"O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" for saxophone and piano

One of the best things about improvising is that you can do it with friends.

For the past two years our congregation has been blessed with the presence of jazz saxophonist Robert Brooks, who came to the University of Illinois to get his Master's degree, then stayed on to do a Doctorate.

Yesterday, on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, we played this classic hymn, " O Come, O Come Emmanuel." Enjoy!

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (12/20/15)

Robert Brooks, saxophone

Michael Hammer, piano

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just a reminder: the homepage of www.pianonoise.com contains close to three hours of Christmas music for piano and organ through the holidays. Happy listening!

Return of the Shepherds

It's a year later and the shepherds are back on the hillside, tending their sheep. Last year I wrote them a nice ten part series having to do with pastorales, musical representations of the bucolic countryside and their own romantic, if smelly and dangerous, occupation. Twelve months later, they are still doing their thing. Same shepherds, same sheep.

Is that the same hill? Man is this a low budget production. I knew I kept seeing the same rocks over and over.

There they stand, subaltern as ever, keeping watch over their flocks by day and night. And we've got another way to let them appear as unpaid extras in our Christmas story. It's a nice, traditional, German carol. The words, translated, go like this:

While by the sheep, we watched at night.
Glad tidings brought and angel bright.
How great our joy! (Great our joy!)
Joy, joy, joy! (Joy, joy, joy!)
Praise we the Lord in heaven on high!
(Praise we the Lord in heaven on high!)

In case you were wondering about how that goes in German, it runs thusly:

Als ich bei meinen Schafen wacht
Ein Engel mir die Botschaft bracht.
Des bin ich froh, (bin ich froh)
Froh, froh, froh, (o, o, o)
|: Benedicamus Domino. :|

German and Latin, actually.

Since the acoustics of the hills are quite reverberent, this carol has become known alternately as "the echo carol" (besides being called "While By the Sheep" and "How Great our Joy")--I was stupid enough to type it first as "While By our sheep" but of course the shepherds don't own the sheep; they are there to look after somebody else's. Probably a big sheep conglamerate.

Anyhow, we can leave them alone now that we've had our look, and listen to this nice carol, which I've set for organ. If anybody wants the score I can send it to you--it's a bit more challenging than last Friday's selection, though there is no improvisation required.

Enjoy!

While By the Sheep
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Last year's shepherd series can be found nicely indexed on the blog--just scroll down until you find it in the right hand column.

Don't forget, the pianonoise.com homepage now has two-and-a-half hours of Christmas music for piano and organ for your listening pleasure. It will be up through Epiphany.

Improvisation season

Does the Christmas season ever feel just thrown together to you?

Obviously there are the pageants. Not enough practice because the kids didn't show up half the time and don't really know what they're doing; also, many of them are too young to be able to do anything but just look dumbfounded and cute. Is it surprising that our species continues to survive? That sheep did look really adorable, though. And the kids did more or less know how to sing their songs this year.

The concerts are often the same way. While leaving the rest of the year to professionals, at Christmas everybody has to get in on the act, and God bless them all, but amateurs frequently don't seem to be much for preparation. They don't think the professionals need any practice, so why should they? If only they knew.

I don't mean to sound like a grinch. We're all busy, overbooked, overloaded, and under-prepared this time of year, and that includes those of us who do this for a living. The difference, besides knowing how to prepare when it is at all possible to do so, being that some of us have gotten better at being able to fly by the seat of our pants and not make that too obvious.

What I'm getting at is that improvisation is not simply an art, with a long, serious, tradition. It is not simply a way to stupefy people into admiration of where all that music just suddenly came from. It is a survival skill. Being able to sit at an instrument and suddenly create music with no preparation whatsoever because it is suddenly required of you or you had no time to practice--is a real gift. But like any gift, you have to purchase it first. That takes time.

Over the last several Christmases I've actually managed to play a lot of written out repertoire. This usually works because I practice it in the summer. The recordings I post during Advent were most likely made in July.

But I still improvise during December. For a start, it is very difficult to find time to capture a creative impulse if you have to find the time to put it all on paper. I still have a few pages around here somewhere with only two measures of music on them--ideas I had for settings of Christmas carols that I tried to write down while I was walking down the hall to the next service or rehearsal. That's as far as they got. So a recorded improvisation, while it may be crude, can be a good start on something I'll write down later. And if I was having a good day, I may be able to simply write what I hear without editing anything.

There are other good reasons for the match of December with improvisations. Beside the high demand for a lot of music for a number of different occasions, even before those demands materialized in my life, I improvised, even as a teenager. I've been doing it now for a long time--for a while, every year I would make a series of improvised arrangements of carols. The first year was 1987, the year my grandmother died (see Dec. 7 blog). For some reason, Christmas seems like a portal in time from year to year as I reflect on Christmases past and present, and ponder mankind's uncertain future. Dickens' ghosts need something to do, after all.

And improvisation in general is a good way to truly connect with musical art. It is a way to THINK musically; to try ideas, and to digest the musical universe swirling around you, to put some of it into your own words, to converse in music. And you can connect in the moment to what is happening, musically and otherwise, all around you. There are a hundred good reasons for doing it. I'll be sharing some of them next semester as we dive into the subject and swim around. Just remember, no musical gift exists in a vacuum. Improvisation  isn't just about improvisation. It is about (and requires, and strengthens) a number of other musical gifts. We'll get into that, too. For now, I leave you with a tiny example of the sort of thing I might do at a Christmas party, or a Christmas service, or a Christmas concert. It's a short improvisation on the carol "Go, Tell it on the Mountain." It was right after lunch, I was tired, less than ambitious, but still this very contained, simple setting has something interesting about it. And it's not like the way I've ever played it before. Like any great story, there is something different about it each time you approach it. The same can be true of a musical source: a hymn, a tune, a folk song, a carol. What did it say today? Or last Friday? Or two weeks from now?

Have a Listen.

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And if you're in a listening mood, the homepage at pianonoise.com now has the annual Christmas program. Some two-and-a-half (?) hours or piano and organ music you can dial up anytime through January 7th. Enjoy! and Merry Christmas.

Music in Space

I'd like to do something special for you this Christmas. I'm going to take you up to the pipe room.

If you're not an organist yourself, you've probably never been up in one. Even if you are, you may not have spent a whole lot of time up there.

Careful on the ladder! This one's not bolted down.

By the way, don't tell our building manager we're doing this. He'll be worried about the liability issues. I'm not even sure whether our insurance covers virtual falls during virtual tours on the internet.

Great! We made it. Also that's what these pipes go to. The Great! ....nevermind.

