A few words from the pope.

The pope’s US visit this week has had some musical repercussions. Jeffrey Tucker has distilled some of the issues. His piece ends with this quote from our distinguished visitor.

When the community of faith, the world-wide unity of the Church and her history, and the mystery of the living Christ are no longer visible in the liturgy, where else, then, is the Church to become visible in her spiritual essence? Then the community is celebrating only itself, an activity that is utterly fruitless. And, because the ecclesial community cannot have its origin from itself but emerges as a unity only from the Lord, through faith, such circumstances will inexorably result in a disintegration into sectarian parties of all kinds - partisan opposition within a Church tearing herself apart. This is why we need a new Liturgical Movement, which will call to life the real heritage of the Second Vatican Council.

The article is worth a few minutes to read in entirety and can be found here: http://thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/2008/04/music-for-dc-mass-end-of-era-and.html

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Is it real or is it Memorex®

In the last couple of weeks, we have talked about the ease of recording a concert. But the question comes: “is one willing to accept the recording of a performance?” We are so used to listening to studio recording that are made up from selections from multiple recordings. I had the privilege to listen to a recording session of John Nelson’s orchestra. They played the movement twice completely plus several recordings of specific selections from the movement. This leads to precision that is unavailable in a live performance recording. In addition, if one is recording a live performance of a work, there is always the problem of an audience noises. A cough is almost unavoidable in the recording. While in a live performance, you take it as one of the “things how they are.” However, after second time you listen to a recording you start to expect it and finally, you almost focus on this noise – “is it time for the guy that coughed to get up and leave the audience?” About the fourth time one is about ready, to paraphrase the Mikado, “the coughers, none of them will be missed, no, none of them will be missed”.

A second characteristic of a live performance is the life that seems to be present that isn’t in the studio recording. – for a live recording, one emphasizes not being boring; for a studio recording one emphasizes not making mistakes. I did a CD of a soprano soloist in our church. She had thought to record a performance of a fundraiser, but I prevailed on her to record in advance. She was a very good amateur soloist and most selections I had at least 3 tries. The CD came out very well. I recorded the concert also, and when I gave her the CD, I commented that I was thankful I had the real multiple cuts. While at the time of the performance, I enjoyed it immensely; however, while listening to the recording of the performance; I could hear all sorts of pitch problems that the life of the live performance had concealed from me.

When we listen to a CD, we are less tolerant of extraneous noises and dynamic range problems. In many ways, it reminds me of the problems in photography. For example, you look out and see a beautiful landscape of gorgeous fall trees. The picture is taken, and when you look at, you realize that there are power lines that your eye was able to ignore and see the underlying beauty. Or you see a person under a tree outside and your eye will automatically cancel out the green from the reflected from the trees. Take a picture of someone under a tree and they will look green. Of course, this is far from new; this is what impressionists noticed and how they made light “real.” It seems the mind, will correct the sound and light in real life but not in reproductions.

So, in getting a recording of a live performance, one must look beyond the minor imperfections to the music that is being conveyed. So returning to where we stared about two weeks ago, when one listens to music, either real or recorded, one must go beyond what has been recording and go to what should have been heard.

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Preparing for the afterlife

A few weeks ago, I was listening to Peter Bannister talk about his work Et iterum venturus est that Soli Deo Gloria has commissioned, which will be premiered in Paris in 2008. One of the other listeners asked, “When are we going to be able to hear it. Peter’s comment was that he was preparing an organ reduction so that the piece could be heard without the necessity of a chamber orchestra.

I previously talked about the question of music being heard – in particular new pieces and commissions. I quoted Daniel Gawthrop about the small number of chorus-orchestral compositions that receive a second playing. There are multiple reasons, not the least of which is that people haven’t heard many of these new pieces. A couple of years ago, the Naperville Chorus presented Robert Hanson’s Psalms of David, a piece that was very popular with the chorus and our audience. But it really isn’t recorded so it it is difficult for groups not knowing of Bob Hanson to realize that this is a piece that is worthy of performance.

