Two brief stories from Dad’s sermon notes dated Jan 6, 1963.

“[On] Christmas eve, we were all trying to get things in shape to leave for the children’s grandparent’s home in West Virginia, but little Mark was suffering with a toothache. A pitiful thing it is to have tooth pulled on Christmas eve, but that was Mark’s luck. We had our Dentist pull the tooth, which proved to be a jaw tooth with long roots. I commented to our dentist that surely it was unusual for a child’s first teeth to have long roots, and he gave me some insight about the roots of teeth. He said, ‘The child’s first teeth begin with roots every bit as long as his 2nd teeth, but as time passes, nature consumes the roots of the teeth until finally when the 2nd teeth arrive, the roots are all gone.’ ”

“The Church which we pastored before we came to Greeneville was a country church…it contained many tomato farmers…We used to go out early in the Spring and see the tomato plants coming up so strong and muscular…We would rejoice for our people to see the healthy plants…But the farmers themselves did not rejoice quite so strongly for they knew the outward part of the plant was not the whole story…They worked carefully with their plants, spraying them, suckering (? succoring?) them, weeding them….and all the time they watched closely…Only too often, they would go out into a field that one day looked healthy and strong, only to find many of the plants fallen over, cut off at the roots…The cut worms, working beneath the surface would saw that plant off like a demon with a knife!”

The title Dad gave this sermon was “The Roots of Our Faith.”

I had a very productive day off yesterday. I practiced on and off for most of the day. The organ guy arrived at church just as I was leaving. He will remove the stuck pipes so that I can use the swell until he is able to come and do the actual repair. This will mean that I will be missing a note, but I can work around that.

Concert Review

I want to say a few words about Yun Kyong Kim’s organ recital on Tuesday.

She played brilliantly. But I was surprised at the lengthy pauses she took to register pieces. These pauses were often more than a minute or two in length.

It’s ironic to me because she took such pains to come up with clever programming (more on that in a minute). The pacing of the pieces and the contrast was quite nice. But it fell flat when she took this enormous amount of time to prepare several pieces. I was surprised. Ray Ferguson would never have allowed me such time in a concert.

I’m curious what my colleague and concert organist herself Rhonda thought of this

She played some unusual music.

“Comes Autumn Time” by Leo Sowerby was the first piece. She obviously chose this as a seasonal reference. This piece didn’t sound very Sowerbyesque to me. More Gershwin than Sowerby to my ears. Accessible. Her program notes neglected to mention this is a transcription of an orchestra piece by Sowerby.

Then two pieces by Joseph Bonnet.

For me these sounded quaint and not all that interesting. The first was “In Memoriam: Titanic, Op. 10, No. 1”

Holy shit. Only number one, eh?(link to pdf of entire opus – 12 pieces!) This was long and based on the tune “Horbury” which is “widely reputed” to the be the song played on the sinking ship (this is from Kim’s program notes).

Kim exploited the many different stops of the organ in her recital. However, I don’t find myself drawn to stops that wheeze and vibrate however appropriate they are to the music (celeste). I think they sound very dated.

“Concert Etude on an Australian Folk Tune” by Robert Ampt demonstrated the considerable composition ability of Ampt. But unfortunately, the cantus firmus (an Australian tune called “Pub with  no Beer”) sounded annoying like “Beautiful Dreamer.”

I would have been more interested to hear an Ampt composition based on better material.

Then two pieces by Vierne. The first, “Clair de lune” (Suite II, Op. 53, No. 5) put me to sleep. I thought it was boring. But “Les Cloches de Hinckley” (Suite IV, Op. 55, No. 6) was for my money the best written piece on the program. It made me wish that Dimnent had some true reverberation. I had to imagine how this piece would sound in Vierne’s church, Notre Dame in Paris.

Finally by the time we arrived at “Fiesta” four selections from a suite by Ian Farrington, I felt the concert had been long enough. These pieces were accessible and displayed Kim’s considerable abilities. But they seem preoccupied with themselves as displays of bravura and the possibilities of registration.

Music audiences deserve the kind of pacing and contrast that Kim was attempting. But I feel more strongly that they should be given a glimpse of the deep beauty of music that would stand up next to all listening experiences available to them these days. This is a tall order. Dr. Kim went a long way toward doing this.

First another excerpt from a sermon by my Dad.

“There were three of us, I think, and we were looking in the living room window of a neighbor. Three peeping toms… (Not exactly a sign of good manners, but we were about 10 years old, and we had a lot to learn about the thing to do and the thing not to do)

Inside the room, they were having a “meeting”…and it was such a meeting that the 3 of us boys were not the only ones looking in the window…several folk passing on the street had stopped, too, and they were looking in at the “meeting.” It was a spectacle…really a most pathetic spectacle…for the people inside were all speaking at once (I did know that much about manners that people shouldn’t speak when someone else is speaking)

It was a sort of prayer meeting…actually, a tongues meeting…and the words the people were speaking sounded more like a babbling infant than a language…

But I recall, as I looked into their faces (by this time my nose was pressed against the window pane…there was deep sincerity written there…

These people were not “devil possessed” as I had heard “Tongues-people” described…they were under deep emotional stress…they were like children…they were trying so hardto do something unusual…”

For some reason, Dad was preaching on Pentecost on January 6, 1963. Actually Jan 6 is Epiphany in the church year, but I don’t think Dad was aware of this at the time. The title of his sermon was “To Build Up or To Tear Down.”

At the Monday evening AGO Potluck, I took three dishes. I did this because it was my idea that college students should not feel like they needed to bring a dish if they wanted to attend.

I made a concoction I have come up with for myself lately.

It’s sort of a Kale ginger stir fry. I brown up some good veggies like mushrooms, onions, garlic, and carrots. Then I add Kale (and chard or whatever… I only added kale Monday). I steam the kale down. Then add bean sprouts and ginger sauce.

I love it.

Apparently the people who took some at this potluck liked it as well. There was none left.

I also took a tossed salad and made blueberry muffins. I was surprised that the muffins were not all gone at the end of the evening.

I have been thinking about the presenter, Yun Kyong Kim.

It was the first time she had done a presentation like this, so she told us. “The Performer Within You: planning, practicing and performing concerts” was her topic.

She is a pretty seasoned virtuoso so I was pretty sure it would be an interesting talk.

What I had not anticipated (what I continue to not anticipate about “educated” people) is her lack of sophistication. In her case, I found it charming. She was obviously terribly sincere and told us stories about how she came to be an organist.

She seemed to be speaking largely out of experience as a teacher who helps church musician break out of a box of not every doing recitals.

I find this kind of weird. Most of my colleagues continued to give recitals after college. I know I did.

Still it was interesting to listen to her talk about the process.

I would have been very interested in her own learning process but she chose to omit that.

The reason I though she was a bit naive is that she skirted some of what I see as the main issues in performing music these days, namely what is it we are doing and why are we doing it.

She hit these by implication. She urged us to think about pacing and “opening  up” a space for listeners by including all kinds of music in our choices.

