The Gloves Come Off

Louis Moreau Gottschalk didn't just take off his gloves. He TOOK OFF....HIS GLOVES. Let's let a pianist who traveled with him explain:

“It was the fashion of the time to always wear white gloves with evening dress, and his manner of taking them off, after seating himself at the piano, was often a very amusing spectacle. His deliberation, his perfect indifference to the waiting audience was thoroughly manifest, as he slowly drew them off one finger at a time, bowing and smiling meanwhile to the familiar faces in the front rows. Finally disposing of them, he would manipulate his hands until they were quite limber, then preludize until his mood prompted him to begin his selection on the programme.”

I left my white gloves home yesterday, which is just as well, as we were running behind on time and I needn't have wasted five minutes with those silly gloves. It might have been amusing, though...

Yesterday was the first of five lecture recitals in the series I'm giving for OLLI/UPITT. The subject is composers of various times and places making music in difficult conditions. Chopin was on the first half, and Gottschalk on the second. Chopin left his native Poland at 20, not realizing he would never return. A political uprising which was crushed by Russia, resulting in the basic non-existence of an independent Poland for yet another episode in their sad history, made it difficult for him to return, so he made a life in Paris among the Polish community there, living in exile, and writing music in a pianistic style all his own. He redefined national Polish dances, recreated old genres, and fostered some new ones, such as the Ballade, of which he wrote four.

There really were no rules for the Ballade: even the world, which suggests both "ballata" (a dance) and the Medieval Ballad (or narrative romance) hadn't been used as the title of a piano composition before, to say nothing of the rules of the form. In Chopin's hands, each is an adventure, the end a mystery until it unfolds before us. Four fascinating musical journeys, which pianists treat as the gold standard of their repertoire. These I played on the first half of our session.

After the intermission it was time to meet Mr. Gottschalk, of whom I have written several blogs, and recorded some of his music. Gottschalk had an interesting life, which I wanted to explore at least as much as the music. Touring on three continents before the age of air travel, assembling mass concerts with up to a thousand performers, a Southerner touring the northern United States during the Civil War, a pioneer in so many respects, introducing America to its own music and to the relatively newfangled idea of the piano recital, all while entertaining the troops, wearing out the rail lines, and trying not to get him and his pianos shot, or captured (by his own people). What a life! And he only lived to be 40.

Next week we'll be in 20th century Russia, meeting Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

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There's more about Chopin and Gottschalk on the homepage this week at pianonoise.com. Also, the final days to listen to music for the concert at Trinity Cathedral before I post some Scary Organ Music for Halloween!

New Year's Eve at the Virginia (part five)

The annual New Year's Eve concert at the Virginia Theater in downtown Champaign, Illinois, isn't like anything else that happens all year. This year's concert packed itself into a trim two-and-a-half hours and contained choral and solo singing, instrumental solos and accompaniment, colorful commentary and jokes, audience participation, a pretty full house, and plenty of time to go celebrate the New Year afterward unless you just wanted to go home and sleep.

Before the show begins I play the Wurlitzer for 15-minutes. The Virginia is an old Vaudeville Theater which was built in the early 1920s and boasts a theater organ dating from the same time. Like the Theater itself, it had fallen into disrepair and been kept going on wings and prayers, or in the case of the organ, rubber bands and duct tape. The organ owes its continued existence to two gentlemen, the last of whom, Warren York, played the organ at this concert until the year before I started doing it. He was a beloved figure in our town, along with Dan Perino, who led the second half singalong into a couple of years ago. Both gentlemen have passed away. Warren York used to always wear red socks, which is why I wear them every year in tribute. Last year after he died the entire men's section of the Chorale wore them as well!

Unfortunately I can't seem to find any pictures of the Wurlitzer. I tried taking one myself--at the concert--you can imagine it didn't look like anything! The Wurlitzer has recently been restored by the Buzard Pipe Organ company of Champaign, Illinois, and looks and sounds great.

The concert is bookended by the 70-voice Chorale singing sets of a half-dozen pieces. In between, guest artists fill in with songs and instrumental music, and the audience gets to join in with the popular sing-along.

This year I was one of the guests. I played about half-an-hour of piano solo music of the lighter variety. In addition to the Grand Sonata in Rag which I've been discussing in other posts in this series, I played Gottschalk's "Union" and a little novelty piece called "Nola." One of our former college scholarship winners, Caitlin Caruso-Dobbs, returned to sing Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "My White Knight" from  The Music Man, and "The Girl in 14G." I was also the accompanist for her.. Since I double as The Chorale's regular accompanist as well, that meant that I was on the stage or in the pit for the entire concert, playing everything. Since the concert began at 7 and finished up at 9:30 (minus the 20-minute intermission plus 15 minutes before on the Wurlitzer and also 5 minute before the second half also at the Wurlitzer) I spent 2 and a half hours in concert. No wonder I'm still a little tired! I told someone backstage that I had set a new record that I wasn't planning to beat.

The Chorale usually goes "American" for this concert, and this year was no exception. We began with a very intriguing arrangement of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" by David Dusing, which was introduced by real-life radio man Jeff Bossert (who sings with us). We were then joined by a fellow named Josh on the harmonica, the first time either of us had collaborated with the other instrument. The occasion was Mark Hayes's arrangement of "Home on the Range." We then sang arrangements of "the Lonesome Dove" before concluding with a Gershwin pairing of "I've Got Rhythm" and "The Real American Folk Song is a Rag" which introduced Caitlin's rendition of the Berlin and the Rag Sonata. Fade to intermission, complete with a harmonica player strolling the lobby and later some more grand sounds from the Mighty Wurlitzer.

The sing-along always features music from the 30s and 40s, which was a little before my time, and the words are projected on glass slides that date back to the early days of the Theater. Sometimes they also have wisecracks on them.

Eve Harwood leading the singalong

I often have to go to Youtube to familiarize myself with these songs. This year I was at the airport waiting for my flight home from Dallas, listening to them through headphones from my Android and writing them down on a stray piece of staff paper. I notated the melody, hinted at the chord structure, and away we went on Tuesday night!

I should mention here that I had my second pleasant sing-along experience of the holidays season (the first was at the 7 o'clock Christmas Eve service) where a large gathering of people know the tunes well and are obviously enjoying singing them. The first thing you realize as organist is that you don't have to play the melody very much, and that you can even not play at all for a few beats here and there, creating a real accompaniment part under the congregants because they really don't need any help from the organ to sing out and even if you use a healthy selection of stops you are only going to be the junior partner in the proceedings, which allows for more creativity as you simply soak up the sounds and add a little pizazz at intervals. It was terrific! (I also remembered not to look down from the hydraulic lift!)