Today, it is easy to make recordings, but it is difficult to release a recording that uses any professional musicians. The additional costs make it virtually impossible. The recent SDG commission of Requiem by Christopher Rouse is a case in point. The Los Angeles classical music radio station wanted to play it on their sacred music show, but as of the last time a friend in the area checked, they didn’t have the funds. Another of Christopher Rouse’s pieces, Karolju was just released as a recording about 17 years after its first performance; this is a piece by a Pulitzer-prize-winning composer, and the piece is very accessible. We in Naperville may do it; I gave a recording of it to our Music Director and he was very interested. It is a question of orchestra size/shifting.

A second section may come from the resources often required for a professional presentation of these pieces. At this point, I am leaving what I know about; I hope I am not in the class of the efficiency expert listening to a symphony (see for example
http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~tfsmiles/humor/orchestra.html
which discusses these issues). I expect that most sacred choral music is done by amateur groups in this country. An orchestra, such as the Chicago Symphony may have only 4 or 5 concerts a year with choral music. I know that for our amateur chorus, one of the major considerations is the cost of an orchestra – we have to hire them – and the difficulty of the music; they have very limited rehearsal time for the amount we can afford to pay them. Certainly, the difficulty of the music is a consideration. While I suspect we could do something like the Bach B-Minor Mass, it would require more work than I think most of our members would be willing to put in. But Britten, Poulenc, Vaughan Williams, and Brahms we have done reasonably successfully.

For a professional orchestra, again cost is a consideration. They already need to pay a chorus; do they want to/can they afford to pay for a large orchestra with extra players? In the article cited above, which discusses the Schubert symphony, comments that the four oboes are not often needed so they could be eliminated and the their jobs spread among the other players. The thought of a tuba player playing the piccolo part comes immediately to mind. But it may be worth asking could a different balance of instruments give a similar effect? Would two oboes and a couple of other woodwinds give a pleasing substitute? Clearly, if the answer is no, then it won’t be done; this however may mean limiting the number of times a piece is played.

New music can be difficult to understand. When someone says, “you need to hear the music several times before you really understand it”, the question becomes, “where does one get the opportunity to hear new music multiple times?” Of course one can help this somewhat with program notes. The piece that comes immediately to my mind is Honeggar’s Cantate de Noel where at the beginning, the music attempts to depict the formlessness before the birth of Jesus and progressing to chant and finally carols weaving throughout. If the reason for the apparent formlessness is explained to the audience in advance, the whole structure of the piece is much more powerful and understandable. They are no longer trying to find form in music that is intended to be formless. To expect the average concert goer to figure it out on his/her own and in one listening is unreasonable.

Finally, a totally Quixote comment; if the Musicians Union could be prevailed upon to not need so much for the release of a recording of a premiere performance, it would make it possible for more people learn about new music. I will discuss the possible problems next week in a blog post that I am tentatively calling “Is it real or is it Memorex.”

As I see from the Soli Deo Gloria goals for the future, one of these goals is to make sure that every commission is recorded so it can be released on a CD. Clearly it is a question of money. Should one try to commission more music or to us funding to make sure that the music can be heard?

While something can be music even if it isn’t heard, if it is to make an impact on people’s lives, it must be heard.

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Preparing for the second dance

I am certain we all know the question

If a tree falls in the wilderness, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

or the comparable

If a man says something and his wife doesn’t hear it, is he still wrong?

but one can also ask

If no one hears a composition, is it still music?

The reason I pose this question at all comes from the fate of much commissioned music. Is it music if the music does not make it into the repertoire? On Daniel Gawthrop’s website, he describes Behold this Mystery in the following way: “Further performances followed, and the piece has now earned a place in the small but distinguished category called Twentieth Century Extended Works for Chorus and Orchestra Which Have Received More Than One Performance. ”

I suppose it is cheating to answer my 3rd question above so quickly, but I have to say yes (the answer to the first, — I don’t care to return to that interminable debate, the answer to the second one is “of course” – (note, I have been married nearly 40 years). I have a friend that has to this point composed something like 600 pieces of music. Until recently most of them have never been heard and now, after I recorded two CD’s worth, more people have heard them. But even if that hadn’t happened, he still heard them in his mind and on his piano. As we all know, the Mass in B minor was not performed during Bach’s lifetime and possibly the first performance was more than 100 years after Bach’s death.

