I am amused that I continue to read and think about religious stuff. After finishing Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, I find myself on the second chapter of The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich. I have to admit he seems a little crazy. It reminds me of reading Philip K. Dick. But like Dick, Illich makes a crazy kind of sense which I find fascinating but pretty much unconvincing.

Illich says that when Paul writes about the “mystery of wickedness” in the second chapter of Thessalonians he is referring to how the young faith is corrupted by those who try to organize it. Either that or Illich means that he sees the ultimate good of the Incarnation as containing the seeds of ultimate evil.

Science fiction, no?

Anyway, I opened up my bible with a smile and read this chapter this morning as well Illich.

What the fuck am I doing I wondered idly as I then pulled out a book on the history of The Book of Common Prayer? This reading led me to some other religious books. The Bibliography of the Book of Common Prayer: 1549-1999 by David N. Griffiths. When I googled this book I found a very weird thing: a YouTube of a review of it read in a robot voice.

Life is good.

On another note I continue to be amused at how badly techies are at designing and thinking about tech.

Yesterday after reading the manual online of the hard drive I purchased, I jumped in the car and drove to Best Buy to ask a Geek dude whether I had actually purchased an independent hard drive or a back up system since the fucking thing was named “Back Up Plus” and the online manual was all about this stupid stupid interface (dashboard) which would let the user automatically back up his pics from Facebook and Twitter.

The young man behind the counter assured me that I would be able to access this drive in the usual manner. My confidence was restored until he added that he knew about these things because he had been doing them “for years.” 

I left. I couldn’t help but muse that I had been doing computers longer than this little fucker had been alive.

God is good.

I find a small solace when I realize there are still a number of people who are interested in the arts, the life of the mind, and the beauty of words.  Many if not most people’s listening habits do not include classical music. Nor do they seem to range over the many wonderful different styles that one can pull up these days and enjoy.

I find myself being drawn deeper and deeper into many styles of music.

My recent rehearsals of violin sonatas of Bach and Mozart with violinist Amy Piersma have been delightful.

These men’s music is in turns profound and playful, moving and insightful. I love it that somehow emotions of such rewarding nature have been embedded in the scribbles of people who lived centuries ago can still be revived and experienced.

I ran across some interesting pop music yesterday.

There was an article about Lily Allen in the New York Times I was reading. I love it that I was able to pull up her album “Sheezus” on Spotify and sample it. Cool. I love sarcasm in pop music.

Yesterday I had some amusing interchanges with people. At the Farmers Market there was a well dressed man soliciting signatures for a petition. The petition was to put our state legislature on a part time basis. I am more selective than I  used to be about signing petitions for public referendums or what not. I used to feel like elevating questions to be voted on was a worthy and important part of democracy.

Now that I think democracy in America is pretty much gone, I don’t really want to sign petitions of things that are too nutty. However this didn’t seem too nutty to me.

On the lapel of the pastel suit coat of the man was a gold plague that read something like Chairman of the Republican State Committee. I teased the man that I would sign it even though he was Republican. In fact, I confided, many of my friends were Republicans.

He replied grimly, “Government has just gotten out of hand.”

I sighed and handed him back his clip board signed.

At the library yesterday I ran across this book, checked it out and brought it home and started reading it. I am interested in the Book of Common Prayer these days. I think the beauty of the generations of language in it are fascinating. I am attracted to things said beautifully and find it satisfying to run across people and resources dedicated to exposing and discussing them historically.

I have a stake in the Episcopal church because it helped me not entirely reject Christianity out of hand. I remember my first contact with it in Oscoda Michigan.

It was a revelation to me that one could have such deep beauty of words and music in church having been raised on the banality of the faith of my childhood.

The banality ends up serving me as well. I am as comfortable with popular music as academic music. I can find music in both areas that I enjoy, listen to and perform. I think that’s good. Many people don’t have that luxury.

Ivan Illich thought that modernity was corrupt. In fact he that all modern institutions in Western Civilizations such as governments, church, schools and the medical profession are corruptions of and grew out of Christian notions.

He builds this idea on a reading of the parable of the Good Samaritan. First of all, the story is about rejecting organizational notions that pervade our lives. Illich maintains that people listening to Jesus tell this story would have been scandalized by the way it turned upside down the way their lives worked.

The idea behind this parable was not that people should take care of others. The young man who asked Jesus the question that prompts the story did not ask how one should behave to one’s neighbor. He asked who one’s neighbor was.

Illich sees that this parable is mostly misread. “Dictionaries recognize the good Samaritan as a friend in need. The United States has so-called Good Samaritan laws, which exempt you from tort actions, if you inadvertently do harm while offering aid,” Illich says, “This familiarity disguises the shocking character” of the tale.

The Samaritan “steps outside the embrace of the community” the “we.” He rejects the institutionalized notion of purification which was basic to his listeners who would not have seen anything untoward in the passing of the wounded person by the Priest and the Levite.

Illich says the moment we organize our self around charity we have lost its essence. Rules constrain and change the situation radically.

The Samaritan chooses something that breaks rules. It is one person suddenly seeing the other and acting in love. “A new dimension of love has opened, but this opening is highly ambiguous because of the way it explodes certain universal assumptions about the conditions under which love are possible.” You know , like church or family or people who look and think like us.

“There is a temptation to try to manage and, eventually to legislate this new love, to create an institution that will guarantee it, insure it, and protect it by criminalizing its opposite. So along with this new ability to freely give on oneself has appeared an entirely new kind of power, the power of those who organize Christianity and use this vocation to claim their superiority as social institutions. This power is claimed first by the Church and later by the many secular institutions stamped from its mold.”

