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.

Making Connections

One of the difficulties I've always found with liturgy is that it tends to be very local. One short musical response followed by a prayer or a reading, then another short musical response. In the best of situations those responses have something to do with one another, the elements coalesce, the service itself seems to be about something, to have a particular mood, message, occasion, reason for being, but at other times, the service wanders, shifts gears constantly, not sure whether to celebrate or beat its breast, proclaim, meditate, confess, or try to do them all in no particular order.

This is because, in the long running battle of form with function, form has always dominated the church service. All the same elements in the same order, week after week, because that's the way we are supposed to do it, or we like it that way, or it is just easier not to have to make new decisions, or we think God likes it that way, or something.

There are ways, though, myriad ways, to draw connections between the elements, between themes and ideas and positions. Ways to play the opening hymn or the prayer response differently from week to week so that it seems meant not only for the long procession of worship occasions past present and future but on this one occasion particularly intended for this one. 

The last couple of weeks I've been doing that with the transition to the doxology. Between the offertory and the closing hymn in our service sits the celebratory doxology. It is always loud, always majestic, and sometimes of a completely different character than the offertory that immediately precedes it. I submit for your ears the offertory I played on Baptism of the Lord Sunday this year. It's five and a half minutes--if you are in a hurry you can just listen to enough of it to get the idea.

[listen]

Right. Now, as soon as that ends, it is time for the doxology, which, at our 10:30 service, sounds like this:

[listen]

(Better, if I don't miss that pedal note at the beginning!)

If you have difficulty imagining how those two things fit together, that makes two of us. So here is what I did about it. After the offertory concluded, I played this (or something like it) as an introduction to the doxology:

[listen]

That last phrase it designed to get people to stand up, and it works.

The following week we had a classical guitar solo for the offertory. The musical selection was the lute suite in E major. Since our soloist needed a little time to move his equipment back, I made a longer introduction to cover the sound and give him the necessary time. Also, I hoped, to preserve the character of what we'd just heard and move it into the doxology. What I actually played was improvised at the service, and it was more inspired than what I dashed off for the microphone late last night. But it was something like this:

[listen]

That also meant I took the doxology up a half step. I hope the sopranos in the choir didn't mind. I didn't ask!

The net effect of this is, I hope, to help the service to flow better from one moment to the next, and also to say that in the long parade of weekly services, THIS day matters enough to get the elements to cooperate with one another and make one effective statement out of, to build on the enthusiasm, or the introspection, of a particular moment in time, and not to simply break into it with our regularly scheduled bits of stuff we have to do every week whether it derails the effect or not. 

This is something over which I could write many a blog (and perhaps will one day). It is not intended to subvert the liturgy but to enhance it. And of course it requires imagination and improvisational skills, and much practice in making quick decisions, taking risks (often I have not planned this out ahead of time) and trusting that somehow things will go well. Better than well, one hopes. But then, there is always next week. In a curious way, for a learning musician, church is an excellent laboratory in this respect. On the other hand, every experiment matters. Which is why you live and learn, and yet why I so often will not leave well enough alone.

Because it isn't "well enough."