We are surrounded by pipes. Careful! There are over a thousand of them, and some of them are pretty small; still, you can do quite a bit of damage to them if you fall on one. And to yourself, of course. No wonder we don't give tours regularly.

The reason we are up here is so we can get a little perspective. The piano is a pretty terrific instrument, but it doesn't take up three rooms like our organ does. And despite our organ's being on the large side of small, as pipe organs go, it has some 1200 pipes. Now, that takes up a lot of room. And when you are up here, you really get a feel for the size of the instrument. In fact, it is all around you. That console downstairs is only where the decisions are made. The sound comes from up here.

A year ago, when we got our playback system, I got to do something I couldn't do before. I could listen to myself play from somewhere other than the organ bench. So I made my way up here to listen from inside the instrument. It's quite something. And--aren't you lucky--I spent half an hour dragging my recording equipment up into the pipe room so I could make some recordings from in here as well.  I'm going to share one of them (there are some others we can get to later).

This is a nice little Canzona (90 seconds) by Franz Tunder (1614-67) who was organist at St. Mary's in Lubeck before Dietrich Buxtehude, whom Bach traveled so far to hear. First I'll play it for you the way you would hear it in the sanctuary.

[listen]

Now, as it happens, I was able to record the very same performance from a wholly different angle. Notice the difference in sound. For one thing, it is dryer, there is no resonance, the pipes are close by, and you will distinctly be able to hear some of them coming from one or the other of your speakers--assuming you have two. I hope you are listening to this in stereo, because otherwise you will lose the effect.

In the opening section, it is just a single flute stop playing, so all of the notes will be coming out of one speaker. (the one on your left, I think. The other speaker is making blower noises because that's the side where the blower is located, in case you wondered what was making all that non-musical racket).

But in the next part of the piece, an even more curious thing happens. Although this is the part where I add several more stops and the piece becomes much louder, I've closed the shutters, which closes off the pipes in the front--the ones you can see from the sanctuary--from the ones back in the pipe room. That's at least 3/4 of the organ that the congregation never sees. The reason they are behind shutters is so you can make them louder or softer depending on whether or not you have opened or closed the shutters in front of them. However, we are now BEHIND the shutters, which makes things sound rather backwards.

You see, the foundation stops--the main stops of the organ, which are expected to have some volume--those are placed out in front, and are not able to be quieted by closing the shutters. But the rest of the pipes are affected by the shutters. Now, here, the stops that would normally be loudest are actually on the other side of the shutters. The ones that you will hear best are the ones in the back of the pipe room, nearest to us. It actually sounds like I am using a completely different registration to play the piece now, but that is only because we are listening to the organ from the opposite direction!

[listen]

Cool, huh?

By the way, this was recorded on a hot day in July, and if it sounds to you like one of the pipes was leaking some air, it sounded like that to me, too. I've think we've gotten that fixed by now. The tuner was just here a couple of weeks ago.

Sometimes it is nice to here things from a different angle and to realize how differently they can sound. If only humans could do that more often!

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for more perspectives, you can check out my recent podcast interview with host Vidas Pinkevicius on the "Secrets of Organ Playing" blog.

Also, coming tomorrow to the homepage of pianonoise.com: three hours of piano and organ music for the holidays. It will be up through Christmas.

Music for Gaudete Sunday

This Sunday is "Gaudete" Sunday in the Roman Catholic church. If, like me, you weren't aware of this until recently (perhaps as recently as the reading of this blog), it might be because:

a) you are Protestant
b) you are Orthodox
c) you are Catholic but not very observant (that can be taken a few different ways)
d) you are anybody who hasn't gone to mass during Advent, including persons of different religious persuasions who really weren't planning to do so to begin with!
e) you are a tree sloth in Armenia

Does that cover everybody?

Many Protestants do not practice a very complex church year. In this "low church" model, There is Christmas, and there is Easter, and then there is practically everything else. On the other end of the scale, which tends to be the practice of Anglicans and Catholics, every Sunday has its own name, its own function, its own feast, etc. Being Methodist means our church tends toward the low end of the scale, but with occasional pastoral nods toward more church events like Ascension Sunday and Trinity Sunday. And then, they have an organist who finds history interesting, as well as having a natural curiosity about the customs of others. But the occasional liturgical accident sometimes helps, too.

Advent, as practiced by the church, is a period of waiting. It is also a period of penitence and more somber observance. Sound like Lent? It is, actually. And here is what I've found interesting. Making people wait and watch, reflect and wait, is pretty counter cultural. It takes a discipline that you wouldn't expect to find in 21st century American society. I can't speak for Europe, but I imagine it's a little out of place there, too. Waiting for things is not in a capitalist's vocabulary. Nobody tells you not to come into their store right away for the best deals of the millenium happening RIGHT NOW!

But waiting patiently and penitently appears to have been considered somewhat burdensome many centuries ago, too. Suppressing some of the most joyful parts of the mass, doing without pleasures like the playing of the organ--apparently it was too much for too long. So, just as in Lent, a little more than halfway through, the church lightens those burdens for a week, allows some of these things back into the mass, and we have a Sunday of rejoicing. Gaudete! Rejoice!

Where it gets more interesting is that the series our pastors are using to preach on (courtesy of a major Methodist website), using themes from the four advent candles, just happens to line up with this older tradition. In fact, I learned about it while trying to figure out which order those pesky advents candles were supposed to go in. Four Sundays in Advent, and four candles. Is it hope, joy, peace love? Love, joy, hope, peace? Joy, peace, hope, peace again? argh.

Short answer: there isn't an "official" order. I assumed if anybody had nailed this down, it would be the Catholic church. And they haven't. But the third candle is Joy.

Gaudete!

I mentioned this to our choir director, because she had chosen none other than a modern arrangement of the 15th century chant itself for the choir to sing this week. "Gaudete!" for Gaudete Sunday. She thought that was pretty cool, and called it a "God thing" which means she hadn't planned it that way. It just happened. Of course, the curriculum was responsible for getting her part way there. But the choosing of the piece "Gaudete" itself....I can't explain that one.

Since the choir doesn't sing at the 8 am service, I have to have something to play in their slot. I've come up with an organ solo version of "Gaudete." One of the things that I like about the organ is the way it is so many different instruments. A couple of months ago I shared music from my organ concert. Much of it was full-on all-the-stops-out glorious sounding. But this piece is just the opposite. Using my favorite 4-foot flute stop all by itself, the organ sounds like a recorder consort. It is answered by the 8-foot krummhorn alone. Another Reniassancish ensemble sound.

After a few rounds of that, it is time for some verses. But there is no music for verses provided in the 15th century source. It's customary to use another tune from a period source to cover the verses. I had a different idea.

