June 8th is Pentecost Sunday and while I'll be playing something different in church I couldn't help pay a visit to a familiar friend from years past.
It was Pentecost 2004 when I first made the acquaintance of one Hieronymus Praetorius and his jovial setting of "Veni Creator Spiritus," based on the standard plainchant for the day. It sparked an interest in Renaissance organ music, which I have noticed a lot of my fellow organists do not share (!) and which has caused me to look into the organ music of also Michael and Jacob Praetorius (not necessarily all related to each other).
So this may be new for you, but I have the pleasure of renewing acquaintance with an old friend whenever I play it. It was originally part of the mono catalog from 2004-2011--in fact, I made two recordings, five years apart. Both of these went down with the old catalog when I started over in stereo in 2011, and I've been trying to fill in old literature ever since when time permits.
There are three verses--the tune is in slow motion in the pedals, for which I've used trumpets. Enjoy!
Praetorius, Hieronymus: Veni Creator Spiritus
verse 1 verse 2 verse 3
Showing posts with label Veni Creator Spiritus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Veni Creator Spiritus. Show all posts
Friday, May 23, 2014
Friday, May 24, 2013
Methodist Flash Mobs and other theoretical impossibilities
This past Sunday something truly unusual, revolutionary, perhaps unique in the history of humankind occurred at a Methodist church in Illinois. Think I'm overselling a bit?
It was this: planned...Methodist....chaos.
Methodists don't do planned chaos very well. Unplanned chaos, sure, we're great at that. We can make chit-chat loud and long and fail to pay attention to the proceedings--in fact, the funny thing about the way our service opened on Sunday was how long it took for our pastor to get attention to make the morning announcements. There was festivity in the air. Lots of people in their flame-colored attire, negotiating flame-colored streamers on the backs of the pews and, probably, loudly observing the strangeness of all of this to their neighbors.
It was when the announcements were over that the chaos happened. At the words "turn and greet your neighbor" some persons began greeting one another in different languages. Then a few more joined in. There were the usual handful of volunteers, some speaking German, some Italian, some Spanish--I think we had at least one Asiatic language in there, and sign language--and additionally, the choir had fanned out into the congregation and about two dozen of them were adding their voices to the din, which kept getting louder, and LOUDER.
About a minute into this sanctified fracas came a voice. One soprano intoning the ancient pentecost hymn "Come, Creator Spirit." When she finished there came a thunderous chord from the organ and the opening voluntary began. At that point the flash mob was over and the choir gathered at the back of the church in order to process forward during the singing of the introit. They sang the heck out of it, by the way. I'd like to think the mood created by the flash mob and the ensuing organ music helped them to do that.
We've been doing some variation on the languages of Pentecost for a few years now. The story of a roaring wind, tongues of fire, the disciples suddenly speaking the gospel in different languages lends itself to some kind of dramatic commemoration and, as Methodists, we have a committee that tries to do creative things in worship. It is a sub-committee of another committee, naturally, and I think even those members are answerable to another committee. But this sub-committee, RuacH, from the Greek word for Spirit, is, I would imagine, a fairly unusual thing for a church to have. We gather every couple of months on average to explore the themes for the upcoming seasons of the year and the new sermon series and find ways to incorporate poetry, drama, liturgical dance and so on into those worship services. In past years on Pentecost we've had people stand up front and deliver the gospel message in different languages one at a time, politely waiting until the person ahead of them is finished. Even the rushing wind sound is done solo. It's all very orderly, which is how Methodists like it. That's how we got our name.
So getting folks to all speak at once, or to talk over each other, and to do it loudly, and ON PURPOSE, was like breaking through the fourth wall of Methodism (no, not the Wesleyan Quadrilateral). I don't know if it's ever happened before, and, like a naturalist, I feel compelled to document it. Plus, it was pretty cool.