At this point, I began to realize how narrow the organ world is these days.

I pursued organ at a time when organists were thought to be not quite kosher classical musicians. The world of classical music was symphonic, symphonic instruments and piano. Organists were suspect.

Now I believe that all classical musicians themselves are suspect if they present themselves as sort of high priests (priestesses) of a canonic repertoire accessible mostly to the privileged.

In this case, organists are left a bit in the cold.

I see this as moot, because I think the music world is rapidly changing to be large, fragmented and diverse.

Dr. Kim (as Hew Luwis called her at the recital the other night) addressed this indirectly by having a very open mind about musical styles.

But more on this later when I talk about her concert on Tuesday.

“When I was a boy, I recall my mother always had a sewing basket. Sometimes the basket was full, and sometimes empty. Usually it was empty right after a sewing circle meeting, for the sewing basket was her collecting place for the remnants of material left over from her sewing. She would take those remnants to her sewing circle, and they would make quilts out of them ….. ”

“I remember well after Thanksgiving or Christmas…whether it was a chicken, a duck, or a Turkey we had…the remnants of that bird remained for several days after the holidays…we usually had sandwiches out of the remnants…I’m not sure which were best, the sandwiches or the original turkey…that was Mom’s remnant shop…..”

This is taken from sermon notes by my Dad dated March 31, 1963, Church of God — Greeneville. The title of the sermon is “God’s Remnant Shop.”

After these memories, Dad observes the following.

“But this business of remnants is  beginning to be big business today! We have factory outlet stores all across the nation…In North Carolina, around the towel companies, they have all manner of remnant stores …..During the winter months, we even had some sawdust logs that we burned in our fireplace…logs made out of sawdust pressed under many tons of pressure, until they formed a log once again…..remnant sawdust which used to be thrown away.”

Dad also wrote this odd section:

“… last week, we visited the home of Bro. & Sis. Humphreys and I had to say what I believe to be true… From where I sit, if suddenly the Communists were able to take control of the USA, I sincerely question whether as much as 25% of our people would remain true to the Lord.”

I have no idea what he is talking about here. It’s hard to recreate in imagination a time when so many were frightened of the “Communists.”

That’s all the family stuff in this blog.

Monday and Tuesday were AGO (American Guild of Organists) evenings for me.

On Monday, our chapter sponsored the visiting “Donia” artist, Yun Kyong Kim, to give a talk to us. She talked about her experiences as a musician, discussed how to organize yourself and give an organ recital.

A virtuoso musician, I’m really not sure who she was talking to that evening.

I has happy to see four college students in attendance. Two of these weren’t even organists (a violinist and pianist). I had put up a poster on campus touting this as a chance to hear a professional talk about her life. It’s possible this influenced the student attendance.

I took away a couple of things.

She recommended a book.

I’ve already interlibrary-loaned it.

She also talked about programming and utilizing music already in your library. The latter is something that I try to do. She played a little bit of a Minuetto by Gigout for us, asking us who we thought the composer was. Then she pointed out that the little played piece was sitting in the standard collection of Gigout in many organists’ library.

I admit I pulled out my Gigout and decided to schedule this little piece for a week from Sunday. I will pair it with his Toccata which is a piece most organists are taught.

I see I’m over my self imposed word limit (around 500 words) for a blog, so I’m going to stop here. Monday evening (last night) Yun Kyong Kim played the Donia Memorial Recital. I attended and had some thoughts. But maybe  I’ll put that in a future blog.

Unfortunately my organ has developed a stuck note. This means it’s basically a one manual organ until the organ guy comes. So no trios for me for a while. Fuck.

On April 3, 1963, my Dad, Paul Jenkins, preached at his Dad’s church in Tennessee.

Ben Jenkins had moved to Broyles Chapel in 1961. He had moved there from Ellicott City in Maryland probably to be closer to Paul and family.

It was a Wednesday evening. Dad was preaching a “revival.” This usually meant a series of extra services with a guest preacher.

His sermon notes begin: “How good it is to be back with the folks of Broyles’ Chapel Church. I believe this is my second time to preach here … the first time for a revival effort … Our series of meetings will not be long … Wednesday through Sunday … The time will pass quickly… ”

He then mentioned Ben, his dad, who must have been sitting and listening to his youngest son, the preacher.

“Life is moving quickly away from us all … Dad has commented many times on how fast life is getting away from him … that he must do what he is going to do before it is too late …”

Ben would die in a few years from pancreatic cancer (February 22, 1966).

But not before Paul accepted a pastorate in Flint Michigan and moved himself and his family to Michigan (1963).

Reading through my Dad’s old sermons helps me remember him.

Here he is with his cousin Bill.

I do love the look on his face in the picture above. I always felt that Dad kept a distance from me (and others as well). I didn’t know him as well as one can know a father. But I do believe he loved me and his family.

I’m not sure, but I think this is a picture of him as well.

Church went pretty well yesterday. I taught my Gloria to the congregation. It was well received, I think. The singing was pretty extraordinary. I even noticed the spoken responses were delivered with gusto. Always a good sign.

There was applause during announcements when Jen thanked me for the Gloria. Wow.

Also many birthday wishes.

That was nice.

When I was rehearsing the Gloria before church, Jen wanted to quit rehearsing before I did. I had broken the Gloria up into sections. I had the congregation echo the choir singing it. But we hadn’t done it all the way through at the point Jen wanted to move on.

She quickly agreed to let me do it one more time. I told her we could can the prelude.

This actually gave us the time to run through it once more.

I had the people stand for this pregame run through. When we were done, I asked Jen if we could just go on and sing the opening hymn. When she said yes, I announced the hymn before people could be seated.

This is not the way I would want to do this usually. Liturgist say that this can lead to a sort of weird practice then play syndrome where the music in the service feels as much as a rehearsal as prayer. This didn’t seem to happen yesterday.

The choir sang the anthem well.

I kind of bombed on the closing hymn organ accompaniment. The hymn was “Savior like a shepherd lead us” (also the text of the choral anthem for the day). We sang the lovely “The King of love my shepherd is” as our second communion hymn. I had the (too) clever idea that the short closing hymn (2 verses) would benefit from an interlude based on the communion hymn.

This didn’t go so good. “The King of Love” is in three. “Savior like a shep” is in four. This was not insurmountable. I realized I would need to play “The King of Love” melody in duple meter to make it fit. But it just didn’t work. Oh well. That’s the nature of the way I improv. If I insist that I take chances in my music, if the risk is real, then sometimes inevitably I will fall flat on my face.

This I did. But we went on and they sang the last verse with no less conviction.

I did manage to get through my postlude pretty well (an excerpt of Parry’s chorale prelude on HANOVER “O Worship the King” – the opening hymn for the service).

After church, Charles Huttar talked to me about my nomination to The Guild of Scholars of the Episcopal Church. Chuck mentioned to me this summer that they had a meeting coming up and he would like to nominate as a member.

I was flabbergasted when he did this. They meet annually (here’s a link to their current info page which seems to be about last year’s meeting, they don’t seem to up to speed interweb wise which is kind of surprising).