We are in a time in classical music much like the opening words of The Tale of Two Cities “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” For example, with recordings we can hear a wider variety of music than we have ever been able to hear. There are many composers. But today, composers in general don’t have musical groups to play their compositions and expose it to the public. All new music must compete with music from previous ages for an opportunity to be heard. With modern electronics, we can make satisfactory recordings of a live performance easily so that anyone can hear the music. But with the heavily processed modern studio recordings, the listener has come to expect perfection in recordings that just isn’t possible in a live performance. (I will return to this subject in two weeks time in a post entitled Is it real or is it Memorex) Musicians’ Unions have made it possible for classical musicians in the best orchestras to make a (good) living but have made it difficult to record new compositions.

I know that reading long posts on the Internet is not fun so I plan to continue this discussion next week in a post that I am tentatively calling Preparing for the afterlife.

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Transfiguration

During the 2nd week of Lent, I began to read a book suggested by a friend who is an atheist. I had some interest in the book, Sense and Goodness without God, by Richard Carrier, and I thought I might agree that that ethics and epistemology can be justified on the basis metaphysical naturalism. The contention that humanity is capable of goodness without God is not untenable even for the religious. Historic theology includes doctrines of an existing moral order, referred to variously as natural law or general revelation that precede explicit revelation to prophets or saints. The Apostle Paul begins his Epistle to the Romans with, among other things, a discussion of the “law” that is known to Gentiles because it is “written in their hearts”. The world’s religions, even while they are divergent theologically, have come to many similar conclusions about ethics. Christians do not assume they are superior to others but that that they are beneficiaries of God’s grace.

I admit I have only begun to read the book, but I started without any particular expectation that I would be so astonished by the author’s incomprehension of things that most civilized people take for granted. Mr. Carrier is former editor-in-chief at Infidels.org. His comments on the Bible are informed by so little imagination that he seems tone deaf to poetry and the dramatic texts that have inspired art and faith for millennia. In brief, his claim is that the only viable methodology for knowing anything is rigorous logical analysis based on “experience”. What he’d make of Shakespeare is anybody’s guess. He thinks his methodology is the norm in science and technology and that everything we need to know can be ascertained through application of empirical rigor. Apparently he’s unaware that enthusiasm for logical positivism dwindled off somewhere the middle of the twentieth century and that the rigor and professionalism, which he says he admires in industry and academe, are also applicable to the facile ideas he generates. None of the four hundred pages of his book will ever see light of day in any noteworthy philosophical journal.

A teaching assistant at Columbia University, the writer claims some expertise in ancient languages and philosophy. It seems abrupt then when he writes off ancient philosophy in less than one sentence: Plato, he thinks, “Made a mistake”. He takes a couple of pages to dispatch the arguments of Alvin Plantinga, professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame, who, incidentally, does publish his work in reputable philosophical journals. Mr. Carrier justifies this end-run around the professional rigor of the field in which chooses to publish by noting that philosophy only matters when it is intelligible in non-technical language to those who seek values grounded in experience that can be applied in real life. Unimpressed by the Bible, he nonetheless claims to have read the New Testament in the original Greek. This is dubious because the Koine Greek of the New Testament is, by any measure, dissimilar to the Attic Greek of philosophy and ancient history. Koine resembles Modern Greek, not the language of Plato and Aristotle, just as Carrier’s language resembles the daily bilge of the Internet, not philosophy.