On the second half, after Caitlynn's singing and my other two numbers, the Chorale came back to sing more Stephen Foster--Oh! Susanna, attractively arranged by our friend Alice Parker. Then came a haunting version of "Poor Wayfaring Stranger" by Michael Richardson (I think he has Illinois ties). Ed Harris's arrangement of "Bound for the Promised Land" uses the original minor key version of the tune. Then we finished off with rousing renditions of "Who Are the Brave?" and "America, the Dream Goes On."

We finish the concert every year by holding hands (both out in the audience and on the stage) and singing "Auld Lang Syne." We sing it through once, then the organ modulates up a half-step (although this year I discovered a small cipher on the low f#--that's when a note won't stop sounding--so I went up a whole step instead. I hope Warren York's spirit won't mind!). This year the ceiling at the Virginia has been refurbished so there wasn't any "snow" as we got to the final chord. And yes, I managed to get a picture of the warm and fuzzy moment, even if I had to play 8 bars with one hand to get it:

It's not much of a picture, but the moment was pretty special.
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This year one of the funnier moments occurred when the Chorale had just finished singing their first set. The curtain came down quickly and our director, who was going to introduce the singer, was trapped on the wrong side of it. There I sat at the piano, alone in front of the curtain, while a pregnant pause threatened the production. So I played the moment a little, looking wistfully into the wings and giving signs of being very alone at the piano with nobody else on stage. The audience laughed and the show went on after a few seconds. Apparently it was convincing because I was asked later if that was part of the show! Somebody else told me they realized that I am really a ham!

onward to part six, which, I believe, is nearly the end. Thanks for reading this far. Seriously.

Mr. Gottschalk and I

This is the final installment of the Gottschalk series I wrote in June while preparing for a recital. The series was interrupted while I was on summer break.

Life moves pretty fast, says the prevailing wisdom. You say it. I say it.

Which moves faster, the change or the monotony?

For me last spring it was principally the rapid pace at which I had to adapt to new material. There was new music to learn and play every week. There were rehearsals, concerts, church services (four a weekend), weddings, gigs, people with various projects. There was email to keep up with, blogging and recording, composing, reading and learning, domestic chores---getting tired yet just reading about it?

And then, after a semester of all that, just when things were supposed to simmer down a little bit for the summer (but never did), I decided to throw in a piano recital for the heck of it.


Actually, there was a little more than devil-may-care involved. It had been on my so-called "bucket list" for several years,  and last summer seemed like time to do it. Mr. Gottschalk had nearly gotten himself involved in the Battle of Gettysburg, and that Battle was turning 150 on July 1st. So his music seemed to fit the occasion. And, while I wasn't under contract to anybody and could have pushed the recital back a month to give me time to practice, I really wanted to eventually have everything finished up so I could relax a bit before the fall semester started things up again (no such luck, as it turned out).

In a way, that gave me some insight into Mr. Gottschalk's world. He also had to turn it up a notch a lot of times when he was pretty worn out. In fact, the man gave at least one, if not two or three, concerts every day when he was touring, which was most of the time. During his stint in the United States between 1862 and 1865 he gave hundreds of concerts and traveled thousands of miles by train, often barely getting to the next town in time to start the next concert. Forget actually getting to practice.

But that's where our two worlds diverge. And frankly, I've taken the more obscure path, and it's made all the difference.

It can be stressful learning new music all the time, but routine may be the worse tyrant. And Gottschalk was nothing if not the machine on the road. Always playing the same pieces, night after night, able to predict, as he notes in his diary, at what time he would play The Banjo, when the audience would encore Aelian Murmers, when they would be charmed by Cradle Song, when he would receive thunderous applause for his Union, followed by a light supper (he often didn't get to eat until after the concert it seems!) and a few hours of sleep before that @#$% hotel gong would wake everybody up at 6 a.m. and it was time to catch a train to the next town.

Gottschalk could be fiercely proud of his torrential work schedule. He was once mortally insulted by someone who claimed he had traveled 80 miles by rail in the last year. It was 800! he says, indignantly. Any fool could have done 80. He was forever crabbing about the boredom of the road and of concert life. It sounds a bit like melodrama, perhaps: oh, woe is me, I'm a famous concert pianist whom everyone adores and look how hard it is to be this in demand; :sigh:--but I'll take him at least partially at face value. It wasn't as glamorous a life as it looked to outsiders. I've had enough experience with touring to know. By the third city you can't even remember which way to turn the key to get into your hotel room or how to get the water running because you keep having to learn different procedures for the most basic operations. And you never know about breakfast. Gottschalk complained about hotel food plenty as well.

The truth is, at some point we're all going to get pretty fed up with the life we've chosen and any glamour is going to wear thin at least some of the time. And you can pick your poison: I get more control, and more time to learn and grow, think and play, and do a variety of things, for which I pay by having to constantly juggle and balance, adapt and learn on the fly, and get paid less and acheive less notoriety. Gottschalk got to be famous, see the world, and make a niche in musical history, for which the price was boredom, fatigue, and probably wondering whether it was worth it. Then again, he might not have had such a choice. He had a large family to support, his father having died, and several siblings who depended on as big a paycheck as he could muster. This seemed to be the way to get it.

I've found Gottschalk a fascinating travelling companion this summer as I worked on the concert. His "Notes of a Pianist" is back in print and I highly recommend it. It is an interesting read. And his music, though not of the vintage of Chopin and Mozart is, as one writer put it, "frankly appealing." It is easy to get the ears around, and repetitive, but still has some very original things to say. You can hear some of that music here where it rests in the pianonoise archive. In the meantime, it is time to play "The Banjo!" and you can listen to it right here.

The Banjo by Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

I've outlived the man by over two years now. It must have been an exhausting life on the road. I've enjoyed journeying a little with him, but I don't mind that I am someone else. Maybe he wouldn't want my life either. You never know, though.

"Getting" Gottschalk

In order to play any composer's music well, you have to have some understanding about what makes them tick musically. Any clues you have to their artistic personality are of help. I say this, well aware that some people are under the impression that all the appropriate marks are on the page and all you need to do is to follow them. I have no problem with the marks on the page, but they are incomplete. This is often because a composer just assumed people would follow the standard practice of their time and place and thus constantly reminding people to do something they were going to do anyhow seemed unnecessary. But marks can also lead you down the wrong path. I remember preparing to play a Sonata by William Albright back in graduate school. There were so many instructions in English--almost every note had some kind of adjective under it in some spots--that I assumed he was going to be really detail-oriented and a perfectionist, and maybe even somewhat of a control freak. Then I met him and he coached me on how to play his piece. Basically, he told me to just go for it. This was the complete opposite of what I had been expecting.