Of course, afterward, someone said to me that she would have preferred people do the languages one at a time, and I told her we'd probably do that again next year. And, as unexpected as the whole flash mob thing was supposed to be, the pastor kind of tipped everybody off by explaining it in the church email days before, and instructing everyone not to politely sit down until the organ came in. (We had decided to dispense with the usual Pavlovian chimes and go directly to the organ voluntary.) Look, for a Methodist over fifty, that's about as close to a real flash mob as anyone is going to get! Don't knock it.
One other thing: I was meditating on the irony of the whole Pentecost celebration while putting my notes (/strategy) to the flashmobbers together, thinking about how at the original event everyone was astounded to be actually able to understand the disciples, because in this bustling metropolis of a thousand tongues the gospel was suddenly being shared in all of them, and how, in our sanctuary, it was highly unlikely that any of us would understand most of these languages. In other words, the celebration sort of reversed the event being celebrated. And then I got an advance copy of the bulletin, complete with a prayer of confession which contained the line "We continue the divisions of Babel, speaking in tongues that confound rather than clarify, hurt rather than heal, separate rather than unite."
True, confusion gets a pretty universally bad rap in the church, but besides taking at least one holyday in the church year and un-domesticating it a little bit, bringing back some of the wildness and awesomeness, I think a bit of off-balanced unexpectedness is not such a bad thing always. We in the church are so good at doing things the same way, getting comfortable with ourselves and our methods, that we seldom grow our skills of adaptation and understanding. How can we minister to the stranger in our midst if we don't know what their needs are? And how can we know that, or even empathize with that, if we don't understand them? And how can we understand something outside of ourselves if we don't try to come to terms with something or someone that we don't already understand? Knowing what we like and liking what we know is a good way to avoid growth; it leads to stagnation. They way forward involves learning to know the unknown; Karl Barth even referred to God as "wholly other." (I'd like to find out what that means sometime when I have a couple thousand free hours to read "Church Dogmatics.")
And effort indeed needs to be made to that end. Maybe on the first Pentecost the Spirit gave everyone the ability to speak in new languages just magically, but everyone since who has gone out to spread the gospel in other languages has had to take the trouble to learn them. And always there is at first a sense of floundering around in the new and the unaccustomed. But they get the hang of it.
So maybe getting people outside of the tranquil expectations of the orderly, not just by preaching about it, but by throwing them a little off balance during a worship service, isn't such a bad thing.
In any case, for a few moments on a Sunday morning, something slightly unusual happened within the confines of a Methodist church, the full effects of which are not yet known. We are forming a committee to study it.
It was this: planned...Methodist....chaos.
Methodists don't do planned chaos very well. Unplanned chaos, sure, we're great at that. We can make chit-chat loud and long and fail to pay attention to the proceedings--in fact, the funny thing about the way our service opened on Sunday was how long it took for our pastor to get attention to make the morning announcements. There was festivity in the air. Lots of people in their flame-colored attire, negotiating flame-colored streamers on the backs of the pews and, probably, loudly observing the strangeness of all of this to their neighbors.
It was when the announcements were over that the chaos happened. At the words "turn and greet your neighbor" some persons began greeting one another in different languages. Then a few more joined in. There were the usual handful of volunteers, some speaking German, some Italian, some Spanish--I think we had at least one Asiatic language in there, and sign language--and additionally, the choir had fanned out into the congregation and about two dozen of them were adding their voices to the din, which kept getting louder, and LOUDER.
About a minute into this sanctified fracas came a voice. One soprano intoning the ancient pentecost hymn "Come, Creator Spirit." When she finished there came a thunderous chord from the organ and the opening voluntary began. At that point the flash mob was over and the choir gathered at the back of the church in order to process forward during the singing of the introit. They sang the heck out of it, by the way. I'd like to think the mood created by the flash mob and the ensuing organ music helped them to do that.
