This Sunday is "Gaudete" Sunday in the Roman Catholic church. If, like me, you weren't aware of this until recently (perhaps as recently as the reading of this blog), it might be because:
a) you are Protestant
b) you are Orthodox
c) you are Catholic but not very observant (that can be taken a few different ways)
d) you are anybody who hasn't gone to mass during Advent, including persons of different religious persuasions who really weren't planning to do so to begin with!
e) you are a tree sloth in Armenia
Does that cover everybody?
Many Protestants do not practice a very complex church year. In this "low church" model, There is Christmas, and there is Easter, and then there is practically everything else. On the other end of the scale, which tends to be the practice of Anglicans and Catholics, every Sunday has its own name, its own function, its own feast, etc. Being Methodist means our church tends toward the low end of the scale, but with occasional pastoral nods toward more church events like Ascension Sunday and Trinity Sunday. And then, they have an organist who finds history interesting, as well as having a natural curiosity about the customs of others. But the occasional liturgical accident sometimes helps, too.
Advent, as practiced by the church, is a period of waiting. It is also a period of penitence and more somber observance. Sound like Lent? It is, actually. And here is what I've found interesting. Making people wait and watch, reflect and wait, is pretty counter cultural. It takes a discipline that you wouldn't expect to find in 21st century American society. I can't speak for Europe, but I imagine it's a little out of place there, too. Waiting for things is not in a capitalist's vocabulary. Nobody tells you not to come into their store right away for the best deals of the millenium happening RIGHT NOW!
But waiting patiently and penitently appears to have been considered somewhat burdensome many centuries ago, too. Suppressing some of the most joyful parts of the mass, doing without pleasures like the playing of the organ--apparently it was too much for too long. So, just as in Lent, a little more than halfway through, the church lightens those burdens for a week, allows some of these things back into the mass, and we have a Sunday of rejoicing. Gaudete! Rejoice!
Where it gets more interesting is that the series our pastors are using to preach on (courtesy of a major Methodist website), using themes from the four advent candles, just happens to line up with this older tradition. In fact, I learned about it while trying to figure out which order those pesky advents candles were supposed to go in. Four Sundays in Advent, and four candles. Is it hope, joy, peace love? Love, joy, hope, peace? Joy, peace, hope, peace again? argh.
Short answer: there isn't an "official" order. I assumed if anybody had nailed this down, it would be the Catholic church. And they haven't. But the third candle is Joy.
Gaudete!
I mentioned this to our choir director, because she had chosen none other than a modern arrangement of the 15th century chant itself for the choir to sing this week. "Gaudete!" for Gaudete Sunday. She thought that was pretty cool, and called it a "God thing" which means she hadn't planned it that way. It just happened. Of course, the curriculum was responsible for getting her part way there. But the choosing of the piece "Gaudete" itself....I can't explain that one.
Since the choir doesn't sing at the 8 am service, I have to have something to play in their slot. I've come up with an organ solo version of "Gaudete." One of the things that I like about the organ is the way it is so many different instruments. A couple of months ago I shared music from my organ concert. Much of it was full-on all-the-stops-out glorious sounding. But this piece is just the opposite. Using my favorite 4-foot flute stop all by itself, the organ sounds like a recorder consort. It is answered by the 8-foot krummhorn alone. Another Reniassancish ensemble sound.
After a few rounds of that, it is time for some verses. But there is no music for verses provided in the 15th century source. It's customary to use another tune from a period source to cover the verses. I had a different idea.
That's why, for organists reading this, I'm providing the score I whipped together at an insane hour last night, and giving you a chance to do what I did. Improvise.
That's right; I didn't provide any music for the verses either!
If you are following the score you'll see how it works, though you can hear it on the recording also. First the flutes play. They are answered by the krummhorns. Then the flutes. Krummhorns. Then an extended solo. Then the krummhorns. Each of the four verses is a spot where I improvised a Medieval sounding solo over a drone accompaniment. It's not so difficult. Basically you use the notes of the scale--we're in A dorian, which is all the white keys except F# instead of F natural. Hold the A down with your left hand and move up and down in expressive and dancelike ecstasy, then change the left hand note to G (right hand continues), then F (natural) and finally E as your solo comes to a close. If you haven't improvised before (and we haven't talked about it yet on this blog) this isn't a bad introduction to the sport.
Each of those solos is answered by the written out krummhorn chorus, which I varied a little at whim, but basically played as written. Then for the final chorus, I doubled the flute stop and the krummhorn by coupling the manuals together for the grand finale.