Pianists should have this kind of problem every day. If the attack on Mozart's instrument was much cleaner and decayed much faster than our modern Steinway, is a detached articulation appropriate for any place in the piece that doesn't say otherwise? And just what did Schubert mean when he used a wedge instead of a dot. Or was he even sure himself?

The reason I bring this up is because I'm giving a concert on Sunday of the works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk and I've been dealing with this sort of thing all month. Now, let's be honest, Mr. Gottschalk's compositions aren't on the level with Mozart and Schubert, but they are quite original, and rather interesting. They are not quite as difficult to play as they sound, but they do give you quite a workout. And, although Gottschalk himself was rather anxious about making sure people played his works the way he thought of them, some understanding of what he was going for--some imagination--is required to bring them about.

For instance, Gottschalk is often striving for effect. What sort of effects? Well, try this one on for size. It is a spot from "Union: Paraphrase on National Airs." Now, the score looks like this:

And if somebody didn't understand that he was trying to imitate the sound of marching soldiers on the piano they might play it like this:

[listen]

When in fact, the passage, played correctly, goes something like this:

[listen]

How do I know this? The score has the instruction "pianissimo"--good, we know to play it soft. But how cleanly should I articulate the notes? There isn't anything to indicate that. No staccato, no legato, no slur, nothing.

In fact, the score does indicate "drums" but what kind? Snares? Extremely articulate. What about muffled bass type drums? just the opposite. Choose the wrong kind and you spoil the effect.

I've always thought that the effect was really one of a regiment of soldiers marching. The minute you think of that, you realize that you should not have a precise, clean sound, but an indefinite cluster. The notes should cease to sound like notes and become more of a noise. Get it right and the effect makes your hair stand up. Oddly, the way the notes look in the score puts us off the trail in this case. But then, how else could a 19th century composer notate such an effect?

Gottschalk's music is full of things of this nature. Those of the trumpet call, or the plucking of the banjo, or some kind of whistling sound up on the high end of the piano (Gottschalk's favorite register) are just a few. And he clearly loves the ticklish sound of rapid, delicate passagework. I mean, what else is the following passage doing sandwiched between variations on one of the tunes from his piece "Bamboula" where the action just stops dead for a few moments and we get this little pianistic figure that goes nowhere?

[listen]

He just repeats the gesture a few times, enchanted with the sound, and then afterward dives right back in where we left off! Compositionally it is of no use whatever--I'm sure Brahms would have chopped it right out. But it is pretty--if you want it to be. If you dispatch it like the structural waste of time it is, that is exactly what it will sound like. We have here a paradox--and an opportunity to stop and smell the pianistic roses.

One of the comments that Gottschalk often got was that the piano didn't sound like a piano when Gottschalk played it. Instead, it seemed to transcend its limitations as a percussive box with levers. It didn't just sing like the European Romantics--it gave rise to a variety of interesting effects. That has to be clear. Someone who is just there to play the notes and follow the instructions would never get all the "poesy" as he called it; the inspiration, the rhapsodic fantasy would be gone.

Still, Gottschalk did worry about his instructions being ignored. One of the pieces I'm playing on Sunday, the shortest and simplest, comes with a prologue from the author in which he warns about "substituting [one's] own thoughts for those of the composer." These, he warns, will "inevitably interfere with the general effect." He must insist, therefore, that the rhythms on the page be followed precisely.

And that is really the point. Not to substitute ideas in place of instructions given, but to understand what is behind them, and then to be able to really make the piece sound like intended, following the spirit, not just the letter, of the musical law.

In conclusion...

Some "Notes" for the concert

In preparing for this Sunday's concert (3 P.M. at Faith UMC in Champaign, Illinois, if you are interested) here are some more materials I've been finding in my "research:"

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was one interesting fellow. Perhaps I've mentioned that already. According to the likes of Chopin, Liszt, and Berlioz, he was quite a composer and pianist in his teens, well before he found employment as a concert pianist in the middle of the American Civil war. By this time he had also achieved success touring South America. North America was his third continent, and he was still in his early thirties. Nevertheless, touring here was not a simple matter. There was that small matter of a war. In addition:

 "Adrian, Michigan. Infamous concert! [I made only] Seventy-eight dollars! The people say that they prefer "a good Negro show." They are furious at the price of admission--one dollar. A singular American characteristic! They insult us as if we forced them to pay....One dollar admission! It is the universal theme."

And of course, things got pretty monotonous.

"Everything is foreseen, everything is marked out, in my peregrinations. Thanks to the experience of my agent, I know in advance, within a few dollars, the amount of the receipts in a town of a given number of inhabitants. I know, with my eyes shut, every one of the inextricable cross-threads that form the network of railroads with which New England is covered....In my black suit at eight o'clock I salute my audience....at a quarter to nine they encore the Murmures eoliens. At half past nine they call again for the Berceuse,...at ten I carry off my patriotic audience to the belligerent accents of the Union fantasia; and at half-past ten I throw myself, exhausted and depoetized, into the prosaic arms of the blessed Morpheus...."

Of course, he could be pretty dramatic about it:

"Solitude, for me, is repose--is the absence of the thousand distractions of this unquiet, giddy existence to which my career of nomad artist condemns me. In solitude, in reveries, and in contemplation I find fertile sources of inspiration....Only then am I myself....For myself, who, because of a sickly and nervous nature, always have a propensity to melancholy, the stirring and noisy existence that the career of nomad virtuous imposes on me is that to which I have the greatest antipathy."

But for all that, the only thing worse than having to play was not being able to play:

"O human inconsistency! The piano, which has been a torment for me all week, possesses for me today (on a Sunday, when Sabbath laws forbade most activities) an irresistible charm. It is the charm of forbidden fruit, for, although it is permitted (by going to the bar through the back door) to take an indefinite number of brandy, whiskey, or gin cocktails, to play on the piano, except under certain psalmodic restrictions, is positively prohibited.  The harp perhaps might be tolerated—for David played on the harp—but the piano, fie!" 

Gottschalk goes on to relate a colorful incident from years earlier:

"...One Sunday at Cape May I sat down to practice a polka--the Forest Glade--which I was then composing. Just as I began, a violent thunderstorm burst of the hotel, and at the first flash of lightning several ladies and a clergyman, seen in the storm an unmistakable sign of divine wrath, came rapping at my door, imploring me to stop my profane, though anything but tempestuous, music. I now remember the scandalized countenances of those worthy people too distinctly to venture again on any such experiment."

