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But it all went pretty well including the rehearsals last night at the end of the day.
I’m seriously thinking of cutting down the Bach cantata movement. I woke at 4 AM this morning and was laying in bed realizing that it’s a bit long winded and that I could easily cut down the orchestral ritornello that I am learning on the organ and still have an excellent little choral version.
One of the sopranos (who did NOT show up last night) has said repeatedly that the piece is an organ piece with choral back up since the voices keep coming in to do little fugal sections on each phrase of the chorale.
The choral sections are really the part I’m interested in having performed that Sunday. And even if I had a little orchestra or some other instruments available to play the orchestra part with me, at this point I think I would trim it to help modern listeners and increase its effectiveness for use in liturgy.
I have landed on two Couperin pieces from the Mass for the Convents to play a week from this Sunday.
I will be using much gentler stops than this excellent player (on what sounds like a good organ…. out of tune in places?) especially on the Postiv sections. More like what this player chose for the “white note” or slower section in the middle. I think this is a charming piece and sounds very Louie XIV to me.
For the postlude I am planning the short but elegant “Deo Gratias” from the same Mass.
I love this music.
That’s about all I have time for this morning. I don’t want to miss my rescheduled Urologist appointment (ahem…. like I did Monday).
P.S. Comcast called yesterday and knocked 15 bucks off my monthly bill for me. When the courteous operator asked me if that made me happier, I said it made me 15 dollars a month happier.
I guess Mark Casem or some other Comcast minion gets paid to google Comcast daily (Hi Mark!) because whenever I have mentioned my dissatisfaction with their service he has commented (see yesterday’s blog comments and probably today’s).
I emailed him my complaints (or whoever gets the email at We_can_help@cable.comcast.com address). Not hopeful much will change until I get off my butt and switch services. Mostly I am upset that somehow they changed their service (different corporate owner?) and about that time my bill skyrocketed (my original discount offer ended and apparently they weren’t offering anything else when I called. I ended up using less services. It’s still higher than the original bill. By a lot. Plus the internet goes down intermittently. Often at inconvenient times.)
Anyway.
I finished the string quartet transcription yesterday shortly before my ballet class. So that’s done.
Still haven’t landed on some Couperin for a week from Sunday’s organ music.
I forgot to put my piano lesson on my google calendar.
Subsequently, when my boss emailed me about a meeting I was supposed to attend at the time the lesson was scheduled, I just went to the meeting.
When I got home there was a message and an email from my student asking me about it. Oops.
He was pretty gracious and we rescheduled for next week. This time I put it on the google calendar.
My ballet instructor has asked for some Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff.
This is so tricky, because first I have to make sure any piece I offer has regular phrases (often music doesn’t have the regimented phrases needed for ballet class combinations), secondly she is probably not thinking of piano literature per se, but more popular symphonic and ballet themes in the style.
Tomorrow I am playing a mini concert at my Mom’s nursing home. I have been too busy to learn much for it. I am thinking of playing the very first prelude (in C major) in Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier. This is sort of a famous piece. Lots of piano students learn it. There’s the “Ave Maria” that Gounod put to it.
To make it interesting, I thought I would also play the fugue with it and put it into a bit of context to the audience.
Besides that, I’m thinking light classics (as well as the usual WWII pop music and hymns). I checked out some books yesterday from the library because I couldn’t find my own collections of this sort of stuff.
I’m going to check them for Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff themes as well.
This is my third Wednesday where I have an 8:30 AM class and an evening of church and rehearsals that ends around 9 PM. Long day for an old guy.
I couldn’t find mention of this public interview of this prominent conservative on a conservative news web site yesterday. Maybe I’m out of the loop, eh?
I partially blame Comcast for screwing up my annual Urology exam yesterday. I knew it was in the afternoon. I went to check my Google Calendar and Comcast was not providing Internet signal. This happens from time to time. Usually it’s quite brief. But yesterday it quit working several times. So that each time I checked my calendar, it was down.
It was working other times that I didn’t check my calendar. I only partly blame Comcast. I mostly blame myself.
I took my computer to work to double check the time. I forgot to do so. Instead I sat down and practiced right through my 1 PM appointment.
I am aware that forgetting one’s appointment to have someone talk to you about cancer and put their finger up your butt might not be all inadvertent. But yesterday it was certainly not conscious.
And the entire day was like that. Sometimes there’s a little cloud over my head that causes little things not to work over and over. After my appointment, I went back to Mom’s car which I drove just to run it around a bit. I couldn’t get my key to work to unlock the door on the driver’s side. I tried the latch and the door swung open.
At this point I looked in the car and realized it was not my Mom’s car. Oops. Same color.
This sort of thing happened to me over and over yesterday.
There were some good parts of the day. I was able to chat with daughter Elizabeth. First time I have connected with her in a bit. She and her lovely partner Jeremy are moving to Beijing. He is there now. They are both excited and terrified.
I just read an email from my daughter Sarah in which she offers to help me update my web site software. Ever since I got locked out of an old version I have been terrified of doing this. It would be extremely cool if she helped me do this (Hi Sarah!).
I have decided to schedule some Couperin or other Baroque classic organ music for prelude and postlude on 9/30. Unfortunately after hitting my Bach pieces (cantata movement and now a prelude and fugue and probably a trio) I got bogged down in which Couperin to use.
I had to submit the music this morning without the prelude and postlude in it yet. This is fine for the secretary because she’s mostly interested in which hymns she will have to cut and paste and make fit. My prelude and postlude is just a line in the final bulletin which won’t be printed until a week from Friday.
After I finish blogging and catching up entirely on email, today’s project is to finish that dang string quartet transcription.
It was on the list yesterday, but by the time I figured out I was having one of those days when the “bar eats you.”
So it seemed like a dumb idea to try to work on it yesterday. But my schedule gives me a morning free today, so it’s top of the list.
These are a couple of comments from the left that I couldn’t resist bookmarking. In the first, Nicholas Kristof ticks off Romney’s latest bumbling. In the second, Maureen Dowd does a good job of recapping some of the damage done by neocons.
