Trio Settecento

My wife and I just got back from the finale of the local chamber music season. Ames Town & Gown splits its season between the city auditorium and the recital hall on campus (like tonight).

Tonight’s performers were magnificent. I would be hard-pressed to recall a better-programmed concert. One might think that Italian baroque music is a narrow field, but the contrast of pieces, performing styles, structure, and featured performers was absolutely delightful. Trio Settecento has their own YouTube channel.

The concert began delightfully with Stradella’s Sinfonia in D minor and Legrenzi’s Sonata quinta. After a solo harpsichord piece, a Scarlatti sonata, I really enjoyed Corelli’s E major sonata from Opus 5. Four Scottish airs arranged by Geminiani concluded the first set. Violinist Rachel Barton Pine mentioned that in 17th century Europe, the dividing lines between folk and classical music were not as precise as they might be today. A musician playing in the local concert band one night might be playing dance music in a pub the next. While the whole evening was billed as “An Italian Sojourn,” these “Four Scottish Airs” worked wonderfully well in the trio format.

After intermission, the trio began with Locatelli’s Sonata in D minor, which is on their video page at their web site. What’s not on the page is the outrageous Caprice that concludes the piece. A Vivaldi cello sonata, then Veracini’s Sonata in F finished up. There was a Handel encore after a standing ovation.

It was the best chamber music experience since I lived in Kansas City and heard the Monteverdi 1610 Vespers.

 

On My Bookshelf: Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock ‘n’ Roll is Marc Dolan’s massive 2012 bio that takes the reader through an entertainer’s life from first guitar to the present day. Up front, I’ll set my personal perspective. I had a few Boss albums on vinyl in the late 70′s. I didn’t follow him into the 80′s–mainstream rock lost its appeal to me as I turned to other genres for listening and concerts. I’ve never been to a Springsteen concert, but many of my friends have and have raved. I like to pepper my reading with biography  now and then. I usually find rock biographies depressing for the waste of artists’ lives in chemicals and other forms of self-indulgence. This book, not so much. But it was a marathon.

Mr Dolan is a very good writer. And the story that traces Bruce Springsteen’s rise from a kid with his first guitar to “Born To Run” is engaging. From 1975 on, we get a detailed, though not totally intimate view of a star trying to develop as an artist and as a person while carrying the burdens of stardom/celebrity and some personal demons. That might be an interesting story to fans, but I found it less inspiring. The second half of the book is a long travelogue of details in a very productive artistic life. Are changes in musicians, set-lists, and composing/recording styles important? They got a lot of attention. Springsteen’s failed first marriage and seemingly sound second one, not as much. More of the man’s direct testimony about his own music? None, except through other sources.

I think I’m interested in personal details less for the voyeurism, and more for how one’s loved ones and friends inform and guide one’s life as an artist. Springsteen is painted with his flaws, but these are skipped over somewhat. Psychotherapy is mentioned as sort of a backstory. The last several years seem to be scanned over more quickly, as if the author isn’t quite keen on the move out of rock and into Woody Guthrie and more traditional American music of the last century.

Maybe the problem is writing what is presented as an “authoritative” (or perhaps “long”) biography of a person who doesn’t seem quite finished with his life. Or maybe the Boss is done, pretty much. Or maybe Mr Dolan harbors some of his own skittishness about being fifty, or being sixty, and coming to terms with mortality and age a bit more deeply than he would like. I can dig it. I’m not reading this biography (or others like it) so I can be informed enough to visit websites and chat about the minute details of a star’s life. I want insight into art, creativity, and the hand of God in all of that. In the end, this book didn’t satisfy that for me.

A fan will love this book, especially if you know the music and the concerts. There are most insights into the man’s life, I’m sure. But these seem better suited to what will come sometime in about thirty to fifty years: a cover-to-cover authoritative biography of Bruce Springsteen. If you’re not a fan, this book will likely lose you. Listen to Bruce’s music first. That tells the story you really need to know.

 

Nearly Midnight

I have a mixed heart today. This afternoon I heard the encouraging news of the Holy Father’s Mass in the Roman youth prison, which included washing the feet of young women and Muslims. Surely this must be throwing some of my sister and brother Catholics into apoplexy. I feel for them. I can imagine how it must seem to have a spiritual worldview come crashing down.