We've been doing some variation on the languages of Pentecost for a few years now. The story of a roaring wind, tongues of fire, the disciples suddenly speaking the gospel in different languages lends itself to some kind of dramatic commemoration and, as Methodists, we have a committee that tries to do creative things in worship. It is a sub-committee of another committee, naturally, and I think even those members are answerable to another committee. But this sub-committee, RuacH, from the Greek word for Spirit, is, I would imagine, a fairly unusual thing for a church to have. We gather every couple of months on average to explore the themes for the upcoming seasons of the year and the new sermon series and find ways to incorporate poetry, drama, liturgical dance and so on into those worship services. In past years on Pentecost we've had people stand up front and deliver the gospel message in different languages one at a time, politely waiting until the person ahead of them is finished. Even the rushing wind sound is done solo. It's all very orderly, which is how Methodists like it. That's how we got our name.
So getting folks to all speak at once, or to talk over each other, and to do it loudly, and ON PURPOSE, was like breaking through the fourth wall of Methodism (no, not the Wesleyan Quadrilateral). I don't know if it's ever happened before, and, like a naturalist, I feel compelled to document it. Plus, it was pretty cool.
Of course, afterward, someone said to me that she would have preferred people do the languages one at a time, and I told her we'd probably do that again next year. And, as unexpected as the whole flash mob thing was supposed to be, the pastor kind of tipped everybody off by explaining it in the church email days before, and instructing everyone not to politely sit down until the organ came in. (We had decided to dispense with the usual Pavlovian chimes and go directly to the organ voluntary.) Look, for a Methodist over fifty, that's about as close to a real flash mob as anyone is going to get! Don't knock it.
One other thing: I was meditating on the irony of the whole Pentecost celebration while putting my notes (/strategy) to the flashmobbers together, thinking about how at the original event everyone was astounded to be actually able to understand the disciples, because in this bustling metropolis of a thousand tongues the gospel was suddenly being shared in all of them, and how, in our sanctuary, it was highly unlikely that any of us would understand most of these languages. In other words, the celebration sort of reversed the event being celebrated. And then I got an advance copy of the bulletin, complete with a prayer of confession which contained the line "We continue the divisions of Babel, speaking in tongues that confound rather than clarify, hurt rather than heal, separate rather than unite."
True, confusion gets a pretty universally bad rap in the church, but besides taking at least one holyday in the church year and un-domesticating it a little bit, bringing back some of the wildness and awesomeness, I think a bit of off-balanced unexpectedness is not such a bad thing always. We in the church are so good at doing things the same way, getting comfortable with ourselves and our methods, that we seldom grow our skills of adaptation and understanding. How can we minister to the stranger in our midst if we don't know what their needs are? And how can we know that, or even empathize with that, if we don't understand them? And how can we understand something outside of ourselves if we don't try to come to terms with something or someone that we don't already understand? Knowing what we like and liking what we know is a good way to avoid growth; it leads to stagnation. They way forward involves learning to know the unknown; Karl Barth even referred to God as "wholly other." (I'd like to find out what that means sometime when I have a couple thousand free hours to read "Church Dogmatics.")
And effort indeed needs to be made to that end. Maybe on the first Pentecost the Spirit gave everyone the ability to speak in new languages just magically, but everyone since who has gone out to spread the gospel in other languages has had to take the trouble to learn them. And always there is at first a sense of floundering around in the new and the unaccustomed. But they get the hang of it.
So maybe getting people outside of the tranquil expectations of the orderly, not just by preaching about it, but by throwing them a little off balance during a worship service, isn't such a bad thing.
In any case, for a few moments on a Sunday morning, something slightly unusual happened within the confines of a Methodist church, the full effects of which are not yet known. We are forming a committee to study it.
Friday, May 17, 2013
A Grand old hymn for Pentecost
One of the exciting things this year on Pianonoise is that I am able to bring you music by living composers. Where last year many of the pieces that I played during church services were listed by title and then festooned with the ubiquitous copyright symbol, which, if you clicked on it, would explain that I couldn't legally post the music, this year there have been some changes in that department. It isn't because I've decided to go rogue: I have this bizarre idea that breaking the law is still breaking the law even though I probably wouldn't get caught. And since apparently 95% of music downloads on the web are illegal few of you seem to agree with me. But in situations where the copyright is owned by a small company and/or the composer, I have written to them asking permission to record and post their music. So far I've posted the music of three composers, and I hope that's just the start.