The “Senor” in the following quote is Dan Senor who is now Paul Ryan’s foreign affairs adviser.
As the spokesman for Paul Bremer during the Iraq occupation, Senor helped perpetrate one of the biggest foreign policy bungles in American history. The clueless desert viceroys summarily disbanded the Iraqi Army, forced de-Baathification, stood frozen in denial as thugs looted ministries and museums, deluded themselves about the growing insurgency, and misled reporters with their Panglossian scenarios of progress.
“Off the record, Paris is burning,” Senor told a group of reporters a year into the war. “On the record, security and stability are returning to Iraq.
I have skimmed this one and have some real misgivings about the language of analysis in this context. It’s being redefined away from my own understanding of music analysis and toward a technical understanding limited to popular music. Yikes.
I value the fact that people who have “friended” me on Facebook have such diverse ways of seeing life. I’m especially happy to have “friends” there that see things so differently from me.
This includes people who I think of as more in keeping with the majority of Americans, that is, who have problems with government regulations and see social issues so differently from me.
I know that many people see my news sources (such as the New York Times) as biased to the left. They don’t seem to see the accuracy and in depth coverage that I see in the reporting.
I search all news sources for their bias. I do see bias in op ed pieces in the New York Times and not just from one side. I enjoy this.
When I follow up on other’s mentioned sources of information as I often do, the first thing I try to do is to understand what the purpose of the web site/journalistic source is. I do this by looking for statements of purpose and obvious distortions from one point of view or another especially in reporting.
Obviously I’m just a citizen reader type, but it’s surprising how just a little poking around can reveal hidden agendas.
It seems to me that right wingers have a worse problem finding sources of information they could trust. Maybe this is just my own bias, but I do stay on guard for my own bias having learned in Deborah Tannen’sbook, The Argument Culture, that when we agree with the bias we don’t see it. We are much more likely to detect it (even by upset by it) when it’s something we disagree with.
On the Media’s current show does a nice synoptic radio show which condenses a series they did on bias last year.
But what’s really on my mind is some articles I read yesterday that deal with the deliberate abandoning of truth in the current presidential campaign.
Kunkel is someone whose bias seems to be my own. I think of it as rigorous thinking combined with compassion for underprivileged and a concern for real justice. In other words I’m the soft headed liberal all the conservative talk shows warn about.
I do recommend Kunkel’s article because his basic metaphor is that we as citizens are like therapists as we listen to the public debate.
The point is only that if we listen to his words—or to almost any contemporary political speech—we find ourselves not in the position of a rational interlocutor, but in that of a shrink faced with a patient: here is a someone who either doesn’t believe what he says or says it for other reasons than he gives, and yet whose real reasons and motives are inaccessible to us, and may be to him, too.
He is harder on Republicans (psychotic) than Democrats (neurotic), but he does have a point.
I could excerpt much of his prose, but instead just urge you to read it. It’s one of those laugh and weep articles. And for those of you who are convinced I am a lily livered liberal, you have been warned about his bias.
I found two more news sources to book mark and check this week. NewsMax seems to me to be obviously right wing. National Journal is an inside the belt way source. If you disagree with government, you might see a bias there in its preoccupation.
Speaking of the “truth,” the new public editor for the NYTimes seems to have done some of the same reading I have about false equivalencies in sources.
Jay Rosen has some interesting cautious hope and insight about the current struggle with facts and opinion in presidential campaign and its reporting. I of course come down on the side of “You’re entitled to your own opinion. You’re not entitled to your own facts.”
This article disappointed a bit. There’s not much more to it than Valerie Plame Wilson using her public platform to ask the question in the headline. I agree with this criticism of the current administration. I will still hold my nose and vote Obama. I even ordered a bumper sticker.
I found this article interesting (if obviously biased in my direction) because the reporter and the people he interviews all hail from East Detroit. He also addresses the “coding” of bigotry and the race card from the speaking of the right. I always find this fascinating because I first began thinking about “coding” in political rhetoric in the 60s and 70s listening to people soft pedal hate of black Americans with talk of “busing” and other code words.
“But pointing out that ‘mistakes are simply the portals of discovery’ is hindsight babel that loses touch with the reality that failure is horrible–even nauseating–and that most creative projects never see the light of day.”
Babel? I thought that was the name of the tower in the Bible story.
But no, unsurprisingly in a Scientific American article it’s a legit use of the word.
I did not know that.
As you can see, I have my online access back.
Yesterday was my 61st birthday and it was a good day.
I was happy to discover that my favorite Michigan mustard
is being carried by a local shop, The Shaker Messenger.
I had ordered it from Traverse City through the mail previously having discovered it at Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor. Yesterday I had decided that the S & H was too expensive and poked around and found that The Shaker Messenger carried it. They also stock lots of local goods. Eileen and I will return to spend money in the future!
I returned to the French Baroque yesterday and rediscovered the pleasures of playing Couperin. I miss my harpsichord literature. The interpretation is very similar in the organ works from the period. After listening to some recordings, I found some ways to register these pieces on my very small inferior organ that I can stand. Cool Beans.
I own and have used this excellent guide to Couperin's music and life.
I thought this comparison in this article was interesting:
Fire still lags the iPad in Web browsing. It took my Fire one second longer than the iPad to pull up nytimes.com or ESPN.com (seven seconds versus six), four seconds longer for People.com, three seconds longer for Cracked.com — and, amusingly, 1.5 seconds longer to pull up Amazon.com.
An organist Facebook “friend” recently made the comment that a musician is only as good as her/his instrument. I have spent my whole life playing lots of inferior instruments: pianos, organs, guitars. Not all of them have been so. But especially in my profession of church music I have had to confront limitations of bad electronic simulations of pipe organs and bad pipe organs.
At one point I had a decent organ under my care when I did a short stint as the Music Director for the charming but dying downtown parish of First Presbyterian Church of Detroit. But I actually quit the job despite the presence of a large Cassavant Frere instrument and a paid octet because I missed liturgy.
