ever put paint to canvas) and Beethoven (Mihai is sure that his last piano sonata op. 111 is full of jazz), he invited me to give a lecture in a cross discpline class at the local college.

As he described the series, I thought it sounded interesting and before he invited me to lead a session, I thought he was going to suggest that I come and sit in on it.

Go figure.

Another parishioner handed me a clipping of this article “Beleagured Bookseller Knows Who’s at Fault” by Michael Kimmelman. It appeared in Thursday’s NYT. It mentions Cecil Court which is where I found an excellent used music shop in the U.K. when I was there this year. Cool beans.

I also went to a bunch of Oxfam used book stores. Oxfam is a U.K. thrift shop organization that gets money from the government. This article is about a bitter used book seller who is sure that Oxfam is driving him out of business.

I went into several of these Oxfam used book stores and enjoyed them as well as more traditional used book stores in England.

Like the Oxfam guy in the article says if they are driving used book stores out of business with their more pedestrian type books then the used book stores are quite precarious business-wise anyway.

I’m up early as usual, but am not treadmilling. Just not in the mood quite yet. I made terrible coffee. When we emptied out my Mom’s apartment, I took her leftover coffee and used it to make coffee. My daughter, Sarah, sent me a link that connected unfiltered coffee with high cholesterol so I thought I would try unfiltered.

I just used up Mom’s old coffee and like a person stuck in a rut, I bought a new can of coffee for the first time in years. I usually buy whole bean and grind it. Sigh. This shit is terrible.

Pulling together tunes for an upcoming wedding reception. The bride and groom were weird about this from the beginning. They wanted to “hear my work.” But they chose not to come to hear me at church or in the coffee shop.

Then I got an impossible list of music they wanted me to play on the piano.. Everything from Frank Sinatra (Frank Sinatra? How do you do that on the piano and make it Sinatra?) to Alicia Keys.

So I have been raiding the local library. The gig is next Saturday. Yesterday I went on MusicNotes.com and downloaded four tunes. Now I have to put all this stuff into sheet protectors in a notebook. I am dreading what kind of piano the country club will have sitting there and am seriously considering taking along my EP just in case it’s not usable.

Next Thursday I’m meeting with my choir for the first time.

We (my boss and I) are announcing that this will be a discussion about the future of this organization. It’s very discouraging how more and more people are planning to miss rehearsals regularly even as the number of singers in this group shrinks.

I had grand dreams again. I even ordered multiple copies of expensive Arvo Part choral music. Out of my own pocket.

Yesterday I ordered two St. James Press emergency anthem books.

Out of pique.

Also out of my own pocket. The church can probably reasonably reimburse me for this one. However there is supposed to be a moratorium on spending due to the obvious financial difficulties of the times.

I think I am finally going to do a “Y’all come” choir restricted to Sunday morning rehearsals. Sigh.

I got on Paperback Swap yesterday and cashed in some of my points. I ordered two volumes of poetry by Louise Gluck and a novel by Chang-Rae Lee (“Aloft”).

It’s past seven AM and I need to be treadmilling.

The last couple of days have been very busy for me.

I re-organized six cabinets of choral music at church. The organization of my church choir is different from the way I have been taught. They keep their anthems in manila folders and arrange them in subjects like general (the biggest), Advent, Xmas,  and so on. I have been meaning to reshuffle them into one big file organized by composer. And that’s what I did.

I have chosen to do this right now because my efforts to get the choir off the ground this fall are not going so good.

Several people have quit. Others have to do other things this year on rehearsal night.

My boss and I are quit flummoxed by the idea that we serve a church community full of skilled musicians few of which choose to contribute to the musical life of the church.

This summer I utilized some of this skill. But I was turned down over and over before I could gather a group of musicians to perform one piece on one Sunday morning.

I am beginning to think that I am part of the problem. I suspect  I’m too eccentric and different from these musicians’ idea of what a good musician is.

Actually this isn’t totally a suspicion. It has been partially confirmed by direct comments and behavior of the local college musicians who are in our chuch community. Oh well.

Instead I have been emphasizing areas where I think I am effective.