That's why, for organists reading this, I'm providing the score I whipped together at an insane hour last night, and giving you a chance to do what I did. Improvise.

That's right; I didn't provide any music for the verses either!

If you are following the score you'll see how it works, though you can hear it on the recording also. First the flutes play. They are answered by the krummhorns. Then the flutes. Krummhorns. Then an extended solo. Then the krummhorns. Each of the four verses is a spot where I improvised a Medieval sounding solo over a drone accompaniment. It's not so difficult. Basically you use the notes of the scale--we're in A dorian, which is all the white keys except F# instead of F natural. Hold the A down with your left hand and move up and down in expressive and dancelike ecstasy, then change the left hand note to G (right hand continues), then F (natural) and finally E as your solo comes to a close. If you haven't improvised before (and we haven't talked about it yet on this blog) this isn't a bad introduction to the sport.

Each of those solos is answered by the written out krummhorn chorus, which I varied a little at whim, but basically played as written. Then for the final chorus, I doubled the flute stop and the krummhorn by coupling the manuals together for the grand finale.

Non-organists and organists alike: I hope you enjoy the recording. Rejoice!

Gaudete

and for the organists, here is the score.  I'd love to hear your performances, if you are able to record them. They will all be unique, courtesy of a score that calls for your own improvisations as an integral part of the music.

score here

(update: the 12/10 version had some errors in it--haste will do that, unfortunately. The version linked to above is from 12/12 and has been corrected. My apologies)


Enjoy!

coming soon

Here we go again.

This weekend begins another year in the church calendar. It is time for Advent.

As I've observed before, in American consumerland we are already well into the Christmas season. This is largely because we just can't wait.

I usually spend November trying desperately to fend off Christmas commercials and Christmas music. I love the season. I just don't want to be tired of Sleigh Ride before the leaves even fall off the trees. Last year I heard "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" six times before Thanksgiving, and that was just by going to the grocery store once a week. If we had television I'd have to wear out the batteries on the remote control just hitting the mute button (and hiding my eyes) every time a Christmas commercial came on. I don't want to be so sick of the holiday that by the 25th of December I just desperately want it to go away--yet that seems to be the feeling of people around me. Christmas starts after Halloween and goes on and on and on and on....

Which is the price of gluttony, I suppose. You get tired of it.

I'm not Catholic, but I admire their approach to the season. Advent is a season of waiting. It is not a feast, it is a fast. It is a time of discipline, even a time of scarcity before the feast. Then, at the appointed time, jubilation, celebration, rejoicing, for the entire 12 day period from December 25th to January 6th. If only society knew how to wait....

Salespeople don't want us to wait, obviously. They want us to HURRY HURRY HURRY to get the lastest bargain. And they are listening to the people who want to shop till they drop, not to the ones who won't go to the mall until the middle of December.

The church, by contrast, often seems to want to put the brakes on. They are the most conservative element in society. They shun innovation, serve as a collective for people who oppose change, and look suspiciously on the rights of individuals, which is to say they aren't very progressive. At the same time, they stand for virtue and discipline, continuity and respect. Sometimes the church seems like the weary adult in a world of four-year-olds. And it seems about all they can do sometimes is look on judgmentally as the kids tear into all their Christmas presents in 30 seconds in a frenzy of gratification, and then have a meltdown five minutes later because they are out of stuff to open and they can't handle all the surging emotions.

Pace yourselves. The joy will come. The feast will arrive. Prepare yourselves for it. Don't just revel in every good thing you can find--share it. Live inside it. Don't expect it to make you delirious. Happiness isn't a mind altering drug. It is a state of being.

Does it seem curmudgeonly to all the societal kids? Of course it does. Sometimes it even feels like it. But behind it all is a joy that those kids will never understand. Unless you wait for it. It will come.

And to all a good night

Vacuum the house, do the dishes, practice for church, giftwrap the presents, blog...

Blog! Oh, no! I forgot to blog!

Well, aren't we in a state of whirling around on this blessed day of the year.

I'm off to the Christmas Eve Marathon at my church once again, so lucky to be able to bring music and the joy of the season to about 1000 people in the next 8 hours. Our services are at 5, 7, and 11. Shortly before midnight, I'll be signing off with this little piece by Franz Tundor.

If you have a minute (90 seconds, actually), have a listen. If not, have a happy holiday. It'll be here when you get back.

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!

Tundor: Canzona

By invitation only

Our previous selections were already skirting the boundaries of good liturgical decorum, but today's are definitely of the full festive variety. And so the question: is this sort of thing really appropriate for church?

Of course not. Definitely not. This is music of the countryside, and the type of folks who work in it. What would make you think it belongs in a church?

I'm not answering the "should" question, or offering a personal answer. I'm answering on behalf of the Church Historic, which has a long tradition of drawing lines between what is couth and what is not couth. Shepherds are definitely of the un variety.

Let's face it. They smell. Maybe if they cleaned themselves up a bit and adopted a romanticized mien, we could let them in to the edge of our crèche, so long as they promised not to say anything and make a scene.

Bit of irony: We have a gate between the congregation and the altar space at our church, just like most Methodist churches. A former pastor told me how this works. It was first put in so that animals who managed to get into little country churches wouldn't gain admittance to the altar area. It is known as a "sheep gate." What seems to have happened here is that a couple of animals and their ignorant shepherd have wandered across the sheep gate and right on to our altar. Even if they are made of plastic, that shows pretty poor manners. We don't want to make a scene, though. We won't say anything about it as long as he stays where he belongs.

We can't expect the same for our organist, though, who is planning to play these licentious works on the Sundays of Christmastide. Seems the shepherds are making their presence known after all.

One more thing that I find interesting about this little party on the altar. The kings, promoted by legend, and seated by status, near to the couple, have had to work hard to get where they are. They doubtless feel, having used their knowledge and persistence to figure out where to go and to traverse "afar," that they have earned the right to be there. The freeloading shepherds, on the other hand, didn't need to use their mad navigation skills to chart the skies, their extensive knowledge of a foreign country's prophetic tradition to interpret what they saw. Presumably without any marketable skills besides trying to keep sheep from getting killed, they were just going about their business, ignoring that supernova in the sky, and counting the days till Friday, when the weekend shepherds took over. Just kidding! They probably didn't have any relief. And yet, they too are to be found manger-side in Bethlehem. The whole lot of them, in fact, regardless of what our crèches have to say about it. And why? Because they got a celestial invite from a horde of angels, that's why. And I guess that's worth celebrating. Because maybe nobody else bothered to include them in something so obviously important. But here they are. Because somebody invited them. Now who would send a gilded, singing telegram, ridiculously expensive(?) invitation to a bunch of yokels like that?

