In our “Worship On the Grounds” service this week, our
service was going to be bookended with music by “The Southwind Players,” a
hammer dulcimer quartet consisting of Jim Moore, Victoria Scarborough, Alice
Showalter, and Peggy Tudor. Mother Nature, however, had alternate plans, and
the rainy conditions are making the service impossible. Through the wonders of
technology, however, the music they had intended to offer live will be in the
YouTube service.
The dulcimer group will play three pieces in the service,
two familiar hymns – “Come, Christians, Join to Sing” and “Amazing Grace” – and
a tradition canon, “Dona Nobis Pacem.” This canon is quite possibly familiar to many
also. The Latin text of the canon translates to, “Grant us peace.” I certainly need
these words streaming through my mind these days!
When I began to think about hammer dulcimers this week, I
quickly realized I knew next to nothing about them. What are their origins?
When were they first made? And where? How are the strings set-up on the
instrument? Like a piano? Like a guitar? Why do they have the trapezoidal
shape? I could go on . . .
Luckily, the online Smithsonian Institution answered many of
my questions. Perhaps you will find this article interesting as well. Don’t
miss the links on the side of the page. Enjoy!
In the canon of western classical music, one can easily
stumble upon pieces where music and geography intersect. That is, music
depicting place – a landscape, nature alive with water and animal sounds, an
idyllic reminiscence of childhood, vacation spot, or utopia. For me, this music
is the type where one can close their eyes while listening to it and paint
their own picture of the geography being explored. When I think of this
subsection of classical music, four pieces come to mind right away:
Antonín Dvořák’sSymphony No. 9, more
commonly known as The New World Symphony.
A Czech composer, Dvořák came to America in 1892 to become director of the
National Conservatory of Music in America. The
New World Symphony is inspired, in part, by the prairies he encountered
during his summer visit to the areas in and around Spillville, Iowa. He wrote
often of the “wide open spaces” of America.
Ralph Vaughan
Williams’ The Lark Ascending.
This is a piece for solo violin and orchestra often described as “the
composer’s love song to the British countryside.” The solo violin plays the
part of the lark, singing out the bird’s song in the dizzying heights of the
lark’s flight into the sky.
Edward Elgar’s
Enigma Variations. In a similar
vein as the Vaughan Williams piece described above, this theme and 14
variations also depicts the English countryside, specifically the Malvern hills
where the composer spent much of his time. The most famous variation – “Nimrod”
– is a perennial audience favorite and easily recognizable in pop culture.
Charles
Ives’ Three Places in New England.
The three movements in this orchestral suite all portray a specific place in
the Northeastern United States: Boston Common, Putnam’s Camp (Redding,
Connecticut), and The Housatonic [River] at Stockbridge [Massachusetts].
The two solo piano pieces offered in today’s worship service
follow in this tradition. They come from a collection, An American Portrait: The Pacific Northwest, by a composer from
that region, Valerie Roth Roubos. In addition to this collection, she has three
other books with The American Portrait
title – Scenes from the Great Plains, The Oregon Trail, and Views of the West. I
hope you will consider closing your eyes while they are played and picture the
Lavender Fields of the Olympic Peninsula and the majestic Mt. Rainier – two examples
of God’s stunning beauty on the earth entrusted to our care.
To be sure, our collective cultural vocabulary has been
enhanced with pandemic-related words and phrases over the past few months.
Words that are now commonplace in our conversations would have sounded so
foreign to us in the not-too-distant past. Think about it: Before circa March
15, 2020, how many times had you used the term social distancing? Or personal
protective equipment (PPE)? Or aerosols?
(I could go on with at least a dozen more...) Can you accurately define and
explain the difference between self-isolation,
self-quarantine, and shelter-in-place? On a lighter note, Don’t be a ‘covidiot’! and Y’all need to ‘quarantine and chill’! are
two social media phrases that make me chuckle.
For musicians – especially singers and choral conductors –
another such phrase is virtual choir.
Perhaps you have seen such an “ensemble” on YouTube or Facebook or some other
online platform. They are carefully produced videos where each member of the
ensemble records their own part by themselves in their own space. A (faux)
audio/video engineer then compiles and edits each contributor’s video into a
collective whole or virtual choir. No
doubt, this is a mind-numbing and time-absorbing task!