Like organizing the choral music, choosing and arranging music, doing good hymnody well and performing literature on the organ, harpsichord and piano.  (Haven’t done so much piano lately but I have in the past). Blah blah blah. Life goes on.

I sat in the garden yesterday waiting for Eileen.

I was sipping a martini and read Louis Glück’s little book of poetry, Ararat.

Poem after poem seemed to hit me. I was in the mood I guess.

Here’s an example:

The Untrustworthy Speaker

Don’t listen to me; my heart’s been broken.
I don’t see anything objectively.

I know myself; I’ve learned to hear like a psychiatrist.
When I speak passionately,
That’s when I’m least to be trusted.

It’s very sad, really: all my life I’ve been praised
For my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight-
In the end they’re wasted-

I never see myself.
Standing on the front steps. Holding my sisters hand.
That’s why I can’t account
For the bruises on her arm where the sleeve ends . . .

In my own mind, I’m invisible: that’s why I’m dangerous.
People like me, who seem selfless.
We’re the cripples, the liars:
We’re the ones who should be factored out
In the interest of truth.

When I’m quiet, that’s when the truth emerges.
A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.
Underneath, a little gray house. The azaleas
Red and bright pink.

If you want the truth, you have to close yourself
To the older sister, block her out:
When a living thing is hurt like that
In its deepest workings,
All function is altered.

That’s why I’m not to be trusted.
Because a wound to the heart
Is also a wound to the mind.

by Louis Glück

And aptly for this time of year:

Labor Day

It’s a year exactly since my father died.
Last year was hot. At the funeral, people talked about the weather.
How hot it was for September. How unseasonable.

This year, it’s cold.
There’s just us now, the immediate family,
in the flower beds,
shreeds of bronze, of copper.

Out front, my sister’s daughter rides her bicycle
the way she did last year,
up and down the sidewalk. What she wants is
to make time pass.

While to the rest of us
a whole lifetime is nothing.
One day you’re a blond boy with a tooth missing;
the next, an old man gasping for air.
It comes to nothing, really, hardly
a moment on earth.
Not a sentence, but a breath, a caesura.

by Louis Glück

I thought of her because she’s just published a new book of poetry which was reviewed in Sunday’s NYT Book Review (link).

I didn’t blog yesterday. I got up and worked on my Bach cantata arrangement. Eileen was sleeping in. I began moving stuff around in the kitchen to prepare for thoroughly cleaning the floor. Boy did it need it. It took me two hours. Of course I’m not that efficient.

Recent online readings include “Strained by Katrina, a Hospital Faced Deadly Choices” by Sheri Fink (link). This lengthy story is meticulously fleshed out by Fink who is a doctor and journalist. Quite a read.

Also listened to Elliot Carter’s Oboe Concerto (videos: Part I, Part II, Part III). I continue to enjoy his music although I’ve never studied it.

Tried not to think about church and choir stuff. Sunday went pretty well. I didn’t murder the Mendelssohn too badly. Had some interesting conversations with people about music at the coffee hour.

Yesterday,  I made a peach pie and a peach pie filling in the afternoon. The second was for freezing. Took up food for Eileen and also brought along my own weird food so we could sup together.

Last night, I queued up some beautiful slow Mozart music including “Et Incarnatus Est” from the Great C Minor Mass. It seemed to fit my mood. I ended up playing through some Mozart on the piano and then turning to Gertrude Stein’s Making of Americans for some comfort reading.

I may have figured out why certain of my pages and posts attract so much spam. I often use the word, “organ.” Ahem. Could be wrong but I have one page that attracts tons of viagra ads. It is the list of pieces in Bach’s orgelbuchlein that use tunes in the Hymnal 1982. I just checked and this page doesn’t have the English word, “organ,” on it. So I guess I’m wrong.

Eileen has her loom assembled and has started a project.

Very cool.

Speaking of something being “very cool.” I recently had an email where the writer apologized for using the word, “cool.” Excuse my sixties jargon, he said. Or something like that.