These are Illich’s words. He believed that the “corruption of the best is the worst.”

It’s a hard thought, but one that  makes Christianity more palatable to me. I have never rejected the radical Christ only the muddle made of his prophecy and ideas since he walked the earth (if indeed he was a historical person at all).

In a funny way, Illich reminds me of Phillip Dick. Phillip Dick seems to have gone insane and started believing a notion that permeated some of his novels. Namely, that we are living in a sort of stopped time of illusion that began and was a response to the early Christian church.

Both Philip K. Dick and Ivan Illich saw modernity as a corruption of Christianity. Wow. Talk about strange bedfellows.

I’m in the middle of three days without scheduled events. This is helping immensely.

Yesterday I finally finished reading A Secular Age by Charles Taylor. This book has helped me immensely. I am slowly beginning to get a glimmer of understanding of the current chaotic array of choices for people in my society regarding how they understand and live their own lives. Taylor brilliantly and evenhandedly traces our current confusions about faith and meaning through history and philosophy.

He devotes several pages near the end to Ivan Illich. This led me to purchase and begin reading my next book in this line of thinking: The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich Paperback by David Cayley (Author), Charles Taylor (Foreword).

Illich has hovered on the edge of my consciousness as one of those thinkers I would like to understand better. Now is the time. I am resonating even more deeply with Illich’s ideas than Taylors’s.  His Deschooling of Society has sat on my shelves for years. I have dipped into it but had not understood what Illich was all about. Now I’m setting out to learn more about him. The Rivers North of the Future  is a compilation of remarks buy valium hong kong Illich made regarding his ideas about the evils of institutionalism.

Specifically Illich had quoted the idea that “the corruption of the best is the worst” (Corruptio optimi quae est pessima) surprising the interviewer, David Cayley, who had “made a careful review” of Illich’s published work to prepare for the CBC program he was recording (which apparently is still available for purchase and listening). Intrigued Cayley eventually got Illich to agree to a series of conversations which look to have summed up much of Illich’s thought.

At this stage I see Illich as critiquing how institutions such as church (he was a priest), education, medicine and others had been corrupted by their very attempts to organize and perpetuate their original ideals.

From his obituary: “His critique of modernity was founded on a deep understanding of the birth of institutions in the 13th century, a critical period in church history which enlightened all of his work, whether about gender, reading or materiality. He was … significant as an archaeologist of ideas, someone who helped us to see the present in a truer and richer perspective…” Andrew Todd and Franco La Cecla, The Guardian, Sunday 8 December 2002 21

I see Illich as another seminal thinker in my life like Friedman (family systems guy). I look forward to learning more about his ideas and understanding them better.

My boss and I agreed yesterday that we both need some time off. I’m afraid that I am not that easy for Eileen to be around lately. I am testy and yell at the computer often. Yesterday it balked completely when I attempted to open Finale and RiteStuff simultaneously. I finally had to reboot just to get my cursor back.

Then I opened software consecutively and it worked if very very slowly.

I had several absences at choir last night, plus three new singers one of which was completely unexpected. It is difficult to maintain any kind of choral integrity of sound in this kind of situation. I spent a good portion of the rehearsal doing vocal exercises in attempt to nurture some sort of choral sound. I hope some of these people return in the fall. We only have one more Wednesday rehearsal and four more Sundays.

Next week John Boody of Taylor and Boody is scheduled to meet with our organ committee. Jen is out of town so I will be hosting and making sure he gets his lodging and meals. We also have a field trip scheduled now to take the committee down to South Bend and Elkart to hear some organs.

Recently I decided to learn two pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal book to perform on the organ. They are both by Giles Farnaby and are quite charming.

I could really use some time off. It’s coming.

The Farmer’s Market had its spring opening day yesterday. I purchased onions, parsnips, beets and asparagus. Roasted parsnips with carrots and garlic. Eileen complained about the smell. She doesn’t like most of these vegetables. I ate the veggie mix for supper last night. Also roasted the beets for future use.

1. Recipes as a Guide, Not a Command – NYTimes.com

Review of a cookbook that sounds interesting.

2. Top Court Champions Freedom to Annoy – NYTimes.com

New York courts confront the actions of the son of a Dead Sea Scroll scholar. Fun times.

3. 26 Percent of World’s Adults Are Anti-Semitic, Survey Finds – NYTimes.com

Over half of the respondents in this study had not heard of the Holocaust.

4. Exercising the Mind to Treat Attention Deficits – NYTimes.com

Mind exercise more promising than drug regime.

I was reading yet another angry diatribe against lazy poor people on Facebooger. “Lazy poor people” seems to be code for people of color.

Blaming the victim is fashionable right now.

God knows many people are being inflamed by radio and tv pundits to hate the “other.”

This leads me to think about how easy it is for anyone to substitute one’s own anecdotal experience for clearer thinking. It occurs to me that if one has experienced or witnessed behavior that confirms or initiates a feeling about people who are different from one’s self, that it takes an act of clarity to see beyond that when confronted with clearer perspective.

However reaching beyond one’s own experience to more coherent thinking and even statistics requires a kind of thinking and clarity that results from practiced attempts at logically digesting and understanding reliable studies and reports.

Glib checks on Google can result in distorted perceptions that reinforce one’s own preconceived notions much less listening to your buddy next to you on a figurative bar stool (I think the social media/internet echo chamber effect resembles people bitching over a beer).

Learning how to be literate in a time of such explosions of access requires constant updating of discernment skills. Ask Howard Rheingold.