The term virtual choir
is not necessarily a new phrase born out of the Covid-19 pandemic. Rather,
it is the brainchild of composer Eric Whitacre (b. 1970), who coined the term
about 11 years ago. CBS Sunday Morning recently aired a spot on this phenomenon
a few weeks back. Check it out:
Lest you think singers and choral conductors have lost their
zeal for forming and expressing bold opinions, suffice it to say that the
reception to Whitacre back in 2009 was all over the map. It continues to be
wide and varied even now. Purists among us say that at the heart of choral
singing is the communal and corporate experience; they would argue that
participants in a choir must be physically present in order to achieve true
choral beauty in terms of blend, vowel unification, rhythmic precision, etc. On
the other hand, experimentalists posit that we ought to allow the technology at
our disposal to enhance our art as musicians; if we must forego some of the
technicalities of ensemble music-making, we can make up for it in the symbolism
of cohesion that a carefully produced virtual choir makes. From those two
extremes, many points of view could be plotted along a purist-experimentalist
spectrum.
You may recall a virtual choir being part of our worship
experience a few weeks back on July 5. A quartet of singers offered the
national hymn “This Is My Song,” set to Jean Seibelius’ famous Finlandia. In that instance, each singer
received an audio file of the four-parts being played on the organ. While
listening to that file with earbuds from one device (a phone or tablet), the
singer recorded a video of themselves singing their part onto a second device.
I then collected the four videos, lined them up to the exact millisecond so
that each part is played at the exact same time, and worked to achieve a
quality performance. Thanks (or not!) to modern technology, one could spend
days messing with the details of such things. If one singer’s recording is
softer than the others, you simply manipulate that track to the volume level
you want or need. If one singer is sharp or flat on a chord, no problem! The
software can adjust the pitch. If a word ends with a “dental consonant” (such
as ‘t’ or ‘d’) but the consonant sounds in the four videos don’t match, not to
worry! The engineer just erases the ones they don’t wish to hear. On July 5, my
skills were very much in the early-elementary stage. I hadn’t yet figured out
how to make the video match the audio. So, the audio was simply accompanied by
still photos of the four singers.
This week, you’ll experience another virtual choir in our
worship video – complete with three treble voices and piano, audio and video
alike. So, where do you fall on the purist-experimentalist spectrum with
virtual choirs? (Or virtual music-making in general.) I certainly long for the
day where we can safely make music together in community again, but, for now, I
am grateful for the resources and increasing ability to assemble fellow
musicians in a virtual, safe, and beautiful way. For me, it is just one option
in my “bag of tricks” to allow music to speak to our souls and enhance our
worship.
This week, I had the opportunity to explore yet another
new-to-me text and tune in the Glory to
God hymnal. I stumbled upon it because it is a text that, in part, alludes
to our Gospel lesson for this Sunday: the familiar parable of the Mustard Seed.
I quickly noticed that the hymn was co-written by Adam Tice (text) and Sally
Ann Morris (music) – a team that I first experienced at the Montreat Conference
in June 2019.
You may recall a few weeks back when I wrote on this blog
about the season of Pentecost. I explained that the season is one where we
recall the teachings of Jesus (as
opposed to important life events of him celebrated in other times of the year).
These teachings often come in the form of parables from the Gospel writers. Adam
Tice’s text gives a nod to four such parables: the Mustard Seed (Matthew 13 /
Mark 4 / Luke 13), the Prodigal Son (Luke 15), the Good Samaritan (Luke 10),
and the Ten Bridesmaids (Matthew 25). Both of the Matthew texts here are part
of the lectionary readings for this year – the Mustard Seed this week, and the
Ten Bridesmaids late in the season.
Tice’s text is in five stanzas and is re-printed in full
below. He is no doubt a talented poet and theologian! As you read through his
text, take note of these three elements:
the overall sense of unity by allowing the first
four stanzas to begin with the same question – What is the world like when God’s will is done? – and end with a This is how God... statement relating to
the respective parable
his predominant use of monosyllabic words,
allowing for a feeling of simplicity, directness, honesty, and plainness
the abab
rhyme scheme which makes “done” a rhyme word in each and every stanza as he
brilliantly flips the fifth stanza to answer the reiterated question that opens
the first four
What is the world like when God’s
will is done? Mustard seeds grow more than we
can conceive: roots thread the soil; branches
reach for the sun. This is how God moves us each to
believe.
What is the world like when God’s
will is done? Witness the wandering child coming
home; watch as the parent breaks into a
run. This is how God longs for us when
we roam.
What is the world like when God’s
will is done? No more is neighbor just ally or
friend; peace thrives in places where once
there was none. This is how God works when
rivalries end.
What is the world like when God’s
will is done? Ready for feasting, we watch
through the night, tending our lamp’s till the new
day’s begun. This is how God readies us for the
light.