God did. That's who.

Not that that's ever stopped anybody from complaining about it. You can be shocked, or horrified, or certain that this organist has gone off the deep end, along with the composer of these little pastorales. We know very little about him; much like the shepherds, he doesn't seem to have gotten a lot of press. But here is a little of what he left behind, from 300 years ago in Croatia. Two more pastorales (I played the others in the previous installment). A genre associated with shepherds, and bagpipes. That's right. Bagpipes. And you know how popular those things are in church (or anywhere else). Well, Mr. Pintaric let in the bagpipes. And, apparently, all heaven broke loose.

Pintaric: Pastorale no. 1 in C
Pintaric: Pastorale no. 4 in F

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congratulations! You made it to the end of our ten-part series. Unless you joined us somewhere in the middle and would like to start over to see what you missed. That can be accomplished here. Or you can look for the "shepherd series" in the lists on the right hand side of the blog.

Who let the bagpiper in here?

Finally, it's time to hear what made me want to spend three weeks writing about pastorales in the first place. A few months ago, I discovered a short set of pastorales by a Croation composer named Pintaric. I like variety; I like the unusual, some of the time; these were new to me, and they looked easy enough to ease my way through the Christmas season, given no time for advance practice during the summer this year with the organ console having been removed.

I should also mention that my grandmother was born in Croatia, and my father besides, though they are actually Austrian (long story; involves a little spat called WWII), so I was also interested in them from a heritage point of view.

The first thing I noticed about these little pieces is that they were all wrong! What happened to triple time? These were in four. What about that rocking rhythm, preferably with dots? Gone. And the drone? Well, it's there, but it doesn't sustain. It is repeated hypnotically in the bass, but not the pedals. In fact, there seems to be no pedal part at all. And tranquility? These are downright festive. I'll share the two more subdued ones today; on Monday you'll hear two that could pretty much pass for polkas.

Before we retroactively yank Mr. Pintaric's composer's license, perhaps we should do a rethink on the matter of the pastorale. That's what I did. And it dawned on me that I had been letting city folk do all the talking for the shepherds. Nice, artistic, profoundly moving, and/or idealized works of music all. But suppose these shepherds had little ipods to pass the time while they were up on the hills of Palestine back in the 1st century (and some daggone good cell towers). What would they be listening to? Not oratorios, I'm certain. No, I think polkas are a more likely musical symbol for a person that has to muddle through all week tending sheep and then goes home to party with his friends and watch football on the weekend. Now, as it happens, these two contestants are maybe a bit refined for all that. But there are two more to come. And then let the partying begin!

Pintaric: Pastorale no. in A
Pintaric: Pastorale no. 3 in Bb

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If you feel the urge to party hartily, the final installment of the series can be found here!

This one really drones on and on

Mr. Bach's rendition of a pastorale does have a lot going for it, artistically. Not only is it technically finished, but it has depth, imagination, drama. On an emotional and intellectual level it is deeply satisfying. No wonder it is a major part of the organist's Christmas repertoire. Buxtehude's contribution is also intriguing, and quite beautifully done. Notwithstanding, these gentlemen have gotten us sidetracked.

You remember when I talked about the characteristics of the pastorale having to do with life in the country, and--oh yes--shepherds? Yes. The shepherds. What happened to them? They seem to have been marginalized again.

he's the one on the extreme right--behind the animals

I mentioned before that one of the attributes of many a pastorale is that it was written by a cosmopolitan city-dwelling composer, and that, along with its corollary in the other arts, a pastorale romanticizes, rather than accurately depicts, a life that seems inviting to people who have never lived it.

I mean, who wouldn't want to be a shepherd after listening to Bach tell us about them?

But I'd like to set the stage for some pastorals of a rather different sort that I discovered a few months ago and will be playing for Christmas this year, and to get there, I'd like to return to some of the pastorale's more basic elements. Simplify a little.

Here is a little example by Italian composer Girolamo Frescobaldi. It has a hybrid title; it is a both a pastorale and a capriccio (which basically gives him license to take license, though it doesn't sound all that capricious to me). Frescobaldi's "Cappricio Pastorale" is in a relaxed triple meter (check!) and it contains a drone bass (check!) which not only opens the piece, but is present from beginning to end (the note changes only a few times, and remains on a G for more than 2/3 of the work's length). It certainly seems evocative of a simple country life. And this time, there is no story telling. The shepherds are not interrupted by any bothersome angels; life is peaceful and unchanging, just the way we like it.

Frescobaldi: Cappricio Pastorale

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well, that was short, wasn't it? That should give us the impetus to get to part nine of this series. You're nearing the summit!

It's a story but not really

We've spent the last four posts listening to the gradually unfolding story of the shepherds on the hillside, the angelic announcement, the trip to Bethlehem to see the newborn babe, Mary's meditating and the shepherds rejoicing--in other words, the story millions of Christians will have read to them this coming Christmas Eve at church.

I should point out that this approach is nothing less than heresy to many musicians. The very idea that someone--particularly an extraordinary composer like Bach--would "tell a story" in music is beyond the pale. Let me first state for the record that I am the last person who would tell you to simply bliss out and imagine sheep on a hillside for the duration and not pay attention to the melodies, harmonies, and rhythms Bach employs to get us there.

But also, let me explain something about music and story telling. Suppose you were to write a poem. In order for it to be a good one, you will need to choose appropriate words, with pre-attached meanings, so you can actually communicate intelligibly. Further, you will need to pay some attention to established rules of spelling and grammar, getting the words to co-exist agreeably. You will also want to pay attention to their sounds so you can employ repetitive word beginnings, or indulge in various rhyme schemes. Meter will be important; your poem will ebb and flow as the drama dictates. All of this exists as a rich tapestry of words on the page.

But your poem will be more than simply a collision of sounds. It will have meaning. Images and ideas will be present in the reader's mind as the poem is read--or heard. Is it so bizarre that music should operate similarly?

For a good composer, the movement of harmony, the flow of melody, the life of rhythm, all are important. But it is a rare piece indeed that has no connection to human activity apart from its component parts. A piece may suggest the dance--it may even be meant for dancing (though not necessarily). It may move us deeply in some way by making us feel a strong emotion. It may be inspired by and relate somehow to a picture, a painting, or a series of events (a story). It need not tell us the Gilgamesh Epic every time out. Nor does it have to be very specific about any of these things. In fact, most composers would agree that there is generally some vagueness about non-texted music as to what exactly it is telling us as to its meaning beyond its notes. And usually, when it tries to get very specific about relating each incident in a story in notes, it has a difficult time keeping its internal sense of flow--of musical grammar. So, when someone like Bach tells a story, he doesn't include things like the bleating of the sheep or the tramping of the shepherd's feet. The general outlines are enough. But it should be obvious they are there. For one thing, Bach worked in a church. He dramatized the Christmas story lots of times in choral pieces with text. Why not do it once in a piece for organ?

