We, in the USA, are living through an amazing series of events in our government and polity.  I  make an effort to tap into the discussion of the people I most disagree with who are affecting or in agreement with the new radical approach to our government and politics.

I think it began with Reagan’s political description of government not as the solution to our societal problems but as the problem itself.

This notion has exploded into what we witness in the echo chamber of ignorance, economic/business myopia, and hate. People reify our societal organization into the person(s) they oppose. So we hate the president and what he has done to us. Or we hate the radical Republicans and what they are doing to us. When in fact, we (the people) are doing this to ourselves by electing a dismal class of people who do not think clearly as our leaders.

I am horrified and amused when I understand that people want “the government” out of their lives. You know, keep your hands off my “Medicare” and/or Social Security. This takes a fundamental (willful?) ignorance to maintain.  You know. Those are government run programs.

When my House Rep (Huizenga)was first elected he tweeted about cutting down government size. I asked him via Twitter what if he thought there was any reason or purpose for government. He seem to think there was but that it was out of control.

I think this is the talking point. But what does it mean? In Western Michigan it seems to mean protecting business interests with a dash of social issues (anti-abortion, blaming the poor for being non-white and causing their own poverty, etc.). As this has hit our government right now it looks to have morphed into something weirder.

Charles Taylor’s excellent analytic mind talks about “social  imagination.” In his book, A Secular Age, he keeps pitting his insights on the history of Western Civ up against where he perceives we are now (or 2007 when the book was published).

As he seeks the origin of our modern “exclusive humanism” (which essentially seems to mean a non-religious approach to being alive), he discusses the growth of the public commons and the idea that a nation (USA) could grow from a new idea that the people (as in “we the people”) could write their own constitution and build a new democratic republic that did not grow out of old ways of thinking.

Taylor says it quickly devolved. But that was an important notion in the “social imagination.”

So what about the weird stuff I read, hear and see in the right wing echo chamber? I wonder if it’s some sort of consumer counter reaction to the craziness of living in the 21st century.  Albert Borgmann says in Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology (a book I started reading in this morning) many but not all Americans are free “from hunger, cold, disease, ignorance, and confinement.” And also live lives largely enriched by our “immense prosperity of goods and services that technology has delivered.”

So in the case of many of us, our daily lives are privileged. But of course we have frustrations. It is tempting to  generalize our personal angers and foibles onto our pubic officials. We see them as our enemies who represent a challenge to our understandings of ourselves.

This is who we must punish I guess. Pogo still applies. “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

My colleague Rhonda has asked me about a piece I wrote a while back, a commission actually, for Marimba and Organ. I spent a good part of my morning  yesterday looking for my final manuscript. It was nowhere to be had. I found many drafts. I even found almost final drafts which were essentially intact but not polished. These drafts were both hard copies and Finale files.

I sent an email off to Peter Kurdziel who commissioned this piece and asked him if I had indeed sent the final draft to him. This was nine years ago for pete’s sake.

Peter has not responded yet.

In the meantime, I thought I would spend part of my day off attempting to polish up the piece.

It’s called “Pentecost Suite.”

Three movements: I. Babel

II. Smoke

and III. Bones.

The music is based on biblical images drawn from readings from the Roman Catholic Vigil for Pentecost.

In the intervening years, I had adapted the second movement for performance in Coffee shops and also made a piano solo of it (pdf).

Yesterday when I reviewed  the last movement surprised me. It’s really pretty good I think. I don’t think the piece was ever performed. I’m pretty sure I got paid for it.

The last few years I have felt more and more eccentric in my calling as composer and musician. Isolated, my views on music are not really shared by anyone I know. On top of that I feel more and more invisible. I am beginning to conclude that this is not just my eccentricities but also my age. The older one is, the less one counts in our society. Youth is pretty much the only important phase of life to Americans.

I sometimes allow this to color my thinking about my abilities. Like Rampal in the last blog post, I wonder when people don’t talk to me about music it might be because they don’t appreciate my music the way I do or find my ideas relevant.

Competent people lose confidence because they assume that others who are incompetent are operating from a competent point of view. This is part off the insight I also mentioned in the last blog called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I attempt to persist in as accurate a self assessment as I can muster. This means believing in my self as well as trying to improve my abilities.

Finding an old composition that reaffirms my competence helps.

Yesterday I played a huge funeral. I played Bach and Mozart in the prelude. Bach on the organ and Mozart on piano.

As I ponder the mystery of performing music, I sometimes see myself as whispering beauty over the heads of people without knowing if any of it is reaching them. Part of this is the set up at my church. I play to people’s backs since the organ, piano and choir are in the back of the church. It’s kind of weird that way.

This probably contributes to my feelings of invisibility and eccentricity.

I think of the great flute player Rampal.

I remember a story that he was playing a concert in a church where applause was forbidden. After finishing his last piece he retreated from the performing stage to silence. When someone urged him to do an encore, he demurred, saying something about not knowing if the audience liked what he had done (due to the silence I guess).

If Rampal wondered about this, it makes sense that someone of my meager skills would entertain such a thought.

Later I was drawn to the organ bench yesterday despite weariness and lack of time in my schedule. I decided to continue to practice the Bach trio I performed Sunday and try to learn it more thoroughly.

Today I hope to put some musical ideas into Finale or on paper.

In my fall schedule, Tuesday is a good day to compose. At the least I want to write out the choral parts to my new Gloria. But we’ll see. I need to take some time and goof off.

W. H. Auden  (the poet) has quoted Valery’s idea of how poems are never finished, only abandoned. I get this. After inspiration comes the working of filling out the piece, editing it. This process rarely feels completed. But one must stop at some point.

Auden also has this to say about bad manners.

In art as in life, bad manners, not to be confused with a deliberate intention to cause offence, are the consequence of an over-concern with one’s own ego and a lack of consideration for (and knowledge of) others.

This puts me in mind of a concept I ran across yesterday: the Dunning-Kruger effect which is

a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average.

This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.

Further

Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University conclude, “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others”

Both of these quotes come from the Wikipedia entry.

A more succinct way to say this might be that

the truly incompetent can’t even recognize their own incompetence

This last phrase came from a NYT article by Paul Krugman called “The Boehner Bunglers” where I ran across the concept.