I then took a job in Fenton Michigan at Roman Catholic Parish which paid a bit more and worshiped in a converted Gymnasiam (with a lowered tiled absorbent ceiling) and had what was basically a electronically simulated theater organ as its main organ.
That was one of the worst instruments I had to use. Friends told me that in the U of M organ department I was known as the organist who played in a gymn. Nice.
When I worked here in Holland at Our Lady of the Lake for many years, I presided over the purchase of an excellent used grand Bösendorfer piano. This was (and still is) a very fine piano and inspired me to learn and perform piano literature at Mass.
Yesterday after rehearsing all my upcoming organ music, I still had a bit of energy left and turned to a French Baroque composer whose music I have purchased but not performed: Nicholas LeBegue.
I played through his entire Suite on the First Tone. Here is a fine recording on YouTube of it.
LeBegue died in 1702, but his tradition (the French Baroque) extended for at least another fifty or seventy five years.
I love this music. When I studied with Ray Ferguson, he made sure I learned how to play the music of Louie Couperin, Francois Couperin, Daquin, and many others.
He himself studied with Marie Clair Alain, Kenneth Gilbert and other big kids.
I heard Gilbert play and lecture and was very impressed.
Yesterday, I played through this same suite then came home and listened to a (different) recording.
This led me to think about my Facebook “friend”‘s comment. He is probably right to some extent. But I am unfortunately under the influence of hearing a religious story told by my Dad to a congregation when I was a kid. It was something about a man trying to auction off a violin that was old and in bad shape.
No one was interested in it. Then an old man came up and gently picked it up and played. His playing was transforming. The audience was rapt.
After he put it down, the auctioneer said something like “Now who wants to open the bidding on this instrument?” And of course the bidding began.
Dad’s punch line was predictably that the instrument had been transformed “by the hand of the master.” I seem to remember another of the zillion altar calls of my youth followed.
Goofy story. Nevertheless it is lodged in my brain. And I am influenced to adapt excellent music to inferior instruments trying to recreate them without the available sounds you can hear in the YouTube above.
Last night, I picked up Eileen after work and we drove north an hour to Whitehall and had birthday meal for her Mom at her sister Nancy’s place. Eileen’s Mom was 88 yesterday.
It made a long day for us, but it was good to see fam. I have an 8:30 class this morning and I am feeling the fatigue.
Eileen has the day off so she is still resting.
I broke down and ordered some more used music from my old teacher, Craig Cramer, yesterday. He sends out a monthly list of used music he offers for sale. Eileen and I realized yesterday that this list is “Craig’s List.”
Tomorrow I will be 61 years old. I’m feeling pretty grateful to alive at this point.
I only have a few measures left on the string quartet transcription I am doing. Then all that’s left is to go through and mark dynamics and tempo changes. I will be glad to get that off my plate.
Dwight Garner pretty much pans Byrne’s new book. It’s on my non-fiction reading list to read next after The English Hymn by Watson. My brother and his wife gave me a copy for my birthday. Despite Garner’s take, I look forward to it.
When asked “to respond to people who have criticized him as failing to cite the sources for some of his lyrics, Mr. Dylan, apparently not in the most cheerful mood, replied that they ‘can rot in hell.’”
I can see that Wednesdays this fall are going to be long day and culminate in a strenuous evening of rehearsals. I have an 8:30 – 10 AM ballet class to play for that day. Yesterday this was followed by a church staff meeting at 10:30. I practiced organ in between and went back to the organ before coming home for some lunch. I tried to rest in the afternoon but was restless. I felt the looming presence of the evening rehearsals and also the impending deadline for transcribing a piece for string quartet from a recording I mentioned yesterday.
After an attempt at laying down and resting, I got up and worked on the string quartet transcription which is just about done now.
I walked over to church for our first Wednesday evening of meal, prayer, programs and rehearsal. From my point of view this combining of community building/social, education and music rehearsals worked well for the Childrens Choir. I had three more kids for a grand total of five. One child was under the requested age span (He was in 2nd grade and in the materials promoting this event we have repeatedly said the Kids’ Choir was open to third through sixth graders). He was definitely smart enough to be in Kids’ Choir but his behavior was typical 2nd grade: fidgety, wild fluctuations in concentration, and limited reading ability.
He did however respond to me when I kept urging him to rise to the challenge of being a chorister (one of many new words I taught the kids last night). I had fun showing them Bach as the Composer of the Month. I played the F minor Prelude from WTCII on the piano for them. We also spent time learning the first four phrases of the soprano part of Bach’s cantata 139, mov 1, in German. I had a information sheet with Bach’s picture on it for them to take home which we read over together. Next week I will use some of this information and make a little worksheet where they can fill in the blanks with words like “Baroque” and “violin.” Easy enough to make up in the age of word processing.
I had a “Cracking the Code” worksheet for them. I was surprised at how difficult this was for some kids. I listed off 8 notes on the staff and then asked them to fill in note names below to make several words.
I introduced them to sight singing and a host of other singing techniques.
I hope they come back next week.
Disappointingly I had no new adults in the Chamber Choir. One woman who has been with us a couple years quit. I think the Wednesday night rehearsal might have been why.
Having said that, these people are troopers. We worked hard on the upcoming music some of which is pretty devastatingly beautiful, in my opinion.
Specifically the Bach cantata movement and the Christus Factus Est by Bruckner. I previously embedded YouTube videos of both in a post last week.
Spent yesterday dividing my time between organ practice and transcribing a pop song from a recording of a string quartet rendition for a local string quartet.
I have some qualms about this. There are probably copyright issues at stake. More importantly I started wondering if perhaps this string quartet sells its arrangements. This would bother me because while I will violate copyright laws when they seem stupid to me (Did you know it’s illegal to photocopy a page of music for a page turn?) I do try to avoid violating copyright when something is available for purchase. Generally.