Colorful anecdotes like this are part of what make Gottschalk such a good read. Even in the middle of the panic before Gettysburg, with the town in an uproar over the oncoming Confederates, and Gottschalk himself worried about capture or getting his pianos destroyed, he has to stop and make fun of a volunteer band in the town square:

"A voluntary military band (the only one in Williamsport) draws up in battle array on the principal square; is it necessary for me to say that it is composed of Germans (all the musicians in the United States are Germans)? There are five of them.  A cornet a piston with a broken-down constitution (I speak of the instrument), a cavernous trombone, an ophicleide too low, a clarinet too high, a sour-looking fifer—all of an independent and irascible temper, but united for the moment by their hatred of keeping time and their vigorous desire to cast off its yoke.  I must confess that they succeeded to such an extent that I am doubtful whether they played in a major or minor key." 

Gottschalk notes that in every audience there is, in addition to the "pretty battalion" of boarding school girls who have come to sigh over his sentimental compositions, which they all know by heart and can play (sort of), there is "the local Beethoven," with "uncombed hair, bushy beard, the amenity of a boar at bay to a pack of hounds. I know this type; it is found everywhere...It is time that many unknown musicians should be convinced that...soap is not incompatible with genius, and it is now proved that the daily use of a comb does not exercise any injurious influence on the lobes of the brain."

He has, of course, to please his public, much of which is from small towns, which is not going to make him any friends with the established musical culture in the large cities. But even he is disappointed to note that "the ears of many people are so little exercised that they recognize only two or three songs they have known from birth....and...there must be only the melody, without harmony, without variations, absolutely naked, as a fifer would play it, for them to recognize it. They least artifice, the least ornament, they lose the thread, are confused, and the complaints begin that there is no melody."

It is a difficult crowd to please at times, but then, their musical experience is not profound. In some cases, Gottschalk's recital is the first time anyone in his audience has ever heard a piano recital before. And sometimes...."The other evening, before the concert, an honest farmer, pointing to my  piano, asked me what that 'big accordion' was. He had seen square pianos and upright pianos, but the tail bothered him. Eight or nine days ago , at Zanesville, a charming young girl and her honorable mamma spent the whole concert watching my feet. They did not know the use of the pedals and saw in my movements only a kind of queer trembling and odd, rudimentary dance steps that for two hours and a quarter afforded them an inexhaustible source of amusement."

Gottschalk is trying to be nice about it. He knows you can't make fun of your audience if you want their adoration, and their dollars. (Don't make fun of Zanesville. My grandmother use to live kind of nearby.) Besides, he is a pioneer. How much can you expect? And, within a few years, he writes "I am daily astonished at the rapidity with which the taste for music is developed and is developing in the United States. At the time of my first return from Europe I was constantly deploring the want of public interest for pieces purely sentimental; the public listened with indifference; in order to interest it, it became necessary to astound it; grand movements, tours de force, and noise alone had the privilege in piano music....from whatever cause American taste is becoming purer, and with what remarkable rapidity....We should all, however narrow may be our sphere of action, bear our part in the progressive movement of civilization, and I cannot help feeling a pride in having contributed within the modest limits of my powers in extending through our country the knowledge of music."

In the meantime, he has to put up with strange critiques like the one from the lady in Auburn who said 'What a deafening racket he makes with his piano.  There is no music in it.' I have often heard others speak of it, who said that I always played too softly and that I did not make enough noise.  O critics! You would be very annoying if you were not so amusing!"

Then there is the bad food in the hotels, the wake-up call which consists of banging a gong at six in the morning (he hates that!) the superstitious and sometimes vituperative behavior of the people he meets en route, not to mention the time his train is buried in snow for a couple of days, or when the priest at Sunday Mass can't stay in one key, or when he nearly gets arrested for not paying the hall deposit before his concert in a small town, or when he goes to take a nap in a rear car on the train and discovers he is surrounded by embalmed bodies!

We know all of this, of course, because Gottschalk wrote it all down, in twelve notebooks he kept with him as he travelled, which became "Notes of a Pianist," published by his sister after his death. Even his method of describing them is entertaining:

"I am fond of my notebooks...they never leave me. They are like an intimate companion for me, a mute confidant who has an immense advantage over all the railroad friends I ever have met, that of hearing me without my being obliged to strain my voice over the sharp summits of the highest note, as it listens to me and never interrupts me. It is discreet (of what friends could as much be said?) to the extent that, had you under your eyes the ten or twelve notebooks that I have filled from the Mississippi to the St. Lawrence, and from New York to the Mormon Desert, they would take great care to prevent you from discovering anything other than undecipherable hieroglyphics; every one of their pages looks like the side of an obelisk. The jolts of the road and the haste with which I write assist, it is true, marvelously in making them discreet."

It probably also helped that they were originally in French!

In any case, Gottschalk's notebooks have provided much amusement, much companionship and camaraderie  and, of course, great material for a (lecture) concert--much more, in fact, than would fill many concerts.

Next week, Gottschalk turns war correspondent in Pennsylvania before the Battle of Gettysburg. 

Is Consistency Evil?

With just 10 days to go before my next recital (which is on Sunday, June 30th in Champaign, Illinois, if you are interested--more details here) I now have a new set of things to worry about, as I should. Today it's not about whether or not I can play the music (mostly) or have it memorized (mostly), it's about whether it will go well in front of an audience, and whether those little technical slips I make here and there can be banished and with enough confidence that when the chips are down they will stay banished. The way to take care of that is with practice, and more practice. Concentrated practice--and repetition.

Along this little journey I've shared a few bits from Mr. Gottschalk's life, some looks at how I practice, worries about how little time there is to prepare, and next week--I promise--more about why this project is so interesting, as we get closer to show time. For me, as much fun as this was and will be, a lot of time is spent in the arena of the distinctly not-so-fun. In fact, I'm starting to get a little tired of what I'm playing, having heard the music so many times just in the past few weeks. I'm starting to be able to sympathize with Mr. Gottschalk, actually, when he writes of the numbing repetitiveness of touring in his "Notes of a Pianist:"

"All notions of time and space are effaced from my mind...if you ask me what time it is, I will reply, 'It is time to close my trunk' or 'It is time to play The Banjo' or 'It is time to put on my black coat.' These three events are very nearly the whole of my daily existence. I console myself by thinking that I am not the only one of my species."

Of course, I'm not traveling thousand of miles by train every day--I'm not even on tour at the moment; I'm here in the comfort of my own back yard. I shouldn't complain. But I do envy him a little; he must have played "Banjo" so many times he could just walk out on stage and nail it (fantastic jumps, repeated notes, and all) with no practice (which he probably didn't get anyway while on tour, never mind spending 18 hours on a train in the freezing cold and then having to play all of a sudden). But then, he'd been playing it for at least a decade by then, and he had played it an awful lot of times.