This morning I took an interesting side trip into history and etymology beginning with St. Martin of Tours.

He and his communities are recognized as one of the first expressions of  Western Monasticism.

You will notice he is handing a cloak to a poor person in the above painting.

This is significant because the word, chapel, comes from the story of Martin sharing his cloak with a beggar. This cloak then becomes significant as a relic and is housed in chapels and taken care of by chaplains. Neat.

On St. Martin’s feast day in 1483, Martin Luther was born.

Martin Luther the namesake of Martin Luther King, Jr.

There you have it.

I listened to one of the CDs David Kevin Lamb gave away at a recent American Guild of Organists Dean meeting I attended. While his taste in organ compositions is not my own, I did notice one thing. He plays like someone who likes the music he is playing. Not sure how I can tell this. Maybe it’s a subjective reaction after meeting him and hearing him run a meeting. No matter.

Kenny Werner (Effortless Mastery)  talks about allowing oneself to listen to music, opening up without any other thought than just hearing music. This is an excellent way to listen, I think. I was trying to do that as I listened to Lamb’s renditions of Mendelssohn and Canadian composer Denis Bédard.

I have met many musicians who seem to have a lot of concern and interest in music. Their opinions are firm. They often don’t seem like happy people. It doesn’t occur to one that they enjoy music, that they find it fun. It seems more serious than that. Sometimes its so serious it’s off putting to me.

My defense has been to see myself as someone who may not aspire to the heights of academia and classical music, but nevertheless loves music of many stripes and continues to explore new music and try to improve my own musical skills.

Speaking of which, the performance of my new Bach trio movement proved very interesting to me yesterday. I am constantly working on my attitude toward playing. I examine my thinking for anxiety.  I try to clear my mind as much as possible when I play. This can be particularly difficult at my church.

Yesterday, as I was playing this tricky little trio by Bach, seven or eight acolytes gathered right next to where I was playing and began talking loudly to each other.

I lost concentration several times. Though I walked over after I was done and talked to them about how confusing it was to me when I was doing something difficult and they were shouting nearby, I don’t really blame my lagging concentration on these kids.

There was at least one measure that I didn’t expect to go well yesterday.

But after I finished playing it, I remember thinking (thinking!!!!) that I did it in an acceptable manner.

I often see my prep for performance as a sort of test case on what works in practice for me and what doesn’t.  My teacher, Ray Ferguson, told  me that sometimes one is practicing right up until a performance. I think of that.

Kenny Werner and Dr. Kim both address depth of preparation of pieces. I have been thinking a lot  about how thoroughly I learn pieces I perform. I am very interested in improving the depth of my preparation.

When in school, one rehearses pieces for entire semesters before a performance. That looks like a luxury to this hack church musician.

But at the same time, I am not content to only play music that is well within my technique.

I performed that Bach yesterday a bit before it was ready to be aired, however sections of it surpassed my low expectation of a shaky performance due to performing too soon.

The important thing I learned yesterday is that I need to continue to develop my concentration powers as I try to learn pieces more thoroughly.

Concentrating on what is not as hard as it used to be for me. Now I can often move into an arena of calm and clarity and essentially not thinking in the course of a performance. The goal is to make those moments longer and more clearly focused.

The choir did splendidly yesterday. I was surprised at the beauty of their blend. This was because of the spotty attendance we have had this fall of this small chamber group. But what the heck. They sounded great to me.

But enough happy stuff.

I decided I couldn’t finish Neil Gaiman’s The Books of Magic. Call me an old cranky snob, but I was annoyed when I got to this page.

This is not strictly speaking a Neil Gaiman problem. His letterer, Tod Klein, decided to get overly cute and attempt to make a greeky lettering.

But as you can see, he does it wrong. I found that annoying, but also the fact that I could easily read his mis-use of the Greek Alphabet.

I divided my practice yesterday into two sections: one before and one after lunch. At each sitting I rehearsed my little Bach trio movement carefully. Lately if I am repeating something as I practice, I make sure I at least do it four times, often more. When preparing for a weekend performance at church of something a bit challenging to me, doing something four times carefully seems a good way to proceed. Even when practicing piano for the heck of it, I find carefully repeating a section and counting the number of times I do helps me.

If this seems a bit studentish, it’s because it is.

I have such a long way ahead of me in my technique that I persist in using some pretty simple rehearsal approaches. I do this because I have experienced a lot of improvement in my basic piano and organ technique in the last decade or so due to practicing and learning to practice effectively.

Yesterday I wanted to double my prep for today’s Bach piece. So I began with rehearsing smaller sections of the Bach repeating them over and over. Finally I went through the entire piece four times. Before this I listened to the recording I had made of myself earlier in the week on my phone. From it I learned that my choice of tempo (slower than most play this movement) remained convincing to me as a player. I also cringed at the sound of the reed in the trio.

I began yesterday re-registering the trio without the organ’s ugly reed. This helped a lot.

I also listened to the way I had decided to do the ritard at the end of this piece and found that convincing as well. I am doing what I think of as the John Gardiner baroque ritard which pulls up sharply at the end of a piece in a kind of jerky way.

I rarely use it. But I have added an ornament on the top voice (a  turn) to the ending and it seems to go nicely that way.

I then read through the duet Rhonda has asked me to play, playing through both parts in an attempt to understand the music. I got about twenty pages and broke for lunch.

After lunch, I decided to go through the trio varying tempos consciously. First at performance tempo, then slow, then performance again and then finally slow.

I find that if I leave a piece with a slow rehearsal it reinforces the learning process for me.

As I did this, I did stop occasionally and go over sections if they needed it.

Also I used mister metronome.

In the American Guild of Organists, there are a series of examinations that if you pass you are awarded a professional thingo which allows you to put more letters after your name if you wish.

The exams are Service Playing, Colleague, Associate and Fellow.

When our bookstore failed spectacularly I decided that the next step in my education would be not to get a music degree, but to move to Detroit and prepare to take one of these exams.

I ended up both attending college and taking the exams.

I pursued the Associate exam.

I took it a couple of times and did not achieve it.

The second time I had scores high enough to be awarded the letters, but there was a rule that if you flunked any section of the exam, no matter what your overall score was, you didn’t pass.