This is important to me because, while you would expect a catalogue of interesting piano and organ music to be weighted toward the past, it is, I think, necessary to include the present as well. Classically trained musicians can find all sorts of wonderful and effective music in past centuries, where our homework has already been done for us in sorting out the composers with the most to say musically, but it is a mistake to assume that today's composers aren't making interesting contributions. These composers have to make a living somehow, though, and unfortunately that sometimes leads to a wall of copyright protection administered by a forbiddingly large company which seems to have no awareness of the existence of the internet (they often insist on doing everything by snail mail). Thus far my efforts to obtain permission in these cases has resulted in being roundly ignored.
But in those cases where I've been able to talk to the composer directly, they have all been gracious enough to permit me to post their works simply by linking to their own websites. I wouldn't mind it a bit if listening to one of my recordings led to increased sales or web traffic (hint, hint). At any rate, this past year I've met several interesting persons online and been enriched by the musical experiences they've brought me.
One of these persons is named Vidas Pinkevicius. Vidas lives in Vilnius, Lithuania, which happens to be where a friend of mine from graduate school grew up so I sort of feel like I know the place (from stories) even though I've never actually been there. Vidas has a blog dedicated to helping organists learn to play the organ better. An organist at the university, and apparently a church in town which has an organ that dates back to 1776 and is currently in need of restoration (naturally enough, Vidas is leading the charge), he keeps himself very busy promoting the art of the organ in Lithuania, playing a series of concerts, creating all kinds of resources in the form of teaching editions of organ scores, videos, and blogs, and answering scores of emails. After I downloaded his score for the piece that I'm playing this Pentecost Sunday, I emailed him that I had some concerns over the score's legibility in some spots (if you've ever fought with a software music scoring program you'll know why) and some other minor issues. Vidas got back to me within hours with an improved score! Vidas can make me tired just thinking about his industry.
This is the second year I've managed to play a work written in the past two years for Pentecost. Last year I found a particularly jazzy arrangement on Youtube; unfortunately the composer never got back to me when I left a comment on his channel asking if I could have a copy of the score; I never made a recording of it since I had no authorization. That didn't stop me from playing it in church, however! (worship service exemption, if you are wondering) I simply listened to the video and took dictation. Unfortunately, the composer has recently removed the video (as well as hundreds more--I think he was concerned with the sound quality and is effectively starting his channel over again).
On that occasion the entire congregation processed (or danced) their way into the church with colored streamers while the organ played. This year we are planning a kind of "flash mob" to occur during the passing of the peace right after the opening announcements--people will be greeted in different languages. The hubbub is supposed to increase while one choir member intones the plainchant "Veni Creator Spiritus" on which the organ piece is based, at which point I will interrupt the proceedings with a loud chord. That's the plan, anyhow.
Here is the music. It turned out to be trickier than I thought it would be--it took about a week and a half to learn. It is also nearly a minute faster than the composer's own rendition (see below for a link), and, now that I've given it a week to slumber and have come back to it a few days before the service, I think I played it too fast--particularly the opening, which needs more grandeur. In truth, I was a bit worried that the sectionalized nature of the piece might not hang together well if I didn't give it a sense of forward propulsion. That is why it is necessary to spend time with music, and allow time for your ideas to change, something that both blogging and a week to week church schedule don't really encourage. When there's time--probably in a week or two--I'll make a second recording, which more accurately reflects how I am likely to play it in church this weekend.
In the meantime, I have to run off to another rehearsal. This week I'm playing a bit of Handel on the grand organ at the University. We'll see how that turns out!