Non-organists and organists alike: I hope you enjoy the recording. Rejoice!
Gaudete
and for the organists, here is the score. I'd love to hear your performances, if you are able to record them. They will all be unique, courtesy of a score that calls for your own improvisations as an integral part of the music.
score here
(update: the 12/10 version had some errors in it--haste will do that, unfortunately. The version linked to above is from 12/12 and has been corrected. My apologies)
Enjoy!
Showing posts with label church year. Show all posts
Showing posts with label church year. Show all posts
Friday, December 11, 2015
Friday, November 21, 2014
A Time for New Beginnings
Next weekend--I'll tell you now you so won't miss it--is the beginning of another church year. Happy New Year!
I almost titled this blog "New Year, again?!?" because if you're scoring at home, this is at least the third installment of our annual reset in the last twelve months. Going back to January 1, we have the "official" or civil, new year, in which the number on our calendar changes and 2014 becomes 2015 and so on. This is the New Year which gets the most press, and the most resolutions for reform and improvement of our lives as we head into the new year. Which is odd, because, aside from that change on the calendar, nothing really new happens. There isn't any natural boundary. We are still in the middle of winter--not quite the exact middle, either. Meteorologically winter begins about ten days earlier, with the solstice, though the manifestations of said season have at this point already been with us for as long as there has been snow; generally about a month or so. So there we are, in the deadest part of a cold, dark season (if you live in the Northern hemisphere, anyhow), and the groundhog won't even poke his head out and prophecy comfort for another month. And yet, we feel something new has happened. Out with the old. Let's start again.
The new year with the most effect on our behavior is the one associated with the school year. You don't have to be a child in school, or an adult in school, or a teacher, or a parent, to have the rhythms of the academic year hold sway over your life. Every August there is a great gearing up. Activities, scholastic and otherwise, begin. Both choral organizations I serve begin their rehearsals at this time. Our church choir also begins to sing. People stop going on vacation and get down to business. This great spasm of activity proceeds, with the occasional break until summer, when, as if it were a week writ large, there is a Sabbath for a couple of months. July is a particularly dead time at our church. Everyone is out of town, getting rest, preparing for another spasm of intensity to start in August. We don't have to attach any new year rhetoric to this one. It is new enough on its own.
At the other end of the spectrum are cycles like the fiscal year. Nobody much concerns themselves with those unless you happen to be the treasurer of an organization or work for public radio. Then the fiscal year matters a great deal. It begins with July. If you are a Methodist pastor that is also the beginning of another year, which might bring with it a change of venue. It is another mid-season beginning which exists in our minds, in the realm of numbers. Nature absents herself from those.
Many ancient cultures liked to begin the new year with the beginning of the growing cycle in the spring. Or with the harvest in the fall. If you live in the United States but have you roots in another culture, you may be celebrating their new year as well (ie., Chinese new year), on whatever date it occurs, based on whatever reckoning those in charge thought appropriate.
And if you still haven't had enough newness, along comes the church calendar, which begins anew on the First Sunday in Advent, generally the first Sunday in December, but this year on November 30. It falls four Sundays before Christmas, whenever that happens to be each year.
This yearly reset goes largely unnoticed, I think, unless you happen to work in a church, and it needs to be an uncommonly liturgically aware church at that, at least if you happen to be Protestant, when it is far from a given that you will follow, along with our Catholic cousins, the liturgical year as it was established so long ago.
Still, it is a beginning, even if it begins in sackcloth and ashes, rather than in the promise of spring, the smell of new textbooks, or the steely resolve to hit the gym every day. Our psychology seems to need the promise of the new pretty often; it is never long before we think we've screwed up the old and long to get another chance. Give us a blank slate and before long it is covered with illegible scrawl descending into incoherence and suspect meaning; give us another chance! We'll do better.
So if you are feeling like you need a new beginning, a chance to start over, to renew, refresh, jettison the burdens of the past, don't pass up November 30.
For my money, a new cycle begins with the promise of every moment. If you want to embark on a plan for Bible reading or exercise in the middle of February, go for it. And if you miss a few days, get back on the horse and keep going. Don't wait until next year because you broke the streak! But if you need some sort of officialdom to confirm you in your sense of purpose, then here it is: The start of a new church year. The cycle begins again, like freshly fallen snow. Oh, it'll get tracks in it, eventually. The paper boy won't think to use the side door and will wade through three feet of snow in your front yard and create a royal mess. But, at least for a moment, everything is new again. Always.