But since I accepted the gig in the early summer and the wedding is fast approaching, now is not the time to renegotiate. So I’m avoiding checking to see if the music is available. But if I get asked again, I will definitely check before agreeing.
It’s difficult to get every little nuance in the inner voices. The music is so simple but sometimes I can’t pick exactly what an inner voice is playing. I do have the melody and the bass pretty accurately. But it’s enough for the purposes of this group.
I also had a ballet class to play for and a piano lesson to give yesterday. It turned into a full day.
Today is another one. The goal (as my boss succinctly put it Sunday) is to survive. On Wednesdays this will mean pacing myself since I end the day in an evening of rehearsals. I have to prepare some material for my Kids’ Choir. But other than that, a ballet class, and a staff meeting at church, all I have to do is score study, rehearsal strategizing and practice organ.
I keep noticing commentators pointing out the lack of veracity in public discussion. I guess it makes sense that a public that has long descended into considering politics and government a form of entertainment would abandon a notion of truth in speaking.
This by the way is a bit of a partisan article and I haven’t finished reading it.
More evidence that the crazy socialist in the White house and his administration is not as liberal as people think. Why are we still detaining these people in Cuba?
Saw some of this information on TV last night as well. It does seem like Romney and Ryan are a bit uneasy about their policy stands and would just as soon people not quite know them.
I have recently noticed that sometimes the book review in the Sunday Book Review of the NYTimes are pretty coherent essays on ideas as well as book reviews. This one seems like that to me.
Maureen Dowd skewers the President. John Steward made the same point more gently in his show from last Friday night (which Eileen watched together last night)
Written about eleven years ago, Parr deplores the low standing of the pipe organ in the world of music.
He urges his audience (presumable organists) to take measures to connect to listeners better through some sensible recommendations like inviting people to watch the organist play and to invite them to sit on the bench and try it themselves.
This past Sunday I made sure that my two 3rd graders knew that I played music with my feet. I told them that it allowed me to raise a hand to conduct. I invited them to come over during the prelude or postlude and watch (I don’t think either did but at least they were invited). I have been mulling the idea of doing a little introduction to the organ as part of the Wednesday night deal. Hard to do with such a small organ but I do have flutes, principals and one reed.
Parr also describes how organ music (which he insists many music lovers dislike) can sound like a wall of music. He points out that twenty minutes of a Prelude and Fugue by Bach can acquire a sameness to listeners that does not draw them in.
He invites organists to try to put themselves in the place of their listeners and schedule other music that might be attractive in addition to some of the more austere repertoire.
He recommended the composers: Edwin Lemare,
Alfred Hollins
and Percy Whitlock
as “treats” for the listeners.
I recognize Whitlock but had to check out the first two on Spotify (to help me pick their popular tunes). Then I pulled up their scores on IMSLP (the International Music Score Library Project).
I admit that I found the music treacly in its 19th century sweetness. Yuck. I didn’t see or hear anything I would like to learn and perform. But at the same time I take his point.
Yesterday I chose a transcription of a Sarabande by Vaughan Williams for my prelude a week from Sunday. I think it’s hard to not hear as pretty beautiful, certainly not treacly.
I try to choose music that attracts me as a listener. I’m a pretty opinionated dude, I know, but I still think that I will play music better if I am convinced of its worth and beauty. I kind of think this falls under Parr’s rubric of musical “treats.”
I also have experienced many people who tell me they don’t like the pipe organ. They usually say it nicer than that by expressing a preference for the piano. Or they say that they can tell I like the piano better because I play it well or something like that.
Parr also encourages organists to play musically again thinking of the listener. This I also try to do. It’s one of the reasons Sunday mornings are so draining for me. I try to put myself deep into any music I do from the organ stuff to the congregational stuff.
After three days without my wife around, I realize that though I value solitude I don’t particularly like being alone. Eileen returns today and I have missed her quite a bit.
I did manage to acquit myself pretty well on the Buxtehude yesterday. After blogging I snuck over to church and got in a final half hour of rehearsal on it. When it came time to perform I sailed through the difficult sections with ease. There were a couple of sluffy moments in the pedal parts, but no wrong notes and no wrong rhythms. Cool. Practicing works. I’m counting on it.
My two children who make up the Kids’ Choir right now inspired me with their presence and attention. I had them sing along on the very easy Praetorious choral anthem with the Chamber Choir. I am seriously considering teaching them the soprano line to the “Wohl dem, der sich auf seinen Gott” BWV 139 by Bach. It’s one of those long choral melodies under which all the action happens.
Right now I have my two sopranos trading off the line so one of them can beef up the alto part (which is also much more interesting) when not singing the chorale.
I think my kids would enjoy learning the German and learning the slow melody.
I read the introduction to Yearsley’s Bach’s Feet: The Organ Pedals in European Culture before going to work yesterday. He dashes off some pretty purple prose describing playing with your feet as “The most energetic form of musical performance” that “unites dance and music.” He goes on for pages about the demands of this. I wondered if it would shake my confidence in my abilities. I don’t think of myself as a virtuoso by any means. But I do play music that Yearsley describes as a “musical decathlon unto itself requiring speed, endurance, suppleness, poise, balance, coordination, marksmanship…, steadiness strength and perhaps, most important of all, confidence.”
In this case he is talking specifically about Bach’s A minor Prelude and Fugue (BWV 543) which I have read through but not learned for a performance.
But working on my own performance anxiety has taught me not to think too hard about this kind of thing, especially right before performing.
It was a bit scary to read it and then challenge myself the way I did yesterday with the Buxtehude. But it’s not too surprising that the performance went well despite this little bit of stepping outside of the experience to observe just how difficult a feat organists like myself accomplish playing much of the repertoire.
Once again a foot note led me to interlibrary loan a book. Yearsley mentions Sandra Soderlund’s 2006 book, How Did They Play? How Did They Teach?: A History of Keyboard Technique.
I met Soderlund when I was in undergraduate school. My teacher Ray Ferguson taught us from her fascinating text Organ Technique: An Historical Approach. Then had her come and lecture us.