There is of course fuzzy thinking on all sides of issues being debated today.  I wish the goal on all sides of questions was clarity. But unfortunately we have been infected with the idea that if we are clever enough (and actually distort presentations enough) we can convince people who we disagree with.

This is the idea of “framing.” I find it cynical and self serving. The result of this kind of distortion is that many do not develop skills of thought or logic. Instead, they jump to what seem like unexamined conclusions that support their preconceived notions.

When I was a kid, I was taught that to search for a bible passage that backed up ones own prejudice was a no-no. Better to start open minded and seek wisdom.  The former practice was called “proof texting.”

Coming to conclusions without enough information (anecdotal procedure) is very similar.

I see where having a bad experience with people whom one doesn’t identify can lead to this kind of thinking. But a trained mind can do better.

I hope I can be more trained and discerning than not in my own thinking.

Not easy and a work in progress in any case.

It’s sometimes hard for me to imagine who reads my blog. I do know that specific family members and friends are looking here from time to time because they mention it to me. Since I basically write here for my own amusement, it does occur to me to wonder just how interesting it could possibly be for whoever reads it.

This wonder is intensified by my continuing experience of disconnectedness with what I see as larger movements of thought and being in the society around me.

In her book, The Stone Gods, Jeanette Winterson postulates a hilarious dystopia where reading is reduced to “single-letter recognition.” Describing vehicles in this future she writes:

“Outside there’s a line of Solos and a line of Limos.

S is for Solo – a single seater transport vehicle. L is for Limo, a multi-seater hydrogen hybrid. S is for short distance. L is for long distance.”

I suspect Winterson feels a similar disconnectedness as I do.

Anyway, yesterday I was reading Gardiner’s book on Bach. He was talking about Bach’s cousin, Christoph. It’s tricky when learning about the extended Bach family because there are many musicians and many duplicate names. Bach’s brother was also named Christoph as well as many other Bachs in the family tree.

But Gardiner thinks that cousin Christoph would be more prominent in musical history and importance if he did not live in his famous cousin’s shadow. To support this he describes at length a couple of Christoph’s compositions and footnotes one of them thus: “SDG 715.”

I eventually figured out Gardiner was pointing the reader to a wonderful recording he had made of some of Christoph’s music.

I accessed this recording on Naxos online and listened to it. The music and the performance are wonderful. Gardiner makes his case for the worth of the music and I once again feel privileged in my ability to connect dots via the interwebs.

This morning I read Charles Taylor’s section on Ivan Illich in his book A Secular Age. Illich is on my radar. I have looked at but not read in its entirety his book Deschooling Society. Taylor quotes at length from a book which brings together Illich’s thought published in 2005, The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich.

Taylor’s lengthy discussion of Illich fascinated me so much I wanted to look at the book. Hey, it has a foreword by Taylor. And it looks great and is in Kindle format. Pop it goes on my list of books to consider reading after Taylor.

One thing leads to another.

1. EMA Performs New Music at Rough Trade NYC – NYTimes.com

I thought I better put some links up since I haven’t been doing that. It’s not like I haven’t been scowering the Interwebs for the usual fascinating articles. I’ve just been too lazy to share here. This article is the kind of article I bookmark to give me names of new musicians to check out. I use the tag, “Spotify,” to help me do this.

2. A Lesson in Farming, Classroom to Cafeteria – NYTimes.com

I think it’s cool that this school in Indiana has quit buying ground beef and is growing its own as part of the curriculum. O yeah, this article also mentions Montague Michigan which is the twin city of Whitehall where my lovely wife was born and raised. Right in the New York Times. I put it up on Facebooger.

3. A Devotion to Language Proves Risky – NYTimes.com

Imprisoned for teaching Uighur.

4. European Candidates See Opportunity on Extreme Edge – NYTimes.com

Right wing extremism not limited to US Haters. Scary disturbing shit.

5. Why Americans Don’t Like Jazz — DYSKE.COM

This article elicited several responses when I linked it on Facebooger. I’m always interested in thinking about how people are listening these days. DYSKE SUEMATSU  the author of this blog post from 2003 observes that Americans are losing (have lost?) the ability to listen to abstract music (without words) or appreciate abstract art. We need the visual or the words.

Well that’s enough. See you tomorrow.

I went a bit early to church yesterday to time the prelude.

Good thing I did because I was underestimating the time considerable, thinking it would be about four or five minutes. Instead it came in at seven and half minutes.

The choir was challenging to lead yesterday. I attempted to warm up voices and get them ready to do their anthem. When I began there were no second sopranos and only two first sopranos. This was critical because we had a divisi part in the anthem for the day. I instructed the singers present to simply sing what they had been singing. It would have worked that way. About halfway into the pregame a second soprano showed up. After continuing with my rehearsal I went back and went over the section where she had a part. She came up to me after the pregame very distraught (not unusual). I tried to reassure her and calm her as best as I could.

When it came time to sing the anthem in service, I looked up and didn’t see one of my altos. Unbeknownst to me she had stood up early and was standing behind the organ out of my sight. She did this because she is having difficulty standing up and wanted to be prepared to move into place for the anthem.

I on the other hand thought that I would conducting a different group of singers in service than in rehearsal at that point, missing one of three altos and adding one soprano who did not attend the pregame.

I was surprised when I surveyed the lineup and the missing alto was back.

The anthem (“Loving Shepherd of Thy Sheep” by John Rutter) went pretty well. I sang along with the sole tenor in a couple places where he wasn’t loud enough. There was a little train wreck led by the soprano who has skipped the last two Wednesday rehearsals. I watched the parts diverge and looked for a chance to bring them back together which I did in a few measures.