I use the word, “cool,” a lot. I prefer to think of it as being shallow not stuck in the sixties. Or is that the same thing?

I admit I was jarred this morning when reading Clive Thompson on the New Literacy on the Wired site.

Of course, good teaching is always going to be crucial, as is the mastering of formal academic prose. But it’s also becoming clear that online media are pushing literacy into cool directions. The brevity of texting and status updating teaches young people to deploy haiku-like concision. At the same time, the proliferation of new forms of online pop-cultural exegesis—from sprawling TV-show recaps to 15,000-word videogame walkthroughs—has given them a chance to write enormously long and complex pieces of prose, often while working collaboratively with others.

(emphasis added)

Hmmm. Even this broken down old hippie was startled at the juxtaposition of the first and second sentence in this excerpt.

But whutchugunnadew?

I’m about 2/3rds done with my Bach cantata transcription. This is my annual exercise in futility, I guess. BWV 26, mov 1 is suggested for the  24th Sundayafter Pentecost Proper 28B in my handy dandy index. I would dearly love to do it that Sunday in Novement, but we’ll see.

I sent out an email with a request that choristers attend the rehearsal prior to service if they intend to sing that Sunday. Pissed off half the choir. I give up.

I’m beginning to have my usual suspicions that I am more a part of the problem than than the solution at church. I have reckless dreams of doing superb music. Like today. I’m playing some Shearing and Mendelssohn on the organ. I want it to be good. I practiced twice yesterday. Once in the AM and once in the PM. If it’s not good, it’s not because this old hack didn’t put in the prep time.

But I’m dreading having to try to be sensible and communicative with people who are unhappy with me and my direction. Even worse is the way so many of the talented people in the parish ignore me. I have been staying for the coffee hour for several weeks. I think this is the work of a good church musician. It’s just something I’m bad at and dread: schmoozing.

My problem is that I shoot myself in the foot with being eccentric in a small town. Even the liberals find me a bit hard to take.

But toujours gai, archie, toujours gai. There’s some life in the old gal yet.

I have been thinking a lot about organ music lately as well as choral music. I have the Bach C major prelude, adagio and fugue almost entirely learned. I am working on the fugue. I have William Bolcolm’s clever, lovely, difficult (for me anyway) piece on “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child” almost learned. I have been pounding on Arvo Part’s “Mein Weg hat Gipfel und Wellentäler” for organ and am beginning to think I could perform it in public sometime.

Well back to Bach. Then church. God or whoever-it-is help me.

It’s been about 11 months since I bought my netbook. I think part of my new found enthusiasm for this little guy is the fact that I have never had a laptop before. So I was experiencing portability and connectivity via wifi both for the first time. It has changed my life for the better.

I now spend hours online, not only wasting time with Facebook and Twitter (and blogging I suppose), but also reading, reading like crazy.

This year is the first year I read a book entirely online. Right now I am, true to my usual form, reading several books online. Most of these I have downloaded to my netbook, but there are other online books that I am reading right on the web.

Right now I’m working from the house desk top because I’m defragging the netbook’s hard drive.

Yes, I have a netbook with a hard drive on it. I know that the solid state version sans hard drive is faster, but I ended up with this one and I try to be careful with it, not to jostle it too much.

After treadmilling and showering this morning, I went back to work on my transcription of a bach cantata movement for my choir.

Even if it turns out that I can’t do it with them I hope to finish the dang thing anyway (unlike last year when my enthusiasm waned entirely as choir members dropped out and routinely planned to skip Thursday rehearsals).

Spent forty minutes or so yesterday working on my Mendelssohn postlude for Sunday.

It’s coming along pretty well. I was plenty tired for some reason. So I only rehearsed the preludes and postludes for this Sunday and the next Sunday.  The prelude this Sunday is by my hero jazz-pianist, George Shearing. I have a volume of organ music he wrote and it’s actually not too bad.

Most jazz musicians get a little gicky when they try to write for church. But Shearing retained his love of colorful jazz chords in this version of “Come Away to the Skies.” I think it’s kind of cool and am glad to play it.