I remember well enough my confrontation with mortality when my brother died nearly two years ago in a highway crash. We learned a few days ago my wife’s sister is gravely ill. It is hard to get information all the way from Florida, and lensed through upset loved ones. But it seems the end is near. I remember being in denial about my brother, trying to convince myself I did not hear his wife quite right, and that I would arrive at their home and he would be fine. But he wasn’t. My heart could not steer my mind, not totally. My wife spent most of the day helping me prepare for the first two Triduum liturgies. I hope it was helpful. We didn’t talk too much about things, except over lunch.

Our niece did tell us that she read the Bible to her mother last night. And a tear came from her eye. Otherwise, she has been totally unresponsive to people. My wife debates whether to go now or wait, perhaps, for a miracle. The Triduum is here, the anniversary of her reception into Full Communion over thirty years ago.

This was the backdrop for me of our parish’s Holy Thursday Mass tonight. We were in our temporary location on campus at the Iowa State Center. Our open foot washing got off to a slow start. For a moment, I didn’t think anyone would come forward. It was the first year the young miss declined to wash and be washed. (Usually the three of us would wash each other’s.) But finally, people did come, and it went on for four songs.

The students opted to conduct a transfer procession from the auditorium back to our parish’s lower lounge. Ordinarily, I’d feel heartened by the public act of worship past a few blocks of fraternities and dorms to our student center. But no flowers were prepared, and no special lighting employed. Just a ciborium on the altar, and the “corporate” fluorescent lighting beaming down.

I feel mostly at a loss. Too much time away in exile away from church. Too much heaviness inside of me.

Where to go from here? Psalm 4 is one of my favorite Compline psalms. Verse 2 promises a path out:

Answer when I call, my saving God.
In my troubles, you cleared a way;
show me favor; hear my prayer.

Show me favor: that’s direct. The ICEL Psalter was a bit more insistent: “Be good to me.” Sounds like a Blues song. Dare we insist, “You better be good to me.”? What about this great tune? That sums up where I am right now, ’round midnight. Quiet and melancholy drift, and the occasional blast.

Verse 7 echoes my thoughts tonight:

Many say, “May we see better times!”

But that’s not the conclusion, the “Amen” of Psalm 4. Verse 9 is:

In peace I shall both lie down and sleep,
for you alone, Lord, make me secure.

There are nights when we can only lie down, and sleep does not come. I hope for both after midnight. I suspect the Lord will be good to me.

I realize I am not invulnerable. My brother was not. And now, my wife’s only sibling she has known. Certainly, the human body of Jesus was not, victimized as it was on Good Friday. What is the meaning, and where is the redemption in such suffering? We grow weary from the pounding of life’s events. It may seem as if God is not there. But if not, from where will hope come? On dark, troubled nights like this, I realize clearly I have nowhere else to go. So I will go, banging on the door. “Be good to me.” It’s nearly midnight.

 

The Unanswered Question

From David Gibson at RNS, Reuters correspondent Phil Pullella to Vatican spokesperson Federico Lombardi SJ:

The American cardinals did not leak anything in their briefings. The Italian cardinals did leak and are continuing to leak things outside the General Congregations. Does this not send a message of confusion?

Some theme music for the occasion.

“Clash of the cardinals?” We know that the more purified the Catholic Right gets, the more aggressive and cannibalistic instincts can emerge. I would love love love to be a fly on the wall in the meetings. Even so, I have to root for the curia to dig itself a deeper hole. It’s pretty deep already. They might need a fairly deep chasm to bury the antigospel attitudes built up over the years if not centuries.

Meanwhile, less than a hundred hours to conclave. We could have a new pope by this time next week. The interregnum may be more than half over.

 

Reconciliation Lectionary: Hosea 14:2-10

As we progress through the season of Lent, many of the readings proclaimed are also found in the Rite of Penance. Tomorrow’s first reading is one of them.

Some prophets were too young, one was branded on the lips, and one was urged to a very unusual dining experience. Hosea’s experience was also unusual. His marriage and family life were symbolic of his mission. He married an unfaithful woman. He gave his three children names suggesting a deepening divide in the northern kingdom’s relationship with God. Hosea was no nine-to-five prophet. He was for God 24/7.

The final chapter of the book of Hosea offers words of consolation (see Isaiah 40ff, Jeremiah 30-31), and the formula for renewal is fairly explicit.

Thus says the LORD:
Return, O Israel, to the LORD, your God;
you have collapsed through your guilt.
Take with you words,
and return to the LORD;

The formula is still good today:

Forgive all iniquity, and receive what is good …

This is a formula for the scrutinization of the Elect this Lent: eradicating the weak, and drawing out and building up what is good.