This is the second edition. I own the first.
I was much enamored at the time with historical fingerings and pedalings. Soderlund’s technique book moves chronologically through organ music and provides early fingerings and pedalings for students to learn. As a organ class under Ferguson each student learned a piece or two with the fingerings and then performed them at class for listening and critique.
This was so influential on me that when I went to grad school and learned the famous D major prelude and fugue of Bach’s BWV 532 I did the entire pedal part with toes only.
Learning to play this line with just toes of my feet was one of the accomplishments of grad school.
I scheduled four separate rehearsals for myself at the organ over the last two days, one before lunch and one after. I spent some calculated time trying to learn as thoroughly as possible the Buxtehude Praeludium I am planning to perform this morning. There are about four or five treacherous little sections where the pedal is very independent of the manuals. I took each of these sections and broke them into component parts (at least pedal alone, left hand and pedal)repeating each step about ten times. Then slowly put it all together for another ten times. This kind of repetition in practice is something that’s crept back into my rehearsal technique the last few years. I often practice hands separately at the organ and piano and pedal separately at the organ, then combining them at a slower tempo.
I suppose I’m once again testing my rehearsal technique this morning. The Buxtehude is more thoroughly prepared than many things I have performed in public over the years (excluding my student years in which I would spend entire semesters on one set of pieces and perform them pretty well). At the same time it is a little piece of the organ repertoire and is demanding.
I chose it because I think it’s a happy little thing.
My organ doesn’t have many pipes so I often have to come with a sort of chamber rendition of large organ works. The kind of organ I associate with Buxtehude organs were (are) musical and architectural monuments. The music he created was like this as well. Noble cascades of sound to fill a breath taking room from an elegantly created and massive instrument.
My interpretation of this on a smaller instrument of not that great quality in a room with little reverberation is to be a bid more playful and modest. This particular piece works well I think especially the fugal section which makes up most of it (four pages out of six).
I love the way he repeats the written out trill three times at the beginning of the subject each time:
I play these slightly separated and in a manner I think of as playful.
Buxtehude goes on to complete the subject:
You can see the answer (the second entrance the fugal melody) in red above.
Anyway, I think this evolves into a very happy and joyful piece. It seems like an appropriate choice for Kick-Off Sunday replete with Baptisms at my church. I’m expecting to play it amidst bustling energy of people preparing for service. It should fit nicely.
Staff members presented the establishment as easy to use and tried to dispel some of the mystery that shrouds the institution — though reporters were asked not to disclose its location.
Later it says the reporters were “not blindfolded.”
Kunming is the city Eileen and I visited Elizabeth and Jeremy several years ago. It is in the Yunnan Province where some of the earthquakes hit. Apparently it was in the far northeastern section of the province far from this city.
I continue to sadly watch what seems like the increase of this sort of thing.
We have a culture now where we have real trouble accepting that our kids make mistakes and fail, and when they do, we tend to blame someone else,”
Not sure if it’s actually increasing or just being reported more. Integrity and discipline have always been rare qualities I suspect.
Ms. Gallant recalled giving integrity counseling to a student who would send research papers to her mother to review before turning them in — and saw nothing wrong in that. One paper, it turned out, her mother had extensively rewritten — and extensively plagiarized.
“I said, ‘So what’s the lesson here?’ ” Ms. Gallant said. “And she said, completely serious, ‘Check the work my mom does?’ ”
I managed to get reauthorized to use the library at Hope College yesterday. I had to walk from the dance department (who had done all they could think of) to the main college library.
The librarian clicked something on her screen and I was legal again. Hooray!
I tested it by renewing the book I have been reading: The English Hymn A Critical and Historical Study by J. R. Watson. Of course, the used copy I have ordered arrived in the mail as well. I am find Watson’s history and analysis of hymns to be very valuable. It has helped me see the historical significance of many hymns included in the Hymnal 1982. I have been writing little notes in my Hymnal 1982 Companion. Mostly I am simply cross referring it to Watson’s more lucid exegeses. Very cool.
I was listening to Bach and Beethoven this morning as I made coffee and cleaned up the kitchen a bit (my usual morning ritual enhanced with music since Eileen is away and there is no danger of disturbing her with my tunes), I was wondering about how people listen to classical music these days.
Could it be possible that the logic of music is something that many fail to apprehend, opting instead for fleeting moments of emotion and sensuality?
I do know that it’s often easy for me to doubt that the music I make in church is being noticed much less enjoyed or understood.
Nevertheless I persist because I do love making music, the more excellent it is the better.
I also love learning about shit on the internet. Case in point: recently I ran across a reference to Bach’s Feet: The Organ Pedals in European Culture by David Yearsley (mentioned in my Aug 30th post). So I interlibrary-loaned it. Yesterday I gathered another bunch of Christian Romances (emphasis on the Amish) for my Mom and also picked up my copy of the Yearsley.
As I was reading Acknowledgements in it, I was delighted to discover that a new book was coming out about Mendelssohn and the organ.
A little poking around and ta da! I now have requested a copy of it.
I continue to think that Mendelssohn and a pretty underrated composer. Although after my cynical morning musings, maybe very few people are paying much attention to any of this historical stuff any way. I’m glad to be among them.
I also ran across this book in an Organ Historical Society email. Yep. Interlibrary loaned.
Letters to the editor. I liked the one signed by twenty prominent people including Gary Hart, Jennifer Granholm, Jim Hightower, Norman Lear, Ron Reagan, Robert Reich, and Eliot Spitzer.
This sentence struck me as true:
In America, you can’t love your country and hate your government, since we are the government.
Recently I have actually offended (something that’s pretty hard to do) by the Facebook page “I pledge allegiance to my country but not my president.” Followers I know include people in our military. Sheesh.
