Day Trippers

The young miss and I are planning a day trip tomorrow to one of her childhood homes. This will likely be the last post till Tuesday. (Unless Neil chips in with something.)

Long rehearsal tonight. I’m glad for having lost my extra weight because I seem to have almost limitless energy for these long days. Fifteen hours–that’s more like a day of Holy Week. But we’ve now pieced together the entire production beginning to end. Ten rehearsals left to polish things.

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy spending a relaxing day tomorrow with my daughter. She’s drifted off to high school life somewhat, but I know that days like these will come more infrequently as she gets deeper into the usual adolescent stuff: clubs, trips, boyfriends, and so on.

Car gassed up. Hit the bank early tomorrow to get some cash. Then you won’t see me.

 

The Unread Letter

Interesting story on Vatican Insider. Do you wonder if President Bush or anyone else ever did read the letter? Their inside source:

Laghi knew his mission had failed, but he also realized that the Bush administration was very naïve about the consequences of war.

Ya think?

On a cultural note picking up that theme, there is this terrific song by a duet far more harmonious than the GOP and the Catholic Church.

 

Cast Nearly Complete

My musical director and I had a good, long week auditioning people for Tobit: The Path of Virtue. We have nearly a complete cast, and a few days to pick up a Tobiah, and a few people for supporting roles. I also need to locate an artistic director once the music is learned and known. Otherwise, most all the staff is complete. If you’re in Iowa 12-13 November, stop by my church and enjoy one of our performances.

It’s been a little worrisome, but mostly exciting. I can’t imagine doing this alone. My friend David has been a godsend as a partner in this project. He has a great talent, plus a gentle spirit that should make this an enjoyable experience for all. One young woman was very, very nervous, and he put her at ease, “We’re just two mellow guys looking for talent to fit the parts. Relax.” And she did. She commented it was the easiest audition experience she ever had. I’d like to keep them coming back. Four other projects are in various stages of conception. I could see myself doing one a year for a long time. There’s no lack of ideas.

Then I remind myself: stay focused. Get through the one in front of you, first.

My friend Crystal has that image of a Jan Steen painting up on one of her blog posts from a few years ago. I found some fascinating anime images here. I have a fine local artist doing original work for the posters and publicity, however.

 

Il Mattutino di Santa Chiara

A musical treat for today’s feast:

 

The Unexpected Singer

Many church musicians look with trepidation on working with a new singer. You know: the nephew of the deceased or the cousin of the bride who’s been tapped to sing a song or two. I try to look at it as a positive. I never know when somebody really good might come my way. And if they’re less than capable, well … there’s always rehearsal to get the kinks out of that song.

I was concerned last night when the groom’s cousin turned up as a breathy soprano without much control. Or volume. It didn’t help that fifty minutes before the rehearsal the bride plopped herself down nearby and said, “I want to listen.” An aside to the singer from me: “I just hate when they do that.”

Turns out the singer is about the young miss’s age. Also turns out that once the church was empty this morning and we went to work on a prelude, a hymn, a psalm, an alleluia, and a “special” song, she had quite a voice. Quite a powerful voice and lots of musical potential. There aren’t many high school singers who can produce soul, plus a nearly untrained three-octave range well into high soprano territory. She said she had never sung outside of chorus–no musicals, no voice lessons, or such. She’s a three-sport athlete, she explained.

Ah, sports.

I told her that I didn’t know how good of an athlete she was, but that she was likely one of the best singers in her high school. Imagine what a person like that would do with as much vocal coaching as she’s probably received athletic coaching.

 

Music For the 4th

The Kansas City-born composer Virgil Thomson supposedly once said:

The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do, is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish.

Does “A Prayer To Saint Catherine” suit?

Or perhaps a chat and sampling of ragtime music. Can’t get more American than that.

 

Some Sanity

My sister-in-law has made the trek back east for my brother’s memorial service in the city of his and my birth. Family infighting seems to be trickling out here and there. I’m fairly glad I’m not there right now for it.

Instead, I enjoyed playing some jazz with my friends Brandon and Sean tonight. We still need to find a good drummer to hold us together. I’m not used to the harmonic changes in tunes like “Dolphin Dance” and “Mahjong,” and I tend to slow down the music when I take a solo. Nothing at all like church music. But my jazz brothers let me keep playing with them.

My wife suggested a retreat earlier this month, so I’ll be vacating ordinary life Sunday through Thursday next week. Unless Neil has a contribution or two, blogging will shut down for those five days. I may give my wife the passwords and all, and ask her to keep an eye on you commentators. I noticed Mark Shea shut down his comboxes over Fr Corapi, but I know we won’t have any problems like that here.

I could turn blogging over to my daughter. That would be interesting. Instead of Herbie Hancock and Monteverdi you might get Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars.