Which brings me to tonight's grand question--(I love being able to pose the grand questions)--what is it about the nature of consistency that people love to hate so much?

There used to be a television commercial in which the announcer opined that "amateurs practice until they get it right; professionals practice until they can't get it wrong!" Over the last few days even the most intractable portions of the most difficult pieces on the program are starting to go pretty well--I'm getting it right, finally. The question is, can I keep at it until I can't get it wrong, no matter what I feel like at 3 in the afternoon on a Sunday (and having played three church services and with a two hour choir rehearsal to look forward to I probably won't be at my rested best)? How many times will it take, and what sort of mental conditioning will I have to do to make sure it comes off no matter what? After all, I can't assume that after an hour of practice, feeling rested and with no audience, anything I can get right will automatically transfer itself to the concert. I've been around the stage too long to fall for that.That road keeps going, and the hill gets steeper as you ascend.

But consistency is hard. In anything. And not very glamorous, which makes it all the harder to achieve. Anybody can roll out of bed and decide to train for a Marathon. In fact, the first day or two, the very excitement of possibly being able to achieve this great thing might keep you going through all the hurting muscles. And at the race itself, with all the people running alongside you, and the festive atmosphere, and the close proximity of achievement--these are all powerful motivators. But what about in between, when you are just sore, and you've been training for a couple of months already and the race is still several months away and it's a Tuesday morning and it's hot or its lightly raining, or the hill is kind of steep and nobody is watching you anyway and you really don't feel like it...that's when you are really running the Marathon. That's when you are really training your mind to be able to do it and do it well no matter what obstacles come your way. That's when you are conditioning your muscles to handle the distance and your mind to know what it is supposed to feel like every step of the (sometimes agonizing) way, and your will to overrule your desire for comfort and taking the easy route. And nobody really cares. And the results won't show themselves for months. And you have to do it anyway, because it won't happen any other way. Just makes you want to jump up right now and do it, right? Can I sell it or what?!

This difficulty might, in theory, bias people against it. I mean, most of us aren't really into all the sacrifice it takes to do something really well really often. We can conceive of maybe doing it once, or under the right circumstances. That's what got me thinking about all of those stories, television shows, movies--ones where the underdog beats the big bully. In Star Wars the big bully is the Empire, and Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star because he closed his eyes and really focused for that one miracle shot that instantly destroyed everything the bad guys had been building for years. Actually, that line he delivers earlier in the movie about shooting womp rats back home shows he has been practicing a little, and adds a bit of realism to the achievement if you're paying attention, but still--it's in that one moment that everything pays off.

I was watching a sitcom recently where two guys were in a boxing match and the good guy was predictably getting destroyed by the much better trained bad guy and finally the good guy throws that lucky punch like you know he will when the bad guy is too busy gloating to block and it knocks him flat all in one blow. This isn't new, it goes back at least to David and Goliath, when David fells the Philistine with one shot of his sling because there is no way he would have survived hand to hand combat. Also he gets to avoid to taint of seeming too much like a professional.

I can see where they're coming from. Because "The Banjo" is starting to seem less interesting than is was, and I'm still working out the details, bit by bit, laborious minute by laborious minute. I have to remind myself what I loved about playing it in the first place, back when it was rough and raw and I could hear music in it even if no one else would have if I'd played it for them. But that's the cost of getting it right, and six months from now I can listen to it again after I haven't played it in a while and enjoy what I was able to to do with it--to make it mean something--even if I practically have to suck all the joy out of it in order to get it there. It's not for me now, anyway. It's for my audience.

I can't compress everything into a 30 second video montage with inspirational rock music in the background. That works in the movies, not in life. I've got to be in the practice room every day working it out. So I am. Ten days from now it will matter.

In the meantime, I'm kind of enjoying this perverse fun. It's a skill. You have to really learn how to keep your sanity, and keep it fun. Sometimes its like trying to get meat out of lobster tail. But you know, I'm sort of a strange fellow, and it works for me.

So for now it's all about the training. I'll try to make sure at the concert you don't notice. I won't even complain about it. We'll just enjoy the music together. But I had a teacher once who told how a woman came up to him and complimented him on his playing and said, "you must have suffered a lot!" and he said "you have no idea!"

Right now I think I know what he means.

Next!

Only six things at a time, please!

With less than two weeks to go before my recital on June 30th, I ought to be a little worried. I only really started practicing for it two weeks ago, which will make this a new record for inahurrianism. (That's right, when you're in enough haste you can't be bothered to think of words that already exist; you just mak'em up as you go.)

And yet today I spent my entire practice working on one piece, one of two that isn't yet memorized, or, for that matter, practiced. It is one of the slow tunes (so is the other) and I have played it publicly before (two and a half years ago) so I saved it for the end. The remaining piece is shorter, simpler, and can be played with music if necessary because it is easy to turn the one page. After a while I could feel two things had happened: one, that I was able to play the piece well beginning to end, and another, that I was starting to hear passages of it in my mind and see my fingers working even when away from the piano. If my mind is starting to "photograph" the piece, then it has been a good day. My subconscious will match my conscious efforts, and in a few days I should have it all from memory. That makes it worth dropping the entire rest of the program for a day to make sure my mind could focus on it. If I had played the rest of the program as well it would have interfered with my efforts at assimilating this one, and, since the other pieces are in reasonable technical shape, I can afford a day or two. They do still need quite a bit of polish, though.

I don't have a recording of the piece yet. It is Gottschalk's Cradle Song, which he must have liked since he mentions it eight times in his "Notes of a Pianist." (which is more than any other piece that I've noticed) But I will leave you with a recording--premature though it is--of his "Pasquinade," another piece from the program. I recorded it last Wednesday while I was recording examples for a previous blog installment. I just left the microphone on and tried out a few pieces. It was instructive, not simply because I can then listen to whether or not my interpretive ideas of the piece are working (some aren't yet) but because microphones make me nervous and this is also a good way to reinforce execution under pressure--like testing a piece with an audience. The next day it always sounds so much freer and more fluid.

For what it's worth, here it is. See you Wednesday.

Gottschalk: Pasquinade

Here's the post from the aforementioned Wednesday

A fun game for the kids?

You know that game in the comics section of the paper where you are supposed to find six differences between the two panels? I feel like I've been playing that a lot lately.

Preparing for a concert can be a tricky business. Preparing for one on an accelerated schedule is even more fun and games. But Gottschalk is there to help--sort of. There is a lot of repetition in his works. You can play the same thing four times in a row and it sounds just like a pianist practicing something over and over to get that gesture just right but you are actually playing it straight through the way the audience will hear it in concert!