There is another reason. Bach was an inveterate learner. He learned from all kinds of traditions. And one of those includes pieces that relate stories--even the Christmas story--for keyboard instruments.

This time of year my article about Bach traveling over 250 miles to see Buxtehude gets a lot of foot traffic (sorry). Buxtehude was probably THE organist at the time, and the 20-year old Bach just had to go see him in December of 1705 to learn what he could. Here is something he might have heard. MIGHT, mind you. But still, don't you think it's a strong possibility? He spent three months in Lubeck, and probably looked at most of Buxtehude's organ works by the time he went home (there aren't all that many; I could probably learn them all in three months if that's all I did).

Here is Buxtehude's piece. It isn't a pastorale. It is a chorale fantasia, based on the hymn "How Brightly Shines the Morning Star." Now, the text of this hymn doesn't suggest a story. It is filled with imagery of rejoicing angels, rejoicing people, and plenty of doctrine. But listen to Buxtehude's piece unfold. It could have simply presented the tune with some nice counterpoint and gotten it over with (as some other composers did). Instead, it comes to us in four parts. The first is serene and tranquil. But Suddenly (there's the Christmas tale's favorite word again)--Suddenly, there is a commotion. Specifically at 1:56 in my performance. After the heavenly hosts are done with their proclamation, a period of profound wonder ensues (2:35). Mary pondering again? And us? Then, a gigue breaks out (4:38). Is it the shepherds rejoicing?

The general plan of the work seems to follow the same outline by Bach in his Pastoral in F major.

Buxtehude: How Brightly Shines the Morning Star BuxWV 223

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We're almost there! Part eight of ten coming right up. And thank you for reading!

One holiday party every couple of thousand years ain't so bad

In doing a minimal amount of research on Bach's Pastorale in F, I came across two things. One is that musicologist Christopher Wolff has detected the presence of a Medieval melody in the fourth movement of said Pastorale, called "Resonet in laudibus" which was sung at Christmas to depict the rejoicing of the shepherds upon finding the baby Jesus. Why is this important? Well, because it supports my contention, of course!

The idea here, which, so far as I know, hasn't been advanced before (surely, somebody must have though of this, though; it strikes me as pretty obvious, and I have hardly exhausted the literature, so I'll let you know)--the idea here is that Bach is modelling his pastorale after the story of the Shepherds as related in the 2nd chapter of the gospel of Luke. Pastorales, as a genre, as a musical and artistic movement, are associated with shepherds and rural life in general, and feature idealized views of country life. Bach decided to go a bit further than this, and elaborate on his study of sheep safely grazing under the watchful eye of the shepherd by musically depicting what comes next in the sequence according to our gospel writer.

By the way, I'm going to temporarily sidestep the argument about musical storytelling being a guarantor of bad music, though that assumption is surely much of the reason that some very astute observers often miss obvious clues like this one; it also helps if you know the Bible fairly well, as Bach evidently did.

If you gaze upon the contents of the second chapter of Luke, starting with the 8th verse, what happens?

First there are sheep grazing contentedly on the hillside, being watched over by the shepherds. Got it. That's the first movement. Then there is an angelic announcement. This is the one spot that I don't notice anything musically obvious; does Bach skip this part?

Next, the shepherds rush off to Bethlehem, where they all crowd into the stable and adore the baby. The second movement seems to evoke this precious atmosphere.

Then, completely at odds with all of the rejoicing, which the shepherds start doing almost immediately (when was the last time they got time off work, anyhow? and did they serve spiked eggnog in Bethlehem?), the story continues with the verse about Mary, "pondering these things in her heart" which suggests that the joy, and sorrow, connected with the deep issues at hand, rather than merely the surface merriment, is the subject matter for Bach's third, plaintive movement. By the way, here I found the second item of research, which is that some commentators have found this movement connected with the angelic announcement. How? It sure doesn't sound like it. Their reasoning is evidently that the key signature has three flats in it, which is a number associated with angels. No idea why. Besides, it could also be connected with the Trinity, or the Three Bears. It seems like a paltry rock on which to construct such an edifice.

Finally, another sudden and dramatic shift. Mary only gets one verse to ponder, because in the next, the Shepherds are going everywhere, telling everyone what they have seen, spreading the news, and there is much rejoicing. And not only does Bach give us lots of musical mirth, he includes the afforementioned song,  "Resonet in laudibus" to reference the event itself. Which I think makes the case rather well.

So here now is the whole story--shepherds, angels, baby, (rejoicing) pondering, and (more) rejoicing, in above twelve minutes. I present you, Bach's Pastorale in F:

Bach: Pastorale in F, Bwv 590
movement one
movement two
movement three
movement four

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more pastorales to come in the seventh of our ten-part series

Pondering

A church in town holds a Blue Christmas service each year. This is for folks who have lost loved ones around the holiday season, or in the past year, or are just not generally feeling very ebullient around Christmas for a variety of reasons, from depression to seasonal affective disorder to grief. I attend this service practically every year.

I feel like a bit of an imposter, sometimes. I did lose some relatives around Christmas. My grandmother died of cancer on the 7th of December. That same year, on the 23rd, my cousin wrapped his car around a pole and effectively died that day, though he spent years in a coma before the official end. That was over 25 years ago, though. I still remember, but I'm not dealing with powerful waves of grief over it.

No, I'm afraid the real reason I attend the service has largely to do with the fact that, as a musician, I spend most of my holiday season putting on Christmas for everybody else. This is the one time I get to sing Silent night and hold a candle and not play the organ. I can sit in the pew and not be fiddling with organ stops, running from instrument to instrument or from worship space to worship space, checking the time all morning, making sure not to miss a cue, or a downbeat. I can actually think, or meditate, or pray, without getting a poke in the ribs from somebody because I'm supposed to be playing music during the prayer. I get to do what the rest of you get to do. Once a year.

That may seem like a very utilitarian reason for being there, but I think I end up crying practically every year. A couple of years ago a pastor friend of mine died. During the blue Christmas service, some six months later, I finally got a chance to light a candle for him. I couldn't do that during our All Saint's Day service with everyone else because I was playing the organ to provide a comforting atmosphere for the congregation to do that. Because this isn't my church, I become one of the congregation. As the organist played, and I lit the candle, I realized I was finally getting a chance to say goodbye to a friend.