Chuck said he would be interested in a couple of papers I could possibly give to this organization: one on Healey Willan and one on African-American music in American Episcopal worship.

I don’t think of myself as scholar but maybe by current standards I might barely qualify since I, you know, read and stuff.

I’ve used up my morning time doing upcoming psalms for Eileen to proof. I did figure out how to recreate the pointing using Finale. Here’s what it looks like:

The problem with this is that the person who puts together our weekly bulletin would not be able to correct mistakes in the psalm. Consequently, I mean to work even further ahead to give Eileen (and Chuck who also proofs weekly) a chance to find mistakes.

She is quite good at that.

Today is my 62nd birthday. I am definitely grateful to have lived this long.

My Anglican Chant Psalter arrived in the mail yesterday.

I got up this morning and compared my pointing to the pointing in it.  In a Psalm with 9 verses I found 5 differences. Now that I have read part of the introduction in this book, I see them as five mistakes. There is a very systematic approach suggested in the book which includes arranging accents right after bar lines in the chant. This makes for slightly different pointing.

I have decided to learn the last movement of Bach’s 6th Organ trio sonata. I haven’t learned any of this sonata. I do know one or two movements from the other five, so I guess it’s logical to add a movement from this one.

I do love the interwebs. The illustration above (the beginning of the movement I am learning) is in Bach’s original hand. How cool is that? I was wondering about those staccatos. Lo and behold there they are.

Yesterday was a busy day off for me. I did the farmers market, checked on my Mom (“How are you doing Mom?” “Awful!”), picked up the books she is done with, grocery shopped, went to library and got more books for her, dropped them off, practiced organ, exercised.

Today is the choir’s first Sunday after a rehearsal. I have high hopes I can help them sound good on today’s anthem. We are also introducing the Gloria from the Grace Jazz Mass composed by myself.  Hope that goes okay.

Haven’t put Links up in a while. Here are a few.

1. Jonathan Franzen: what’s wrong with the modern world | Books | The Guardian

Franzen reads satirist Karl Kraus and comes to some interesting insights.

2. How to Save the Syrians by Michael Ignatieff | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

Definitely a biased point of view, but one from the inside of the question.

3. Chico MacMurtrie’s Robot Musicians Perform in Brooklyn – NYTimes.com

Would love to hear and see this.

4. Why academics can’t write

I returned to reading T.S. Eliot and his biographies this morning. I haven’t recently had the calm morning to draw me back into this subject until today.

Lyndall Gordon’s reading of “East Coker” drew me back into this poem.

“Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly  new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one  has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion.”

“East Coker” 174-183a Four Quartets T. S. Eliot

Gordon points out that Eliot lifts lines practically intact from St. John of the Cross in “East Coker.”

Gordon (or someone) tracked down Eliot’s own library and found a translation which he owned of St. John of the Cross by E. Allison Peers.

Eliot:

“In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.”

“East Coker” 138-142

Peers translation of St. John of the Cross (quoted in a footnote by Gordon)

“In order to arrive at that which thou knowest not,
Thou must go by a way which thou knowest not,
In order to arrive at that which thou possessest not,
Thou must go by a way that thou possessest not.
In order to arrive at that which thou are not,
Thou must go through that which thou art not.

“The Ascent of Mount Carmel” I, xiii

Gordon then quotes Thomas Merton on St. John of the Cross and my head exploded as I read it.

At one time I was passionate about Merton. His approach to spirituality resonated with me and I read many of his books and life journals. I found them helpful as I tried to make sanity out of working in the Roman Catholic Church in the late 20th century.

My Merton collection is tucked away (along with numerous other books) waiting for me to reorganize my collection. Otherwise I would have put my hands on Merton this morning and read him along with Eliot and Lyndall Gordon.

Merton continues to haunt me.

Every morning I get up and do a few dishes while I wait for my coffee water to boil. I usually clean my Grandfather’s fishing knife which I use daily. As I was putting it back in the drawer this morning, I knicked myself. Nothing serious, just a surface cut. But I found it ironic that my Father’s Father’s knife left me a little wound. Like the small grief which I carry for both men.

I had some leisure time yesterday combined with fatigue. I ran across some of my Father’s files. He kept reams of files during his life. Files of sermons, resources for sermons and ministry, bills, you name it.

I preserved as many as I could.

I sat and browsed his files yesterday.

It’s funny how present my dead Father is in my life. His ashes are actually sitting on my front porch. My Mom was (is) in no state to decide what to do with them. I figure if she precedes me in death (as is likely) I will probably inter her and my Dad at the same time.

Anyway, reading your dead Father’s sermons must be a bit like reading your live Father’s blog. Most of what he says in his sermons is centered on his concern to help people with their spiritual life. This doesn’t interest me much. But I read them over looking for the good parts. Parts which reveal him. Parts which talk about the family.

I’m not sure what to do with all these sermons. Most of them could probably be thrown away and no one would miss them. I remember my Father’s Father also left a ton of sermons behind. Most are gone now I believe. I have a few stuck away waiting to be organized.

But I am interested when I find little gems in them.

In a sermon dated September 17, 1967 and titled “Lest We Worship the Family,” I find this story.

“I have chuckled many times over the experience which I had in Israel  this past July. We stopped our touring bus to visit a camp of Arabs. About four of us, Ernie Walters and I,plus some others, made our way up a dusty dirt road to the smelly tent on the hillside, while the rest of the party stayed in the bus. We walked into the camp, and two women met us giggling and laughing. We began taking pictures, and the giggling women cried, “Haram, Haram.” They gestured toward their tent, and peering inside we saw an old Arab sitting before a fire on which he was boiling bitter Turkish coffee.

‘Haram?’ I tried to understand.

‘Oh, Harem…family…you are his family.’

The women giggled some more and kept gesturing to the old men, so I went in and sat down to sip some coffee with him. I made a mental note to ask our guide about the word, and after a bit we returned to our bus.

As the bus started again, I asked Elijah our guide, what “Haram’ meant. Puzzled, he looked at me and said, “Haram? That means sin.” And as I explained what happened, he began to chuckle. In taking pictures of the women, I was sinning against the family. As a tourist, I could take the pictures and put the old man’s women in my pocket.”

I can remember hearing my Dad tell this story many times.

I have an 8:30 class and I’m running out time to blog. Maybe I’ll use my blog to preserve or at least share with any reader some of the little stories I find in my Father’s sermons.

I am pretty happy with the way my fall schedule is working out. Yesterday was a very full day spent mostly preparing for last night’s first choir rehearsal. I had my 8:30 AM ballet class, followed pretty quickly by my weekly meeting with my boss at church at 10:30 AM. The rest of the day I spent preparing for the evening rehearsal.

Reverend Jen and I decided to begin singing the Psalm to a more traditional Anglican chant. We have been using “simplified Anglican chant.”  This consists of chanting tones followed only by one note for each line. The congregation hasn’t been too bad with this.