I flunked modulating from one hymn to another. One judge gave me no points and drew the judge average below passing.

At the time, I thought that I probably disagreed with the judges about what constituted a coherent execution of a modulation between two keys.

Philip Gehring published an article in the latest American Guild of Organist mag (Oct 2013) called “AGO Colleague Examination 2013 improvising question: The Modulating Bridge.”

I read it over and decided to try to learn to do this his way.

So I have added that to  my daily practice, modulating via Gehring’s recommended technique of duplicating the initial motive of the hymn you are modulating to and doing this in a circle of fifths keys between the two.

So far I feel like I’m doing it in a clunky way. But what the heck. Toujours gai, Archy, toujours gai. There’s some life in the old gal yet.

I think I might have bitten more than I should have in tomorrow’s scheduled organ prelude.  I thought I had performed the first movement of the C minor Organ Trio of Bach before. But I’m beginning to think this is not true. Mostly I am having second thoughts about tempo. The movement is marked Vivace in my edition. The word means “lively.” I am afraid however I can’t really play it too fast yet.

I like the way I play it.  It feels lively to me. I have decided even if my tempo is incorrect, tomorrow I am still going to play it at a slower tempo than the recordings I have listened to (briefly at this stage of learning).  I will have more of a chance of playing it musically (always the goal).

And of course tomorrow the new bishop is presiding at our church.

Why do I put myself through this stuff?

The answer is that I still at the old age of 62 have a need to challenge myself especially in the service of beauty.

A quick look at Donington’s The Interpretation of Early Music (which is largely an anthology of quotes) reveals that Leopold Mozart (Amadeus’s dad) puts Vivace in between Moderato and Allegretto.

Writing in 1756 (6 years after Bach’s death), Leopold says this:

VIVACE means lively, and SPIRITOSO says that we should play with intelligence and spirit, and ANIMOSO is almost the same. All three kinds stand midway between fast and slow, as to which piece of music bearing these must itself show us more

Leopold Mozart, Violinschule, Augsburg, 1756, I, iii, 27 quoted in Donington p. 389

So there you have that.

When I perform at a slower tempo than other players I am reminded of Bob Hobby’s observation about his teacher Don Busarow. Busarow was notorious for performing slowly.  His students maintained that there was Adiagio, Largo and then Busaro.

Speaking of challenges, my colleague Rhonda Edgington has asked me to learn a duet part for “Rhapsody for Organ Duo” by Naji Hakim.

I do admire the way Rhonda is interested in so many different composers. I have never heard of this dude. The piece will be a challenge for me. I ordered the music in late September, but it’s not scheduled to leave the warehouse of Sheet Music Plus for four to six weeks. When I see that, I figure they have to get it themselves from the publisher. If I had been clever I would have ordered directly from the publisher.

Instead, Rhonda loaned me her copy. I will (illegally) photocopy it to begin learning right away. I don’t think the concert is scheduled until Advent.

This morning (and yesterday) I played some Czerny virtuoso finger exercises. I sometimes keenly feel my lack of keyboard technique. I persist in playing scales and Hanon.

I read a story once about Oscar Peterson.  Some interviewer was leaving Peterson’s apartment after interviewing him. After he closed the door, he heard Peterson begin in on Hanon exercises. I find this inspiring since Peterson’s piano technique was huge.

I got  up a little late this morning and have even less time than usual to blog.

I spent a couple hours of my morning off yesterday looking for a credit card. I thought I had misplaced it. It was actually tucked in between some leaves of the ledger of my Mom’s check book. I ransacked the house, then drove around retracing my steps since Monday which was the last time I had used it. All the while, I was carrying it with me unbeknownst.

Sigh.

I am finding watching the debacle in Washington D.C. right now very disheartening. The shutdown of our government is now at day four. I tweeted my representative (Huizenga). I’m not sure if he is one of the Tea Party crazies who are bringing the government to its knees, but I know he votes the party line (as do most if not all Republicans in the House).

I know that the left (the side I tend to agree more with) is also very flawed. But its hard not to see the actions of a small number of not so bright Representatives as a move (misstep, hopefully) by the far right. It plays into President Obama’s hands. But it also is slowly unraveling our infrastructure. I fear in the next few weeks especially if the debt limit is not routinely raised, we as a country may reach a point where it will be hard to repair this damage.

Eileen continues to be miserable in her job. She is talking with MERS (the people who handle the retirement of library workers) about her options. She asked for a couple more days off around her trip to California. I fear it’s all too little too late and that one day soon she will come home from work and tell me she quit.

This will be doable as long as I continue to pull in a little money. But date night will have to look different, as will our list of weekly bills. We can do some serious trimming and stay fat and happy, I’m pretty sure.

Unless of course the far right fucks up the country (and the global economy) so bad that those of us who are not rich will be scrambling to survive.

If we end up on the street, I think we’ll have to move somewhere warmer.

I managed to finish my transcription of Alec Rowley’s anthem, “When the whole heart turns unto God” yesterday and make copies for the choir. Here’s a link to the PDF of the piece. At least it’s a link to a permalink from my google doc of the pdf. I’m hoping that it works as an access link. If anyone has troubles with these links, I wish they would let me know (jupiterjenkins@gmail.com).

Today I have time to blog but my mind is tired. I have been up reading for a while and that is refreshing. But I usually have an insight or two or an inspiration before I start to write here.

The inspiration hasn’t kicked in this morning.

In the meantime here are some excerpts from my reading.

Why do people stop taking piano lessons?

“The answer is that the bliss of music has been filtered out of their studies.”

from Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner

“Music is not the cake. It’s the icing on the cake.”

from Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner

I am finding Werner’s prose a bit on the breathless side. It feels like it’s ghost written and not that well put together. But still once in while something pithy like the above two quotes hit me.

I feel pretty strongly that people start out as artists, dancers, painters, musicians and poets as children. Life tends to take that away for many people. I feel lucky to have retained as much of this bliss as I have.

And I agree with the idea that music is icing on the cake of living. This might be another way of saying that music is something one does, not a thing.

Then there is Merton.

I am reading the final journals of his life. As one reads, his sudden death from electrocution while traveling looms over the prose (he got out of a shower and tried to turn a fan on or off if my memory serves).

Still there are some wonderful moments.