It is a small congregation. I don't think attendance usually rises much above 10 or 12. One reason surely must be that there is still a stigma about admitting you might be a little depressed this holiday season. It takes some strength to say to a society that thinks there is something wrong with you if you aren't hohohoing with the rest of them, look, this is just the way it is. Deal with it. I am.

The artist in me finds this appealing. Life isn't one vast plunge through sheer joy; it is visited by plenty of sorrow. We can try to pretend it isn't so, or we can acknowledge that. Generally, works of great art by great artists show us this dual experience of life. It doesn't take a break for Christmas, either. The light shines in the darkness. My friend liked to say that you can't have a light without a dark to put it in (He said he was quoting Woody Guthrie). At Christmastime, ever since my teen years, I find myself meditating on the darkness in the world, made all the more apparent by the presence of light in it. How far short we fall as a species in performing simple acts of humanity; hoarding our resources, ruining our environment, making war on each other, unable to get along, or to show the slightest concern for other members of our human family. The light shines in the darkness; the light makes the darkness all the more evident, and all the more obviously dark.

The reason I am telling you all this is because we are taking a journey through several works with the title "Pastoral" this season. This week, we are examining the most well known and profound of them, by J. S. Bach. Bach's piece began with the same evocation of shepherds and serenity, but continued with a second movement of peace and joy. Now comes something more arresting.

Bach is in a minor mode now, giving us a touching arioso full of pathos and suffering. Why?

I suggested previously that Bach was telling us a story, that story being the Christmas story, as found in Luke chapter 2. In it, the shepherds are tending their sheep when they receive a heavenly announcement. Go see a baby lying in a manger, say a horde of angels. Don't have to tell us twice! Say the shepherds (Yes, but this is the Baroque era, say the angels, all text must be repeated in short fragments and repeated and repeated until you come to a cadence.) So the shepherds run off to Bethlehem. They see the precious, innocent little baby in the arms of its beatific mother. Then something else...

Mary remembered these things, pondering them in her heart.

What did she ponder? And what was the nature of her pondering?

If you are a musical theologian, you might want to remind people that this story which begins in promise will have a powerful, dramatic end. It's a story your congregation knows, and they've been taught that everything hinges on the eventual death of that baby for the sins of fallen humanity. For Baroque Lutherans, that was the lynchpin of the whole story. The climax. The point.

That idea is older than Luther. Even Luke has a prophet named Simeon hold the week-old infant and tell Mary that she is overjoyed by the birth of her beautiful new baby but that she will eventually be visited by grief; that someday "a sword shall pierce your own soul, too." She is going to know great sorrow, and witness the cruel death of this son of hers. Was that what she was thinking about, a grim foreknowledge mixed in with the bliss of the tale's opening? This is only the start, for beyond this joy there is tragedy to come, and behind that, and even more profound joy. And from this vantage point we get just a glimpse....

There are even Medieval Christmas Carols reminding us of the other pole of the story, the part that will be celebrated on Easter, in which everything we see at Christmas is a symbol of that story which is to come. I'm thinking specifically here of "The Holly and the Ivy" but there are others.

So as Bach continues his tale, or, I suggest, Luke's story, he, too, pauses to meditate on the profounder issues at work here, to plumb the depths of sorrow in the midst of this Christmas joy.

The story so far....
Bach: Pastorale  part one
Bach: Pastorale  part two

and now...
Bach: Pastorale  part three

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continue to part six of ten and the glorious conclusion of Bach's pastorale

Apparently there's more to this sheep herding thing than I thought

If you are the type of careful listener I like to have at pianonoise, you probably went away from Friday's listening example a little puzzled. Sure, everything was fine for a while, nice bucolic tune over a pleasant drone, but as the piece unfolded things got away from all of that undisturbed bliss, and the piece actually came to an end on a minor chord. Which might lead to two thoughts:

1) that didn't end well

and

2) it's not really over, is it?

No, it isn't. Bach's Pastorale in F actually has four movements, which means we still have three to go. And the strange ending is probably the strongest case for concluding that Bach intended the piece to keep going, because instead of returning us to where we started, he's left off in what feels like the middle of musical nowhere, besides leaving us kind of depressed.

 I feel like making a case for it because there seems to have been some musicological disagreement on that point. I don't know the details, because it is December and I am too busy to bother trying to find out, but I do remember once acquiring a score that only contained the first movement. Maybe the publisher simply made a mistake. Or the last three movements have some doubt about authorship.

Some hasty internet research buttresses this last point. But it seems likely to me that Bach wrote this multipart work. We don't know why, and we don't know how it was used during church services, but I have an idea about why it unfolds as it does. Bach is telling a story.

It's not that much of a stretch which story he has in mind. It's the same story Bach has been telling and retelling all his life, most of which was spent writing sacred music for the church. And it's a pastorale, after all. Begin in the same place, with the shepherds on the hillside tending their sheep. Only because this is a Christian story, the Christmas story, those shepherds are about to get a very special announcement from some angels. They've been invited to go see the babe born in Bethlehem, lying in a manger. So they do.

On to part two. It leaves off where part one ends. In fact, the first part of this piece does something Bach never does. Instead of finishing in the same key in which it started, to give balance and finality to each individual movement of a large scale work, this piece ends in a way that doesn't finish, and thus it absolutely depends on the piece's continuation. I don't know Bach's entire catalogue like the back of my hand, but as far as I know, this is the only time Bach has ever used this technique. A piece that begins in F major concludes on an A minor chord, which acts as a pivot to pave the way for the tonality of the next piece, in C major.

Immediately, in just a verse, Bach has those shepherds down off the hillside and in the stable, gazing in rapturous wonder at the baby born that night. Us too.

(here's the first part again as well, so you can listen to them continuously)

Bach: Pastorale in F, movement one
Bach: Pastorale in F, movement two

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onward to the fifth article in this series of ten on Shepherds and Pastorales

History is mystory

There's a little exchange between Scrooge and the first of the three spirits, when Scrooge wants to know if the spirit is taking him to see Christmas "long past?" "No, your past," she answers. He's probably relieved. A lot of folks seem to think that if it doesn't directly deal with themselves it isn't important. Scrooge is definitely one of these people.

The piece I'm going to share today is from the "long past." It's around 300 years old. And it is probably the most well known of the pastorals I'm going to play for you this Christmas season. In case you missed it, I'm on a "pastorale" jag this month.

This one is from a Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach. If you don't know it, you should definitely make its acquaintance. But before going on to the new pieces I discovered for this season, I feel the need to review.

Like the other pieces we've explored this week, it is in a triple meter. Like the others, it has a drone note in the bass. Those simple shepherds! And a kind of hunting call (similar to Grieg's idea of morning in the country from the "Peer Gynt" suite, an observation you can borrow if you really want to show off at parties).

