Holy Juxtapositions for Lent

The crucifixion of Jesus Christ our Lord.

We have the stories in the Bible. We have the church traditions. We have the scholars and theologians who have studied them in detail… and are still studying. We can learn and understand much, but, at the same time, this crux of history brings heaven, earth, and hell together in ways that we can only begin to comprehend. For the artistically-minded, there is plenty of space for the imagination to soar. For the Christian, it can all be devotion to the Holy Son of God.

In this post, I journey toward comprehension of the cross through juxtapositions that are present at it. For example:

These are just some of my own. For more, I draw from the riches of Western hymns and Eastern liturgy and tradition.

Cross of Jesus from John Stainer’s The Crucifixion

Once the Lord of brilliant seraphs, / Winged with love to do His will,
Now the scorn of all His creatures, /And the aim of every ill.

Alas! and Did my Savior Bleed? by Isaac Watts

Well might the sun in darkness hide / And shut his glories in,
When Christ, the mighty Maker died, /For man the creature’s sin.

Selections from an Eastern Orthodox Holy Saturday liturgy:

In a new tomb He is laid, Who empties the tombs of the dead.
Light of salvation, how art Thou hidden in a dark tomb?
By dying, O my God, Thou puttest death to death through Thy divine power.
Hell was wounded in the heart when it received Him whose side was pierced by the spear.
The most pure Temple is destroyed, but raises up the fallen tabernacle.
The second Adam, He who dwells on high, has come down to the first Adam in the depths of hell.

Joseph of Arimathea receiving the body of Jesus from Pontius Pilate.

St. Epiphanius says: “…A mortal went in before a mortal, asking to receive God; the God of mortals he begs; clay stands before clay so as to receive the Fashioner of all! Grass asks to receive from grass the Heavenly Fire; the miserable drop seeks to receive from a drop the whole Abyss! Who ever saw, who ever heard such a thing?”

A hymn of Joseph of Arimathea speaking to Pilate:

Give me this stranger, who from infancy has been as a stranger, a sojourner in the world.
Give me this stranger, whom His own race has hated and delivered unto death as a stranger.
Give me this stranger, who in a strange manner is a stranger to death.
Give me this stranger, who has received the poor as guests.
Give me this stranger, whom His people from envy estranged from the world.
Give me this stranger, that I may hide him in a tomb, for as a stranger He has no place to lay His head.
Give me this stranger, whose Mother seeing His dead body cries out: ‘O my Son and my God, I am sorely wounded within me and my heart is rent, seeing Thee as one dead; but in Thy Resurrection I take courage and magnify Thee.’

How now can we respond to such things, too wonderful for us by far? We cannot, if we hope that our response will equal them. But, by faith, we can simply embrace, trust, die, and be reborn. And give thanks, now and forevermore.

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Christmas Music! (Part 2)

And now, some of my favorite music in the Christmas carol genre. Again, I would love to hear favorites from others as well. I fear this genre is so broad that I can only cover a fraction of it, but I will do so anyway.

Of all the music in this genre, I think my heart is closest to the a cappella choral recordings of the Robert Shaw Chorale. There are some classic recordings from the ’50s (here is an original LP) that were re-released on CD several years ago, but I cannot locate them online anymore. But the Songs of Angels CD contains newer performances of many of these great pieces, and these two CDs also add to the collection. The great thing about these arrangements is that they add musical interest and vitality to the carols with minimal distortion to their character and harmonic feel (e.g., no “strange” harmonic twists). These arrangements mostly represent the collaboration between Shaw and Alice Parker, which has given the world so much beautiful shorter choral music.

Now, if you actually like unusual harmonic twists on familiar carols, then you can branch out to the Dale Warland Singers in Minnesota with these two reissues of memorable recordings. To pick one example of what these CDs contain: Alfred Burt’s carols are hardly masterworks, but they are worthwhile enough to deserve a decent recording, and many of them get that treatment on these CDs.