Previously I marked this passage as beautiful enough to set to music. Sorry to get all religious and shit, but I still like it.

“I am the utter poverty of God. I am His emptiness, littleness, nothingness, lostness. When this is understood, my life in His freedom, the self-emptying of God in me is the fullness of grace. A love for God that knows no reason because He is God; a love without measure…”

I wonder what has happened to our country when there is no room for compassion for each other or true human spirituality in our public rhetoric?

Onward. Upward.

Here are some recent articles I have bookmarked as noteworthy.

1. John Boehner’s Shutdown – NYTimes.com

Bookmarked this to help me remember how the Republicans stalled before they balked.

2. PolitiFact | 10 things Obamacare supporters say that aren’t entirely true

Unfortunately most of these originate with President Obama. Yikes. Why can’t we be more accurate and honest in our speaking?

3. Chirlane McCray Plays Key Role in de Blasio Campaign – NYTimes.com

I admire McCray as portrayed in this article. Also her and her husband’s relationship. Good read.

4. Hitting Pay Dirt on Mars – NYTimes.com

A little more detail about water on Mars.

5. Defining and Demanding a Musician’s Fair Shake in the Internet Age – NYTimes.com

I find this man’s anger and navel gazing repellent. Nevertheless as a consumer of recorded music I am aware of the need to purchase it beyond the sharing sites of Spotify and Pandora. I purchase recordings regularly when I find that I admire them.

6. Changed the Way Americans Cook Italian Food – NYTimes.com

Another fascinating obit.

7. The Captain Ahabs of the House – NYTimes.com

Written way back before the government shutdown. Charles Blow has a nice and succinct way of putting it:

“This is about a group of ideologues who are not in touch with reality, who have very limited intelligence, who are playing mad games with the world economy.”

8. A Muslim Prosecutor in Britain, Fighting Forced Marriages and Honor Crimes – NYTimes.com

An admirable and wise man.

9. Suffocating Echo Chamber – NYTimes.com

Forgive me if I have posted this before, but I don’t think I have. This one is another astute pre-shutdown observation. This time from Kristoff.

“The right-wing echo chamber breeds extremism, intimidates Republican moderates and misleads people into thinking that their worldview is broadly shared.”

I got up a bit later this morning. But the real reason I don’t have much time to blog is that I need to use this time to finish “arranging” an anthem I want to have ready for tonight’s rehearsal.

Alec Rowley lived from 1892 to 1958. He preceded the modern sensibility towards sexism in language. His anthem, “When the Whole Heart of Man,” is a nice example of what I think of as “hoary”  old English anthems. My church owns it. It was published in 1923 and is most certainly out of copyright.

I want use it but change the language. The more I looked at the language and the more I thought about the fact that my choir attendance is extremely spotty this fall, the more I thought I could save some time by just re-doing the score with the word changes I want.

So that’s what I have to do this morning.

I also pointed some of the Instructions from the the Anglican Chant Psalter and thought it might be fun to sing that tonight as well.

Here’s a pdf of the whole thing if you’re interested.

Eileen came home pretty down last night from work. It looks like she will not make it to retirement at this gig. I try to encourage her to do what she has to do to take care of herself.

Sunday and Monday have left me feeling depleted. Sunday afternoon I had an additional duty of playing for the blessing of the animals. Most of the effort is hauling my piano and amp over to church then hauling it back after the service.

Yesterday I played for my Mom’s nursing home September birthday party. After two and a half hours of ballet  classes, I stopped for a bit of organ practice, then went over to Resthaven.

I couldn’t tell how they were responding to my Bach and Beethoven. First I played the C major invention for them without identifying it. No one seem to know it. Then I talked about Bach as an inventor who made the inventions. Then I played the A major two part invention followed by the Eb Sinfonia. Not sure I was getting through. Ah well. It’s lovely music.

Then I played Fur Elise. I recently discovered that it is a bagatelle. A bagatelle is a “trifle, a thing of no value or importances”  or “a piece of verse or music in a light style.” (OED)

When I finished one of the old men growled that it sounded like a soap opera. I told him that soap operas sounded like Beethoven, since Beethoven came first.

I then played the slow movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata. I chose it in the hopes it might sound familiar to a group of elderly people who may have listened to Karl Haas’s radio program, “Adventuress in Good Music.” It was his theme song.

Again nothing.

I launched into “Adelweiss” and people immediately began quietly humming and singing along. They seemed a little more connected after that.

At the conclusion one gentleman thanked me for playing “The Wild Blue Yonder,” since he was a retired airman.

Also the activity director asked me if I gave piano lessons. She said she plays by ear but can’t read music.

I told her to email me and we would set up an interview.

I just checked and it doesn’t look like she has emailed me yet.

I do love teaching but I get asked less and less.

I am feeling a bit invisible these days.

It’s something I’m accepting more and more. Perception seems to trump content and I am a bit obsessed with content so it doesn’t bother me that people perceive me as not that relevant.

Case in point was the organ music for this past Sunday. I worked hard on this music. I finished the postlude and Eileen commented that she could see what I meant about needed to prepare the music. I told her that it was really the simpler sounding prelude (Minuetto by Gigout) that had taken the prep during the past week. Of course I practiced the Toccata but I essentially have known it since the 80s.

At any rate, neither piece made too much impression on listeners. I do have a couple of choir people who seem interested in what I do at the organ. But I find that most of the congregation doesn’t perceive what I am doing with the music as all that relevant.

While I was rehearsing the choir before church I had to ask one of the adult servers to talk a bit softer. He was standing a few feet from me and talking loudly.

Invisible.

I figure that some of my most persistent and careful readers are family members. Indeed besides my own need to write a daily entry they are uppermost in my mind when I write.

That being the case, here’s an excerpt from my Dad’s sermon dated January 27, 1963 entitled “Tackle the Impossible.”

“I wish to talk tonight primarily to the young people of our church, though certainly I do not wish to exclude anyone else. I believe that something of the Adolescent is present in all of us here, and we will all find something of benefit for ourselves from this message…

But tonight, my heart goes out to you  young people…

I think I understand something of what you are facing…something of what you are experiencing…something of what your problems are…

I cannot say adolescence or youth was the happiest period of my own life… There were some of the saddest moments of my life spent in my teen years. Some of the deeper sorrows of my life were felt at this time, … heartaches…gloom…frustration…fears…despondency.” [emphasis added]

I remember my Dad as someone who seemed to have a lot going on inside him. He rarely confided to me about this stuff. But what inkling I was able to get often linked his silent struggle with his youth. It seemed to me that he carried disproportionate guilt around this time of his life (unless of course he was a murderer or something).