Ay carumba!

Despite my misgivings, the organ prelude went very well. Even though I missed my Saturday practice on it, the two weeks of work paid off. I meant to put a note in the bulletin explaining that I was going to play a chorale before each setting. This meant that there were actually six parts to the prelude (no wonder it was seven and a half minutes).  I sometimes wonder if Bach’s Orgelbuchlein is a bit distant from the listening experience of many people at church.

I love these little settings myself. But it helps that I have been playing them for years and that I am familiar with most of the hymn tunes they are based on. Yesterday I played the three settings of Christ ist erstanden. This was also the tune for the opening hymn which the cong sang with gusto.

The postlude was another setting of this chorale by Harald Rohlig, an obscure Lutheran composer I admire.

After church we came home and Eileen made bouquets for her Mom and mine. We delivered the flowers to Mary and then drove off to Whitehall for the annual Hatch Mother’s day meal. On the way I managed to get Skype loaded on my phone and we talked to Sarah in England despite the road noise of Eileen’s mini.

At the end of the day I mustered the energy to treadmill. Whew. Another crazy Sunday.

I discovered yesterday that it is possible to download articles from the New Groves Dictionary of Music to my Kindle to read. When I mentioned this to Eileen she said I should be teaching Hope people how to utilize their online resources. Flattering, but I do wonder how many profs utilize the extensive stuff available or are even aware of it. I hope I underestimate the number that do.

I am feeling pretty discouraged this morning. The wedding I played yesterday was a nightmare. I hesitate to bitch too much here. Part of my hesitation is realizing that the event held a lot of meaning for the people involved, especially (hopefully) the two people getting married.

I think of this kind of wedding as the “church-as-a-backdrop” type wedding. I knew we were in trouble when I walked in and a couple young kids were banging away on my congas and piano. During the course of the afternoon I had to intervene a couple times to keep them from hurting the instruments.

My trepidation was confirmed when the visiting Presbyterian minister advised the jean clad videographer to think of the wedding as a  “Princess Bride” wedding. I seriously doubt if the young man knew  what the fuck he was talking about. Unfortunately, I did.

Predictably we began late. The wedding was scheduled at the exact time the huge Tulip Time High School Bands Parade was to begin. This usually stops all local vehicle traffic. The minister whipped by the piano and leaned over and asked what my last name was.

He then went to the front of the church. “How bout that piano player, Steve Jenkins?” he said or something like that prompting unenthusiastic polite applause but effectively quietening them down probably out of curiosity to see what in the world he was going to say.

He then proceed to tell jokes to kill time while we waited to begin.

I am not making this up.

I think maybe a lot of my discouragement comes from not knowing exactly how to proceed musically for this group. I began the prelude with some happy Mozart and Bach. But before long I began improvising. When I improvise, sometimes I watch people. This influences my improvisation when I do this. I respond to the people I see. Yesterday my improvisations kept getting more and more banal. I couldn’t help it.

I think I nailed the pop songs the couple requested. But I’m not totally sure. When trying to render a contemporary popular song with just a piano, I often wonder what part of the original song attracts listeners. I am of course unable to replicate their listening experience of a recording which often includes many musicians and special effects. Even the basic timbres elude me at the keyboard. I hope that the melody means something to them and try to play it the way I hear it from the recording (not from the sheet music although that is a guide).

All this discouragement was made complete when I read a discussion on the Facebook organist page.

Basically dozens of organists (103 comments) complained about how snobby some organists are who refuse to play Gordon Young’s music on the organ. I don’t know why but I blotted out their names above even though this an open public group.

 I am one of those that doesn’t play Gordon Young nor use his choral compostions. I actually held a position in Detroit which was Young’s for years: First Pres downtown.

You can see First Pres to the left of the burning Unitarian church (pic from yesterday).

I believe I have the robe Gordon Young is wearing in the picture above hanging in my basement right now.

I remember meeting Young at a Detroit AGO meeting. He asked me if I had seen his latest organ composition. I remember him saying something, “Boy have I got the piece for you!”

I do however sympathize with the commenters who complain that snobby organs were very uncomplimentary to them about playing Young. I didn’t enter the fray myself. Who cares what these organists play?

All in all, a pretty discourage day musically for me. I tried to get some practice in after the ceremony yesterday but the room quickly refilled with the rite of taking pictures. It was so crowded and weird (I had to advise a young person that he should not “hit the piano keys but play them.”) I just went home.

So this morning I will be playing my prelude and postlude without my last solid Saturday practice.  It will probably go fine.

First I want to tell about my dream last night. I have been having disturbing dreams about family that I won’t share here, but last night I dreamed about an orchestral concert I was attending. In the dream I knew they were playing a Brahms symphony  (although it wasn’t actually Brahms they were playing only a symphony from my own imagination). This symphony I knew (in the dream) ended abruptly and beautifully. The orchestra ended. The conductor turned to the audience. There was dead silence. No one applauded. I tried to clap my hands but no sound came from my clapping. Finally only a faint sound emerged from my clapping but it was overwhelmed by the silence of the rest of the audience. The conductor turned away and began the next selection.

Deep, eh? Not so hard to understand this one. I find that the music I love has little meaning for many other people who like music, mostly pop music I guess. Today I am playing a wedding which has only popular music choices in it. I have managed to come up with piano versions of “Beautiful Day” by U2, “Come Away with Me” by Norah Jones, and “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri. I usually play a prelude as people are being seated. Often I play lively Mozart and/or Bach. Today I wonder how well this will be received by people whose musical taste is so rooted in bland popular music.