On the other hand, many of Gottschalk's "repetitions" aren't exactly the same. I submit for your inspection this passage, in which the first three measure are identical and the fourth isn't:

[listen]

Did you notice the difference? It comes down to one single note missing in the bass. It's such a small difference I didn't notice it the first time I listened to my recorded example, either, and I know where to "look." (the 2nd beat of the fourth measure)

Then there are details like this passage, which is played three times the first time it comes up, and only twice later in the piece. Twice also the third time it comes up toward the end of the piece. It's obligingly repetitive in its original guise, but isn't repeated the same number of times as everything around it, which means you have to pay attention to that slight difference too!

[listen]

No wonder I'm going a little batty. This is all from a piece of Gottschalk's called "The Banjo," and the passages in question are really more atmosphere than anything else. They suggest patterns of plucking on the banjo, and occur as buildups and interludes rather than the places where there is any real melody--it's just that two-thirds of the piece occurs this way, as rhythm and verve but no tune. An interesting concept, but tricky to memorize.

Gottschalk does like to put on a show, though. People always like to sit on the keyboard side at piano recitals, which I can understand, but you are really going to want to do that for this concert. The composer's choreography is vital. Here's a passage from a piece called "Bamboula:"

[listen]

Now just listening to it you might be under the impression that my right hand is playing the notes in the middle of the keyboard and the left hand stays down in the bass. No such luck. The left hand does play the bass note, then leaps up to join the right hand, not to cross over it, but to play the same notes that the right hand has just played. Everytime you hear a rapid dum-bump you are listening to my right and then my left in rapid-fire combination. I've got a wicked left, by the way. That piano doesn't stand a chance.

These kinds of acrobatic leaps are essential to Gottschalk's keyboard approach, and both the piano and I are really getting a workout. One final passage today for you to hear mainly because I'm relieved that I am finally able to play it with some decency. It occurs only once near the end of Bamboula, and there is, as usually, quite a bit of jumping around (the right hand pinkie in particular has to keep reaching up to snag that high C#):

[listen]

It isn't quite all there yet, but it's starting to come, with two and a half weeks to go until show time. What a relief!


onward!

Charming, for sure

One of the reasons for playing a concert devoted to the works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk is that he was such an interesting fellow. Born in New Orleans in 1829, he soon made his way to Europe where, as an adolescent, he wowed Fred Chopin and the boys (Liszt, Berlioz et. al) with his original and untamed American music, then went to South America where he organized concerts for hundreds of performers, sometimes employing as many as 40 pianos along the way. All of this happened even before he got around to touring the northern United States while there was a bit of a war on.

One of the reasons we know so much about it is that he was also a prolific writer of words. "Researching" for this concert gave me an excuse to re-read "Notes of a Pianist," a volume of his writings, some published during his lifetime, some jotted down in a notebook for future publication when his death intervened. His sister later compiled the contents into a book and sent it into the world with the help of a poor translation from the French original by her husband. (That's right, Gottschalk spoke French--and English--and Spanish.)

Even before Gottschalk gets to America, he is living a strange double life. When he is not "Whirl[ing] in that monotonous and agitated circle that is called concert life" he is wandering among the villages, "seriously resolved to go no father; or detained in a village where the piano was unknown, by the ties of an affection with which my fingers had nothing to do...I forgot the world, and lived only for two large black eyes, which veiled themselves with tears whenever I spoke of beginning my vagabond course again, living as the bird sings, as the flower opens, as the brook flows, forgetful of the past, careless of the future."

Ok, if you want to gag now, I'll understand. Here Gottschalk paints himself rather proudly as a Don Juan, although later he will partially apologize for it to his American audiences: "All of this is frightfully immoral, I know, but life in the savannas of the tropics, in the midst of a half-civilized and voluptuous race, cannot be that of a London cockney, a Parisian ilder, or an American Presbyterian."

For Gottschalk, as to the Romantic movement in general, a sense of wandering and aimless freedom was very important, as was the charm of the exotic, and Gottschalk vows from the first pages that he is a traveller who will immerse himself in each locale, deploring those who travel but never, in their hearts or habits, truly leave home behind.

And if you find his lofty Romanticism insufferable, he can at times be funny. As Mark Twain was later in the century to write that "rumors of [his] death [had] been greatly exaggerated," so Gottschalk has to deal with the inevitable premature obituary in the newspapers--papers, which, in their haste to get the news to you first, occasionally could be blown a trifle off course (imagine that!):

"I wish to speak of my death. This sad event took place at Santiago three months ago. I was carried off in three days by a frightful attack of back vomit; it is the newspaper Savana la Grande that tells it; but the Revue de Villa Clara, without doubt better informed, makes me succomb to an aneurism of the heart, which I much prefer, the aneurism being much more poetical than the vomit."

Gottschalk's actual death, in Rio in 1869, apparently was caused by malaria, peritonitis, an overdose of quinine, or a ruptured abscess of the abdomen, depending on who is telling the tale, but it began with a collapse on stage shortly after playing a piece of his called "Morte!" (she is dead) which is all Romantic enough; legend, which admits no lengthy delays, removed the last two weeks of Gottschalk's decline and has him dying on the stage itself.

These things bookend his Civil War experiences, which is the period for the concert, though some of the pieces I'll be playing were written earlier. I'll be reading several of his observations as we go along, particularly the dispatches shortly before the Battle of Gettysburg, when he became an unwitting war correspondent for a few days!

The pianist's sudden departure from the United States in 1865 is also the stuff of tales; enmeshed in a scandal involving two young seminary girls, he was censured in the local papers, and fearing his reputation was finished, boarded a steamship in the dead of night and left the United States forever. He may have been framed by a local operatic impresario who was an artistic rival, and a letter that surfaced in 1984 from Gottschalk maintains his innocence. Still, the Bohemian bachelor, who makes several references in "notes" to the pretty young girls who attended his concerts as "faces to make one play false notes," might have had more of a way with the ladies than was good for him.

At any rate, faces of all kinds are welcome at Faith UMC, 1719 S. Prospect, Champaign, Illinois, on Sunday, June 30th at 3 P.M. There will be plenty of piano music, and more of Gottschalk in his own words.

Have a listen to one of Gottschalk's popular parlor pieces (it's on the concert, and I recorded it from the same piano.)

Gottschalk: O My Charmer, Spare Me!

next up, part four!

An act of faith

I'm playing a piano recital of the music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a concert pianist who toured America during the Civil War. The concert is on June 30th at 3pm at Faith United Methodist Church in Champaign, Illinois.

Every time I start to prepare for a concert there is the time when I think: this is never going to happen. I am not going to learn this music in time. It feels like an act of faith to even prepare for it as if it is actually going to occur--successfully. And yet something (unreasoning fear?) makes me practice for an hour. Then another. And another. This process happens so often I refer to it as step one.