Veni Creator Spiritus by Vidas Pinkevicius (2010)
Vidas' blog is at
www.organduo.it
the score of this piece, and a video of the composer playing it, can be found at
www.organduo/veni-creator-spiritus.html
This is important to me because, while you would expect a catalogue of interesting piano and organ music to be weighted toward the past, it is, I think, necessary to include the present as well. Classically trained musicians can find all sorts of wonderful and effective music in past centuries, where our homework has already been done for us in sorting out the composers with the most to say musically, but it is a mistake to assume that today's composers aren't making interesting contributions. These composers have to make a living somehow, though, and unfortunately that sometimes leads to a wall of copyright protection administered by a forbiddingly large company which seems to have no awareness of the existence of the internet (they often insist on doing everything by snail mail). Thus far my efforts to obtain permission in these cases has resulted in being roundly ignored.
But in those cases where I've been able to talk to the composer directly, they have all been gracious enough to permit me to post their works simply by linking to their own websites. I wouldn't mind it a bit if listening to one of my recordings led to increased sales or web traffic (hint, hint). At any rate, this past year I've met several interesting persons online and been enriched by the musical experiences they've brought me.
One of these persons is named Vidas Pinkevicius. Vidas lives in Vilnius, Lithuania, which happens to be where a friend of mine from graduate school grew up so I sort of feel like I know the place (from stories) even though I've never actually been there. Vidas has a blog dedicated to helping organists learn to play the organ better. An organist at the university, and apparently a church in town which has an organ that dates back to 1776 and is currently in need of restoration (naturally enough, Vidas is leading the charge), he keeps himself very busy promoting the art of the organ in Lithuania, playing a series of concerts, creating all kinds of resources in the form of teaching editions of organ scores, videos, and blogs, and answering scores of emails. After I downloaded his score for the piece that I'm playing this Pentecost Sunday, I emailed him that I had some concerns over the score's legibility in some spots (if you've ever fought with a software music scoring program you'll know why) and some other minor issues. Vidas got back to me within hours with an improved score! Vidas can make me tired just thinking about his industry.
This is the second year I've managed to play a work written in the past two years for Pentecost. Last year I found a particularly jazzy arrangement on Youtube; unfortunately the composer never got back to me when I left a comment on his channel asking if I could have a copy of the score; I never made a recording of it since I had no authorization. That didn't stop me from playing it in church, however! (worship service exemption, if you are wondering) I simply listened to the video and took dictation. Unfortunately, the composer has recently removed the video (as well as hundreds more--I think he was concerned with the sound quality and is effectively starting his channel over again).
On that occasion the entire congregation processed (or danced) their way into the church with colored streamers while the organ played. This year we are planning a kind of "flash mob" to occur during the passing of the peace right after the opening announcements--people will be greeted in different languages. The hubbub is supposed to increase while one choir member intones the plainchant "Veni Creator Spiritus" on which the organ piece is based, at which point I will interrupt the proceedings with a loud chord. That's the plan, anyhow.
Here is the music. It turned out to be trickier than I thought it would be--it took about a week and a half to learn. It is also nearly a minute faster than the composer's own rendition (see below for a link), and, now that I've given it a week to slumber and have come back to it a few days before the service, I think I played it too fast--particularly the opening, which needs more grandeur. In truth, I was a bit worried that the sectionalized nature of the piece might not hang together well if I didn't give it a sense of forward propulsion. That is why it is necessary to spend time with music, and allow time for your ideas to change, something that both blogging and a week to week church schedule don't really encourage. When there's time--probably in a week or two--I'll make a second recording, which more accurately reflects how I am likely to play it in church this weekend.
In the meantime, I have to run off to another rehearsal. This week I'm playing a bit of Handel on the grand organ at the University. We'll see how that turns out!
Veni Creator Spiritus by Vidas Pinkevicius (2010)
Vidas' blog is at
www.organduo.it
the score of this piece, and a video of the composer playing it, can be found at
www.organduo/veni-creator-spiritus.html
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