Since I’m being all biased and shit here’s a link to an excellent Paul Krugman article. Example quote:
“Now, you may have noticed that in telling this story about a disappointing recovery I didn’t mention any of the things that Republicans talked about last week in Tampa, Fla. — the effects of high taxes and regulation, the lack of confidence supposedly created by Mr. Obama’s failure to lavish enough praise on “job creators” (what I call the “Ma, he’s looking at me funny!” theory of our economic problems). Why the omission? Because there’s not a shred of evidence for the G.O.P. theory of what ails our economy, while there’s a lot of hard evidence for the view that a lack of demand, largely because of excessive household debt, is the real problem.”
Eileen gets on a plane and flies away to New York today. I don’t get to go. I couldn’t take a weekend off so early in the new choir season. Eileen will have good time and get to see daughter Elizabeth and her partner Jeremy before they move to Beijing. Elizabeth didn’t seem too upset that I was unable to visit. If she had I probably would have finagled it some how.
As it is, I am putting huge amounts of time and energy into upcoming music at work. It looks like my fall work week will peak from Sunday through Wednesday. So yesterday, a Thursday, will probably become a day for recuperating. Despite trying to take this into account I spent several hours practicing yesterday.
Of course I have one ballet class a day to play for on Mondays through Fridays. This leaves only Saturday open as a possible day of rest. And I find that I need to prepare for Sundays on Saturdays.
So reinstating the Wednesday evening rehearsal is changing my work schedule and inevitably increasing it as well.
At least I go in with my eyes open realizing this.
Speaking of being reinstated, I checked and I still am not authorized to use the library and resources at college yet. Sheesh. I will stop by the Dance department office and check with the secretary again today. On Monday she said this could probably be fixed with a few emails and that she would get back to me.
I have been reading in The Robert Shaw Reading. I admire the many letters reproduced there that he wrote to his choirs. They range from humorous to analytic to inspiring.
Yesterday they were in my mind as I emailed my choir recordings of two upcoming big pieces.
This setting of “Christus Factus Est” is an ambitious one for a small choir. I do think we can pull it off. I found a recording by John Rutter’s small choir (I don’t think this Youtube version is it). Of course my church choir is not the quality of his, but still it shows that a small ensemble sound can make it work.
I do think it’s a pretty cool piece.
I hit the accompaniment to the Bach cantata 139 movement we began rehearsing this week pretty hard yesterday. It is a mountain for me to climb because of the intricate (and necessary) voice leading in the transcription of the two oboes and violin obligatos. It began to fall together a bit better yesterday. I have been practicing it slow so I was encouraged at how slow this recording was. Here is a screwed up Youtube version of the recording (It doesn’t begin well as you will see… the choir doesn’t come in for a page anyway).
After all the hoopla about misstatements at the Republican convention I guess scrutinizing the Democrats was inevitable. At any rate, I am completely for accuracy.
And of course there is the critique from the left which reminds us what Clinton’s governing philosophy really was. I’m afraid it’s the way I see his presidency as well. I couldn’t vote for him the second term. Although I did admire the adroitness of his speech on Wednesday evening especially the part about not hating the opposition.
Christian music at the top of the charts. I can remember when Christian pop music was pretty terrible. Now I usually find it a bit cloying but much better written, performed and produced. I plan to check out some of the music mentioned in this article.
“… [S]chools first and foremost should teach us habits of learning.
For Dewey, these habits included awareness of our interdependence; nobody is an expert on everything. He emphasized “plasticity,” an openness to being shaped by experience: “The inclination to learn from life itself and to make the conditions of life such that all will learn in the process of living is the finest product of schooling.”
I’m so glad that Linda Greenhouse continues to write and publish in her retirement. Here she gives us a bit of history her insights on the ugly pre-Roe V. Wade aspects of abortion.
All in all, I was pretty satisfied with last night’s choir rehearsals. Notice the plural. I had two rehearsals scheduled. Two 3rd graders showed up to be in the Kid’s Choir. I was pleasantly surprised. Eileen helped me by sitting with them during rehearsal and helping them practice process and singing while I was at the organ in the church. I have asked them to come this Sunday and process with the choir at the beginning and ending of the service.
I was also pleasantly surprised that I had so many returning members show for the Chamber Choir rehearsal. Actually only one person just didn’t show without bothering to let me know. One person called in sick. The rest was the crew from last year. We had a good rehearsal and started working diligently on compositions by Bach and Bruckner.
Part of the happy surprise is the ease with which this group of singers recommitted themselves to a weekly rehearsal after not having one for two years. Pretty cool.
I was slightly disappointed that not one of the many new people I sent letters to showed up. Four people bothered to let me know they couldn’t accept my invitation to join.
I’m thinking my musical (or maybe otherwise general) creditably is pretty low with people who might otherwise join the church’s choir where I work. And I’m sure there are a host of other reasons, not the least of which is living in a passive and under educated culture that prizes appearances and busyness over living a bit deeper life.
But as I told the choir last night, I want to make some good music before I die.
I didn’t follow this comment with my strong feeling that people can either join in or get out of the way. It’s their life and it’s their choice.
If I sound bitter this morning, it probably has a lot to do with fatigue. I tried to pace myself yesterday. I did an early ballet class with a new (to me) teacher which went pretty well. Then I traipsed off to the Farmer’s Market. Came home and folded and collated a couple of anthems. Had lunch with Eileen. Went off to church and did a bunch of tasks prepping for last night. Practiced organ. Managed to come home and lay down and rest for about an hour and a half. Then I met Eileen at church with some take out supper for us and did the rehearsals.
This will be a typical Wednesday for me. I’m hoping this soon to be 61 year old can keep up the pace and learn and perform some good music this fall.
I think I just found a discrepancy between the vocal/keyboard score edition of the Bach cantata movement and the Bach Gesselschaft full score (both available online).
The full score indicates that there is one A sharp in this measure. As usual the person who has made the keyboard adaptation has had to alter the lines a bit to make them fit. In the adaptation there is a voice crossing which puts the tenor A in the path of the ascending bass’s A sharp accidental. In normal keyboard practice, this A would be sharped which is how I’ve been rehearsing it.