Before my 8:30 class, I put together a sheet with a pointed psalm and six psalm tones on it for Rev Jen and I to consider at our meeting. (A pointed psalm is one in which the way the psalm should be sung is indicated.)

This shows the top of the sheet I made yesterday for Jen and me.

You’ll notice the underlined syllables. Technically the line should be above the syllables. Or at least that’s how the Hymnal 1982 does it.

I just went with the underlining due to time constraints. I also ordered a copy of Alec Wyton’s book The Anglican Chant Psalter in which he presumably “points” all the psalms in the Hymnal 1982.

At Jen’s suggestion I contacted another organist to ask if he knew any resources and/or how he did this sort of thing.

The guy’s name is Stephen White and he is an Episcopalian organist in Battle Creek.

I “friended” him a while back on Facebook when he came to my attention.

He was very cool about responding and sent me an email with a couple psalms attached to show me how he does it. He had the same dilemma I did: How to make a doc that looks like the hymnal. He ended up using back slashes and underlining.

This guy made my day by how quickly and graciously he responded to me out of the blue. This is so different from most of my experiences these days with other local musicians (Rhonda E excepted!).

Anyway, I ended up making up a working psalm for the choir to begin practicing last night.

I was in a hurry, but I believe that I could make a doc more like the Hymnal 1982 notation using my Finale software. It would be a bit of pain and the secretary could not edit it (which is a drawback, because I have been known to, ahem, make mistakes).

We also began rehearsing my bastardization of “In Paradisum” from Duruflé’s Requiem I mentioned yesterday. I am hoping this will be an easy anthem for people. I was a bit floored that no one in the choir knew Duruflé’s Requiem. I think it is a very fine piece. Not only that but  no one seemed to know the chant, “In Paradisum.”

I guess I find that odd because I have used this chant so much at Roman Catholic funerals.

Oh well.

Speaking of Roman Catholics, I had another colleagial moment yesterday when Nick Palmer (the Roman Catholic Cathedral dude in Grand Rapids) sent me a motet he has composed on commission. I think he wants me to look it over. We used to meet more often and trade composing tips. But he seems to be pretty busy these days.

Hell I’m glad to get an emailed composition to look over and think about.

ORGULOUS ORGANIST

[Warning! This section is probably

only interesting to insane word lovers.]

Once again this morning I found myself perusing the online Oxford English Dictionary.  I was reading “The Dark Years,” a poem by W. H. Auden and ran across these lines: “that the spirit orgulous may while it can/ conform to its temporal focus with praise.”

I finished the reading poem but wondered what the word meant.

The OED says that it means “haughty.” It is a revived archaicism: “Used once by Shakespeare, and retained in the 1634 modernization of Malory’s Morte Arthur, but apparently obsolete from the mid 17th cent. until revived as a historical archaism by Southey and Scott in the early 19th cent.”

The Shakespeare citation from the OED: “a1616   Shakespeare Troilus & Cressida (1623) Prol. 2   From Iles of Greece The Princes Orgillous, their high blood chaf’d, Haue to the Port of Athens sent their shippes.”

Auden is cited also by the OED: “1941   W. H. Auden New Year Let. 187   That the orgulous spirit may while it can Conform to its temporal focus with praise.”

These are the lines I read in “The Dark Years.” I’m not sure why the OED citation says they are in “The New Letter.” It doesn’t seem to be the name of the original book of poetry.

Not only that, but when I use these search terms “orgulous inauthor:auden” in Google Books (without the quote marks), I find the words are flipped in Auden’s book of poems, The Double Man in what is presumably the same poem.

Weird. I wonder if it’s (horrors!) an error in the OEd.

I was happy to see my beloved James Joyce cited in this entry: “1922   J. Joyce Ulysses ii. xiv. [Oxen of the Sun] 372   Then spoke young Stephen orgulous of mother Church that would cast him out of her bosom.”

What more could I ask of the sentences cited to illustrate a word in the OED? Shakespeare, Joyce and Auden. Cool beans.

I checked and the etymology of “organ” (as in pipe organ) is not related to “orgelous.” Heh.

One thing that has helped me when I am in the throes of reactivity (such as occurs when I am being over sensitive or thin-skinned) is to ask myself what is at stake. Most times, what has upset me is not important. Admittedly, this insight can only come after I calm down a bit. This can take an embarrassing amount of time. I am only calming down this morning from Monday. Good grief.

In the meantime, it looks like taking Tuesdays off is going to work. I did some composing, balanced my Mom’s checkbook and paid her bills, went to the bank and deposited some checks, and ended up at the organ console by 11:30 or so.

I did read through the last of the six Bach organ trios. I then counted up the movements I have performed and was surprised to find I have learned half of them (9 out of the 18). How about that?

I had planned to play a Praeludium of Böhm for a postlude last Sunday. I realized that the procedure on “Kick off Sunday” is that everyone traipses outside to have a group shot after Eucharist. This can happen quite quickly. After talking it over with the boss, we decided I would cancel the Böhm and improvise something I could then tailor to the time it took for this moment to happen.

The good part about this is that I scheduled the Böhm for the prelude for a week from next Sunday. This is good because I can pick sounds that will work better if I don’t have to use loud sounds (usually necessary to be heard at my church during the postlude). There are not that many sounds on my little organ.

So I found a different postlude for a week from Sunday. I chose and rehearsed a piece called “Festival Finale” by Henry Coleman in one of my Oxford collections.

It’s a goofy thing. But it is Anglican and flashy. Sort of a poor man’s Gigout type toccata.

I came home and worked on an arrangement I want my choir to sing on the last Sunday of this month. I was surprised to learn that a couple of the music profs from Hope are scheduled to give a presentation that Sunday before church. I would like to attend it and am planning on a short pregame that day. The anthem I put together is a bastardized version of the last movement of Duruflé’s Requiem.

I took the movement, put it down a major third. I gave all of the gregorian chant (In Paradisum) to the choir. In the original, Duruflé begins with the sopranos singing the chant. Then about half way through the chant melody continues in the organ (or orchestra in the orchestra version). The choir then has a new section. I gave this to the accompaniment and made the piece a Unison and Organ piece.

I then reworked the chant a bit so that the English translation from the Hymnal 1982 would fit it. I was amused to see that this translation was by Theodore Marier (pictured below) who is a notoriously reactive and conservative Roman Catholic dude.

I am a bit sheepish about this piece. I have been thinking about my understanding of the chant, “In Paradisum.” I realize that my musical conception was pretty much handed to me by Duruflé’ in this movement. It is a gorgeous thing.

It will make a nice anthem that hopefully won’t need too much prep on that Sunday.

I am a damn introvert. I mean by this that I am overly sensitive to interactions with other humans. I often describe myself as “thin-skinned.” However much a fault this is, it is something that I can only hide, but have difficulty changing.

Yesterday battered around the introvert in me. I had interactions with people who were obtuse and people who were inspiring. Both leave me a bit dizzy.

I use this space (and have for decades) to write notes to myself. I do it knowing that this is a public space, a place where anyone might drop in and read a few words. So I try to discipline myself to be appropriate for that reason.