He was definitely hard on himself as he remember being a young person. He more than once expressed relief at having that part of his life over and would not want to repeat it. But he does go on this sermon to say this.

“But on the other hand, I do not wish to paint the picture with too dark colors, for there were also the bright  moments as well…Against the blackness of despair, many times there shown forth the white brilliance of joys such as I have seldom experienced since…There were many happy moments too…rollicking, frolicking, tripping moments…days of laughter, days when everything was wonderful, and my heart sag with the joys of a thousand angels in song…”

***************************

Yesterday morning I got up and reviewed and read material I had received on Saturday from David Lamb at the American Guild of Organists’ Regional Dean meeting I attended on behalf of local Dean Rhonda Edgington.

This included two articles Lamb himself had provided for us. The first of them, “Inspired Passion or Personal Satisfaction,” was published in the Fall 2012 Issue of ICDA Notations (link to pdf of this issue) ICDA is the Indian Choral Directors Association. The second seemed to be a copy of a speech he had recently written called “Blessings in Disguise!” along the same lines. Both articles are attempting to inspire choral directors.

This morning I got up and reviewed the handouts from a presentation given yesterday at my church’s education hour.

Brad Richmond and Brian Coyle presented a synopsis of a course the have given several times called “Sacred and Profane”

It’s one of those travel courses. They take students to Great Britain and visit London, Bath, Cambridge and more. They observe English choral singing and also folk dancing and music.

I was most taken with Richmond’s comments on the impact of tech on the arts. Apparently this is a strong subtext of this course.

The hand out included a reading list. Here are some of the links I was able to run down this morning.

George Orwell: Shooting an Elephant

 Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

William Blake’s America, 2010

Guns of August from Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age by Modris Eksteins

“The Moral Significance of Material Culture” from Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology by Albert Borgmann

“Is Facebook Making us Lonely?” by Stephen Marche

They also included this article in the packet itself: James Wood: The Book of Common Prayer : The New Yorker

Some interesting stuff.

I have been thinking and reading in this area for years. It’s too bad I don’t get a chance to bullshit with these guys about this stuff. I would enjoy it.

I was sitting in a roomful of musicians yesterday and had an insight I sometimes have about myself. Musicians tend toward passion if not obsession.

But I think we as musicians have different obsessions.

Most of the people I am talking about being with yesterday are concerned with organ and choral music.

I have always felt like the odd organist in that I am more interested in the music itself than the instrument.  Organs can attract people who are interested in certain kinds of organ designs. There are competing schools of thought about what makes the most beautiful organ. Add to that the extreme diversity of what an organ can be.

In the world of pipe organs most of them are a one of a kind instrument. This is something many non-organists forget. If you have ten organs in a city, you have often have ten entirely different set-ups. From the number of pipes to the number of manuals (keyboards), from the way the pipe is being activated (electrically, mechanically or a combination of these two).

And critically how were the pipes themselves made? How were they designed?

The variables can seem endless. And all of them produce individual instruments with their own character for good or ill depending upon the obsession of the beholder.

I respect this obsession but do not share it very strongly.

I think that I am interested in organ largely because of Bach and church work.

Bach continues to draw me in as a player. One of the things about his work is that it survives bad organs and often bad players.  I find this quality fascinating and attractive.

Of course there are many other organ composers I admire. But there are many many of them that I’m only interested in professionally.

Today I have scheduled a couple of pieces by a composer like that. His name is Gigout.

He was decidedly of the French romantic organ school which loved large effects on instruments emulating orchestral like textures. Here’s some of what the Groves online music encyclopedia says about him.

According to accounts by his contemporaries, Gigout, like Guilmant, played in a very clean style, which did not prevent him from performing the music of Franck with great intensity. As an improviser he is reported to have been eclectic, but was drawn particularly to classicism.

His organ music testifies to this ambivalence between a refined language derived from Bach, or certain passages in a classical style, and symphonic effects in the grand manner, sometimes making use of plainsong. Based on an aesthetic close to that of Saint-Saëns, his output is dominated by his organ works, completely overshadowing his piano pieces and mélodies

I  am playing his Minuetto and Toccata from his 10 pieces this morning. I have learned the former for today and revived the latter.

I find Gigout tuneful and interesting to play. But I am not drawn to him musically the way I am drawn to other music.

So my insight about myself is that my obsession is a love of music. It is the music itself that has attracted me all my life. This includes a good amount of organ and choral music. But I would say it is mostly other kinds of music. And it includes a lot of stuff which I haven’t heard yet and am still seeking.

That’s the fun of it I guess.

This morning I broke down and used some of my Amazon birthday money (thank you again Mark and Leigh!). I bought my own copy of two books I am interested in but about which I have reservations.

Kenny Werner’s Effortless Mastery was recommended by Dr. Kim as an important book for musicians to read. I am finding his description of how alienated his education left him a bit on the simplistic side. He assumes that his experience was pretty universal. I grew up at the same time and had a much different experience.

But I wasn’t the talented little pianist he was, gigging at age 9 either.

His prose is a bit fluffy for me. He writes like a musician or self help person not someone interested in writing.

But still I like his topic and am curious to see what he recommends in the way of mental exercises.

Stuart Forester’s Hymn Playing is a book my friend Rhonda brought back from a John Ferguson workshop. Although it does have some interesting interviews in it (grouped by topic), the point of view of the editor seems to be pretty narrow. There are startling omissions in the editors choice of hymn “experts.” No women.

And there are a couple of pairs of teachers and their students who are now teachers themselves (presumably). Incest is the American way.

Again I am drawn to reading more despite the flaws of the book. I have Rhonda’s copy. This way I can return it and read it at leisure.

I’m also reading a book my daughter Elizabeth gave me in Kindle format.

Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection goes a long way to correcting my misperceptions of how global and connected the world is in reality. Short answer: not so much. Zuckerman makes a convincing argument that atoms are easier to move than bits and that immigration is at a low point historically not a peak. Cool stuff. Thanks, Elizabeth!

I bought three Kindle books on sale yesterday.

Lorca: A Dream of Life by Leslie Stainton

Thieves in the Night by Arthur Koestler

Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Mosley

The last one I already own a real copy of, but what the heck. They were all $1.99. What a bargain.

I have been editing my own adaptation of Duruflé’s “In Paradisum.”

I’m a little concerned to share this because I’m pretty sure it’s still under copyright. Nevertheless here’s a pdf of the whole thing.

I can’t decide whether I’m being too hokey by coming up with this. I will be interested to see if the Hope College choir director (Brad Richmond) makes any comment on it, as I know  he is planning to do the original Requiem in its entirety soon. He is also likely to be sitting in the pews when we perform it.

I’ll close with a fun fact I realized this morning. Around 1940, just before the USA entered WWII, Auden was living in Ann Arbor and T. S. Eliot was living in London. So the excellent English poet in the USA at the same time the excellent American poet is in the U.K. How bout that?

Here they are with Valerie Eliot. I believe this is years later.

Charles Taylor mentions Adam Smith’s notion of “the invisible hand” of the market in his book A Secular Age. Taylor’s book is a meticulous and fascinating examination of how our civilizations got to the point they are now, namely that “exclusive humanism” (by which he means a belief in humanity but not religion) evolved.

When he mentions the “invisible hand,” however, he cannot resist observing that neo-liberals (this means the ruling ideology of the USA for the past umpteen years) are in fact advocating some pretty cynical notions in their endorsement of the idea that the market will rule benignly, even benevolently, if left alone.

Taylor says the notion of “invisible hand” relies on “corrupt” actors. By which I think he means, people who operate purely out of self interest. He implies that this notion is not compatible with most religious faiths which seek the betterment of humanity and the pursuit of the good of the community.

Here’s how he puts it.

“One might think that the Smithian notion of an invisible hand defines a new ‘normal’ order, one of mutual enrichment; and in some ways it can be treated as such, and is so invoked by various neo-liberal boosters of ‘the market’ in our day. But it is not an order of collective action. It requires, to operate properly, a certain pattern of interventions (keeping order, enforcing contracts, setting weights and measures, etc.) and (tirelessly stressed) non-interventions (get the government off our backs). What is striking about the Smithian invisible hand, from the standpoint of the old science, is that it is a spontaneous order arising among corrupt, that is, purely self-regarding actors.” p. 183

I find this ironic when listening to the right wing radicals splutter their weirdness in the context of fundamentalist Christianity.

Jes sayin.

I had a pleasant surprise yesterday while attempting to renew my computer security subscription. I use Trend Micro and subscribe to their cheapest software. As I was renewing it yesterday, I noticed that they offered a “computer PC clean up” for around $25. They claimed that this service would address issues of slow computers. What the heck. I signed up for it.

It turned out that the service  consisted of one of their techs taking remote control of your computer, downloading a powerful software, and going over your computer with you sitting there watching and talking to them.

That’s cool.

I asked if the software the tech was using was available for purchase somehow. Nope. Sooprise sooprise.

Not sure how much faster my old desktop will run now, but at least I have the satisfaction that some of its issues have been addressed.

1.Suffocating Echo Chamber – NYTimes.com

In his column yesterday, Kristof addresses something that I see functioning a lot, namely that many people only get information they agree with. The nature of many situations online is that the we are catered to and offered choices that are expected to attract us. So that the bias we experience as consumers of information is necessarily a narrowing one.

The only way to combat this is to be more active about seeking out sources we disagree with.

Kristof believes that the radical right by turning to hate radio and other sources is in the process of hurting itself and the country.

2. How Do You Say ‘Blog’ in German? – NYTimes.com

Emailed this article to some friends who speak German and English. Fun stuff.

Wednesday (yesterday) is turning into a marathon day for me.  Yesterday I took books to my Mom. Met with my boss. Practiced organ. Prepared for choir rehearsal. Went grocery shopping. Brought treats for my choir for the evening rehearsal. Ran the dang rehearsal. And then there’s the regularly scheduled ballet classes.

Two and half hours of ballet class (an 8:30 and a 2 PM class) makes for a lot of  improvising. I feel like my improvising is improving in this situation. I keep the phrases regular. But I regularly explore rhythmic and melodic ideas that probably have more to do with popular music than stiff stereotypical classical ideas.

I say stereotypical because the more new music I hear the more I am convinced that genre by style is an invention after the fact. The illustrious composer Duke Ellington had it right: music that sounds good is good music.

I had this reaction after hearing the Dave Holland Quintet a few years ago.

I went into the concert skeptical that I would hear anything new and fresh. Holland played for Miles Davis who I think of as a constant innovator and probably a musical genius. Holland had young players with him. I came out of the concert thinking simply I had heard a lot of good music that was new and fresh. Cool.

In my ballet improvising, I also “take choruses” as the jazzers say. This means I set up a melody and usually a simple harmonic progression to keep the expectations of the dancers met. Then I will start to elaborate. Usually through a more ornate melody woven over the harmony but not always. Sometimes I switch registers and give the bass a solo. Sometimes I do block chords hueing more interesting (and to me more beautiful) sounds around the expected chord changes.

One of the dance teachers wants to use at least one traditional ballet excerpt to devise an exercise for her students. This is in pointe class. Pointe means the dancers are wearing a special shoe used in ballet which enables them to dance on “pointe” or their toes. It is a dangerous method of dance because of its difficulty and ease of injury of dancers. I have cheap valium ireland observed pointe teachers admonishing dancers to take care and even to take off their shoes in a class if they tire or are hurting.

Anyway, the teacher gave me the name of the ballet (La Esmeralda) and a description of the section she wanted to use (the one with the solo tambourine dance).

Thank goodness for Youtube. I found a video of a young Russian dancer in a competition doing this very dance. So now I knew what it sounded like. A search of the usual sources for online scores turned up an old piano score of sections of this ballet. But nothing that looked like what I was hearing on the video.

I kept using Google coming up with different search terms and I managed to stumble across a pdf of exactly what I was looking for: this section of the ballet transcribed for piano. Cool beans.