I did however think it sounded a bit odd. So I checked the score.
As far as I can tell there is only one A sharp in this measure. The second oboe (the second line) has an A natural in the first beat. The first violin (the third line) has A natural also in the first beat. And in the third beat, the spot where adapter has made up a tenor line (apparently out of thin air) there is no accidental on the A in the Viola part. In addition in the same spot in the figured bass at the bottom there is no sharp indicated on the 5 below the F sharp in the bass which would normally be there if the A was sharped.
As to the adaptation, I find it discouraging that the vocal/keyboard rendition also introduces a G sharp in the tenor line in the second beat where no G sharp exists in the original. This is the sort of thing I like to correct and just do a whole new little edition.
In this case, since I am hard pressed to learn this by the performance date of October 7th, I will probably only change the A sharp to A natural. This is pending an actually playing it at the organ and listening carefully.
As you can see, upcoming choral music is on my mind. This evening I have two initial rehearsals scheduled. At 6:30, Eileen and I will be sitting in the choir room waiting to see if any kids show up for the first Kids’ Choir rehearsal. I am pretty skeptical that any will tonight since no parent or child has indicated to me they will be there. But I am hopeful that in the course of the next few weeks some kids will drift in as their family begins to participate in our new weekly Wednesday education evening.
Eileen will be there because of the diocesan policy of not allowing only one adult in a room full of children. It’s always handy anyway to have another adult present when you’re working with kids anyway.
At 7:30, I’m not sure who will attend the first Chamber Choir rehearsal. But I want to have folders ready and a rehearsal planned. (I will also have a Kids’ Choir planned and ready as well)
At this point I have all the Chamber Choir music ready to fold, assemble and stuff into 25 slots. That’s one of my tasks today. Another is to prepare this rehearsal. I have already begun some score study. When I’m doing such fine music, score study is essential to leading a rehearsal.
Another task is spending time at the organ console rehearsing upcoming preludes, postludes and accompaniments like the Bach at the beginning of the post.
Thanks to brother, Mark Jenkins, for pointing this article out on Facebook. I especially like the mention of Cage’s definition of an error: “simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality…”
I heard Kofi Annan talk about Syria on the radio this week. He said there could be no peaceful resolution reached by armed conflict. This article sounds like any resolution is highly unlikely. So discouraging to read about hate.
I don’t think I mentioned that the prelude and postlude went well Sunday. I’m thinking of looking at the entire third Organ sonata by Francis Jackson from which I drew the slow movement (the Andante below) as the prelude.
I like his combination of spicy little harmonies with lyricism in it. Not sure if I’m going to have the time and energy to work on it soon.
Since I’m already planning to play Buxtehude’s Praeludium in F major, BuxWV 145 and Andrea Gabrielli’s Ricercar Arioso (IV) this Sunday as prelude and postlude respectively, I went ahead and chose organ music for the following Sunday. This puts me ahead a week. I’m thinking I could learn some harder music if I gave myself a minimum of two weeks for each Sunday. Of course some pieces will be longer projects.
Yesterday I scheduled Introduction, Theme and Variation One from “Variations on a Hymn Tune” Op.20 by William Mathias for the prelude. The nomenclature is my own. He doesn’t really call the beginning of this piece the “introduction.” But that’s what it is. I like to be clear as possible to listeners who notice the music citations in the bulletin.
I am very partial to William Mathias. Again he uses spicey harmonies and is in the same vein as Francis Jackson. But Mathias has a unique flavor all his own. I once heard an Anglican musician I knew in Detroit talk about interviewing Mathias before he died. The interviewer told me that he wasn’t sure that Mathias was living on this planet or something like that. Whatever he said gave Mathias an otherworldly feeling as a person that matches his lively and eccentric music.
I found this piece by searching “toccata” on the ISMLP site. He was a pupil of Gigout. The French wikipedia article indicates a couple other composers who like him are basically known for one toccata, Albert Renaud and Marcel Lanquetuit.
Renaud’s is also copyright free and on ISMLP:
His is dedicated to Guilmant. Marcel Lanquetuit’s toccata is not on ISMLP. I figure this is because he lived well into the 20th century and somebody still holds copyrights on it. Again the French Wikipedia indicates that his Toccata in D major was published in 1927. He died in 1985.
It’s kind of a gas to find three composers I’ve never heard of. I played through Belier yesterday before scheduling it. It’s fluffy but satisfactorily flashy.
I feel like as I kick off the choir season it might be a good idea to play a few of these flashy pieces for postludes.
At this point I’m bracing myself for no shows at the rehearsals tomorrow evening. I scheduled the rehearsals because the boss wanted the choirs to sing on Kick Off Sunday (that would be this coming Sunday).
I didn’t do enough (any?) follow-up to my recruitment letters except to talk with several people Sunday who basically told me “no thanks.”
My obstinate commitment to quality music in worship persists. Fuck the duck. I will begin teaching my choir the Bach cantata movement I want to sing on October 7th this Wednesday. I have some excellent music planned. I only hope I can pull some of it off with whoever bothers to volunteer for choir (and come to the reinstated Wednesday rehearsal). If it looks shaky I have plans B, C, D, and on.
I remember many negative things about Reagan’s regime (Hello, Olly North!), but this writer points out the irony of Republicans ready to gut entitlements who worship at the Reagan altar. Unfortunately Reagan did not hesitate to accept government assistance. This from the man who brought the USA the false idea of the Welfare Queen.
A parishioner accosted me after church at coffee hour and suggested that we should sing “Holy,holy, holy” or “A Mighty Fortress” in honor of our assistant priest sometime. The requester caught me off guard because he had tossed out a comment which took me a moment to register.
Our assistant priest is a Lutheran minister. The ELCA branch of the Lutheran Church has an arrangement with the American Episcopal church in which clergy can serve in either denomination (if I understand this correctly).
I smiled non-committedly at the parishioner. Hymn requests are a tricky thing. My understanding is that public liturgical worship is diminished when it is used for self-expression (Sing my favorite hymn!).