I have been journaling for most of my conscious adult life. I even have some journals from my late teens still laying around.

I don’t want to dwell on my experience of obtuse people yesterday.

I have found this can be like a rehearsal of emotion to continue to recount it. Suffice it to say, that living in the United States today brings me into frequent contact with people who deride with a pleasant face and take one look at me and see only what they abhor. Whippy skippy.

But for my inspiration (which happened after the first experience) I find that rehearsing and recounting can have a more positive effect. My inspiring moment yesterday was when the ballet instructor I was working with chatted me up. In the course of our conversation she asked me if I would be interested in collaborating on a piece. I told her I would. I have found her inspiring and interesting to work with as a teacher and would be interested to find out what she would be like to work with as a collaborator.

Whether this ever comes to fruition is almost moot. The conversation and idea itself is one that I treasure.

I have found myself very interested in collaborating at a time when I also find myself sort of isolated. I am mostly thankful for this isolation (my experience with the typically obtuse yesterday bears this out).

But I try to stay on the lookout for other minds to connect with.

Of course I do this daily with great minds in books and music. This is part of my high quality of life.

I managed to play through the fifth Bach organ trio yesterday despite my dizziness from sitting through some uncomfortable interaction. I will probably continue on and finish the set today and play through number six. I have a strong attraction to trios and trio sonatas. I have enjoyed many performances and rehearsals at harpsichord, organ and piano of trios. I love my weekly piano trio rehearsal.

Again it’s a matter of collaboration, but also a matter of texture. I like three and four part clarity in music. I have never been overly attracted to the large symphonic sound in music. Of course I enjoy it, but I love being connected with the chamber sound, whether that is listening to string quartets, playing in an ensemble or playing alone by myself.

My schedule is settling in. I adjusted yesterday and did some of the tasks I usually do on Tuesday thus allowing me to have Tuesday mostly free. This means that I might be able to have a lighter schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays through Saturdays. The hope is not only that I have time for myself but that I will be able to do some composing.

I’m up early again this morning. This time in order to have time to print up a few posters to put up at the college. It was my idea to publicize an upcoming meeting featuring Yun Kyong Kim, “The Performer Within You! planning, practicing and performing for concert artists.” I thought the topic should interest any young performer and might attract some non-organist Hope college music majors.

Probably not, I know. But still I will make some posters today. I realized later that I needn’t have gotten up this early. I won’t have a change to put the posters up after my 8:30 class since I am planning on having coffee with Rhonda and a new guy to the area, “Gene.”

I purchased four new ink cartridges to install in my printer. Hopefully I will be able to make a nice poster using this pic of Yun Kyong Kim.

Yesterday was a big Sunday in the life of my church. They call it Kick-off Sunday. Yesterday’s service featured one of those “modern” rites developed to help fill the voids in our culture: “Stepping Up.” It is a rite that recognizes the the transition from childhood to early adulthood. At least that’s what I got out of it.

As usual, it’s quite wordy. At least my boss put the rite directly into the bulletin instead of the usual inserts (something which I have mentioned as weird and distracting).

What I like most about the rite is the movement of the people. On the right (stage left), begin the young people and their parents and other adult figures. On the left are waiting older young people who have presumably gone through this rite themselves earlier. In the course of the rite (which is pretty wordy…. yesterday it included a psalm which was recited by the people in front with an antiphon spoken by all) the young people are prayed over by the priest and parent figures and then get up and walk over to join the other kids.

Very cool. At least I think so.

It reminded me yesterday of a description of a group of people who were meeting for some purpose I can’t recall. As sort of an exercise of development and identity they arranged themselves in order by age. The clarity this gave the group moved them deeply. Again this must have filled a ritual gap in lives.

As I was doing dishes earlier this morning, I was thinking of some “secret” pianists I know.

One is a professor. He is known mostly for his erudition and scholarship (not in music). Few people know that he is a “secret pianist” who plays Beethoven privately on his piano. The other person is a bureaucrat in a local government office. One day I caught her sitting at the piano playing Beethoven alone. A “secret pianist.”

It bothers me that our society has shut these people down a bit. Both choose not to share their music. Presumably out of a sense of inadequacy or shyness.

I continually return to Christopher Small’s idea of “musicking,” music as verb and owned by all not just the virtuosi and trained players and professors.

Yesterday at church, it was an especially festive celebration of the Eucharist. The people sang lustily. Before and after service sounds of people connecting filled the air, bustling.

The “musicking” of these people inspires me. I love being in the room and participating in their song.

I have been returning to the pleasure I derive from music. Playing hymns with congregations is one of these. Playing Bach anytime anywhere is another.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday of last week, I played through one of Bach’s trio sonatas for organ. I have been working through them in order. Today I will probably play through the fifth one. This is such a joy to me, this music.

I remember talking with a couple of very fine young organists who had just completed their undergraduate degree in organ performance. One mentioned that his teacher said he didn’t need to go for a masters. Instead he should devote his time to learning the six Bach organ trios.

I take this to mean they are the equivalent of a graduate degree when mastered. I buy that.

It is fun for me, because I don’t realize how many of them I have learned and performed over the years. A good number. I’ll probably figure it out after I play through all six (they each consist of three movements).

I have also played through Beethoven’s opus 119, a set of Bagatelles. I had only a couple years of formal training on piano. We didn’t get to the Bagatelles. This opus is one Beethoven wrote near the end of his life. The Groves online dictionary rather snobbishly calls the first six of the set “trifles” and points out that Beethoven described them as ‘Kleinigkeiten (German for “trifles).

This is the same word C. F. Peters used when he wrote to Beethoven about these when he decided not to publish them: “You should consider it beneath your dignity to waster your time on such trifles which anyone could have written.”

Beethoven rebuked Peters and wrote that he  “had no artistic judgment.” I found this information on their correspondence in the critical apparatus of my little edition which I purchased used from my previous teacher Craig Cramer

It may be that I am attracted to “trifles.” My beloved deceased prof, Ray Ferguson, used to cheerfully confess being attracted to light music. Of course he was talking about the French Baroque which is hardly “light” music but is sometimes heard that way by listeners.

I am intrigued by Beethoven’s use of Bagatelles am interested in the next set he wrote, opus 126. I just ordered a copy of his complete Bagatelles online for under 10 bucks (including S & H). I love the interwebs.

Usually I’m a defender of how tech impacts the quality of my life. And in general I am very happy with the ways the digital technology has improved my access to information via books, online reference access, music and people. I also realize that digital technology has changed the way I do many things. For example moving from typing on paper to typing on a screen and only printing it on paper if need be. Also making music notation and recording have improved immensely due to new tech . All good stuff.

The basic bug I have is poor design. Or at least that”s how it seems to me.

One recent problem I have had is with a little application on my phone called Evernote.

The idea is great. I should be able to make little notes to keep on my phone. I can do it online so I can type them in with a larger keyboard (I text but am not proficient at it. Some of this is that I have a scar on one thumb which makes thumb texting next to impossible). Also Evernote allows one to append a picture or a recording to a note. It even has a clever little box you can put in a note so you can check things off a list. All good, right?