I guess I’ll find out.  These choices cut off two sources of music I usually draw on for public prayer: classical music and religious music. I wonder what makes this wedding today prayer. Maybe the prayer has been drained away and leaves only a civic kind of ritual, which is hollowed out by not connecting to historical communal rituals. Rather it’s the whimsical invention of people trying to make some kind of meaning with the tools of their understanding. Yikes.

Eileen and I got serious shit done yesterday. First we had a nice breakfast at Simpatico despite the fact that the baristas forgot parts of our order and had to be reminded that we had paid for but not received my yogurt parfait and Eileen’s lattee. Sheesh.

Then we went to my Mom’s bank and I opened a second Money Market account in my and eventually my brother’s name. These accounts have a clock on them. If Mom’s death occurs five years after we open an account, this money is protected and is in Mark’s and my name.  If she needs the money in the meantime it’s there for her use.

Mark seemed to think that we had formed a trust for our previous account. I’ll check with the lawyer next week since he is not in the office on Fridays.

In the afternoon, Eileen and I met with our insurance guy. Many years ago I signed up for a $150k life insurance policy on myself. Understandably as I have aged, this policy has increased in price. Originally I thought of it as in lieu of savings that would protect Eileen when I died. Now our situation has changed drastically. The house is paid for. We are rapidly becoming debt free. Eileen has retired early and we need to trim as many costs as possible.

So after a discussion the insurance guy, we trimmed a hundred dollars off our monthly insurance bill. It should now be down to about $250 monthly which covers car,  house and life insurance for both of us.  Of course this doesn’t count our out of pocket health insurance. But what the heck.

Getting shit done.

It looks I did the right thing when I ordered the Cliff Eisen editions of Mozart’s violin sonatas. This morning after doing my Greek (and unsuccessfully searching the house for my Greek flash cards…. they are here somewhere!),  instead of turning to my biography of Cranmer by MacCulloch or my philosophical treatise, The Secular Age by Charles Taylor, I chose instead to examine volume 1 of the three volumes of Mozart violin sonatas I received in the mail yesterday (unfortunately too late for my weekly meeting with my violinist).

Eisen bases the first volume of his edition (K. 301- K. 306) on photocopies of Mozart’s original handwritten manuscript (“privately owned in Switzerland”) and the published first edition which apparently contains many errors. I love the way Eisen thinks about the relationship of music to performance. He notes that Mozart continually revised his works. It’s not possible to make a definitive edition when thinking like Eisen does. Instead he provides as much clarity as he can in the text.

He points out that Mozart wrote no accents in these works. Instead he uses a stroke which seems to serve as both an accent and a staccato mark. When a stroke occurs over a long note it can hardly mean staccato (although after a cursory look in this volume I could not find one of these). Also he notes that in addition to two dynamic markings (the traditional P and F) Mozart also writes out “pia” and “for” in places. Eisen makes a good case that Mozart might have some crescendos and decrescendos in mind at these points.

He also notes carefully where Mozart write differing articulations for the piano and the violin. In one passage in particular the piano and violin are playing the same notes in octaves and Mozart seems to have deliberately written different slurs for them.

In Eisen’s words: “It is difficult to credit these differences to sloppiness or oversight.” I quite like that and the result in performance is fascinating to me.

I also liked Eisen’s observations on Mozart’s approach to his music: “As for consistency of articulation, the notion that the ‘classical style’ represents a model of symmetry, balance and clarity is for the most part a 19th-century fiction, an attempt to rationalize a musical discourse—an exemplary ‘absolute’—-in a world that was perceived as fundamentally irrational. As such it has little to do with Mozart’s actual practice, which is based primarily on variety of both content and articulation.”

Finally I was amused to find an error in Eisen’s own English version of the preface I have been quoting:

After comparing the French translation I can find no reason for the second “one” above.

I totally love that there are errors in an essay discussing different readings including previous errors of a manuscript!

The new version of RiteStuff, the denomination software my church uses, turns out to be a very complicated revision.

It is like new software to me. I began yesterday morning by using the registration info the church secretary provided me. My idea was to do my morning tasks using the new software. Yikes. Picking my way through it turned out to be confusing. At the same time I could see new possibilities in how I could possibly use it once I learned it.

I looked for tutorial information online about RiteStuff 2.0. Finally in the afternoon (after I had managed to accomplish my tasks despite the new software) I found the User Manual tucked away at the bottom of the web page. Even though I couldn’t get the dang thing to stop loading online I did manage to read some of it and could see that it would be a key for me to understanding how the software might work.

The church secretary wisely kept the old version on her computer even as she had installed the new one. My boss and I agreed our task this summer is to look at this software and decide how we will use it.

The choir at church is stumbling along. People are skipping rehearsals and Sundays, scheduling other stuff in these times. Last night I had to cancel an upcoming anthem when three of my five  men indicated they were not planning to attend on Sunday, June 1. It will be relatively simple to come up with a substitute anthem for this Sunday, but I am disappointed we won’t be able to sing Healey Willian’s lovely “God has gone up with a shout.” Oh well. Yesterday I had picked a prelude and postlude by Willan for this Sunday. Maybe I’ll still perform them. Willan is an important Anglican composer and I do enjoy preserving his status by using his music in this setting.

I worked hard on vocal production last night. In such a small ensemble it is essential to continue to emphasize good vocal sounds. We have a new soprano. I hadn’t thought that it would be so evident that joining this late in the season would present a difference in vocal production in the newbie. I do emphasize vocaleses throughout the choir season, spending as much as ten or fifteen minutes on exercises. We had a spectacular sound on Good Friday. I like to think my doggedness in persisting with vocal exercises had something to do with that.