I worked for a fine Roman Catholic priest who would never talk about his own musical predilections in my presence. He didn’t want his music director (me) to be influenced by his tastes.
I did say in response to this request that I had actually worked for the assistant in the Lutheran church and that we do use Lutheran music in our services. (How could one not?)
After he walked away, I realized that he had identified “Holy, holy, holy” as a Lutheran heritage piece. I admit that when he first said it, I thought he was talking about the Sanctus portion of the service which is sometimes called “Holy, holy.”
It took me awhile to realize he meant the hymn which begins that way.
The pairing of Heber’s text with Dykes’ tune occurred for the first time in the 1861 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern. Nothing more English and less German.
Reginald Heber (1783-1826)John B. Dykes (1823-1876).
I continue to read of J.R. Watson’s The English Hymn. This morning he has just arrived chronologically at this hymnal. It has been helpful to my understanding to follow Watson’s elucidation of the evolution of English hymnody. This places Hymns Ancient and Modern as a hymnal which was consciously put together and promoted to reach over the many divisions of the English Christian church people at the time (sectaries as they were called).
The elderly parishioner who caught me after church yesterday was educated at Valparaiso University and seemed to identify strongly with the Lutheran tradition.
Pretty ironic that in his mind “Holy, holy, holy” was as Lutheran as “A Mighty Fortress.” Would that I had been a bit more nimble in my response. Missed the teaching moment I guess.
Went to log on to the OED this weekend and discovered that my Hope College privileges have expired. What a revoltin’ development! Hope College has classes today. So after class I plan to stop by and see if I can rectify this.
Recently after a comment about my attire (“nice shorts”) with an odd look from the chair of the department, I realized that I would dress any way they wanted if they would let me keep my online access to stuff. I mentioned this to Eileen and added, “I would cut my hair to keep that stuff.”
Looks like I jinxed it. Hopefully it will be possible (but probably a hassle) to get reinstated properly.
“… [W]e human beings, who have been trying to make things for only the blink of an evolutionary eye, have a lot to learn from the long processes of natural selection, whether it’s how to make a wing more aerodynamic or a city more resilient or an electronic display more vibrant.”
“‘Agnotology’, the art of spreading doubt (as pioneered by Big Tobacco), distorts the scepticism of research to obscure the truth. Areas of academic life have been tainted by the practice, but some scholars are fighting back by showing the public how to spot such sleight of hand, reports Matthew Reisz”
“When I find that a sentence I’m writing isn’t working, I don’t think about what I want that sentence to look like or to be; I don’t pull it from the page to weigh it in my hand; I don’t worry over its internal balance. I simply ask myself, ‘What do I need this sentence to do?'”
“Chomsky has achieved eminence in two very different fields, theoretical linguistics and political commentary. The “Chomsky problem” is that his approaches to these fields appear to contradict each other.”
Spent the entire morning finishing up a working copy of the Mendelssohn anthem I putting into Finale. I need to get practicing this as soon as possible, so even though it’s not quite done, I want to print up what I have and start learning the organ part.
All that is left to do is put in the words. I am thinking of making a different score for the choir utilizing this doc in which I will expand the two staves of the choral part into the more traditional four.
Interesting concept. It probably works better in a society that not only can see the invisible old but actually respects them in a culturally embedded way (I have experienced this there).
A sentence from J. R. Watson’s The English Hymn keeps rattling around in my head:
The sound of these angelic harmonies ‘swelling'(a mysterious crescendo of sound) over the synecdoches for the created world, which themselves oversimplify it, anticipate film music, supplying the emotions to meet the images.
A “synecdoche” is “a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special, as in ten sail for ten ships or a Croesus for a rich man.”
Watson’s neat phrase about “film music supplying the emotions to meet the images” struck me when I read it.
My first realization that music could be used to maniuplate emotion was thinking about the idea of “altar calls” in the church where I was raised.
At the end of a church service there would be a moment when an emotional pleading hymn would be sung and people would be urged to walk up to the front of the church, kneel down and “give their heart to Jesus” …. i.e. to be “saved.”
I watched my father and other preachers lead this moment. They would often ask the musicians to keep playing while they spoke gently encouraging people to “come forward.”
The moment was emotional.
We have a family story about an older family member urging the son of the preacher to go forward during an “altar call” his dad was leading because “you dont’ want to your dad to be a failure, do you?” This story is not about me. But the young man developed an aversion to all things church as an adult. Who could blame him?
There is much movie music that I admire. I think the connection between music and images is fascinating and pretty constituent to being alive in the USA right now.
Yesterday Eileen and I went to see the movie, “The Dark Knight Rises.” It’s a weak flick in my opinion, but most movies hit me this way.
But it was mildly entertaining if lacking in even comic book plausibility.
The music was by Hans Zimmer and I think it included high quality synthesized orchestral sounds as well as more abstract sounds.
As I listened to Zimmer utilize the tricks that John Williams “borrowed” from composers I love like Vaughan Williams and Paul Hindemith I pondered Watson’s little phrase.
Music is emotion. But when it becomes the emotional servant of content like “altar calls” and super heroes movies what is going on? It seems to devalue the musical content especially when the music itself is outlining the emotions sought by the movie makers to evoke in the audience.
I have thought about how music works in church as well. Inevitably it must serve the moment. When it is used in an “altar call” or a similar obviously manipulative moment it is not far from Zimmer’s little tricks.
Zimmer by the way is a fine composer. As usual the music that caught my attention the most was during the credits. It is then that the composer can sort of let loose and do when he/she wants.
But music in church can work with integrity. For one thing there is a long musical history to draw on and utilize in choral anthems, hymns, organ music and other music.
I think of the distinction as helping people pray, not tricking them into feeling something. I have often thought of music as a sort of “frame” for the church service. The main activity is prayer.
Chanting prayer can “heighten” the language, removing it from the everyday experience of speaking and drawing it into mystery.