The instructor also told me that she was interested in finding a visual recording of the entire ballet but the DVD was cost prohibitive ($100+). Just before class yesterday I did a quick search. Lo and behold there was a two hour version sitting on Youtube.  I emailed her a link.

I love the interwebs.

1. Rutgers Updates Its Anthem to Include Women – NYTimes.com

Since I struggled for years to help Roman Catholics rid their prayer language of sexism I get a kick out of these kinds of stories.

2. Losing Is Good for You – NYTimes.com

If everybody wins, nobody really wins.

3. In Sickness and in Health a poem by W. H. Auden

I spent a good portion of my morning reading and rereading this poem. I found it interesting but thought I was missing some of the allusions and did a search on the internet.

Again I love the interwebs.

I found an article online with one person’s interpretation and some helpful notes:

AudenLovevDesire

I found an interesting discussion where a writer quoted this poem as one of his favorite Auden poems:

Did Auden’s Talent Outstrip His Genius?

And lastly I found an online PDF of doctoral dissertation that looks fascinating:

Queering the City of God: W. H. Auden’s later poetry and the ethics of friendship by Olivia F. Bustion

I finally finished Reinventing Bach by Paul Elie. It is a book driven by the passion of someone who loves Bach and at the same time is not completely asleep to what is happening around him. Elie sets Bach squarely into the 21st century. He sets up a corrective to stereotypes of Bach as irrelevant by layering instance after instance of Bach’s impact on contemporary life.

I would say that I recognized a good 80 to 85 per cent of the appearances and performances of Bach he weaves into his narrative. More than that, he doesn’t seem to omit anyone who has impacted me about Bach: Glenn Gould, Pablo Casals, Wendy Carlos, The Swingle Singers, Albert Schweitzer and others. This is not to mention those I more reluctantly admit have influenced me like Stokowski and Yo Yo Ma.

Reading this book felt like a guilty pleasure. Elie’s basic metaphor was Bach as the quintessential inventor who is as at home in our digital permutations as he is in passionate and eccentric recreations of his works like John Gardiner’s Cantata Pilgrimage.

The book is written in short sections. I took advantage of this and read it while I was sitting at the piano in ballet class waiting to play or standing in line at the grocery store as well as sitting alone in my house.

I was almost sorry to come to the end of the book.  I have a feeling that if you don’t love Bach as much as I do, you as a reader might find Elie cloying. But I do love Bach and immensely enjoyed reading of another’s passion especially someone who seems to be living in the same world of music and information  that I inhabit.

Recommended but only to crazy people in love with Bach.

I interlibrary-loaned Julie Staub’s first book of poetry Face to Face after reading a poem by her on Writer’s Almanac. As far as I can tell, this poem called “Progress” is omitted from this collection (no index). I believe there is a poet lurking somewhere in this writer’s consciousness. But her orientation toward sentimental Christianity sometimes leaves me with an over sweet taste in my mouth. She seems to be a Quaker who took a degree in Religioius studies.

More disturbing is her use of the illness and death of her husband as a subject and context for these poems.

When I was a young man, I was introduced to the idea of how artists cold bloodedly will use  those around them for their art by Ingmar Bergman’s film, “Through a Glass Darkly.”

In this film, the father mercilessly uses his daughter’s mental illness as background material for himself as a writer.

This film was also my first exposure to Pablo Casal’s brilliant rendition of the Bach cello suites which is used in the soundtrack.

Julie Staub creates poems that refer to her dying husband. Some of them are beautiful. Some trivial. Her consequent embrace of life in a Christian joie de vivre left me a bit queasy. A bit like watching the mentally ill daughter in “Through a Glass Darkly” read the journal of her father the writer where he is meticulously documenting her descent into madness (presumably as background material for future writing).

I do love the Ingmar Bergman films. “Through a Glass Darkly” was the first of a trilogy by Bergman. The second in the trilogy was “Winter Light.” It also is an important one to me. In it, there is a priest who is suffering from a loss of faith.

The pacing on these old films is probably annoying to revisit. But in my memory they are important to me and help me understand myself.

I’m pretty tired this morning. I didn’t sleep well last night. This I believe is directly a result of human interaction last night at the AGO Installation service. The introvert in me finds brief connections with people I have known in the past simultaneously draining and enervating. Sheesh.

The service reminded me once again how sectarian the local reformed church people are. All of the music choices were pretty conservative (Haydn, Faure). The organ voluntaries were well played (Howells, Bonnet – cough). The service itself followed what looks like a pattern for reformed ecumenical services with a round robin of preaching,  most of it pretty bad. Some odd little spoken parts which probably represents the worship pattern of the CRC.

The hymnody seemed to rely heavily on a fake Anglican approach: Thaxted, Redez a dieu (which is at least Calvinist in origin if not revival), and Hyfrydol. The organ accompaniment was as loud as the voluntaries. No creativity in the accompaniment other than a bit of varied hymn accompaniment in Hyfrydol. Each time the organist played the ENTIRE tune through as an intro (has he never heard of the Lutheran approach of doing creative intonations for hymns? Probably not. Nothing exists except the CRC church apparently) then we all pop up as instructed on the “last line of the hymn.” Good grief.

Not once did the organ back off a bit and let the obviously enthusiastic singing group hear itself.

The acoustics were typical American bad. Better than my church but only a little over a second reverberation.

The whole dealy seemed very pompous, self important and stilted to me.

My friend Rhonda (who is the dean of our chapter of this august organization) was concerned about rumors they were going to ask us to host the installation service next year.  She wondered how we could come up to the standards of this event. I told her that I easily thought we could do a lot better.

But what do I know? Maybe the entire Western Mich is sort of stuck in Calvinistic paradigm that doesn’t take liturgical churches much into consideration.

Also I was a little troubled that it sounded like I have committed myself to serving on the board for a term of more than one year. Rhonda suggested I look at the bylaws when I asked her about that.  I’ll have to do that.

I think I’m going to call this a blog. I’m tired and have the day off to compose and practice. That sounds like a good idea.

I received a “Linked-in” message from my cousin Ken Jenkins, that his brother Fred had died yesterday. I emailed him for confirmation which I quickly received. Fred was born the same year I was earlier in the year (February). Information is sketchy but it appears he had difficulty breathing and succumbed before he was able to be helped. Damn shame. Here’s a pic of him with his wife Kathy.