But I can’t go any farther without mentioning all the wonderful Christmas music from English choirs, much of which comes from the Carols for Choirs books and The Oxford Book of Carols (which also has a newer, more academic, version). There are countless recordings here, but here are a few that are readily available. And, if you don’t find the recordings of John Rutter to be too treacly for a self-respecting musician to take seriously, there are several recordings by him as well. (I do like some of his music, but I wish I could pretend that, for example, “Donkey Carol” never happened.)

I want to mention the Christmas with Chanticleer recording because, beyond featuring their legendary flawless blend and the lovely voice of Dawn Upshaw, it features a rare recording of a multi-movement version of Distler’s arrangement of “Es ist ein’ Ros’ entsprungen” (”Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming”). I suspect it would be viewed by many readers as heresy for me to suggest that Praetorius’ original could actually be improved upon. I won’t, but I will be so bold as to suggest that Distler’s version approaches Praetorius’.

Finally, if you are fed up with traditional carols arrangements (and yet still reading this post) and looking for something more invigorating than sentimental, I recommend recordings the Tallis Scholars and Joel Cohen’s Boston Camerata. You may well find new vitality from ages past.

What musical riches we have, inspired by the humble but cosmically-significant birth in Bethlehem so many years ago!

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Christmas Music! (Part 1)

It’s almost a cliche (and perhaps not “almost”), but Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. Although the added busyness & stress can sometimes be frustrating, there is so much to like. And, for me, following the rich American tradition of only allowing Christmas music to be played between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, it is a time when a certain not insubstantial section of my family’s personal CD collection comes alive. For you, too, perhaps?

So, just for fun, I thought I’d share some of my favorite Christmas music. I’d love to hear favorites from other readers of this blog as well. For this post, I will focus on fine arts music related to Christmas. I hope to devote a separate post to Christmas carols.

Note: I have at times included links to sample recordings online. Please understand that this is simply a convenient way to show sample recordings and neither an advertisement for a music store nor a true review of any recording.

The first thing that comes to mind for me here is Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (Weihnachtsoratorium, BWV 248). As readers may know, it was not composed as an oratorio, but is rather a collection of six cantatas for performance in the days between Christmas and Epiphany. As the cantatas form a sequence that tell the story of Jesus’ early days, it works reasonably well in collected form.

For me, listening to a John Eliot Gardiner recording of the joyful first movement (I adore every Gardiner recording of Bach I have heard) was love at first hearing. I noticed there is a brand new recording of this piece with Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting who has also done so many wonderful Bach recordings.

If you consider Handel’s Messiah to be a Christmas piece, you’re probably not paying close enough attention to it. Or, to be more cordial: you might also include it on this list. Certainly, Messiah performances, both amateur and professional, are widespread Christmas traditions for Christians and even many non-Christians. And the rich collection of Scriptural references brings many Christian truths powerfully to mind in a season of heighten spiritual focus.

I also think of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ smaller oratorio called Hodie, based on Lessons & Carols readings and also English poetry (most notably John Milton’s Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity). I suspect the David Willcocks recording of this work is the classic against which others are judged. The performance is powerful and moving, and I think that Dame Janet Baker’s singing in particular is very memorable. But I see also that there is a new recording with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing.

This work has moments for me that pierce the heart with their beauty and send the soul soaring. The Milton poetry inspires Vaughan Williams to touch on both the fragility and intimacy of the baby in the stable in one tender movement (”It was the Winter wilde”) and the cosmic significance of this momentous birth later in the piece. What a great mystery this juxtaposition is! Vaughan Williams ends the work in triumph with the orchestra going full tilt under these words:

Yea Truth, and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Th’enameld Arras of the Rain-bow wearing,
And Mercy set between,
Thron’d in Celestiall sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down stearing,
And Heav’n as at som festivall,
Will open wide the Gates of her high Palace Hall.

May the music and the message of this season bring home the intimacy and the majesty of this birth to you as well!

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An evening of song with Sylvia McNair

The area where I live has been privileged to have more than its fair share of Sylvia McNair concerts. My wife and I recently got another opportunity to hear her, and I thought I would share my thoughts about the evening.