Hosea also suggests renouncing what we Christians have come to know as pelagianism, the sense we can accomplish things by our own abilities:

Assyria will not save us,
nor shall we have horses to mount;
We shall say no more, ‘Our god,’
to the work of our hands;
for in you the orphan finds compassion.

What do we receive in return for turning back to God? Simply this: healing and love.

I will heal their defection, says the LORD,
I will love them freely;
for my wrath is turned away from them.
I will be like the dew for Israel:
he shall blossom like the lily;
He shall strike root like the Lebanon cedar,
and put forth his shoots.
His splendor shall be like the olive tree
and his fragrance like the Lebanon cedar.
Again they shall dwell in his shade
and raise grain;
They shall blossom like the vine,
and his fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon.

I love verses 6-8, above. It recalls the great reverence of Saint Hildegard for viriditas, a vitality/greenness/holiness to be found in God’s boundless generosity. We see it in nature’s plenty. We experience it in moments when we turn ourselves over, body and soul, to our loving God. Very fitting for this time of year, even as much of the north languishes with winter snow and barren landscapes.

Hildegard may well have drawn on these prophetic images of plenty for her writings and music. (See Isaiah here, and here, and here, among other places, for the connection between viriditas and human redemption.) Hildegard’s composition (performed on this disc by Sequentia):

O nobilissima viriditas,
quae radicas in sole,
et quae in candida serenitate luces in rota,
quam nulla terrena excellentia comprehendis …

(O noblest viriditas,
who rooted in the sun,
and who, in dazzling serenity, shine in a sphere
that no earthly excellence can fully know …)

But when God graces us with it, we can perceive. And we can know the fruits of reconciliation, as promised to Ephraim:

Ephraim! What more has he to do with idols?
I have humbled him, but I will prosper him.
“I am like a verdant cypress tree”–
Because of me you bear fruit!

The last word from Hosea, advocating not knowledge exactly, but wisdom and prudence.

Let (those who are) wise understand these things;
let (those who are) prudent know them.
Straight are the paths of the LORD,
in them the just walk,
but sinners stumble in them.

This summation skips over a good deal of richness in the whole passage, and indeed, in the entire book. “Walk with God” is an easy thing to say and counsel. But the actual journey includes many missteps as well as many wonders. Reconciliation with God is far more than an intellectual assent to virtue. It requires a commitment to a whole lifestyle, in which we reorient ourselves to the viriditas, the life and grace around us. We don’t just attend to it when we become aware of sin. We can realize that we have many blindspots. We can recognize that a continual orientation to God and renewal in Christ will help us when we have wandered and gotten lost and are not even aware of it.

Hosea brought home his experience of God. He didn’t leave behind his prophetic vocation when it was time to punch his timecard. Modern Christian believers, too, can see that our calling is also meant to permeate our families, our work, our school, our social lives–very much like Hildegard’s experience of the rich, insistent greenery she found in God’s grace. May we all find such grace.

 

Into Silence

In many previous Lents, I’ve left the car radio dial alone. cd player too. It’s an offshoot of my longtime practice of heading home from retreat in a silent car. This year, too, but with an addition.

I’ve always been struck by the contrast between my nervous need to fill up a road trip with sound and the calm trek home after several days of quiet. Granted, there are times when you need a good driving song played loud and sung along to, like this one from the 70′s, or this one from the 80′s. That latter one came on the radio when I was driving I-90 between Buffalo and Erie on July 9th, 1988. My first car. My first move from the ancestral hometown–all my possessions in the backseat and trunk. A nice bright summer Saturday morning. A radio dial turned up. Figuring out how to “play” guitar on my steering wheel. Without weaving.

Today is the twentieth day of dialing it down. This Lent, I’ve found it fruitful to use that silent time, sometimes fidgety, to pray for others. For those of you who ask me to pray for you, I confess: I often forget. But I have a particular prayer I use these days to at least place a name in a context. I’m remembering far more often. Perhaps like those adventurous trips on the open road, I feel like filling my small car with sound. I can fill it with prayer these days, more readily with this opportunity.

This all came back to me when I read Michelle Francl-Donnay’s reflection on PrayTell.

What if instead of fasting on Lenten Fridays, I elected instead to pay extraordinary attention to God’s presence in my everyday life? In my kitchen, as I dice carrots for dinner; in my classroom, confronted by confused students.

Am I letting myself off too easy? I think not. As the people of Nazareth so dramatically demonstrated, it can require heroic attention to recognize the face of God when we see it every day.