But recently I have found relying on this app is not a good idea. More than once I have found myself in a store and unable to pull up the latest version of a list of stuff I have wanted to remember. It should sync automatically across platforms, right? Not so.

The final straw came this week when I had pinned (as they say) a couple of notes on the access window of my phone. Evernote allows one to take a picture of a web site and then recall it in a note. I had done this with a couple of books I wanted to look at when I was at the library. It’s the equivalent of jotting down a call number for a book.

Only it’s not. Because when I called up the notes, instead of seeing my note I saw a little message that said my note was loading and would I like to upgrade my Evernote to Premium (i.e. pay version). The note never loaded and I ended up looking up books at the library’s online card catalog.

Yesterday I went grocery shopping. I simply took the list from the fridge and put it on a clip board. High tech.

And while I’m bitching, I am annoyed by the design of web pages (like the New York Times) that insist on having two pages for an article. So if I notice an article is several web pages long, the first thing I do is try to get a single page in front of me. I do this because I often have to refer back and forth in an article and it is cumbersome and annoying to have to load each page back and forth in order to do this.

I also have decided that moving things on the computer screen should be a matter of choice for the viewer.

I have found that movement on a screen draws my eye and interrupts my concentration.

No doubt that’s the intended effect. It reminds me of a famous quote (famous to me) of an advertising exec I read in a news report once, “People LIKE advertising,” the dope said.

Well, this person doesn’t.

And my final complaint (in THIS list) is when I pull up a page online and it automatically begins audio or video or often both. I have been known to simply close the window and either re-evaluate my need for the information I was seeking (i.e. forget it) or find it elsewhere.

I attribute some of my frustration to my own eccentricities, but surely some of this is bad design.

Life is going good. As usual. I’m a lucky guy and I know it.

I preface this post with those comments because what I want to talk about probably sounds self-serving and full of self-pity but of course I don’t think it is.

I have been noticing how much I am still the person I was when I was an alienated teen and then later an alienated musician and book store person.

I know that I have changed because I know that personality is fluid and never static.

But I have been struck by how my interests and concerns, specifically love of words and sounds, are so far away from what seems important to others.

Usually I just feel lucky about my passions. But I can’t help but notice that many of the people I see and am around are unhappy. From my vantage, they often seem to be running after something.

Usually I don’t feel that they even much notice me as they struggle in their daily lives which for the most part are ones of privilege and ease.

But enough about them. What I want to say is how much I value being able to spend time reading, looking up words, thinking about ideas, playing music, studying music, and the other things I do.

Some of what has brought on these musings is the final chapters in Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Chapter 38 has the title, “Experienced Wellbeing.” In it, Kahneman cites some pretty weird studies that attempt to scientifically determine people’s happiness. I think he’s way out to lunch with his methodology and underlying assumptions.

This is weird because I have learned so much from him in the other parts off the book.

But what he is missing is good old wisdom. It seems so obvious to me that satisfaction in life is connected to making meaning out your daily existence.

The meaning that I have found and am thinking about gets me thinking about myself as a young teen entranced with poetry and music. For some reason I fell in love with poetry. I remember spending hours alone reading it (Dylan Thomas, mostly, but others as well). This love has evolved to include love of ideas and a realization that part of poetry for me is a love of both words and ideas.

I also spent hours and hours alone making music. It was amateurish to be sure. Plunking at piano or guitar. Usually alone, but not always.

That young teen that was me had few people he could relate to about poetry and music. It’s not unusual for teens to be alienated. Kind of a stereotype really.

But as I walk the streets of my little Western Michigan town in my sixties, I realize that my emotional terrain is still connected to myself as a young teen.

What interests me (using the internet as a huge reference warehouse, the beauty of words and sounds, and other stuff) seems moot to those I meet.

As I spend my time reading poetry, books, and playing Beethoven, Bach and others on piano and organ, I feel incredibly lucky and connected to meaning. I even find immense satisfaction in my daily work at church and in ballet class.

I know this is possible because I am well loved, well fed and taken care of. Those things obviously have to come first for humans.

This is why when I’m thinking clearly at all, I feel lucky.

I realized this morning that Charles Taylor’s book, A Secular Age, is essentially a philosophical work. His wikipedia article calls him “Charles Taylor (philosopher).”

This is to disambiguate him from “Charles Taylor (Liberian politician).”

I turned to the bio on the flyleaf this morning to learn that he is professor emeritus in philosophy at MacGill University. I was wondering about this because of how engaging I find the story he is telling in the book I am reading.

He is seeking through history, philosophy, sociology, art and all other disciplines of humanities to explain how we got ourselves where we are now: a situation where “exclusive humanism” is a viable way to live. By “exclusive humanism,” he means something like humanism which precludes a religious faith. This comes about historically by a historical ebbing of  “naive” and “enchanted” understandings of the world both religious and superstitious.

I am drawn into his conversation prose which has a erudition that ranges widely over many disciplines. It was a footnote of his that led me to read Peter Berger’s book, A Far Glory. 

So I figure it’s a combination of philosophy, sociology and history that draws me to these two men’s work.

Yesterday I pretty much had an honest day off.

I did some work for church, but mostly spent the day playing Bach on organ and piano and doing a little reading.

Very satisfying. My fall schedule looks as though Thursday through Saturday will be a weekly light time for me. I have one class on Friday morning, but the rest of the time I will be able to structure myself for some seriously goofing off with Bach and books.

Today I’m thinking wordplay.

Charles Taylor in his book The Secular Age talks about Descartes.

I’ve always  had a soft spot for Descartes. I was introduced to him in a college logic class and continue to dip into his works from time to time.

Taylor points out the way Descartes uses the word, “generosity,” to mean something much different than the modern sense of this word.

“This word meant something different in the seventeenth century. It designates the lively sense one has of one’s rank, and of the honour which attaches to it, which motivates one to live up to the demands of one’s station… heroes [in stage plays of Descartes time] are always declaring their ‘générositié’ as the reason for the striking, courageous and often gruesome acts they are about to commit.”

I was intrigued and checked it out in the Oxford Dictionary of English. Sure enough, there tons of quotes to illustrate this obsolete mean of the word.

Under the definition “Aristocratic birth or lineage; nobility” was this lovely quote:

“1572 J. Bossewell Wks. Armorie f. 13v, Sentences concerning generositie, collected out of sundrye Aucthors, and firste certayne verses, made by G. Chaucer, teaching what is gentleness, or who is worthy to bee called gentle.”

Another definition moves a bit toward our modern understanding of “generosity.”

“Character or conduct characteristic of or befitting a person of noble birth, esp. nobility of spirit. Now in weakened sense: willingness to lay aside resentment or forgive injuries; magnanimity; fair-mindedness. Formerly also: spec. †courage (obs.).”

You can hear this in the phrase, “generosity of spirit,” which sort of combines the obsolete meaning with the modern. I usually read through the sentences provided to illustrate the meaning of words in the OED. Here’s a great one for generosity.

