I used up my morning blogging time reading this morning, so this will be short. I have to get moving and get to ballet. I nailed the Bach postlude yesterday. I don’t think many people were listening, but I tried to lose myself in his wonderful setting of Schmüche dich. I used a slightly different technique in my choral pregame rehearsal yesterday. Instead of the usual vocalises, I emphasized singing as an ensemble by alternating the four part hymn settings with repeating the anthem for the day. I  had one bass, two tenors, two altos and four sopranos. Of course this particular group had never sung together in this way before (the line up always shifts because attendance is so sporadic). I thought repetition might help ensemble to gel. I think it did. We rehearsed mostly acappella which is how we performed the anthem.

Weirdly, during the anthem the ushers rudely reached in front of the soprano section to retrieve the offering plate. This reminds me of a Roman Catholic usher who tried to take up the choir’s offering during an anthem. I’ve got many stories of rudeness like this.

I emailed the Hope College conductor about not paying me yet for playing for him a couple weeks ago again yesterday. This time he replied. It looks like they will mail a check sometime.

After I bought my John Eliot Gardiner book on Bach online yesterday Amazon asked me if I would like to begin reading it right away. It did this by a specific online Kindle link.  So by purchasing a real copy, they provided instant access until it arrived. I like that. I have the library copy, but this means I don’t have to lug a rather large book with me today in order to read in it at work. Cool.

I look forward to when a purchase results in access to both a hard copy and a digital  copy of a book. This would make it much more convenient.

I think this is the week where I will muster my energy and prepare all the psalms for Holy Week. In each service, when a psalm is used we are now singing it to an Anglican chant. This means I make a version that is pointed with the chosen chant with my Finale software. I don’t mind that much because it creates an elegant musical moment in the service. But it is more work.

1. Shakespeare’s Plays Are a Natural Fit With Dance – NYTimes.com

When I subscribed to a real copy of the New York Times I used to peruse every section (except sports). Now I find that I only regularly access the three sections of International News, National News and Opinion. Some of this is a combination of clunkiness of their evolving online portal. Some of it is the slowness of my computers. At any rate, yesterday I managed to hit the arts section and find some pretty interesting articles. The one linked above has numerous historical references to dances made from or about Shakespeare.

2.A New Rameau for Specialists – NYTimes.com

A Couple of Nights of Disruptions – NYTimes.com

O.K., Singers, Let’s Move Along – NYTimes.com

These three links I marked to spotify music mentioned in them.

3. Joseph Kerman, Colorful Critic of Musicology, Dies at 89 – NYTimes.com

The New York Times finally did an obit on Kerman.

4.Two Cheers for Rach 3 by Joseph Kerman | The New York Review of Books

The obit linked in this article by Kerman. Bookmarked to read.

5.Few Safe Places for Central African Republic’s Muslims – NYTimes.com

Christians killing Muslims. Nice.

6. Ukraine’s Hopes Riding on a Chocolatier – NYTimes.com

The Willy Wonka of Ukraine running for president. Russian banned his candy. You can’t make this shit up.

7. ‘The Story of the Jews,’ by Simon Schama – NYTimes.com

‘Overwhelmed,’ by Brigid Schulte – NYTimes.com

On Sundays I always try to read the Magazine and the Book Review as well as other sections. These are two reviews I bookmarked to read later.

According to Google Analytics, you, dear reader, are part of a dwindling few. 9 hits on Friday. Ah, the joys of increasing obscurity. Nevertheless I persist if only for myself. It’s sort of like performing excellent music and wondering if anyone notices. Or doing an improvisation in a room full of sweating sincere athletic young dancers and wondering how they hear what I am doing. How does it compare to what musics they listen to on their own? Are many perceiving the ideas in the music at all?

Yesterday I began to firm up a resolve to perform a movement from the Mendelssohn A major organ sonata as the postlude next week. Originally I had scheduled a lovely elegant setting of Aus Tiefer not by Jan Bender. It is short, not that hard and quite beautiful (in my obscure estimation).

But on Friday (the day of the 9 hits), I pulled out the Mendelssohn for the heck of it. It quotes the chorale as well. I was surprised at how easily this piece of music came back to me. The echoes in my head are not always helpful. I can remember a teacher telling me quite late in my training that I had no pedal technique. When I combine negative ideas like this with the obscurity of laboring in a small Episcopal church or a small college dance class, it’s sometimes difficult to maintain a clear picture of my own abilities.

I live with my most severe critic, of course, myself. But I can easily see that my abilities are not that of a virtuoso. But I think that my relentless practicing helps. So the Mendelssohn seems to fall into the category of performing excellent music to the best of my abilities when called on. So I think I will use it as the postlude next Sunday. It would be cool if I did a little bulletin article that talked about the relationship between the postlude, the choir offertory (the Bach four part chorale setting of Aus Tiefer sung in a Catherine Winkworth English translation adapted, and the psalm for the day (130… the text of the chorale).

Also rattling in my brain is what I hear in the theology and meaning of Mendelssohn’s setting. It begins with a joyous A major section, but quickly moves to a lovely minor fugue with the chorale tune emerging in the pedal as a cantus firmus (“fixed song”). After a few pages the beautiful A major section returns. This reminds me of the intelligent way my church prays through Lent, a time often when Christians beat their breasts and contemplate their miserable navels. Instead there seems to be a healthiness in the gathered community that I serve. A combination of contemplating the stories of this year’s Lent with a clear-sighted persistence of idealism if not naivete. (The stories this year are The desert temptation of Jesus, Nicodemus coming to Jesus in secret by night, The Woman at the well, the healing of the blind man, and the raising of Lazarus from the dead).

Yesterday, while making my weekly library visit to return my mother’s books and pick out a slew of new books for her to read, I glanced at the new shelf and saw John Eliot Gardiner’s recent biography of Bach.

I checked it out, read the preface and some of the first the chapter this morning, then ordered a copy for myself.

I also succumbed and ordered Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music by Greg  Milner, one of the books David Byrne refers to that I haven’t read yet and the piano transcription of Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert.

It can be dangerous to keep books in your Amazon queue.

1. An Engineer’s Eureka Moment With a G.M. Flaw – NYTimes.com

What happens when an investigator compares old and new parts with the same identifying part number and find the new one changed.

2. High Culture and Hard Labor – NYTimes.com

Building a world class cultural center with indentured workers. Nice.