In the meantime, I can’t really work on choral sound with such differing groups of singers (different people at rehearsals and performances). I have to triage the sound the day of the performance. I can however, work on individual vocal production and make sure people know their parts as well as possible. That’s what I did last night.

I feel pretty good about not succumbing to discouragement as a conductor in the face of these difficulties. I think that choristers enjoy the  rehearsal despite these obstacles and leave feeling good about being a choir member.

Fuck the duck. Toujours gai, Archie!

I realized yesterday that it is this Saturday that I have a wedding. My boss is not the priest for this wedding but she still handled all the musical choices. This is definitely not a churchy type wedding. I am playing three pop songs  instrumentally on the piano. This is good time for me. I didn’t really want to learn these three far in advance so I would have to keep them in my fingers.

Yesterday I made a playlist of them on Spotify and listened to them a bit while treadmilling.

The three tunes this couple has chosen are:

Come Away with Me by Norah Jones

A Thousand Years by Christina Perri

A Beautiful Day by U2

I requested that the couple purchase the music and get it to me. They of course bought Vocal/piano versions. If I were to play just the piano part they would wonder where the melody is. The last one is the only one I’ll have to practice to adapt it to piano solo. The other two are pretty simple. It never fails to amaze me how people define their relationship to church musically. At least these people don’t seem to be part of our regular worshiping community. I would hope that the way we sing and pray might influence someone’s preferences when choosing stuff to get married by. But what do I know?

A box of used organ music I purchased from my old teacher Craig Cramer arrived recently. Yesterday I sat at the bench and went through a lot of it. Most of it was by living or recently deceased composers. Some of this was vaguely interesting, some pretty boring. At this stage of my life, craft doesn’t hold my attention by itself. There are slew of church music composers who write well crafted stuff that puts me to sleep.

I also ordered a bunch of different editions of Buxtehude and Sweelinck from Craig. These ranged from Dover and Kalmus editions of the former to a beautiful old Barenreiter edition of the latter.

It was these not the contemporary stuff that grabbed me yesterday. I played through some bicinium of Sweelinck and the Ciacona in C minor (BuxWV 159), Ciacona in E minor (BuxWV 160), Passacaglia in D minor (BuxWV 161) and several Preludiums of Buxtehude. This is such fine music and a joy to play even on  my old Moller.

The secretary at church purchased the update for the church software so I now I have registration number. This should allow me to do my work today.  Onward and upward for the old guy.

I am experiencing a sort of mental relaxation.

I am forcing myself to do tasks like practice. My predilection is to goof off. I did go practice yesterday. But even as I did so, I preferred to stay at home and do nothing. I guess that’s a good sign.

And I’m not really doing nothing. I continue to read and study my Greek. I played a great deal of Mendelssohn’s piano music yesterday. I continue to find him rewarding and fun to play. I even treadmilled to a recording of his piano music. What’s up with that?

Tried to reinstall the software my church uses that contains all the hymnals of the Episcopal Church (in America), RiteSong or RiteStuff. Of course it didn’t work. Unfortunately it looks like the version my church was using is no longer available for download online. The church secretary told me she hadn’t done the update yet. In the meantime I am without this handy piece of software. It’s only inconvenient, not completely detrimental.

Eileen took me up on my offer to keep her company on the ride to her Weavers Guild meeting in Grand Rapids. I took the car and found a Meijer’s gas station nearby (the Guild meets in a more rural area where there’s much else around). Bought a diet peach tea, an egg salad sandwich, some fruit and a bag of sunflower seeds. I sat and ate and read while Eileen’s meeting went on. It got out after 9 PM.

Came home exhausted and fell into bed. My brain seems to be on vacation.

1. Inventing a Failure – NYTimes.com

Krugmann is critical of how far the right is taking the rhetoric of distortion.

2. ‘James Madison,’ by Lynne Cheney – NYTimes.com

One of three interesting book reviews in Sunday’s NYT. Yes, she is that Lynn Cheney, the one married to Darth Vader.

3. ‘Decoded,’ by Mai Jia – NYTimes.com

A spy novel from China. Cool.

4. ‘The Word Exchange,’ by Alena Graedon – NYTimes.com

Futuristic novel where computers infect humans with a virus that makes them forget words and substitute gibberish. Looks like fun.

5. The Education of a Public Man – NYTimes.com

Not really thinking of reading this book, but I enjoyed the tile and the article.

6.Exposing the Hypocrisies of the New York Liberal – NYTimes.com

I am on the far left in the political spectrum, but I enjoy this kind of critical thinking especially when directed at policies which with I am basically in sympathy. It provokes thought.

7. Embrace of Atheism Put an Indonesian in Prison – NYTimes.com

Woah!

I continue to put up half ass pictures on Facebooger. My Dad left behind thousands of slides. I would like to have them in digital format. I am currently using my phone and a slide viewer to convert them.

This is a lame procedure I know, but I haven’t decided how to approach this process in a more effective way yet. That will probably involve some poking around on line which I haven’t gotten around to.

It is fun to throw up pics on Facebooger and get immediate feedback from viewers (mostly but not all family).

I had an interesting reconnection with a person yesterday. His name is Tim Pertler.

I knew him when my Dad was pastor at West Court Street Church of God, Flint Michigan. He is four years younger than me. He sent me a “friend request.” (I do abhor this debasing of language but whatchagonnado?) I usually connect with anybody who tries to reach out to me (assuming they are real people and I have some kind of connection with them).