The  following week I am planning to perform my own chorale prelude on SHARPETHORNE which I have been blogging about and is online (link). I keep working this sucker over and changing it. For the better I think.

The postlude next week is also loud but not as good as Mendelssohn. It’s a chorale prelude on ST. DENIO (or as I like to call it: “Immoral, invisible”) by J. Bert Carlson. I don’t know too much about him other than what I read on the Augsburg link. It’s not that great a piece, but it’s not too bad and it fits in with my idea of playing boisterous postludes for a while.

Well, I hear Eileen coming down the stairs. Time to quit.

I’m too organic for that, said the luddite.
***
They heard that the president had been shot. He and his high school mates who did not have driving licenses hijacked a car and drove the back roads to DC. They witnessed the president’s funeral. Later, he was grounded for life. But he and I still think it was worth it.
***
After graduating, he hitch-hiked all over Europe. He had ignored his father’s wishes and gotten a degree in philosophy. As a middle-aged man, he told me it had been a stupid idea. I disagreed.

As I look to start up my choral season at church, I find myself in a similar situation to last year. I keep resolving I will try to do choral repertoire with my choir, chosen so that it’s within their abilities.

And I keep getting big ideas.

I would like to do a choral recital in February. And I want to do an Arvo Part piece with the choir this year, both in liturgy and then in the recital.

Another big idea (which is what reminds me of last year) is I’m thinking I could arrange a Bach cantata movement (BWV 26, mov I) to be practical for my choir. Last year I was looking at a much harder movement. As the choir year began and I saw people dropping out and skipping rehearsals I realized the project was not realistic.

It is possible I’m repeating this particular mistake.

But at least I have resolved that I am working on the arrangement mostly for the fun of it. That way, even if it doesn’t turn out to be feasible for my choir, I will still post it here and show to colleagues.

BWV 26 uses a trio of oboes that is quite lovely. I am reducing the score (which is for 2 oboes and the usual string section) to a solo line (oboe? violin?) and keyboard (with of course the possibility of doubling the bass on cello  or other instrument).  So I lose the texture, but am trying to retain the linear aspect of Bach’s writing. And it’s pretty a much a given that I have to retain the bass line.

And once again (like last year) I am entertaining tossing the hymn melody cantus firmus (which are long notes) around from part to part.

I am transcribing the thing in the key it’s written. But I’m planning on doing it down a key. From A minor to G minor. This is not totally satisfactory from an artistic point of view. But I think it will make the piece more practical given the ranges of the voices and even the instruments (oboe doesn’t like to go quite as high as violin).

I keep working on my little organ piece based on Erik Routley’s tune SHARPETHORNE. I do a draft. Then work on it at the bench. Make changes. Come home and record the changes in Finale. Big fun. But actually I do enjoy doing this.

I haven’t treadmilled yet this morning. So I better get to it. I didn’t sleep very well last night. When I have my 2 martinis plus a few glasses of wine, I often wake when the alcohol wears off. Then the goal is to fall back asleep. Last night I wasn’t able to do so. The church stuff keeps ringing through my head.

It can be a challenge to be the person who believes the most in your own work when so few others do. And at the same time try to stay as well self-assessed as possible, not kid myself about the level of my skills.

I’m playing Mendelssohn Sunday for the postlude.

The prelude from the C minor prelude and fugue. I’ve sort of resolved I need to lead a bit more with my own skills. I feel like my congregation at large appreciates my work. But there are so many musicians in the community. It is hard to realize that many of them see me as a hack. I think I’m a bit thin-skinned about this, but it’s hard not to be.

So, I continue to try to lead with the most quality music I can come up with both on the organ, with the choir and the congregation. Quality is my only defense. I certainly don’t look the part. Heh.

Conventional online wisdom sometimes remarks that the internet is for seeking recognition. That we all basically think we are celebrities and need an audience. If this is true for me, it’s not conscious.

I have been blogging for a long time (before the word was coined, actually). My conscious motivation is to seek conversation and ideas. That’s why I was so intent on switching to a template like WordPress. It enables comments. I like comments. I like ideas.

And I do leave comments on other sites.