I almost titled this blog "New Year, again?!?" because if you're scoring at home, this is at least the third installment of our annual reset in the last twelve months. Going back to January 1, we have the "official" or civil, new year, in which the number on our calendar changes and 2014 becomes 2015 and so on. This is the New Year which gets the most press, and the most resolutions for reform and improvement of our lives as we head into the new year. Which is odd, because, aside from that change on the calendar, nothing really new happens. There isn't any natural boundary. We are still in the middle of winter--not quite the exact middle, either. Meteorologically winter begins about ten days earlier, with the solstice, though the manifestations of said season have at this point already been with us for as long as there has been snow; generally about a month or so. So there we are, in the deadest part of a cold, dark season (if you live in the Northern hemisphere, anyhow), and the groundhog won't even poke his head out and prophecy comfort for another month. And yet, we feel something new has happened. Out with the old. Let's start again.
The new year with the most effect on our behavior is the one associated with the school year. You don't have to be a child in school, or an adult in school, or a teacher, or a parent, to have the rhythms of the academic year hold sway over your life. Every August there is a great gearing up. Activities, scholastic and otherwise, begin. Both choral organizations I serve begin their rehearsals at this time. Our church choir also begins to sing. People stop going on vacation and get down to business. This great spasm of activity proceeds, with the occasional break until summer, when, as if it were a week writ large, there is a Sabbath for a couple of months. July is a particularly dead time at our church. Everyone is out of town, getting rest, preparing for another spasm of intensity to start in August. We don't have to attach any new year rhetoric to this one. It is new enough on its own.
At the other end of the spectrum are cycles like the fiscal year. Nobody much concerns themselves with those unless you happen to be the treasurer of an organization or work for public radio. Then the fiscal year matters a great deal. It begins with July. If you are a Methodist pastor that is also the beginning of another year, which might bring with it a change of venue. It is another mid-season beginning which exists in our minds, in the realm of numbers. Nature absents herself from those.
Many ancient cultures liked to begin the new year with the beginning of the growing cycle in the spring. Or with the harvest in the fall. If you live in the United States but have you roots in another culture, you may be celebrating their new year as well (ie., Chinese new year), on whatever date it occurs, based on whatever reckoning those in charge thought appropriate.
And if you still haven't had enough newness, along comes the church calendar, which begins anew on the First Sunday in Advent, generally the first Sunday in December, but this year on November 30. It falls four Sundays before Christmas, whenever that happens to be each year.
This yearly reset goes largely unnoticed, I think, unless you happen to work in a church, and it needs to be an uncommonly liturgically aware church at that, at least if you happen to be Protestant, when it is far from a given that you will follow, along with our Catholic cousins, the liturgical year as it was established so long ago.
Still, it is a beginning, even if it begins in sackcloth and ashes, rather than in the promise of spring, the smell of new textbooks, or the steely resolve to hit the gym every day. Our psychology seems to need the promise of the new pretty often; it is never long before we think we've screwed up the old and long to get another chance. Give us a blank slate and before long it is covered with illegible scrawl descending into incoherence and suspect meaning; give us another chance! We'll do better.
So if you are feeling like you need a new beginning, a chance to start over, to renew, refresh, jettison the burdens of the past, don't pass up November 30.
For my money, a new cycle begins with the promise of every moment. If you want to embark on a plan for Bible reading or exercise in the middle of February, go for it. And if you miss a few days, get back on the horse and keep going. Don't wait until next year because you broke the streak! But if you need some sort of officialdom to confirm you in your sense of purpose, then here it is: The start of a new church year. The cycle begins again, like freshly fallen snow. Oh, it'll get tracks in it, eventually. The paper boy won't think to use the side door and will wade through three feet of snow in your front yard and create a royal mess. But, at least for a moment, everything is new again. Always.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Transition
This week is another odd juncture in the church year: this Sunday, we'll be picking up in the narrative of Christ's earthly ministry where we left off on the second Sunday of January, when we celebrated the "Baptism of the Lord." in Mark's gospel, Jesus comes up out of the water and a voice thunders "this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." And suddenly, says Mark, with no further ado whatever, Jesus was driven into the wilderness and spent 40 days and nights there being tempted by Satan. This makes the baptism and the temptation a two-parter that happen one right after the other. But liturgically, we take our time about it, spending however many weeks it takes for the lunar calendar to align properly before we begin Lent. Then the week preceding, for those of you keeping liturgical score, we skip to the Transfiguration, an incident the synoptic gospel writers put in the middle of Jesus's ministry, before we double back to pick up the temptation in the wilderness. What a ride!