It turns out that Mr. Pertler is interested in the history of my Dad’s denomination and specifically the church in Flint. I put up some pics that I otherwise didn’t think would interest anyone with Mr. Pertler in mind.

Although I have little interest in this denomination I do think history and the keeping of history is interesting and would assist this dude however I can. My father and his father were both involved in the history of the Church of God. I have tons of info sitting around that might be pertinent to historical endeavors and would be glad to share. But we’ll see. Often people flirt with ideas and stuff and then let it go.

I finished Murakami’s 1Q84 yesterday. It is more tightly plotted than I remember some of his other novels being. I think I would classify it as romantic surrealism.

I am nearing the end of two other books I am reading: Cranmer by Diarmaid MacCulloch and A Secular Age by Charles Taylor. I am enjoying both of them, but the latter seems to speak directly to issues I think about regarding how we live now. Taylor is careful to examine issues of morality and belief and nobelief as even handedly as he can. That he even tries to do this is a breath of fresh air for me.

I’m closing today’s blog with a lengthy quote. I encourage you to read it. We live in a time of hate and division. Taylor helps me understand both people I agree with and disagree with as well as myself.

A third pattern of motivation…  this time in the register of justice ….  [we can see it] today with the politically correct left, as well as the so-called ‘Christian’ right. We fight against injustices which cry out to heaven for vengeance. We are moved by a flaming indignation against these: racism, oppression, sexism, or leftist attacks on the family or Christian faith. This indignation comes to be fuelled by hatred for those who support and connive with these injustices; and this in turn is fed by our sense of superiority that we are not like these instruments and accomplices of evil. Soon we are blinded to the havoc we wreak around us. Our picture of the world has safely located all evil outside of us. We must never relent, but on the contrary double our energy, vie with each other in indignation and denunciation….

“Another tragic irony nests here. The stronger the sense of (often correctly identified) injustice, the more powerfully this pattern can become entrenched.  We become centres of hatred, generators of new modes of injustice on a greater scale, but we started with the most exquisite sense of wrong, the greatest passion for justice and equality and peace.

“A Buddhist acquaintance of mine from Thailand briefly visited the German Greens. He confessed to utter bewilderment. He thought he understood the goals of the party: peace between human beings, and a stance of respect and friendship by humans toward nature. But what astonished him was all the anger, the tone of denunciation, of hatred towards the established parties. These people didn’t seem to see that the first step towards their goal wold have to involve stilling the anger and aggression in themselves. He couldn’t understand what they were up to.”

I have been thinking about the title of the memoir my Dad left behind, Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares. I don’t understand why he chose this title. Although he begins with a Forward and a little Introduction, he doesn’t indicate why he chose that title.

It makes me wonder because although I know that Dad struggled with life, I don’t know what “dangers, toils and snares” confronted him. As I see  it, he had a pretty good life. Starting from a modest background as the youngest son of a preacher of pretty new religious movement (The Church of God), Dad goes on to emerge as one of the golden young ministers. He sang in the quartet from the church college which both sang on the church’s radio show and toured the United States in effect advertising the faith.

He was known as a Youth Minister and gave revivals and led youth camps.

He made that dang 1959 trip to Europe and the Middle East. He and Mom were “delegates to the World Convention of the Church of God.” He says they borrowed $2,750.00 to make the trip and that it didn’t make sense to “just” respond to the invitation to be delegates. Rather that making “an extended trip to the middle East and Europe was very enticing.”

I am intrigued that Dad was “enticed.” I have to conclude that he was an adventuresome man even though I didn’t always see him that way.

I experienced my father as kind of secretive. He didn’t easily confide in me. It was difficult for him to say that he loved me. But I didn’t really think of him as tortured by “dangers, toils and snares.”

In 1963 he moved the family from Tennessee to Michigan accepting what was in the confines of the small eccentric denomination a significant church in Flint Michigan. West Court Street was significant because he was following one of the preeminent preachers of the church, Herb Thompson, as pastor.

I remember Herb visiting us in Greeneville Tennessee and giving a “revival.” This means that he stayed with us a week or so and preached at a service every evening at my Dad’s church. It sort of feels like he was looking to Dad to carry on his work in Flint and in the national church (such as it was).

However, Dad found himself in an increasingly complex situation both in the local Flint church which was made up about half educated teacher types and half factory workers and in the country at the time which was reeling from the death of JFK and well on its way to the turbulent sixties.

Dad experienced a change in Flint. He found himself questioning a lot. In 1968 hiss transformation from the mantle bearing young conservative minister of his denomination to one of the farthest left wing factions of his own Dad’s church was probably completed by his taking a course in Chicago from the Urban Training center.  He has written and spoken about this time in his life as culminating in an “identity crisis.”

So maybe from his point of view this time in his life was one of “dangers, toils and snares.” Hard to say.

Yesterday I had some time to myself while Elizabeth and Eileen were in Whitehall.  At one point I messed with some of my Dad’s old slides. Elizabeth had pointed out that it would be cool if we could find a slide of my Mom and Dad in Paris so that Emily my niece could at least see them as she heads off to join her husband Jeremy who has been in France for a while plugging French versions of his graphic novel.

After a bit of looking earlier in the week I did find this picture of Mom and Dad in Paris in 1958.

Since Emily is leaving in a few days, I wanted to somehow get the slide into a jpeg format. I went to Walgreens and found out that the store in Holland didn’t do this but the store on the north side would overnight it for me to do it.

I found a $99 contraption at Meijers that purported to turn slides into jpegs, but wasn’t ready to risk the bucks on it. I thought of Kinkos and looked online to see if I could expect to walk in the door and do this task. It wasn’t clear to me if that was possible.