Last Friday night, coming home from a party, my wife was driving us through Campustown. One apparently drunken student ignored safe traffic behavior and challenged two lanes of cars. We were at the head of one of those lanes. When presented with everyday opportunities outside the soundtrack of my life, I certainly try to pray these days. Even if it’s a little less alcohol consumption, and a little more prudence crossing the street on the way home at night.

Driving a car is something I do a lot. Picking up the young miss from an after-school activity, working some pastoral errand. All of those little pilgrimages are opportunities, just like chopping vegetables or when student conversations drift into my office. Maybe this is a practice I can adopt and maintain into Easter and beyond, not as an intrusion into silence, but as part of the journey into silence.

 

Old Creole Days

I was reacquainting myself with some of the music of Ferde Grofé. I have a Naxos disk of three of his “American” suites: Mississippi, Grand Canyon, and Niagara Falls. I love the orchestration as well as the chromatic tunefulness of “Old Creole Days,” here.

 

Exit Concubines, Enter One Singin’ Coat

Several months ago I began the book of Genesis as a source for my daily practice of lectio divina. One of my staff colleagues suggested it when I was close to completing Mark’s Gospel and mentioned I was considering Old Testament alternatives.

I’ve arrived at my favorite part of that first biblical book. Reflecting on Genesis 37:1-9 yesterday, the day’s impact wasn’t so much any insight from the text. (I was drawn to the words and contrast on love and hate.) This section was in mind for hours afterward, especially from 5:23 onward. Jumping ahead a bit, I know.

I find it a refreshing change from the multiple wives and offspring of many main figures: Jacob, Esau, Abraham. (Quick quiz: how many women bore Abraham’s children? Answer in comments.) Advocates of traditional marriage are on unsteady ground when they plant their flag in Genesis. Like this commentator, there’s a lot in the Bible I’m prepared to dismiss as ungodly, immoral, and troubling.

 

Sampling the Music Scene

Jeffrey Tucker calms down and pulls back from his elation on Tuesday:

Fixing this fixes nearly everything.

And today:

There are two errors to correct in the news that Bishop Alexander K. Sample is headed to Portland, Oregon. The first is that it means nothing. The second is that it means everything. As is often the case, the reality will be something in between.

The reality is always to be found between two expected extremes. If you believe the reform2 camp, it was all vocal cords and roses before Vatican II, and all guitar chords and crap afterward. That might not be as gross a caricature as it might seem. Jeffrey does talk about 1968-2010 as if it were a monolithic age of impoverishment. I found a 1983 Music Issue from OCP at the bottom of a box a few years ago. Not much similarity between that and the 2011 on my office bookshelf. It’s been a significant and steady upward crawl from there. Oh, wait: Jeffrey is already talking about that today:

The change won’t happen immediately. It might not even be detectable by anyone but the closest observers. It might takes several years. But it will come. And the Church and her liturgy will be much better off as a result. Making this change in Portland will spread change to the whole of the American Church and then to the whole of the English speaking world and then to the whole rest of the world. This is the center, the core, the spot from which a major problem that exists in the Catholic world can be rectified.

This is typical of my excitable friend. He starts off with a dose of reason. Change is incremental. Change happens slowly, and often with great resistance. Our life experiences in the Church and outside of us inform us of this.

Of course, the kind of change he’s been speaking of has been taking place in the Catholic Church over the past fifty years. OCP included. Comparing Music Issues twenty-eight years apart makes it seem like night and day. Anybody want to check on how many of the Hymnal for Young Christians are still in pews? Those red, sky blue, or orange Glory & Praise books? Tens of millions? Are you sure? Are all those Protestants still laughing at “Here We Are”? Really?

Jeffrey dreams big. Portland to all of America to the English speaking world to the whole planet. Suddenly Bishop Sample seems to be at the spiritual epicenter of “everything.” Oops.

There are a lot of false assumptions running up the spine of reform2. It’s one reason why the movement borders on dangerous–a lack of respect for history. You heard that right.

Jeffrey and his young CMAA turks think that we’ve all been languishing with Pete Seeger for the past two generations. The truth is that Ray Repp was exploring plainchant before most of these guys were born, and before Jeffrey could define “anarchism.” He concedes Bishop Sample’s approach of gratitude and gentle urging forward is wise and effective. And he’s right. Too bad many of his buddies don’t emulate it.

As for me, don’t criticize me because I choose not to fly in your flock. Just thank me for learning to read chant notation (1984) for improving my abilities as a singer and conductor (since 1983) for a theological education, for teaching plainchant hymns, propers, and antiphons to my choirs for the past two decades. Acknowledge that your contemporaries in American church music don’t betray chant by not programming it 100% of the time.