This time, however, I have set a new record for lateness in getting started. It's been a busy year, with a whole lot of unrelated musical activities, and, when I sat down on Monday, with less than four weeks to go before the concert date, I was in new territory. Normally I would have the entire program memorized by now; instead, I'm just getting started.

This was one of my worries--memorization. Besides just being able to play the notes. And everything else.

I have a theory that more successful people aren't any cooler than the rest, or that amateurs get worried and nervous while the professionals just go about their business. No, the difference is that the professional panics earlier. And with more intensity. That intensity compels him or her to practice. Hard. Then, as the date nears, the panic lessens as the results come in. A piece of music starts to actually sound like a piece of music. Until then, it is actually not a lot of fun preparing a program. And that's where I'm at right now. I want everything to feel comfortable and to sound good by last Tuesday. Which is totally unreasonable, and is probably the best thing I've got going for me right now. Make sense?

I'll share a couple of nuts and bolts things I did today. Here's a passage from the opening piece on the program which I am determined not to give away before concert time. This is a passage from somewhere in the middle so it doesn't count. It is also not going to be the most musical thing you've ever heard. In fact, it is the complete opposite of how I plan to play it on stage. That's because the thing I am worried about getting my ears around here is not the melody, or the bass--those are interesting enough that I'll imbibe them without thinking about them too hard. It's the tenor voice, the top of those chords that the left hand jumps to up from the bass every time. Where does that voice go? If I don't pay particular attention to it, try to make a musical line out of it, I'll never be able to remember how it actually goes and at the concert I'll mess it up. It's not very memorable, which means it needs special attention. As a general rule, you have to put in at least twice as much time on the "dull parts." So I'm playing this line quite loudly, to teach my ear how that part goes. The rest, melody and bass, is on automatic.

[listen]

Another harvest from the practice room is the old standby to play slowly. Painfully. It's not terribly interesting this way, but it is also not at all necessary to achieve anything close to performance tempo in the first few days, particularly if you can play it well and comfortable at a slower speed. In my experience, once that happens, the piece speeds ups rather quickly. Suddenly, within a day, the piece goes from competent but boring to a full fledged piece of music that I can do something with. Check back in a couple of days; you won't recognize this passage!

[listen]

In the meantime, Mr. Gottschalk has written a lot of interesting instructions in his scores, and I think I'm going to have a lot of fun trying to get into his brain. For one thing, he seems obsessed with "good rhythm." Instructions to keep the rhythm steady, not to slow down, to mark the rhythm well, dot the scores. Sometime  soon I'll count the number of similar instructions in the six pieces I'm playing. I suspect a large part of the reason for that is to combat the way amateurs played his music, slowing down partly out of affectation and partly because they just couldn't handle the hard parts at the same tempo they'd set for the rest of the piece! I can't imagine he didn't use a little rubato; I've heard a few pianists online playing these pieces with an absolutely unswerving sense of plowing through every beat of every passage at an identical speed and they sound like robots. No, a dance is not composed of absolutely equal beats. Besides, I've already noted one place in the scores that supports my theory about these markings being more to prevent abuse than out of a desire to communicate a musical idea: there is a place toward the beginning of a piece called "Pasquinade" where there is marking to not slow down. Now it never would have occurred to me to even think of slowing down there. If the composer feels compelled to warn others not to, then I think we have our winner!

Until next time, slow and steady! And with accents on all the "wrong" (unimportant) notes!

on to part three

Where's my agent, anyhow?

Today I flipped a switch and became a concert pianist again.

For those not familiar with my "lifestyle," over the weekend I ran a 10k, had a wedding and a funeral, played four church services, rehearsed "Missa Solemnis" with a choir, snuck in a little piano practice and another short rehearsal and a brief nap. Also played a set with a rock band I'm in (outdoors and just before the thunderstorm moved in!), and tonight I had to pretend I remember how to be a restaurant pianist for 90 minutes at a dinner to benefit cancer research. Good thing it's summer and the livin' is easy.

Since I've been learning so many organ works for church services this past year (I estimate that I play the equivalent of an organ recital about every six weeks) I've been neglecting the piano. And we have a perfectly good (actually perfectly wonderful) seven foot Steinway in our sanctuary that has been practically begging me to play it since Christmas. But no more. I have a plan to give it a workout this month.

On Sunday, June 30th at 3pm at Faith UMC here in Champaign Illinois (that's 1719 S Prospect) I'm going to give a recital of the works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk. The reason for the choice of program is simple. Gottschalk was a fascinating fellow who toured the United States giving concerts right in the middle of the Civil War. This July 1-3 is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, which Gottschalk nearly got himself in the middle of (he was at a safe distance by the time the battle began). I'm going to play probably about a half dozen of his pieces and also read some of his own writings about his travails, including how close he got to the war. If you can't make it to the concert, you can follow it on the blog. I plan to make some recordings as well as share my thoughts as I prepare for it. For now, you can get an introduction to Mr. Gottschalk over on Pianonoise. I wrote it over 10 years ago, and its about time I added some more music to the page, don't you think?

Now four weeks is a freakishly short time to prepare a piano recital, particularly if you are not feeling too ambitious (what can I say; summertime blahs). But I think I can pull it off, mostly because I'll only be playing about 35 minutes of music and spending the rest of the time telling Gottschalk's story, and also because Gottschalk's music is not as hard as it sounds, though it is still difficult. Most of the pieces, however, will be ones I have played before in some capacity or other, though none for very long or for a major occasion: at least I will have them somewhat under my fingers. The major exception to that is a piece called "Bamboula" which I've never played before, and I decided I'd better start with that one. I'm already violating my rule about having everything memorized a month before the concert--in this case I've decided I'd better get comfortable with everything in the next two weeks so I can polish everything in the last two. That means I'm going to have to take on a piece every couple of days. And today, as I said, was "Bamboula" day. For nearly five hours today, in three sessions, I ran over most of the pieces I plan to play, with a special emphasis on this piece, and, by the end of the day (about 10:30), I had the piece nearly memorized, and at an occasionally halting performance speed. Not too shabby for the first day. I ought to practice like this more often. If only I could! I'll share some of the early results on Wednesday.

Sometimes Gottschalk's audience got a preview by purchasing his music in sheet music form and playing it themselves. Sometimes they'd never heard any of it--or even heard a piano recital before. In some cases they'd never even seen a piano. Gottschalk was often their first exposure to anything that even resembled his art.

If you've never been to a piano recital before, this is a good place to start. The music is very listener friendly, with plenty of repetition and pianistic flair because Gottschalk really knew how to put on a show. I came to realize that from the very first few bars of "Bamboula." You will too. Have some fun with me this month.

on to part two

Seriously. This is what I am playing in church this weekend.