“2001   Cape Times 25 May ii. 12/3   South Africans lack a generosity of spirit and would much rather actively resent the success of others than be happy that success means one less lumpen pissing on the pavement.”

Yesterday I found myself thinking of the phrase, “duty and delight.”

Some used it at staff. I know it as the title of Erik Routley’s Festschrift.

I was wondering where the phrase comes from. I found myself using it talking to my student, Rudy, yesterday. We worked on two measures for about forty minutes. It was quite intense. He understood that passage but was having difficulty executing it. When we moved from that piece to a Scriabin prelude, I refrained from doing much constructive criticism and made him play it three times all the way through. For the third time, I removed all the stuff on his baby grand and opened the lid. I reminded him how much better it sounds now that he had a piano technician work on it.

The last time through I could tell that he was letting himself enjoy it more. That’s when I mentioned “duty and delight.”

Besides Routley’s own hymn quoted in the subtitle of the Festschrift (“In praise of God meet duty and delight”), the editors give two more references for the phrase: an Isaac Watts version of Psalm 147 and the United Reformed Church (of Scotland I guess) Book of Worship second eucharistic prayer.

I have penciled in the margin of my copy of this book that the two words are used in conjunction St. Augustine’s City of God as found in translation and excerpted in Robert Wright’s Readings for the Daily Office from the Early Church, p. 425

“[God] will be the goal of all our longings; and we shall see him for ever; we shall love him without surfeit; we shall praise him without wearying. This will be the duty, the delight, the activity of all, shared by all who share the life of eternity.”

I’m having to write my blog posts earlier and earlier because my days are starting earlier. Yesterday, I had an 8:15 AM Urologists appointment (annual prostrate check– all is well in this area). This morning, in order to pick up our CSA package before noon, I am choosing to get over to the Farmers Market when it opens at 8 AM.

This means having to plan my morning a bit different. I still managed to do most of my morning ritual reading. I begin with a few pages of Daniel Kahnemen’s Thinking Fast and Slow. Then I read  marvelous poem by W. H. Auden called “The Riddle.”

I think it helps to read Auden in order. I am slowly working my way a poem or two at a time through Part VI of his collected poems. The years this section covers are 1939 through 1947. These were devastating times in the U.K. WWII and the aftermath.

Also I have read critics who say this is a turning point in Auden’s work. Be that as it may, I am enjoying his work.

“The Riddle” follows a poem called “Like a Vocation.” In the latter poem, Auden seems to be understanding his love for his lover as similar to understanding one’s vocation in life. Very beautiful. In “The Riddle,” he returns to his need to see things clearly  however disturbing.

The “riddle” is that we heighten our experience of existence raise our experience existence when we love each other, but the ensuing clarity brings us to the realization that we live in a “savage solitude” (I love that phrase). And we are only able to discover this in the “eyes of” our “beloved.” “Existence is enough” even though we are ultimately alone.

I think Auden gets the paradoxical mix right: redemption, the  mirror of our self in the eyes of the one we love and our ultimate savage solitude. Nice.

After Auden, I turned once again to A Secular Age by Charles Taylor. Then a few electronic pages of Peter Berger’s A Rumor of Angels. These last two thinkers are helping me understand my relationship to religion in my life. Both write in a conversational manner. Both flirt with profundity. It’s a good way to start my day.

I’m feeling pretty good about all the tasks that were facing me at the beginning of the week. Yesterday I was able to outline a list of anthems for my choir to learn and perform between now and Advent (December). I drew almost exclusively on anthems in the library this time.

The only exception was planning to do a little adaptation of “In Paradisum” from Duruflé’s Requiem. I purchased a use copy of the organ score of this wonderful work this summer. I have come to realize that it was in performing this work (in the chorus) that I first truly had the rich experience that simple Gregorian chants can provide.

Duruflé wrote this requiem to honor his father. He chose to base it on  chants that were the daily ordinary chants sung in the Catholic church. First hearing these chants through Duruflé’s beautiful prism  of his composition was an experience of a lifetime.

Now at least I know that the melodies like In Paradisum are for me rooted in his understanding and use of them, despite the fact of having used them in many various ways myself.

In this arrangement I will give the chant to the choir (Duruflé begins with it in the Sopranos but then hands it on to the organ/orchestra and has the choir sing a love choral part) and give the organ the other parts. It should make an easy and beautiful anthem which won’t annoy too many people unless they know the Duruflé well.

I passed a young dance teacher in the hall yesterday. He seems to know me. He was dressed in sweats and looked to have been exercising. He took his ear pod out of one ear and greeted me. He said something about getting back into the routine. We agreed it wasn’t all bad. Back at it.

I manage to complete a couple of tasks on my list yesterday. I finished picking hymns through June 8, 2014. I emailed my boss, my secretary and my brother. I put the hymns for the rest of the church year in the ema il. At the end of the email I put a  link to a permanent URL for the rest of the hymns (Year A in the lectionary or system of readings). I’ve made it a public link.

I also managed to get all of the choir stuff out of the church basement and up into the new choir room. (The pic above is what it looked like a week or so ago). I was able to do this because someone had already taken up most of the boxes of choral music.

There are fewer drawers in the new choir room for music. I can’t imagine what the buildings and grounds committee was thinking. I filled the drawers they provided (that would be nine lateral drawers) and left the rest arranged in boxes. I will ask my boss if I can have some of my old file cabinets back or just leave music in boxes. Kind of a weird way to go, but I don’t really mind. These are the old files:

The closet doors below are now painted. Thank goodness for the closets in the new room. I was able to throw a lot of junk in them so that I can have neat room this Sunday morning for rehearsal.

I was looking at some notes I have made about a new composition yesterday. I jotted them down in a moment of inspiration a week or so ago.  I was surprised when I put my analytic mind to work and discovered the coherence of ideas I had initially just thought of as beautiful or nice to hear.

This reinforces one of my youthful prejudices which is that music that attracts is often structured in a coherent and proportional way.  I have doubted this at this stage of my aesthetic. Now I am much more likely to evaluate music by considering whether I am attracted to it.

I see this as a reaction to years of evaluating it more about how it was constructed, harmonically, motivically. And also looking at overall structural plans of larger works, between movements.

Now I am much more likely to listen closely to my own response to the music.

This was pretty much a conscious change I made about thirteen or so years ago when I moved into my midlife crisis phase.

Anyway, I find it’s better if I’m not too specific about a new compositional project until it is well underway.

It somehow seems to sabotage it otherwise. Not always, but often.

I think it’s a good idea to have Tuesdays and Thursdays ballet free. Ideally I would like to do some composing on those days. Today I will probably concentrate on choosing anthems for the upcoming choral season. This is actually made easier after examining the readings and choosing hymns for a Sunday, something I have already done for all the Sundays of the upcoming church season.

1.Compensation for Your Travel Troubles – NYTimes.com

If you ever take global flights, this article is worth looking at. Apparently there are European rules about passengers receiving compensation for airline screw-ups. At least outside of the USA. Good to know.