Finally I broke down and started taking pictures with my phone of slides on a viewer. That’s what these are.

I’m probably five or six in the picture above. The man is Benjamin Jenkins, my Father’s father. The picture has a sliver of my Grandmother on the left.

Mark was one and I was eight when my Mom and Dad took most of the summer and went to Europe. According to my Dad’s family memoirs they visited Canada, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Syria and Lebanon.

Anyway that’s all I have time for this morning. Gotta skate. More later.

1. You Must Enter Singing

A blog I ran across recently that is “a forum dedicated to the engaging of ideas at the intersection of the arts and the Christian faith with particular attention to music.” It seems a bit conservative but educated.

2. A Bad Death in Oklahoma : The New Yorker

Back when I subscribed to the hard copy of the New Yorker I looked forward to reading this guy’s articles.

3.

My friend Amy and I played through three violin sonatas by Mozart yesterday (K. 395, 303 and 306). Dang this is cool music. It is mature Mozart. I performed from an ancient crumbling used copy of the piano part I own and printed up violin parts from the internet for Amy. I decided that today I will order us a new printed edition so that our parts will match. I’m planning on purchasing a Cliff Eisen edition if I can find it.

I ordered from Zingerman’s on Wednesday. I had a discount coupon that expired on April 30. I ordered olive oil, a loaf of bread and some cheese. It came yesterday. Over night, that’s pretty quick. I purchased another loaf of bread from Meijers and some cheese and that was our meal together last night. Elizabeth whipped up a salad. Mmmmm.

Today Elizabeth and Eileen are off to Whitehall to taxi Eileen’s Mom around. Elizabeth gets on a plane tomorrow. It has been delightful having her around.

1.Outrage Across Ideological Spectrum in Europe Over Flawed Lethal Injection in U.S. – NYTimes.com

Before Choir rehearsal last night, Elizabeth pointed out that we had had contact with 14 Jenkinses that day. Lunch with Mom and my brother, Mark’s fam (5), video phone call with Sarah in England and Matthew off camera  (2), video phone call with California fam (4) and Eileen, Elizabeth and me (3).

I have chosen to learn Bach’s Orgelbüchlein setting of Christ ist erstanden for performance as the prelude a week from this Sunday. This will be the tune of the opening hymn that day.  This setting of Bach’s is the only example of a three part setting of a chorale in the Orgelbüchlein. It follows the three verses of the original hymn and is so marked Versus I, II, III in the original manuscript.

I love it that the composition in Bach’s handwriting is available online.

I’m one of those crazy musicians who will actually look at manuscripts and compare them to printed editions. I have learned to do this because of changes editors make, sometimes one I would prefer not to make, to the original composition.

Also performing a movement from Harald Rohlig’s Fantasy on the same tune as the postlude:

The third Vers 3. 

These two pieces (Bach and Rohlig) will keep me busy for the next week and half. I do enjoy learning music this good.

Well, Elizabeth is visiting so once again I’m bringing this to a close. Life is good. Fun to have her around.

1. Amid a Revived East-West Chill, Cold War Relics Draw New Interest – NYTimes.com

Russian museum.

2. Justices Appear Divided on Cellphone Warrants – NYTimes.com

Hard to rule on subjects you don’t exactly understand I would imagine.

3. Voter ID Is the Real Fraud – NYTimes.com

Judges beginning to understand the underlying partisan nature of this controversy? Maybe.

4. Cli-Fi Books

 New term for me. Climate Science Fiction. I understand that Margaret Atwood’s latest trilogy falls into this category.

I managed to get a little Greek in before Elizabeth got up.  Then we had a pleasant morning chat. No time to blog really but here are some links.

I’m writing this while Elizabeth and Eileen have breakfast with their phones.

1. Uproar in Egypt After Judge Sentences More Than 680 to Death – NYTimes.com

Injustice incident take two. Both hearings were minutes long.

2. Political Executions in Egypt – NYTimes.com

More editorial analysis on link 1.

3. Saving the System – NYTimes.com

US going to hell in a handbasket observations. I liked this quote:

“when an established international system enters its phase of deterioration, many leaders nonetheless respond with insouciance, obliviousness, and self-congratulation. When the wolves of the world sense this, they, of course, will begin to make their moves to probe the ambiguities of the aging system and pick off choice pieces to devour at their leisure.” Apparently quoting from an email from Charles Hill to David Brooks.

4. Finding a Flash Drive in the Sea – NYTimes.com

Satellite tech soon to entire last decade.

5. High Plains Moochers – NYTimes.com

Obvious Bundy observations that the right denies.

6. No Accounting Skills? No Moral Reckoning – NYTimes.com – NYTimes.com

Double-entry book keeping becomes part of cultural literacy requirement.

7. The War on Truth in Ukraine – NYTimes.com

More background on this evolving disaster.

8. ‘The Cairo Affair,’ by Olen Steinhauer – NYTimes.com

I loved this quote describing reading a boring book:

” The overall effect is like sitting through one of those new super duper jazz concerts where the band kicks off at 7 p.m., three hours go by, then you look at your watch and it’s only 7:15. You want to ask the guy sitting next to you the name of the song, but you don’t want to look stupid. So you sit there, waiting for the melody to come along. Lots of music, lots of riffs, but, alas, no melody.”

9. Ukraine: The Phony War? by Tim Judah | The New York Review of Books

More background. Recommended.

10. ‘Living With a Wild God,’ by Barbara Ehrenreich – NYTimes.com

Review of a book written by an atheist about her mystical experience as a child.