At a previous concert, Ms. McNair spoke about beginning her undergraduate studies studying violin. But, like many college students, she changed her major. As I recall, she said there were multiple reasons for this, but one was that she found vocal performance to be more highly communicative.

At this stage in her career, she is undergoing another change. Her most recent bio states that she has “segued from opera and oratorio to the Great American Songbook, the music with which she feels most at home.” Again, I’m sure there are multiple reasons for this. For example, after an impressive 2-3 decades of singing professionally, some of the magic from the top of her range and her trademark sense of effortlessness has waned a bit. But, perhaps like her transition in college, her new repertoire seems to allow her to be more highly communicative than that of her classical days.

And she does seem at home in this genre; she puts her heart and soul into it. A few rather pedestrian songs come alive when with her masterful touch, and other well-known (and well-worn) songs sounded fresh and made to be her own. And I believe that her expressiveness, her phrasing, her charisma, her ability to communicate to and connect with the audience, and her ability to sell the texts she is singing are as good as or better than ever. She may at times reach to the audience as a dramatic gesture, but really her whole concert felt like a reaching to the audience — an act of giving.

The concert took place in a chapel, lending a sense of intimacy and also of the sacred. Furthermore, Ms. McNair’s spoken words and sincerity of delivery encouraged the audience to take the songs she sang as personal statements and not just performances. Given that, and given that she had a bout with breast cancer last year, songs like “O God Our Help in Ages Past” and this one seemed to take on some of the greatest meaning:

No storm can shake my inmost calm
while to that Rock I’m clinging.
Since love is Lord of heaven and earth,
how can I keep from singing?

This is a strong statement indeed, and many of us would feel blessed indeed if we could make one like it after facing a serious trial.

Ms. McNair also made a case for looking in sacred not just in settings of religious texts like the Prayer of St. Francis, but also in more ordinary texts from Stephen Sondheim and Harold Arlen. This should not be a stretch as it sometimes is for those of us who believe that the God of heaven and earth was found as an infant by sheep herders amidst cattle.

For a few numbers, Ms. McNair invited a college choir to join her. That got me thinking: much of the training of a young artist is spent on technical development. This is reasonable, for without sufficient skill great art cannot be made. But I’m guessing that one strong lesson that many students in the choir will take from that experience is that artistry goes beyond the merely technical. An artist might even allow a little soul to creep into his or her work from time to time. And hopefully those students also would have picked up some of Ms. McNair’s spirit that can’t help but share the joy of life with others, and that can’t keep from singing.

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Introduction (Joel Buursma)

Greetings to all who find themselves at this site! My name is Joel Buursma. I have made my living working with computers for the past decade or so, but I am also a long time choral and classical music enthusiast. I suppose I have been an amateur singer, in one form or another, for most of my life. I come from a home of musicians where fine music was often played and discussed. My religious perspective is that of an evangelical Christian.

Ever since my college days, I have found “classical” music to be my favorite genre of music, with jazz a not-distant second. I find in it the right combination of beauty and complexity, which I find wanting in other genres. I find it so often to be a font of delight to which I can keep returning. I love that great artist works can be examined from multiple perspectives and on multiple levels. I love that the artist is allowed to reflect upon and revel in the great mysteries and experiences of life without necessarily needing to subject them to cold scientific dissection.

But my interest in “classical” music goes beyond that. In fact, attending and especially participating as a choir member in performances of great sacred music (a few of them, actually, under the baton of Maestro Nelson) have provided me with some of the most profound spiritual experiences of my life. At times, I find this hard to articulate (after participating in a performance of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, I found myself quite speechless), but I hope to take a crack at it. I hope also to share thoughts on specific musical works and performances.

Without further ado, let me close this introduction with a quote by author Philip Yancey from his book Rumors of Another World: What on Earth Are We Missing?

“I credit three things — classical music, the beauties of nature, and romantic love — as responsible for my own conversion. The first two convinced me of the goodness of this world, and prodded me to search for the One who had made it….”

Clearly, this is something worth writing about!

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