And here’s the thing: everyone knows that things must change. The problem with Catholic music is famous. I’ve never spoken to a group of Catholics where the problems are not well known and understood widely. You only need to raise a slight eyebrow on the subject to garner laughter. Everyone knows. More importantly, everyone at OCP knows too.

Of course things must change. That’s the whole point of reform. Of liturgical renewal. It was bad and worse in 1950. I don’t think the problem with Catholic music is “famous” so much as it galls a number of people who care. People have laughed at me for being Catholic for a lot more than their possible perception of poor church music. I was asked to play guitar at a friend’s wedding in a Protestant church many many years ago. “That was actually quite … good,” their music director said. I said thanks and I packed my instrument and left. I know I work on my musicianship, and even three years into playing, I was a far better than average guitarist. But I don’t need the regard of snobs to keep me afloat.

“Everyone” at OCP indeed knows. That’s why they offer a substantially better set of options today than they did ten, or thirty years ago. Perhaps if Jeffrey really talked with his “friends” at OCP and less with the bitter voices of resentment in CMAA, he might learn a thing or two. I suspect that if Bishop Sample is as described today, he’ll learn a thing or two in Portland too. Somewhere between nothing and everything.

 

Christmas Music: Lauda per la Natività del Signore

Ottorino Respighi’s cantata, Praise for the Lord’s Nativity, is a delightful piece for chorus and three soloists, accompanied by a small wind ensemble, and piano four hands.

Listen to it here.

His wife Elsa sang the role of Mary at the premiere on St Cecilia’s Day in 1930. This work presents the Nativity from the point of view of the shepherds. It contains elements familiar to other Respighi works: traditional forms–though recast with 20th century harmonizations, plainchant-inspired melodies, and even a nod to Monteverdi.

 

Advent Music: “Legends of St Nicholas”

I suppose I could have posted this a week ago Thursday. But the observance of Saint Nicholas is entwined with Advent and Christmas both, so I’m sure it’s not that much of a problem to suggest giving Anonymous 4 a listen for their disc, Legends of St Nicholas. They seem to have many selections from other recordings available for a quick listen on YouTube, but nothing at all from this disk.

This collection includes a variety of forms: plainchant, songs, and very early polyphony rendering liturgical texts, including a few readings from the legendary traditions of the bishop of Myra.

 

Advent Music: Alma Redemptoris Mater

Alma Redemptoris Mater, quae pervia caeli
Porta manes, et stella maris, succurre cadenti,
Surgere qui curat, populo: tu quae genuisti,
Natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem
Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore
Sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.

Two versions. First, sung by my friend Jeremiah:

alma redemptoris mater prime

And Palestrina’s setting.

 

Dave Brubeck

A sad day for this loss. CNS posted a nice feature from 1996.

This was one of the most moving moments I’ve ever seen on television. And it shows a bit of God’s grace working with the great soul of Dave Brubeck. Thanks, Mr Brubeck, for the music. Thanks for everything.

 

Advent Music: “Celestial Gate”

Luke Hill at dotCommonweal makes a case for a very wide musical Advent/Christmas. I can’t refute it. At my house, there is considerable variety in listening tastes as well as film viewing (Christmases in Connecticut, Canaan, and lots of other places).

I thought I’d peruse my personal library and offer some listening suggestions for this month. My friends and readers know my tastes run pretty eclectic. But many of you might find many of these suggestions helpful to draw you in more deeply into the waiting of these weeks before Christmas.

Today’s suggestion is a more obscure symphony of the great American composer of the last century, Alan Hovhaness. Speaking in commentary of this work …

(M)usic is a sacred art, a pathway through a living universe, merging East and West, heaven and earth, addressed not to the snobbish few but to all people as an inspiration in their journey through the universe.

I loved listening to this piece in the dark, headphones on, laying on the bed or on the floor. Twenty-one minutes of pilgrimage through a universe where grace continues to break through our prisons, the skies open, and we are lifted into a place that, while a bit beyond the ordinary, seems to welcome us and bring us peace.

I hope you enjoy:

Symphony number 6, “Celestial Gate”

 

Sing With Thanksgiving

A portion (7-11) of Psalm 147 for Thanksgiving Day:

Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre.
He covers the heavens with clouds, prepares rain for the earth, makes grass grow on the hills.
He gives to the animals their food, and to the young ravens when they cry.
His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner;
but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.

Ah! Plucked string instruments. I’m thankful for those, and their long history in Judeo-Christian worship.