Reading Carrier’s book thus far has made me doubt that the groundswell of activity in the blogosphere is adding much to the public discourse, regardless how many infidels are making names for themselves online. He says confidently that in school he mastered any science to which applied his nimble mind, but after graduation he was not in possession of any skills by which he could earn a living. He admits spending years doing menial jobs such as gardening and waiting tables. By now he might be qualified for service as a maître d’ in a good restaurant, but he has chosen to disencumber the world of its philosophical pretensions and religious illusions. While he raised himself from “poverty”, he was content with the life of the mind and of good friends because in his youthful quest he had discovered the truths of the Tao. The Tao is self evident, coherent, and practicable as opposed to the childish nonsense of the Bible, he says, though he doesn’t enlighten us in these profundities. As I recall, “The Tao that can be told is not the Tao”, a tenet that Lao Tzu seems to have neglected in writing about a hundred pages on the subject. Richard Carrier does claim transcendental experience of all an encompassing unity and being. He enlisted in the Coast Guard, and one night at sea, after being awake for something like 35 hours during training exercises, he attained cosmic consciousness or the equivalent. He tells us that he continues to seek to improve his mind, but now “in maturity” he knows everything required to live a satisfying, knowledgeable, and moral life.

The writer’s misapprehension of how ethics might be theoretically grounded is very unlike ancient philosophy. Plato’s discussions of justice are engaging dialogues that explore many facets of the ideal. Carrier’s sophomoric monologues go on for hundreds of pages in such digressions as the kind of evidence that might indicate the truth of the proposition “I have a cat” –creaturely claws, hair on the sofa, vet bills, etc. Some of Carrier’s role models, notably A. J. Ayer and Bertrand Russell, wrote like this, but it wasn’t long until people like G. J. Warnock and J. L. Austin dismantled silly arguments about sense data and evidence for things nobody would ever doubt. When the cat is purring in my lap, I don’t need to produce evidence for its existence.

I rehearsed most of this on the way to choir practice last Thursday night. By the time I got to church, I was in a mood to demolish Carrier for anybody who would listen. Of course, that was not the reason I was there. I got involved in the Lenten music we were preparing. Our conductor is a musical whiz and does not waste time. If your mind wanders under her direction, even for a minute, you end up feeling as negligent to detail as is this infidel PR hack, Carrier. We sang for a couple of hours. Beyond our illuminated loft the music resonated in the distance of the darkened sanctuary. Near the end of the rehearsal the conductor read the following notes on the transfiguration as related to the music she had selected for this Sunday:

In every year of the lectionary cycle, the particular Gospel proclaims the Transfiguration of the Lord on the 2^nd Sunday of Lent. In addition to the image of the glory that Christ would receive in his Resurrection, the church has always seen in this event a glimpse of the promised glory that each follower of Christ receives as a baptized member of His Body the Church. In a sermon about the Transfiguration, Pope Leo the Great wrote, “With no less forethought, Christ was also providing a firm foundation of the hope of the holy Church. The whole body of Christ was to understand the kind of transformation that it would receive as His gift. The members of that body were to look forward to a share in that glory which first blazed out in Christ their head.”

One thing missing in the work of currently fashionable advocates of religious abnegation is any sense of how faith, particularly Christian faith, provides hope in the face of unbearable sorrow. The story of Jesus is hope starkly defined against the passion of the man of sorrows. For Jesus, opposition is unrelenting, and there is treachery even among those he loves. While he heals the diseases of the throng, he knows that suffering will continue and that the poor–and the poor in spirit–will be always among us. Liturgical worship is a rehearsal for the passion none of us will ultimately evade. Familiarity with it helps us to recognize ourselves in Jesus. The crucifix behind the altar represents more than recurring cycles of the Lenten progression. Everyone will eventually carry or hang on the cross. Hours spent in contemplation in this atmosphere may improve our prospects.

We concluded our musical rehearsal by singing O Lux Beatissima, by Howard Helvey. This is a setting of a text attributed to Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, deceased in 1228, that was used in the ancient Catholic Pentecost Sequence Veni, Sancte Spiritus.

O lux beatissima                              O light most blessed
Reple cordis intima                         Fill the inmost heart
Tuorum fidelium                              Of all thy faithful.
Sine tuo nomine                               Without your grace
Nihil est in homine                          There is nothing in us,
Nihil est innoxium                            Nothing that is not harmful.

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