In honor of the 20th anniversary of the third edition of the Worship hymnal (LB: that's the red hymnal in St.MMspeak) I propose that GIA puts out a fourth edition. Worship is a great resource, especially for parishes that have only organ as their instrument. It has traditional songs and straight-up hymns, many of which we stole from the ol' Protties.
That said, it has a lot of really bad choices in there. Please join in singing our opening song, number 731. 'Silence! Frenzied Unclean Spirit!'. Gather Us In is not right stylistically - I don't want that anywhere near an organ, although, with apologies to jjostm, I like the song. There are some heinous poems set to traditional hymn tunes, and some clunkers that just don't get sung.
I have no problem being patient with liturgical music natural selection: all the crap that was written just after the council, and before the St Louis Jesuits were smart enough to use scriptural texts, most of it has gone the way of the dinosaur, and lots of the other music we don't like now will go right along with it. But we have to help it along, folks!
My suspicion is that because Worship is slightly more traditional, and because GIA isn't the exclusive copyright holder on most of the music like they are on the HaugenHaas-heavy Gather suite, they are not interested in putting much effort into a fourth edition of Worship. Or maybe they are trying to phase it out - I suppose with Ritual Song out there, few parishes are going to keep investing in Worship AND Gather, although if they are like St MM they might supplement one of those with a missalette from another publisher.
I have only within the last few years become a frequent user of Ritual Song. I love it.
And with apologies to all the oregonians on the friends list, I will always be a GIA girl.
famished, I scrambled three eggs at 9pm to supplement the oatmeal i had before rehearsal.
beethoven missa solemnis tonight. so much easier to memorize when I know the text, i feel like all the other pieces i've done with the bso have been in german, by far my weakest language.
the conductor went off on one of his wonderful tangents tonight, talking about a time he spent 3 or 4 weeks sitting in on b minor mass rehearsals, and noting all of the tempi. he found that there was a symmetry (at least in proportions) of the tempi from beginning to end which leads him to believe that Bach really did have the whole piece in mind when he composed it.
The historical evidence for a fractured composition is too compelling for me to agree with him completely, but I believe that Bach in his genius managed to fit in another mathematical game or pattern while putting all the pieces together. The man was a genius. I think I revere him. When I read the Wolff biography of Sebby I cried when he died.
Hearing the conductor tell that story tonight reminded me how much I love Bach. I miss thinking about this stuff.
Current Music
tune virus = the osanna section of the missa solemnis
I just began reading Evening in the Palace of Reason by James R. Gaines. It's subtitled Bach meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment. I expected to really not like it, thinking it would be pretentious historical fiction, but it's more like accessible history. I particularly liked this quote:
"A work that may be read as a kind of last will and testament, Bach's Musical Offering leaves us, among other things, a compelling case for the following proposition: that a world without a sense of the transcendent and mysterious, a universe ultimately discoverable through reason alone, can only be a barren place; and that the music sounding forth from such a world might be very pretty, but it can never be beautiful."
A lot of people talk to me about the role of music in their life. For many people it is something very important, deeply connected to one aspect or another of their lives. I have never really felt that way about it. It has always been in the foreground of my existence, and although I certainly don't begrudge it it's ubiquity, I know that I take it for granted. I often hear people say that music brought them back to the Church or to some sort of religious faith or spirituality. I realized this past weekend that music is what brought me back to patriotism.
After 9/11 I was furious at the hate and imperialism that was masquerading as patriotism. I hated that the Republicans co-opted the flag. I knew that these were some of the reasons other people hated us, not necessarily those that were committing terrorist acts (they are reacting to something other than our jingoism, if it can be argued that they are reacting at all), but other people in the international community. Indeed, some of my own peers were stuck with a peculiar self-hatred, because we had people singing "we'll stick a boot in your ass, it's the American way", and we suddenly didn't want to be American anymore.
Patriotism became a politically charged word. No matter how deeply I knew that I loved America, I was told that I didn't because I didn't love it "the way I was supposed to". I love democracy, our history, our government, checks and balances, legislation, purple mountains' majesty, the whole nine yards. But, much like in the Church which is so dear to me, I saw need of reform. And so I was a traitor.
From the stage in Symphony Hall Saturday night, I was moved by the rush of people rising to sing the National Anthem with us. I saw their lips moving along with ours to America the Beautiful. Tuesday night, Flag Day, was when the crowd was at their rowdiest. A guy two thirds of the way back was waving the little flag we gave him, rotating from the shoulder. They leaped up to sing God Bless America; their voices were louder than ours. And the applause and excitement the follow the first notes of Stars and Stripes Forever were electrifying. I suppose singing Stars and Stripes Forever with the Boston Pops would bring anyone back to patriotism.
But in that hall I saw more than just crass America-love. There was community, joy, excitement, and a love for that which is bigger than us but which binds us together. That which can't be quantified but has offered us the opportunity to enjoy an orchestra, to sit in wonder at the opening notes of "Fanfare for the Common Man", and for the grand-daughter of an Irish maid to do what she loves in a city that welcomes her, in a country that welcomed her family.