These are the stories that Jesus
imparts, filled with the Spirit who joins
us as one. Born through our voices, our
hands, and our hearts, This is a new world where God’s
will is done.
Hymnologist Carl Daw has some further insight into this
text. He writes, “Each of these [parables] is an indirect description of what
Scripture calls ‘the kingdom of God’ or ‘the kingdom of heaven.’ In other
words, these are narrative approximations of what it means to live under the
sovereignty of God; as such, parables do not seek to define but to suggest, to
awaken the imagination, to free us from our everyday assumptions about life.
... These [first] four stanzas are then summarized in the fifth stanza holding
out the possibility that ‘through our voices, our hands, and our hearts’ we can
be part of this reign of God on earth.”
I’m thankful for Catherine Hines, who graciously learned
this piece with me this week. Now living and working in Lexington, Catherine is
a 2019 Centre grad and a former music intern at The Presbyterian Church of
Danville.
Service music included in our worship for Sunday, July 19 revolves
around Robert Schumann’s (1810-1856) suite of solo piano pieces called Kinderszenen,
opus 15, from 1838. Translated as “Scenes from Childhood,” the composer once
told a friend, “this music was intended as an adult’s reflections on childhood
and not with young pianist’s in mind.” Schumann originally intended this opus
to include 30 short movements, but, in the end, only thirteen made the cut of
the self-critical composer. Kinderszenen have been loved by pianists
around the world for many decades now; Vladimir Horowitz famously played them
in concert throughout his career.
Perhaps the most famous piece of the collection is Träumerei
(Dreaming). A 1944 German biographical film of the same name portrays the life
of the composer’s pianist wife, Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-1896). Speaking of
the movements from this suite, Robert Schumann famously told Clara that the “small,
droll things” were inspired by her comment that he sometimes “seemed like a
child.” (He also said that the pieces are “more cheerful, gentler, and melodic”
than his earlier works.) Träumerei is also used as the opening and
closing music of the 1947 Hollywood film – Song of Love – that stars Katharine
Hepburn as Clara.
In these days of hoping and longing for a more perfect,
peaceful world, I hope these simple, innocent, dream-like pieces will
contribute to our corporate worship and prayer this week.
British composer and organist Elizabeth Stirling (1819-1895) is among the many female composers and musical figures of her age that have yet to receive their due attention. Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-1847) and Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-1896) are two of Stirling’s female contemporaries from the Romantic era. Both of these women had skill and careers overshadowed by their male family members: Fanny’s brother, Felix Mendelssohn, and Clara’s husband, Robert Schumann.
Born in Greenwich and educated at the Royal Academy of Music in London, Stirling held church posts at All Saints’ (Poplar) and St. Andrew (Undershaft) – both in London. Her husband, Frederick Albert Bridge, was choirmaster at London’s famed St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Additionally, her prowess as an organ recitalist is well-documented. After a performance in August of 1837 (when she was not yet 20 years old!), a reviewer in The Musical World wrote:
This young lady ... was the unceasing object of general astonishment, and performed for nearly three hours in continuation the most difficult pedal fugues and preludes of Bach, with a degree of precision and mastery, which may almost be said to be unrivalled. We hope to see justice done to Miss Stirling. The prejudice against lady organists cannot remain, with such an example opposed to it.
Side note--- Judith Barger’s book, Elizabeth Stirling and the Musical Life of Female Organists in Nineteenth-Century England, is a fascinating read. More about that here.
Her compositions for organ have been described as containing “soaring melodies and lush harmonies.” The Largo – included in this Sunday’s worship video – is no exception. Her pieces are almost always in an ABA form, meaning the 3-part composition is such that the inner section differs from the opening and closing sections.
On a lighter note, Stirling’s most well-known composition is likely her arrangement of the folksong, All Among the Barley. Check it out:
Whew! What a wild few weeks we’ve just lived through. In the
midst of this holiday weekend, I have to admit I’m not feeling overly
celebratory. Each year in the early days of July, we celebrate America, and
especially her independence and freedom. Heavy on my mind this year, though,
are all of our fellow American citizens who not yet feel their full freedoms.
I have so many thoughts screaming through my brain, and, at
the same time, words escape me. So, I turn to the work of veteran journalist
Jane Pauley, whose short piece on the Black National Anthem – “Lift Every Voice
and Sing” – was released a couple of weeks ago on “Flag Day” as part of the CBS
Sunday Morning program.
I’m grateful that this national song was selected for use in
our Glory to God hymnals, and I hope that its inclusion in our service
this weekend will be helpful in your personal reflection and meditation. It's certainly a rousing song, so let us "lift every voice and sing"!