My wise spouse and generous daughter gave me a retreat for Father’s Day. It’s only been eight months since my last one. But I think the timing is right. With the upheaval of end-of-school, my brother’s death, and whatnot, I’ve kind of lost a spiritual thread. I feel a little bit unraveled. It will be good to get some sanity.

 

Tobit Coming in November

Now that my first musical is substantially finished and scheduled for its debut performance, I feel comfortable about letting the word out. So if you’re in or around Ames on Saturday evening the 12th of November or Sunday afternoon the next day, feel free to come to my parish for Tobit: The Path of Virtue.

Not everything is set yet. I need to make some determinations on the band, mainly instruments and number. Then the parts need to be scored. I’ve been saving that last part for the summer when I’ll have more time to ponder more deeply the completed songs. We’re fortunate to have a small orchestra of good players in the parish. I can offer just about any instrumental color imaginable. Applying that judiciously will be the last creative task before casting call and rehearsals.

I also need to decide if I want to bring in a pianist or play it myself. Some people laugh when I tell them I would need to learn the music I wrote. For this project, I’ve written the melodies and the vocal arrangements with attention. 22 of the 26 pieces have actual piano parts as of today. But if I had a pianist who could render my arrangements, I could attend more to the musical production of the singers.

There are seven roles with substantial singing parts, plus six to eight others who sing in groups. Nearly every song is an ensemble piece of some sort. There are very few solos.

For me, the most worrisome thing is how to actually produce a musical, especially as I’ve never sung in one, played in one, and I’ve only watched them as a paying customer.

I plan to learn a lot from this first experience, and I hope I don’t drive people crazy doing it. How do you manage rehearsals that involve singing, acting, movement and dancing without wasting people’s time? How much time does it actually take to get a polished production ready for the stage? Will nine weeks be too much time? Or have I written things a little more demanding than the average theatre piece?

At the reading session last November, one person suggested doing Tobit as a concert first. But my wife and a trusted friend counseled I go all out. My friend said she would not be inclined to go to a “concert” setting of a musical. But even if it were produced with costuming and minimal props, it would be an exciting prospect.

Aside from exciting, the project will also have a strong spiritual aspect.  I continue to reflect on and refine insights from last year’s silent retreat and our parish’s effort with the Catherine of Siena Institute‘s fine materials. My ongoing exploration of combining the spiritual gifts of music and writing will be tested. All spiritual gifts (or alleged ones) will be tested. By mid-November I will see more clearly if this is an authentic apostolate for me.

The illustration at the top shows Sarah (she of seven husbands) and her bridegroom Tobiah (the son) on their wedding night. I found this cool manga interpretation of Tobiah and Sarah. Rembrandt von Rijn has his depiction of the healing of the father, above, left.

 

New Gloria Making the Rounds

Jimmy Mac alerted me to the posting of Jeff Ostrowski’s Gloria on the America blog.

It’s a misconception that you have to produce a piece of music exactly the way it’s been recorded. I always look at the melody of a liturgical piece. Will people sing it? Will they sing it without accompaniment–you’d be surprised how many non-chant pieces get sung really well without a piano, organ, or guitar. That’s usually my biggest test on a piece of music–will people at daily Mass sing it, bringing their own abilities and enthusiasm to the words?

Accompanied liturgical music operates on levels plainsong doesn’t. Sure, chant produces nice overtones in a live acoustic space. But any music will do that.

Aware that the Church lauds the human voice and the tradition of singing above any other instrument, I have to stick up for the instruments. People utilize wood and metal in the same way they produce sound from vocal cords and the empty spaces in their heads. Did God not create trees with their wood? The iron and carbon and copper and tin that make bronze and steel? Plants and metals cannot praise God on their own, but crying stones aside, there is no dishonor in using things made by God and fashioned by human hands to augment the praise of the Creator.

Getting back to the Gloria in question: yes, the organ registration is unoriginal. I’d prefer an a cappella rendering in a live space for a recording. If I bring this Gloria to the parish’s music committee, and they accepted it, we would need to see it accompanied by piano and ensembles as well as organ. I wouldn’t see a problem encouraging an organist to get a little creative with the registration either.

I can’t agree with Jimmy on his assessment, though. (Sorry, my friend.) I sang through some of it, and I think it has great promise.

 

Gerry Rafferty

Another fine artist ruined by struggles with chemical dependency dies sooner (perhaps) than he should have. A moving obit is here.

I loved Gerry Rafferty’s ’78 lp City to City. Not so much for the hit songs from FM radio, which were certainly very good. That line in “Baker Street” about the guy trying to give up “the booze and the one night stands” seems particularly poignant given the singer’s much-publicized, and ultimately losing, battle with alcohol.