But mostly I read online.

This morning, I read Edward Kennedy’s NYT obit (link). For many years I clipped obits of people. If they were authors, I would tuck the obit into my favorite book of theirs. Otherwise, I just might slip their obit in my library at where their name would occur if they had a book (that’s right…. I try to keep the books in alphabetical order by author).

Yesterday morning I was pleased to read most of the first chapter of Daniel Leech-Wilkensen’s The Changing Sound of Music: Approaches to Studying Musical Approaches (link). As I mentioned yesterday, I am very excited and encouraged that Leech-Wilkensen has chosen to publish his research online. And to top it off, it’s a fascinating read so far with many references and links to stuff that interests me.

I like his embrace of ambiguity, going so far as to see it as a defining feature of musical performance:

For now it’s enough that we begin to entertain the thought that the impossibility of pinning down the identity and full meaning of a piece of music in one ideal performance might be not a problem but rather a defining feature of music, one of the main sources of its power.

The Changing Sound of Music: Approaches to Studying Musical Approaches by Daniel Leech-Wilkensen (link).

Maureen Dowd’s “Stung by the Perfect Sting” (NYT link) was fun because I think she represents a complete misunderstanding of the internet. One shaped by the fears of parents and the ignorance of other adults. Whew! Just my opinion of course. Heh.

For example, she is writing about the dishonesty one can find on the web and quotes Leon Wieseltier to make her point:

“The velocity and volume on the Web are so great that nothing is forgotten and nothing is remembered,” says Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic. “The Internet is like closing time at a blue-collar bar in Boston. Everyone’s drunk and ugly and they’re going to pass out in a few minutes.

I think this is bullshit. For me the internet has been, from the beginning, a fascinating way to access libraries, information and ideas. Of course there are drunks wandering around the shelves just like you might find in any library.

And then my hero, Alex Ross, had a pretty interesting article: “Taking liberties: the art of classical improvisation” (New Yorker link).

Well, I have to stop and work on picking choral anthems for the upcoming church year. I had planned to write a bit about my own sinking morale at church and how maybe I do seek recognition as a musician and don’t feel that I get it that much. But I think that maybe it’s just self-pity so screw it.

I got up early and revised my organ piece. I worked on it yesterday, drastically recomposing bits of it. Here’s the current version: pdf.

Parties to a conflict tend to think that while they see the issue “objectively,” the other side is biased. Stanford psychology professor Lee Ross dubs this psychological characteristic naive realism

Tyranny for the Commons Man by Barry Schwartz

This is the temptation. To be sure that people you disagree with are biased or short-sighted.

I sometimes say we always make sense to ourselves even those of us who are insane.

Another interesting idea:

informational cascades:

Someone out there who won’t take the lead in using cloth bags is almost ready to do so. Just one example will tip that person’s behavior. And once there are two adherents, other people, whose “tipping threshold” is a bit higher, will come on board. This will make it easier for others, and so on. Before you know it, plastic grocery bags will have gone the way of the rotary phone.

Tyranny for the Commons Man by Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz’s article leaves me musing quite abit about interpersonal relationships. I like the ideas of “informational cascades” and “tipping thresholds.” At my church, I would like dearly to change the choir. It seems stuck in its old ways. Or maybe I’m stuck on the idea that choirs need consistent attendance at rehearsal to perform well. I sent out an email yesterday asking people to no longer sing at services if they miss the immediate rehearsal prior to it.

I instantly received four emails from members questioning this idea.

The problem is that I have allowed choir members to define their own commitment and they have continually defined it to less and less time at rehearsal.

Another quote:

overly cooperative strategies [are]… vulnerable to exploitation by defectors…

Tyranny for the Commons Man by Barry Schwartz

Schwartz is talking about negotiations between countries. But he also says that he is basing his ideas on interpersonal psychology.

So now I’m trying to work my way out of being overly cooperative. We’ll see if I can succeed. People can react strongly to leadership these days. The four emailers perceive my request as policy. They are wrong about that. It’s just a request. I’ll remind them if they show up at rehearsal. Heh.