In our local church, however, we've spent the last seven weeks discussing hymns, the different persons and groups responsible for writing them, and what they tell us about our faith. In other words, we've been off the liturgical cycle altogether. And in Lent, both of our pastors are taking the seven last words of Christ and preaching sermon series' on that.
Musically, the last seven weeks for me have been spent at the piano, playing hymn based compositions by my French cousin M. Marteau. The last of these was a raucous send-up of about eight camp meeting revival style hymns from 19th century America, whose melodies the aphasic composer confessed not being able to keep straight.
listen
I had some fun with this over the weekend. On Saturday, one fellow came up to the piano during the climax to peer over my shoulder. Hoping to catch the title to see which hymn I was playing (the Saturday evening worship folks don't benefit from explanatory program notes). On Sunday a few folks took the thing perfectly seriously; some laughed or smiled, and others noted (and counted) the hymns as they tumbled out. One lady came up with nine but said she may have counted one twice. I'm not even sure myself. Often a hymn is present for only one measure before it becomes something else, and a couple of times there are three going at once. He may not have gotten the joke, but the liturgist found the music "inspiring" which is just fine with me.
This week, as I get my sackcloth out of the closet, I'm going in an entirely different direction. We just had seven weeks of 21st century piano music, now it is time for some 19th century german organ music. Felix Mendelssohn wrote six sonatas that are at the core of the organ literature, and every serious organist plays. Being a little late to the game (trained as a pianist in school) I've only played one of these a few years back (and probably not well). So I've decided to learn three of the six this spring, and I've found an interesting way to program them.
For lent I've chosen the three that are in minor keys. Each of them, however, concludes with one or more movements in the parallel major key, and I'm going to save those movements until after Easter. So with the first sonata, the f minor, only the first movement is in minor. The second sonata has only one as well. The d minor sixth sonata has one large minor key movement and one other short one. Only the brief concluding movement is in d major, and I'll play that at the end of the year, in June.
It's going to be quite a change from what I've been "preaching." And it will probably be a bit less popular than what I've been serving up. But that's good, too. There's a time for reflection, and this season is one of those times.
In our local church, however, we've spent the last seven weeks discussing hymns, the different persons and groups responsible for writing them, and what they tell us about our faith. In other words, we've been off the liturgical cycle altogether. And in Lent, both of our pastors are taking the seven last words of Christ and preaching sermon series' on that.
Musically, the last seven weeks for me have been spent at the piano, playing hymn based compositions by my French cousin M. Marteau. The last of these was a raucous send-up of about eight camp meeting revival style hymns from 19th century America, whose melodies the aphasic composer confessed not being able to keep straight.
listen
I had some fun with this over the weekend. On Saturday, one fellow came up to the piano during the climax to peer over my shoulder. Hoping to catch the title to see which hymn I was playing (the Saturday evening worship folks don't benefit from explanatory program notes). On Sunday a few folks took the thing perfectly seriously; some laughed or smiled, and others noted (and counted) the hymns as they tumbled out. One lady came up with nine but said she may have counted one twice. I'm not even sure myself. Often a hymn is present for only one measure before it becomes something else, and a couple of times there are three going at once. He may not have gotten the joke, but the liturgist found the music "inspiring" which is just fine with me.
This week, as I get my sackcloth out of the closet, I'm going in an entirely different direction. We just had seven weeks of 21st century piano music, now it is time for some 19th century german organ music. Felix Mendelssohn wrote six sonatas that are at the core of the organ literature, and every serious organist plays. Being a little late to the game (trained as a pianist in school) I've only played one of these a few years back (and probably not well). So I've decided to learn three of the six this spring, and I've found an interesting way to program them.
For lent I've chosen the three that are in minor keys. Each of them, however, concludes with one or more movements in the parallel major key, and I'm going to save those movements until after Easter. So with the first sonata, the f minor, only the first movement is in minor. The second sonata has only one as well. The d minor sixth sonata has one large minor key movement and one other short one. Only the brief concluding movement is in d major, and I'll play that at the end of the year, in June.
It's going to be quite a change from what I've been "preaching." And it will probably be a bit less popular than what I've been serving up. But that's good, too. There's a time for reflection, and this season is one of those times.
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