I liked the way Gerry Rafferty put his ensembles together on all the tunes I’ve ever heard from him: a tasteful assortment of instruments and voices, and a creative variety of styles. My favorites were “Whatever’s Written in Your Heart” and “The Ark.” I tried to talk a folk band I played with in the 80′s to consider working on covers of those tunes.

In my own family, I’ve seen lived tainted–if not ruined–by alcohol. My paternal grandfather spent most of his final years as a street person. My mom reported he was an outstanding violinist. What is it about musicians who get seduced by chemicals? Mom also told me that he loved to cook. Another love of mine. I was talking with my wife about it earlier tonight: the parallels of talents and avocations in my own life with that of the grandfather I never knew. He died when I was two. I have one picture of the two of us with a paper hat he made for me, and a big smile on my face.

My wife counseled me to remember that it was another age, the 50′s. People smoked. People drank. People got trapped and sick and if there was a way out, it was a lot darker then than it might be today. You watched guys like this swim through slightly flavored C2H5OH in movies, and who complained? The so-called Great Generation meets alcohol, and passes on that corrupted love to its sons and daughters: no wonder young people rebelled in the 60′s. Bah, humbug: that’s hardly a great legacy. Thanks for a urine-soaked war trophy, people: beating and abusing your children and passing on a very questionable heritage. My hope is that someday, somehow, it will all stop. Maybe it will in my small part of my extended family. At least I won’t be going in blind. But I still miss great musicians, near and far.

 

Music of a Divided Soul

Jimmy Mac sent along a Tablet piece by Paul Bailey on the composer Francis Poulenc. Bailey mentions music critic Claude Rostand’s assessment of Poulenc as part monk, part guttersnipe (voyou). Is such an internal conflict a fruitful branch for a creative spirit? Or does creativity flourish in spite of inner turmoil?

My older brother recently sang Poulenc’s Four Motets for Christmas with his choral society. Didn’t like them at all. They played on the radio a few nights ago, and unfortunately, it was very late and I was already on the edge of sleep. It’s been years since I’ve heard them myself.

Music critic Paul Bailey:

During the winter of 1951-52, the monk was to the fore, or better still in the ascendant, as he composed the Quatre Motets pour un temps de Noël, which is among his most radiant offerings to the God with whom he sometimes struggled. The four motets make perfect Christmas music, far removed from the glutinous sweetness that mars certain carols. Of especial beauty is Videntes stellam (“seeing the star”), with its soaring harmonies reaching for the guiding star the Magi saw in the sky.

The words “videntes stellam”are repeated several times, ever more movingly until the heart-stopping final cadence. The deceptive simplicity of Poulenc’s genius as a composer of choral music is apparent on first hearing. Later hearings reveal the depth and subtlety of his melodic writing.

A deeply sensitive man, Poulenc was shaken by the deaths of those close to him. The composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud may have been more rival than friend, according to Bailey, but the man’s horrific death in August 1936 spurred Poulenc to turn his creative energy to religious music.

From wikipedia:

This led him to his first visit to the shrine of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour. Here, before the statue of the Madonna with a young child on her lap, Poulenc experienced a life-changing transformation. Thereafter, he produced a sizeable output of liturgical music or compositions based on religious themes, beginning with the Litanies à la vierge noire (1936) and including his opera Dialogues of the Carmelites (1956). In 1949, Poulenc experienced the death of another friend, the artist Christian Bérard, for whom he composed his Stabat Mater (1950). Other sacred works from this period include the Mass in G (1937), Gloria (1959), and Sept répons des ténèbres (1961–2).

When Bailey mentioned Poulenc’s faith and his struggles with it, my eyes perked up.

Poulenc was not a conventionally pious Catholic. He wasn’t always totally secure in his faith. Yet his need to believe is everywhere apparent in the great choral works of his maturity. The element of doubt gives them a dramatic edge, a welcome dissonance. It is too easy and convenient to mention him alongside such lightweights as Milhaud and Satie, with whom he is in friendly and lasting company, but it is also salutary to record that he was influenced by Monteverdi and Webern.

Monteverdi: now there is inspiration.

I will have to give the man a listen in the days ahead. I don’t think I have any of his works in my cd library.

Bailey on a recent cd release and the composer’s inner conflict:

A compact disc, released earlier this year on the Signum Classics label, offers proof of the depth of his religious feeling, his aspiration towards the much-wanted state of grace.