Like the others, it evokes the countryside, and the simplicity of the past. Though for me, it may be the complexity of the past as well. You see, for me this piece is not simply a relic of musical history; it is intertwined with my personal past as well.

I've been playing it now, on and off, for over 20 years. The first thing I remember about it is the organist from my very first church job mentioning his own Christmas tradition of playing this piece every year. I suppose that may be how it became mine.

Except that I don't play it every year. I've probably played it five or six times in those twenty plus years. I like to find something different to play each year, which not only expands my repertoire, it gives each Christmas its own unique musical identity. But that isn't what customs are built on. They involve a return to the same thing you did last year, in the hope that it still has meaning, and, in each individual instance, comfort comes from being part of a larger tradition. Also, you can turn off your mind and just do it because you are supposed to. That's got to have mass appeal.

I'm writing this blog while staring at a large bit of herbage we displaced from a local tree farm and decided to place in our living room, to be festooned with lights and ornaments.  Objectively, I'd say we are nuts for doing that, but it's a Christmas tradition, so not only are we allowed this bit of looniness, we are even encouraged. We've been doing it every year we were married save the first year. This year makes tree number nine. It's actually the nicest specimen yet. Want to see it? (of course you do)

Here is Bach's pastorale: comforting, serene, an evocation of the halcyon past. Enjoy!

Bach: Pastorale in F  (movement one)

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proceed to article four (of ten) in this series

It's got a nice beat...I can tend sheep to it

You didn't know it on Monday, but what started out as an innocent little blog is just the beginning of a multi-part obsession. This is the "Year of the Pastorale."

Just what is a Pastorale? As I mentioned on Monday, the word is related to shepherding, to pasture, to the countryside. In music, a Pastorale is supposed to evoke the world of the countryside, specifically, as Wikipedia puts it, the bucolic world of the country. In other words, that world is being Romanticized. It is being imagined as a simple joy. All of the sheep and the shepherds on a scenic hillside, getting along blissfully with each other, no dangers in sight. It is a remembrance of the good old days, the way things used to be.

Except that they never were. The Pastorale is for city folk, imagining life in the country where, obviously, people have no cares, and life is easy. Shh! Quiet, country folk! We city folk don't want to hear your rebuttal. You have it easy. Case closed.

One of the things that makes a pastorale pastoral is its rhythm, a gently rocking rhythm, in three. But it's not a simple waltz. Often, there is a snap between beats one and two so you get a sort of dum  dedum figure. You'll hear what I mean. To demonstrate that, here is another piece from Franz Liszt, country romanticizer extraordinaire. He could also play a mean piano, and it is really admirable to hear him restrain himself to such a simple texture. The mood here is quite bucolic:

Liszt: The Shepherds at the Manger

The piece does not call itself a pastorale. It is from Liszt's "Christmas Album"--obviously, it is a setting of "Good Christian Men Rejoice." But Liszt refers to shepherds in the title, and in order to conjure them up musically we need the rhythm of the pastorale.

Before I go, let me take a minute to romanticize about last year, when I made this recording. On a Saturday afternoon in December, I was recording this serene little piece when some fellow across the street from the church started up his riding mower and interrupted my calm. You can read about my genteel reaction here. I spent the next hour working on something else instead. I forget now whether the take I chose to use includes the mower or not. I think I edited it out. You can find out by cranking the volume way up, but I don't recommend it. It would destroy the mood of the placid countryside, in the land that never was, where you and I don't have a care in the world.

Must be nice, being a shepherd. All you have to do is enjoy the smell of sheep. Plus, with unions these days, they probably make nearly 8 bucks an hour.

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on to the third article in this series

It's not just for shepherds anymore....if at all

I keep thinking about that shepherd over there on the right.

If there's ever been a more visually obvious way to emphasize the word "marginalized" I don't know what it is. There is only one of him, and he is right at the edge; it looks like he barely made the cut. They'll let him be part of their tableaux if he doesn't say anything and doesn't draw any attention to himself. They're ignoring him.

Well of course they're ignoring him, you say. All their attention is on the infant in the middle. He's the reason for the season. Not the shepherds.

Shepherds, you say. Oh, right. The Bible says there were shepherds. Plural. More than one. Possibly lots of them. So why do we only have the one?

I'm not accusing our crèche of anything unusual, here. Most of the ones I've seen in fact only have one shepherd, with a sheep over his shoulders so you can tell what he does for a living. And it makes him look cute--by proxy, since the little lamb he's chosen is always adorable. He's usually on the periphery, with the sheep.

The kings, on the other hand--the Bible says nothing about the "wise men from the east" being kings, nor does it say there were three of them--but there they are, right up with the holy family, all three of them. They are also centered on the action--sort of. Actually one of them is turned a little awkwardly so he seems to be presenting his gift to us, rather than the infant in the middle.

They must know somebody to get those front row seats right next to the holy family.

This Christmas season I'll be sharing several pieces with you that bear the curious title "pastorale." This word is a cousin of the word "pasture"--also "pastor" as in "shepherd of his flock."

The reason these pieces bear witness to the season is precisely because of their connection with shepherds and the shepherds connection to the Christmas story. See, in the Bible, a whole throng of angels decided they had some news they wanted to go tell the shepherds. So they went right to where they worked (they knew the shepherds were in a job that wouldn't give them any time off) and they told them that news. And the shepherds left their flocks and went to see the baby that was to be a Messiah.

I wonder if their employers ever found out, and if they got fired for their civil disturbance. The citizens of Bethlehem couldn't have been all that pleased to see them.

Shepherds aren't exactly at the top of the food chain when it comes to social importance. They are right at the bottom. And like people on the bottom, they don't get to speak for themselves. Which is where things get interesting.

Typically, a composer with the ability to speak so that others will hear, and listen well into the next century, is a highly trained fellow with at least a spark of genius and a cosmopolitan background. Let's put Mr. Liszt in that category. Here is a little piece he wrote when he was on a three-year journey through Europe. His musical travelogue (he called it "Years of Pilgrimage") contains this little specimen. It has a few "rustic" touches, seen through the romanticized gaze of a city boy. It is also fairly simple of construction, and contains plenty of repetition. The entire first part unfolds over a bass note that does not change--a drone note, common to many pastorales.

Would actual shepherds approve?

Is anybody planning to ask?

Here it is, anyway. It's a pretty little piece, not the sort of thing that would disturb us in any way. Unless you start thinking outside the music, and start asking troubling questions about who gets to speak for whom and so on. Next I'll be wondering if it actually snowed at the first Christmas.