2. Walking While Black in the ‘White Gaze’ – NYTimes.com

This writer eloquently punctures the illusion many white people seem to maintain about the state of our society and our history. I didn’t learn too much from it, but enjoyed the articulate way he puts things. “White gaze” is the gaze that objectifies people of color from humans to objects.

I also liked this lovely bit of historical hate facts:

“David Hume claimed that to be black was to be “like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly.” And Immanuel Kant maintained that to be “black from head to foot” was “clear proof” that what any black person says is stupid. In his “Notes on Virginia,” Thomas Jefferson wrote: “In imagination they [Negroes] are dull, tasteless and anomalous,” and inferior. In the first American Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1798), the term “Negro” was defined as someone who is cruel, impudent, revengeful, treacherous, nasty, idle, dishonest, a liar and given to stealing.

My point here is to say that the white gaze is global and historically mobile. And its origins, while from Europe, are deeply seated in the making of America.”

Today I begin my fall schedule in earnest. Hope College has classes on Labor day so I have my 8:30 AM class this morning. I haven’t quite worked out how I will do my mornings on the days I have the early class (MWF). This morning I did some initial reading as usual in Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow, then I made coffee. While the water for coffee comes to a boil I have been doing dishes and cleaning the kitchen.

Then I usually sit down and read for an hour. I don’t really have the time to do that and post here this morning. So I’m skipping some of my morning reading.

Supposedly the choir room is now ready for me to move all the stuff into it which has been in the church basement. I have dozens of boxes of music to move and put in the new file cabinets. My boss keeps asking me if I need help doing this. I have told her no so far, but this morning it hit me that this huge task should be done this week along with my other self imposed tasks like picking out hymns and choral anthems for the year.

Stuff to do, I guess.

Yesterday the music went pretty well at church.

Eileen skipped church. This is the last Sunday in a while she will be able to do this without also skipping choir. I think that was a factor.

Daughter Sarah called and we chatted with her a bit on the phone.

She seems to be doing pretty well.

I haven’t been putting links up here but I have been continuing to bookmark interesting articles.

Here’s a few.

1, Norman Rush’s Brilliantly Broken Promise – NYTimes.com

I found this  article so interesting that I accidentally went an extra five minutes on the treadmill while reading it. I think I have read some of this author’s work. I pulled out one of his novels and read a bit in it yesterday after reading this article.

2. Liberal Education in Authoritarian Places – NYTimes.com

This talks about how US colleges quickly abandon their principles in order to get the business in other countries. How disheartening.

3. San Bernardino: A Hub of Food Activity | Mark Winne

Interesting article about skipping middle men in food distribution and increasing quality. Thanks to David J for putting this up on Facebook.

4.Benjamin Britten’s Lost Score for ‘Les Sylphides’ – NYTimes.com

I always love these stories about how scholars find a work by someone that has been lost. It feels like a musical detective story.

5.Mahalia Jackson, and King’s Improvisation – NYTimes.com

For some reason in my aural memory of Martin Luther King’s greet speech I also have Mahalia Jackson’s voice in my ear: “Tell ’em about the dream, Martin!”

I emailed my adult kids and Eileen the full version of yesterday’s blog (with words and pics) after Sarah said she’d like to hear the whining. I believe that covers many of my regular readers. But if you happen to be perversely interested here’s a link to it.

I dither about what’s appropriate to write here and also what is boringly redundant (nothing new, Jupe’s bitching about stupidity, ignorance and provincialism…. ahem).

Seamus Heaney died recently.

This morning after reading a couple of poems by Auden, I turned to my only book by him, Beowolf: A new verse translation. 

I read part of the essay “About the Translation” and enjoyed it. I will probably seek out a bit more of him to read. It’s how I learn: via obits. People die and I notice them and get curious.

I had the entire day free yesterday to devote to my various impending tasks. I started with the most onerous and balanced our checkbook and paid bills. We have been racking up a sizable debt with this dang renovation. Time to pay it down.

Then I chose hymns.

Manged to get through Lent 2014 yesterday (through April 6, 2014). I would dearly love to get hymns chosen for the entire choir season (Through Pentecost 2014, June 8, 2014) but I am beginning to feel the choral season breathing down my neck.

I sketched in anthems for the rest of this year, but have not finalized any. I am thinking of drawing significantly on the choral library we own at Grace which is huge if dated.

I spent an hour on the string quartet transcription I am working on, then went to church and practiced organ for a couple of hours. For the sheer pleasure of it, I have added a daily rehearsing of a Bach trio and fugue to my daily practice. This makes it more fun for me. Yesterday I played all the way through the first trio in Eb and a couple of Bach fugues. This music inspires me and reminds me what  a privilege it is to spend time with this music and the mind that made it.

I was reminded of this this morning when I read these lines in Auden: “messengers who walked/ Into my life from books where they were staying,/ Those beautiful machines which never talked…. love was the word they never said aloud.” (From “The Prophets”)

Before going to practice I stopped off at the library to pick up a book and say hi to Eileen.

I inter-library-loaned Double Feature by Owen King.

He’s another of the literary family of Kings. Not sure I will actually get through this one, but am intending to try each author in the extended  Stephen King fam.

When I came home, I tried to rest but quickly became restless and fired up the Music Notation software once again and bore down on this silly arrangement. I have been transcribing (illegally, unethically) a fine little string quartet arrangement of a Iron and Wine/Postal Service tune that I was pointed to by the people who need a version of it for an upcoming wedding. I presume an arrangement cannot be purchased. This is almost always the case.

Anyway, I decided to omit many of the clever parts and just get a version of it done. Which is exactly what I did. Now I don’t have to worry about that any more.

This morning at church for the prelude I am going to play through the Gloria I have written for the congregation. I will play the melody through clearly, improvise for a bit, and then finish with the melody again and a bit of a flourish for an ending.

It is the vulnerability of these moments that draws  me into feeling that other musicians in the congregation may find my work a bit laughable.

I thought of the many academics in my life this morning (both present on Sunday mornings and tucked into my memory) when I was reading Seamus Heaney’s essay.

He is talking about language academics but I related to the idea of finding a “loophole” from the “partitioned” intellects. He was excited that his passion for the Irish language (which he was deprived of as a native language as a boy growing up in Ireland) had led him “into further language.”

“The place on the language map where the Usk and the uisce and the whiskey  coincided was definitely a place where the spirit might find a loophole, an escape route from what John Montague has called the “partitioned intellect,” away into some unpartitioned linguistic country, a region where one’s language would not be a simple badge of ethnicity or a matter of cultural preference or official imposition, but an entry into further language.”

Heaney is talking about his discovery that the English word, whiskey, not only came from the Irish word for water (uisce) but also was the source for the name of the British river, The Usk.

It is just this feeling of excitement and privilege and relief I have about being able to connect so many “further languages” of music despite the partitioned intellects I rub shoulders with both figuratively (from the past) and literally (here in jolly old Hollyland).