Other Links:

The Changing Sound of Music: Approaches to Studying Recorded Musical Performances by Daniel Leech-Wilkenson

I am very excited about this. Daniel Leech-Wilkenson has done something radical. He has published his scholarship online. I especially like it when in his introduction he says

“Books (if one can still use that word) are for readers, and it is quite unreasonable to ask the reader of a book like this, who may well be a student or an underpaid musician, to invest (as buyers of my last two books were required to invest) £60 ($85/120) or more in order to have a copy on hand for future reference” link

So at least one musicologist is experimenting in the face of an intransigent and unreasonable approach to information in his field by publishing a book entirely on line. Very cool. His footnotes are links to other places on the page, of course. But he also has a link by the footnote that says “return to context.” Very handy.

Tarusa Journal – Revealing Secret Spots That Evoke Dark Secrets – NYTimes.com

This story is about little tablets Russia has quietly started installing all over the country to memorialize nuclear tragedies it formerly covered up.

A Short Manifesto on the Future of Attention: Observatory: Design Observer

This is truly a short piece. But that makes sense.

I imagine attention festivals: week-long multimedia, cross-industry carnivals of readings, installations, and performances, where you go from a tent with 30-second films, guitar solos, 10-minute video games, and haiku to the tent with only Andy Warhol movies, to a myriad of venues with other media forms and activities requiring other attention lengths. In the Nano Tent, you can hear ringtones and read tweets. A festival organized not by the forms of the commodities themselves but of the experience of interacting with them. Not organized by time elapsed, but by cognitive investment: a pop song, which goes by quickly, can resonate for days; a poem, which can go by more quickly, sticks through a season. A festival in which you can see images of your brain on knitting and on Twitter. link

He also mentions The Gift by Lewis Hyde.

Well that’s enough for today.

I’m working on church stuff today. I wrote a string trio/congregational setting of Erik Routley’s tune SHARPETHORNE in 1983. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for this piece in my heart. I like it’s vigor and I like it on strings. However, I thought maybe since we are singing this hymn a couple weeks I would adapt it for organ. Here’s a pdf link if you want to see it. (N.B. This now links to the revised version…. SBJ 8/26/09)

Ran across the Significant Objects Web site this morning (link)). This is pretty cool. It pairs up writers with objects found in thrift stores. The writer then invents a story for the object. Then they see if using the story on Ebay will entice people to purchase essentially eccentric things from Goodwill. Very cool.

Alex Ross has a new New Yorker article that I haven’t read yet but plan to. It’s called “Taking Liberties: reviving the art of classical improvisation.” (link) I’m already a tad grumpy about the title. Hey. I improvise. I guess organists/composers don’t really count. But anyway, I look forward to reading Ross’s article. He usually has his head on straight regarding music.

I sent out an email to old and new choristers.

I put in it the idea that I am asking singers not sing if they miss a rehearsal before a service.  People have told me this will kill the choir. I hope not. I think it will make it better.

I continue to notice the way the metaphor of money defines in a destructive way many people view the world and their own panicky views of it.

In his book, “The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World,”

Lewis Hyde makes the following comment:

After community has appeared, we may speak of dissent,segmentation,differentiation, dispute, and all other nuances of intellectual life. But it would be difficult to work in the other direction—to begin with ideas exchanged in a way that stressed particularity, individuality, and personal profit—and then move toward a coordination of efort and a harmony of theory. p.108

I wonder if this is part of a problem right now. That we start from the profit motive aspect of any question and find ourselves unable to proceed to the nuances of life that make it worthwhile. Nuances like art,  music, the exchange of ideas, conversation, you name it.

Newspapers and the people worried about them as an industry can’t seem to get their head around what is happening with their audience right now.

So that in yesterday’s NYT Sunday Book Review, Harold Evans (“The Daily Show” link) wrestles with Alex Jones myopic take on newspapers and journalism in his new book: Losing the News:The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy.

Jones has a weird view of what’s possible on the internet and Evans quotes him as saying:

“An article on the Web of more than 150 words is generally considered too long and unlikely to be read.”