Liszt: Pastorale

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on to the second article on this series

The Beginning is Near!

Last Friday I mentioned that this weekend is the start of another church year, and if you are a church organist or pianist that might affect your choice of music. The curious thing about the first week of Advent, the four weeks leading up to Christmas, is that the scripture readings chosen for that Sunday are usually pretty gloomy. Much gets written by church folks about being out of step with the surrounding culture (often but not always that is viewed positively) and this time of the year illustrates that pretty well. While the culture at large is looking for good vibes and happiness during the entirety of the Christmas Season, which has been underway for quite a while already, the church is under the impression that Christmas won't arrive until, well, Christmas Day, and that the season beforehand is actually a rather bleak time. Time for reflection, penitence, giving up things, self-examination--much like Lent, actually, which gets more press. People not from a liturgical church tradition must find this rather odd.

The readings for this first week are particularly dire; signs of the end of days, stars falling from the sky, earthquakes, wars, dogs and cats living with each other (or was that from Ghostbusters?)--so, given the liturgical emphasis of the day, I chose a piece for the organ that is less warm and fuzzy and more apocalyptic.

I bring this up both so you can listen to this hair-raising but wonderful piece, and also so we can have a debate about it in two days. This is the Wednesday portion of the blog, wherein we don't generally discuss matters of religious or church music, but I hope you'll forgive the setup, because on Friday I'm going to be talking a lot about interpretation, which is really more of a Wednesday thing.

I'm going to be thinking about how we play Bach, and what does, or doesn't, constitute a legitimate interpretation, how we think we know, and so forth. I'm also going to play for you three different versions of the same piece I recorded this week and see what you think about them. That's my preamble. Now go digest your turkey and I'll see you in 48 hours!

Silent Note

It looks like I won't have to write a sequel to "Silent Night" this year after all. That would have been a pretty tall order, considering how popular that carol is and how the sequel would be bound to disappoint.

You're familiar with the story of its nativity, right? I don't know how historically accurate it is, but the legend begins with the breakdown of the church organ, right on Christmas Eve. Suddenly the priest and the organist are out of a way to lead the music for a very important service, and they sit down and bang out "Silent Night," to be played on the guitar. It's a hit. The priest writes the words, the organist writes the music, and a Christmas Miracle happens.

About a decade ago at another church of mine the organ decided to manifest a small problem the day before Christmas Eve. I had also planned quite a bit of organ music for this special service. The trouble was that one of the notes wouldn't stop speaking when you drew any of several stops. It's known as a "blown primary" and it's not particularly good news. However, we got somebody to service it on Christmas Eve in the afternoon, and a few hours later we had our service!

This year's trouble also had something to do with the primary, but it was about a note that would not turn on. A "G" above middle C on the upper manual wouldn't sound on most of the stops. It was kind of inconvenient. I use that note a lot and it is hard to work around it when it affects most of the stops instead of just one or two.

At first it was inconsistently troublesome, and I put off calling our organ technicians because they are going to tune it this week anyhow (regular semi-annual tuning) but at last one afternoon the usual trick for getting the note to turn back on again, wherein you pull out stops that WILL play the note and tease the note back to life somehow, didn't work anymore. I gave up and called our guy and he said he'd come the next morning.

Of course, the note worked that morning. You were expecting that, right? And I managed to make the recording you are about to hear. It uses the note many, many times, including for that little repetition on the words "news! news!" about ten seconds in, which, although the piece is 12 years old now, makes that part seem like an inside joke. I'll play the piece for you, but first, here is what one of the passages sounds like with that note missing (it obliged me the day before):

[listen]

You've probably figured out that the piece is based on the melody "Good Christian Men, Rejoice." Also that the organ sounds like it is being constantly censored when probably the most important single note in the piece goes missing. By the way, I have no idea whose digital watch that is the background. People leave them around our church and they go off at various times of day.

Now of course the technician tried several things when I explained the problem, and thought perhaps he'd fixed it, which was hard to know since it sometimes worked and was currently fine. And then the minute he left--well, you know what happened. The first G I tried to play sounded like this:

So I called him and got him to turn his car around and come back. He fiddled with it some more, and now we are hopeful that it won't cut out on me in the middle of the service on Sunday. If it does, he says he plays at the church down the road and will come look at it again between services. That's dedication.

It's too early to rest easy, I suppose. We have all of Advent stretched out ahead of us to worry about. But it looks as though things are going to be fine with the organ, and if somehow they aren't, we'll just make it happen somehow. Besides, I know a guitar player....

Listen to "Invitation" by Marteau

Wake Up!

It's time for Advent again, that not very warm and fuzzy time that leads up to Christmas. A year ago, during the first Friday installment of this blog, I pointed out that the first week of Advent in the Revised Common Lectionary, which is a prescribed set of scripture readings for each week of the year, followed by all Catholics, and many Protestant, churches, contains some pretty dark, apocalyptic readings. And I played for you a not very warm and fuzzy rendering of an ancient Advent hymn by non other than Johann Sebastian Bach. In that version, the tune booms out in the pedals like a peal of doom while the counterpoint swirls on top. This year for the first week in Advent I'm playing two other versions of the same Advent hymn by different composers, a dancelike setting from the late Renaissance by Hieronymus Praetorius, and a more regal setting by Johann Pachelbel. (you can always hear what I'm playing in church that week by visiting the Godmusic page at pianonoise.com)

Meanwhile, I thought maybe I should make all that gloom and doom up to you by playing something that I will not be playing in church this Advent season, but of which I happened to make a recording earlier this year. It's based on the very same scriptural attitude of being vigilant because you never now when the end will come, but the music is much friendlier. It is commonly translated as "Sleepers, awake! A voice is calling" and it is one of Bach's best known tunes. (I prefer a closer translation, "Wake up! A voice calls out to us!") Bach himself seems to have liked it particularly, because it was originally part of one of his church cantatas, sort of a weekly sermon for choir and orchestra, and he later arranged it for organ solo.

As usual for a sort of "chorale prelude" the faster notes are Bach's, written to harmonize with the hymn tune, or rather to babble alongside it delightfully. The hymn tune itself doesn't come in for about 45 seconds, in the reed stop. One year at church the low Eb trumpet pipe, which is the first note of the melody, decided to stop working on Sunday morning, and I had to substitute the krummhorn stop instead, which is a nice reed, but too polite to wake everybody up for an apocalypse. However, I prefer the 8 foot covered flute stop which happens to be on the same manual as the trumpet (which means you can't have both!) so you'll just have to stay vigilant on your own. Have some strong coffee or something.

listen to Wachet auf  by J. S. Bach