The church secretary called me yesterday morning to inform me that I was playing the prelude, the offertory, and the postlude at Sunday's service and to ask if I wanted to list anything in the bulletin.

Uh, oh, I thought.

Now ordinarily there would have been nothing odd about that. As the church musician (organist and pianist/keyboard player), I provide those three pieces nearly every week at our "traditional" services (save for the rare occasion when somebody else takes one of the slots). But this week we aren't having our usual slate of four services. Instead, there is only one, taking place in our Worship and Life Center, which is home to our contemporary service, and has a grand piano but no organ. It's time for our annual Children's Musical and Confirmation service, when our teens join the church. I'll be around to play a song with the band, and a hymn or two, but our children's choir director is playing the piano for the musical, so it is practically like having a week off. At least, that's what I thought was going to happen. For the last couple of years there has been so much music in supply from the kids that they sing the offertory as well, as part of the musical. Change of plans this year, apparently.

Hmm. Could I think about it for an hour and get back to her?

At which point my wife, wanting to be helpful, asked if I had anything under my fingers from the concert I am planning to give this summer. Not yet, I told her. Besides, I can't think of anything that would be even vaguely appropriate for church.

But then a light bulb went on. You are going to think this is a really bizarre idea for a Sunday morning offertory, but I think I'll just let you listen to it first and then do my explaining.

[listen]

It's a piece called "The Banjo" by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a pianist from New Orleans who lived from 1829 to 1859, and toured the United States during the Civil War. If you are wondering why on earth it would make sense to play it in church, here's why:

The kids are doing a musical called "Down By the Creek Bank." Most of the pieces sound like they were written for banjo, even though they'll be played on a piano. The folks in this musical would use words like "crick" and "holler" (as in "down by the")--it is an evocation of the Appalachians or the Ozarks or someplace in the southeastern United States. The offertory has been placed right after the musical ends.

In other words, I chose the offertory as I was thinking about the nature of the musical and the tradition from which it, broadly speaking, sprang. This is second nature to me, being used to doing this, but I know it is not for many organists: this idea that whatever music you select for a service should somehow belong to the particular service for which it was intended, should somehow match it, in spirit, mood, style, tradition, or whatever. You may think that on this occasion it lead me to a rather bizarre conclusion, but I want to stress how important this idea is.

Besides being a useful discipline (meaning that I don't just play whatever I feel like playing on a given Sunday) it also sends a signal to the other persons in charge of worship that you are taking your cue from their efforts as well. Every pastor I have worked with has at some point been pleasantly surprised to discover that what I choose to play frequently has something to do with the sermon topic or the scripture.

Sometimes that means I go outside accepted norms with regard to church repertoire, which isn't hard to do because somebody's tradition or personal inclination has outlawed practically anything (even music itself, in some cases), or because liturgical instrumental music has usually been pretty narrow in focus, i.e. organists don't think they can get away with much (with reason). Within my own tradition, the rules seem comparatively lax, although people are free to complain about anything they wish, such as playing the piano one week instead of the organ (God's chosen instrument, apparently), or not basing your selections on familiar hymns (these days that's called "diluting your brand"). In our educated university town, however, people seem to be relatively tolerant of a wide range of music. Including gospel and jazz, and--Oliver Messaien. Were I to behave as befits my training, and as many of my colleagues would like to behave if their congregations would let them, I could almost get away with, although I know it would not be the majority taste, playing major classical repertoire every week, scouring the canon of great literature as if on a parallel lectionary schedule. But I think that misses something. For one thing, it is too autonomous. A cycle of Beethoven sonatas would be great (that has been suggested to me, before, by the way) but it kind of misses the larger picture. I can do that in concert, where there isn't anything else, no message, no presenters, no participation, to think about. Or to engage, collaborate with. To cause me to do something I wouldn't have done otherwise.

And then there is this...Paul wrote, right before that endlessly read scripture about love in the 13th chapter of Corinthians that he wanted to "show [us] a more excellent way" which was an attempt to get the members of the church in Corinth to stop going at each other and get along for a change. Love, it turns out, starts with an attempt to actually get along with people, even to recognize and affirm their contributions, their ideas, their tastes, their standards of value. It does not insist on its own way. Which is why I let the service, the contributions of others, have a say in what I play, rather than sticking to the classical organ or piano repertoire I was taught to value. It may be great music. But it isn't the only music.  And my way isn't the only way. My classical canon can get stretched a little. I don't have to play everything on the organ. Everything doesn't have to have been written in the 17th century by some fellow named Bach. And maybe--perish the thought--it really is ok to let people tap their toes to an offertory some of the time. And even more radical, maybe it wouldn't cause almighty wrath to come crashing down on our heads if we actually had a banjo in church. As it is, we'll be getting it second-hand.

There is, finally, something about this selection that might be even more important, particularly if it doesn't sound like church for many of us. It is this: music is a cultural product. Though we claim to worship a creator of everything around us, most faith traditions are pretty exclusive about what they think belongs in a worship service. Some will make arguments relating to quality (including the composer of the present selection, who might have been as shocked as anyone to find his piece in a church bulletin). These arguments are fraught with human relations peril. Often that music which is "quality" just happens to be music from one particular culture, for instance, all dead white European men. Now, I play healthy quantities of Bach and Buxtehude and plan to keep on doing it. And I find the music of high quality as well as spiritual uplift. But shouldn't we be careful about excluding music that doesn't fit our supposedly objective sense of quality? I think of so many people from the Evangelical tradition who have been quite disdainful of rock music, gospel, syncopation, back beats--all things they claim have no place before God, and all things which just happen to have come into our musical vocabulary by way of African Americans. It would be unfair to say (as some do) that any discussion of musical quality whatsoever is snooty or even racist. But I think as human beings with a long history of treating each other pretty poorly we can never be free of this evil possibility. Excluding music is also excluding people.

And so, even though I never would have thought of a piece like this for church before, on this day and in this place, it seems a good match. Besides being a day to celebrate the entrance of several of our teenagers into membership in the church, and the songful contributions of our children, there is also an evocation of the rural southeast, and the culture of a people who are our neighbors from several states over. Is it ok to go on mission trips to build houses for them but not to allow them or their music in our church?

I'll grant you that the children's musical isn't exactly great art. And it's cheesy. But it's a children's musical--what else would it be? The kids enjoy it, and it helps them contribute to our community. And if it happens to stretch our boundaries a little, maybe that's not the worst thing that's ever happened in a church. To which my little offertory says "I support that. I agree with that. Yeah that."

Or in liturgical terms, AMEN.