I immediately added a sticky note via my online bookmarking site (Diggolet link) that I did not agree.

I know that it is sterotypical that internet and cell phone communications are quick, short and often mindless. But that’s not the only way I use the internet. I have seen it from the beginning as a possible conversation and exchange of ideas and important parts of life like stories, music, pictures, information, and sheet music.

I look forward to in-depth articles I can read on my little netbook the way I used to look forward to excellent magazine and newspaper articles.

I am usually not disappointed.

Take for instance the wonderful article in yesterday’s NYT Sunday Magazine, “The Women’s Crusade” link by Nicholas Kristoff and Sharon WuDunn or “Tyranny for the Commons Man” link by Barry Schwartz on the National Interest Online site. Both of these are pretty lengthy articles, but both held my attention online to not only finish reading but highlight and think about since then.

It is the content that attracts me.

Westerners encounter sweatshops and see exploitation, and indeed, many of these plants are just as bad as critics say. But it’s sometimes said in poor countries that the only thing worse than being exploited in a sweatshop is not being exploited in a sweatshop

from “The Women’s Crusade”

One hundred years ago, many women in China were still having their feet bound.

from “The Women’s Crusade”

Only a hundred years ago. Wow. And yes there are people who would rather be exploited than watch their families starve. Many of them are women and children. Good to be reminded of this in my comfy Western existence.

… the prisoner’s dilemma, an exercise that has been used to model everything from littering to nuclear proliferation. As we know from these exercises in which convicts stay mum or rat out their partners to cut a deal on their sentence, both inmates do better collectively over the long term by cooperating with each other and staying silent. But in any one-shot game, there will be no trust between the two of them and so they will both rat out one another. from “The Tyranny of the Commons Man”

The prisoner’s dilemma.

A defining emblem of existence in the U.S.A. We live in the shadow of the short-term profit (like the one-shot game in the prisoner’s dilemma). We aspire to the cooperation that is the smart outcome of the prisoner’s dilemma. It is the idea of community mentioned by Hyde that continues to elude us because we approach life backwards from money to people, from profit to content.

True, cooperators are vulnerable to exploitation, but they open the possibility of a virtuous cycle of mutual cooperation. Defectors are doomed to a vicious cycle of defection.

from “The Tyranny of the Commons”

A virutous cycle of mutual cooperation. That’s how I see the exchange of ideas and beauty. In my mind this is community. The community not only of my breathing creating fellow humans but the ones that have lived and left me and you the wonderful record of their response to life: their music, their poetry, their art. For me, this is community.

I believe the internet can help us start there.

It’s been a quiet day. Eileen has a head ache and is laying down. I made Jasmine rice and grilled egplant before I went to church. Came home and finished making recipe for Steamed Rice and Grilled Eggplant Salad.

Church went pretty well.

I got a chance to do a little practice beforehand. I have decided to learn a new Bach organ fugue. I’m thinking my postludes should start to be a bit more obvious and  loud. I am working on the prelude from Mendelssohn’s Prelude and Fugue in C minor. That would do it. So would Bach. I recently bought a book of Oxford postludes used. I’m working on one of them as well.

I’m playing with my new web site. Can you tell? heh.

This has been a great day. I finally have realized my dream of getting my compositions back online in case people are interested in looking at them or, god forbid, using them.

I did manage to connect with the Loom people and they are sending out Eileen’s loom next Tuesday.

I think it looks something like that. It’s a Kromski 32′ harp loom.

Chatted on the phone with Elizabeth in New York for a bit.  She was wandering around and talking on her cell phone.

Read the excellent article, “Women’s Crusade,” by husband and wife journalists, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn. It will appear in this buy valium bristol weekend’s New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Admired Eileen’s paintings that she put up on facebook.

This is her first attempt using gouache, I believe. It’s a wooden car she made years ago. It can be taken apart and put back together.

This is a painting of where Eileen grew up near Whitehall. She copied it from a drawing she did. I keep threatening to take her up there and see if this water tower is still there. If it is, we can take pictures for her to work from if she keeps  painting and drawing it.

Life continues to be good.