Yesterday church was kind of a downer. The energy in the choir was unusually negative (and that’s saying something). I had been  looking forward to singing the psalm to Anglican chant. Which we did. It went okay. The choir did not sound as good as I want them too.

After church, the new alto quit. She said that it was too difficult to juggle her new baby and be in the choir (nice image, that). One does wonder if the negativity was part of her departure.

I had been sweating bullets over my prelude which was a Praeludium and fugue by Bohm. I learned it as an undergrad. It took some practice for this old dude to get it into shape.

I have been working on my organ technique, practicing more and also practicing carefully.

My friend Rhonda is looking for some chorale preludes on familiar tunes and asked me to gather some for her from my library. After googling to determine popular hymns (fuck if I know what’s popular), I checked through my cross index and went over to church yesterday afternoon.

I picked out music. I couldn’t resist sitting down at the console and practicing the upcoming Gigout pieces I have scheduled.

Eileen has been glum. I think she is beginning to seriously dislike her job. I suggested we run away (pull up stakes) yesterday but no go yet.

She cleaned up the old wardrobe sitting in the garage and we moved it into the house.

I have been finding the political news in the US particularly distressing. It looks like radical Republicans are succeeding in shutting down the government. Facts are being distorted on all sides of the discussion. I know this is what politics looks like, but the injustices and dishonesty are so disheartening.

My boss even preached about it yesterday, something which is very rare for her. She is level headed and very reluctant to talk politics from the pulpit (as we churchy people say). So you know if she is moved to speak out, things are bad.

This evening I have committed myself to attending an installation of American Guild of Organists officers. The Grand Rapids chapter invited the Holland chapter (and I think some other local chapters) to attend. It looks like a lengthy (and probably deadly boring) service. Here’s a pdf of the program. You can judge for yourself.

I have been having weird thoughts about joining the Association of Anglican Musicians. I joined their Facebooger group. I have always thought of them as a bit too fancy for me. But on reflection, I realize that I haven’t had reason to join them until my present church gig.

They require three letters from other members, one nominating and two supporting. Not sure I could come up with these. But the Facebooger AAM page did say if one was interested in joining to let them know.

I could use some intelligent talk around church music issues.

At least I could read the magazine, I guess.

1. Once Suicidal and Shipped Off, Now Battling Nevada Over Care – NYTimes.com

Unbelievable policy of putting mental ill people on a bus to another state (called ” Greyhound Therapy”)

Owen King writes in his novel, Double Feature, the following passage. It tells what happens when the main character’s father comes to school to share at a “Career Day Presentation.”

“My name is Booth Dolan. I am a storyteller and a thespian. A thespian is an actor. I make believe on a professional basis. I pretend to be people who I am not. You are children. You make believe as a matter of course. I presume that each of you is competent at making believe on at least a semi-professional level. That is as it should be.

Are any of you familiar with the concept of the double feature? No? A double feature is a showing of a two movies back to back. The double feature was the staple of the drive-in movie theater. A single ticket provided you with an entire night’s entertainment.

But the second movie of the double feature was always better than the first movie. They saved it for later, when it was good and dark, when the images on the screen could be seen with the greatest clarity. Because that was the one you really wanted to see. The first movie was just the warm-up. The double feature often began while there was still some light, and it could be hard to make out everything happening on the screen—it could be hazy. Everything was perfect for the second movie, though. The second movie had all the exciting stuff: the scares and the surprises and the parts that you’d remember and want to discuss later.

You are currently living in the first movie of the double feature of your life. It’s fine, you’re happy enough, but probably some parts are hazy to you. That’s the nature of the first feature.

However, the characters you play in your minds and in your games now are vital preparation for the wild implausibility of adult existence, which is the second feature. As adults, you will experience incredible adventures. Feats of derring-do will be required. You will labor beneath weighty responsibilities. There will be cunning puzzles to solve. Pirates may fire upon you. You should not be surprised to find yourself traveling by night, with scant provisions, along broken roads haunted by wayfarers of unreliable character. Hangers-on of the court may sow intrigue against you. Misfortune will not be a stranger to you; nor will duplicity. Now will tragedy. There will doubtless be romantic entanglements, as well as many bawdy, humorous episodes.

So. Make believe. It is important. You second feature will start soon.”

**************************************************************************

Stumbled across an interesting website recently: https://sourcemap.com/ My daughter Elizabeth gave me a kindle book called Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection by Ethan Zuckerman. He mentions this website in a foot note.

Here’s a sample of the maps on sourcemap.

I think this is a “crowd sourced” site (i.e. anyone can put up stuff). But I didn’t look at it very hard.

I received a royalty check in the mail yesterday.

These make my wife (who does our taxes) crazy. Heh.

Finally I was looking up a word this morning and was surprised at how relevant it is to the headlines in my country right now.

If you look at the etymology you can see that the word has been applied historically to politicians.

Last night, Eileen and I attended a performance by Ballet X. It was a stunning evening. The first piece (archived above from a few years ago) used music of Bach. The video synopsis above doesn’t do justice to the experience of the entire dance. The dance captured Bach in most ways for me: the humor, the human face of Bach, the flights of fancy and on and on. I was very moved.

You cannot tell from this video but the movement was completely in sync with the music. Not only for this piece for all three pieces I saw last night.

The second piece seemed to be about relationship struggles. Hard to put into words the way movement can communicate. Watching these abbreviated videos is sort of likely pulling sentences out of a short story or essay and trying to convey what is captured in it.

The choreographer for the last piece gave a master class yesterday morning. I was the pianist for the class. It was a standard ballet class nothing like the dances above. But it was fun to work with the guy.

Eileen said to me later that the performance was entertaining. I disagreed. I thought it was profound.

Today I guess I’m posting videos. I have been listening to Jack White’s new album. I quite like it. I sometimes entertain the suspicion that pop/rock/whatever music is keeping a lot of great poetry afloat. Case in point this piece:

I especially like this part

“and i want love to,
change my friends to enemies,
change my friends to enemies
show me how it’s all my fault”

Link to lyric page.

I had to “share” this with my Facebooger “Friends.”