…

There are tiny treasures here: the Litanies à la Vierge Noire, dating from that fateful August of 1936; the very brief Salve Regina; the Quatre petites prières de St Francis d’Assise; and the haunting Un soir de neige. This is Poulenc the monk, the contemplative spirit who sought consolation in a musical language, like Webern’s, that functions on the verge of silence. The other Poulenc, the self-confessed guttersnipe, is present in the early works, with which he has been for far too long associated. It might not be the conventional lifestyle of a devout Catholic but it becomes clearer now, some 47 years after his passing, that the seeming contradictions of his character – the monk and the guttersnipe – were necessary companions. The guttersnipe had to escape from the monkish restrictions, and the monk felt ashamed of the depths of unrequited love and affection his desires drew him into. Out of this confusion of flesh and spirit comes the transcendental music for which he will be forever celebrated.

As I pondered Bailey’s essay, I considered how this divided nature is so much a part of our world. Christmas, a festival of light (and of the Light of the World) is placed in the darkest of Northern days. Christ the King comes, but is welcomed by rural riff-raff. No earthly choirs celebrated the nativity, but the spirit of angelic heaven could not be contained. Christ comes to feed the world, yet his first bed was in the feeding area of an animal.

I disagree that such contrasts are necessarily those of “confusion.” Perhaps Poulenc himself was tortured by the unresolved longings brushing up against devotion and belief. Without excusing either, can they not exist together in this world? Christendom has struggled, shed blood even on the theological point of truly God/truly human. And no doubt some believers continue to struggle to this day, even unaware of the consignment of Arius to heresy. Human beings lack the insight, and often even the language, to express sublime realities of God and God’s agency in the mortal world. What if we let it be, and just be satisfied amid the conflict of putting pen to paper and fingers to instruments, and let the depths of our own souls do the speaking?

 

Mary McKillop, A Musical Saint

Little more than a week away from canonization, and Australia’s first saint is the focus of a musical being performed in Sydney and Melbourne. Interesting that they got priests to play the parts of antagonist Bishop Sheil (who excommunicated her) and Pope Pius IX.

Opera singer Joanna Cole on the role:

I feel incredibly privileged to be cast as Mary MacKillop. Mary was a very special woman who faced some extraordinary opposition throughout her life. So the chance to tell her story and bring her charisma to the stage is one I feel very honoured to have been given.

Interesting site for the musical here, including some song samples by the composer, Xavier Brouwer.

 

Parents’ Weekend

The archdiocese directs us to count worshipers at weekend Masses this month. Thanks to Iowa State’s designation of Parents’ Weekend and Homecoming, we occasionally report slightly over 100% attendance compared to our parishioner base. Looks like another 100+ percent year. 10:30 Mass this morning was crammed. Nearly a thousand people came to worship at that one liturgy. Bigger than Christmas or Easter.

It was a busy weekend for me, as I’ve been tasked with putting together a cd recording for our Whole Parish Catechesis later this month. The topic is Mary, and I got a few nice takes yesterday of Caccini’s Ave Maria and my metrical text of the Magnificat with Katherine, a grad student and very fine singer. I have another friend who loves plainchant and I’m hoping to talk him into singing a few Marian antiphons.

Today was a full day of playing: two Masses, plus a fundraising gig with a praise band I play with. We have out of town company tomorrow, so I’m hoping to return to posting on OCF Tuesday.

 

Break Out the Hip-Hop for B16

Did you know that the pope’s visit to Britain will have an official “youth anthem”? Here’s the news:

“Heart’s Cry”, by Catholic trio Ooberfuse, is a world away from the type of soaring hymnals usually associated with Catholic services.

The band, who all live in London, sent their track to Father Andrew Headon, a member of the Papal Visit Organising Committee which chose the song to represent young worshippers. It will almost certainly be played to the faithful during the Pope’s prayer vigil in Hyde Park, an event which is specifically aimed at appealing to younger Catholics.

I like that the band is committed to “infuse the increasingly moribund traditions of western pop with fresh vigour.” That’s got to be good. Pope Benedict, I assume, has approved the use of a sound clip from one of his own addresses for this song.

 

Pick Space Music

You space buffs out there might know that astronauts are awakened each working day with music selected and piped into whatever passes for an alarm system on the space shuttle. While you may be disappointed with the musical selections for the pope’s visit to Britain, you can register your approval in another setting by voting for wake-up music for the team of mission STS-133. Personally, I’d vote for the Jupiter movement of the suite The Planets. Spem in alium would be up there too, even if the Brits overlooked it for the Holy Father.

I’m going to give the wake-up music of STS-134 some real consideration. I think I could piece together my gifts in writing, composition, and astronomy to give the men and women of the last shuttle mission a real nice start to the morning. This is the mission they want original tunes:

Submit your original song by January 10, 2011.

Entries will be screened by our NASA panel. The top entries will then be posted on this website for a public vote starting on February 8, 2011.

The two songs with the most votes will be announced and played during the STS-134 mission, scheduled to launch on February 26, 2011.