Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-16-18

That we live in an upside-world ought to surprise nobody who has even a cursory relationship with history and tradition. Our age is often called “modern times,” but according to philosophers and cultural anthropologists, the Modern Age ended after the Renaissance; after the Enlightenment came Postmodernism, in which many people we currently are mired… but we are past, or below, that. Clearly this is a post-Christian Age; but is has also been described as Post-Post-Modern (yes), Nihilistic, and so forth.

I raise these definitions not because there will be a quiz in in-boxes tomorrow. We are better off if we understand where we are in the sweep of time, to what twigs and leaves we cling as we helplessly ride the rapids of time.

Why? Perhaps we can discern the evidences of madness that beset us; perhaps the better to resist. In my biography of Johann Sebastian Bach a major goal of mine was to pain the absolute centrality of faith in that composer’s life. It is almost impossible to understand the genius of Bach, and his music, without understanding the role of faith in his life.

His jobs were not merely at churches where he wrote to order. He was as learned as professors of religion; he had a large library of Christian books; he taught Catechism; two-thirds of his approximate 1800 compositions were church music; and his secular music was virtually always dedicated to God.

It is how life was in Germany of the 1700s. And his fellow Protestants took their cues from Martin Luther and other Reformers of the 1500s. Remember, Luther rejected the term Modern, and declared Reason to be the enemy of Faith.

The son of friends recently returned from a bicycle semester in Europe, 11 countries. We had an evening enjoying his photos, including the great town square in Prague, where there is a statue of the great Reformer Jan Hus, bound to the stake before his immolation as a martyr for the faith… a hundred years before Luther. (From my visit, years ago, I assumed that it was the spot where he was put to death for his faith, but that was in Konstanz; the great Bohemian was commemorated in his home city.)

In those days people died for their faith. Today, they still do… mostly in what we call the Far East and in the Middle East and south of the Equator. Not so much in Europe and America. Here we largely, at best, endure annoyance for our faith; or complain to each other.

Some, like the Masterpiece Cakeshop decorator, are not asked to die for their faith, but probably would. At moment people like Jack Phillips sustain abuse, vandalism, and sacrifices to their businesses and home lives. The most our culture forces, at this moment in time.

I bring up Bach’s livelihood and terms like the Dark Ages because, as noted, it can be a healthy thing to realize how different we are than those of earlier generations. In the days of Bach, Luther before him, and especially back to the Dark Ages, churches were at centers of every community.

The center? Yes, for prolonged worship, several days a week; for municipal events of all sorts requiring space; for schooling and civil ceremonies. And many churches, especially cathedrals, took decades and even centuries to build – and every citizen took on duties. Often when a day’s work was done in fields or shops, people ate and hurried to put in long hours – willingly – for carpentry work, masonry, sculpting, stained glass arts, and so forth.

It is what they did. And desired to do.

And in ages where illiteracy was common, the churches also “spoke” the Revealed Word of God – every color of vestment or altarpieces, every carved lectern, every sign and symbol in elaborate tapestries and stained-glass windows… MEANT something, telling the Gospel story, representing Biblical truths, reminding worshipers of the lives of saints and martyrs.

In other words, as Henry Adams noted in his great book Mont St-Michel et Chartres, the “Dark Ages” where not so dark at all. One of the only times in human history – certainly the last time in Western Civilization – when an entire culture was of one mind in matters of heart and head; when societies were unified in belief and purpose.

I was reminded of this when I came across a video of singers and musicians gathering to rehearse a performance of Vivaldi’s great Gloria, in Venice, in a cathedral, at night, dedicated in a haunting performance. Chilling, and a little taste of people gathered just more than 300 years ago at the School for Wayward Girls, where Vivaldi was Music Teacher and Priest. The profound liturgical words likely date from the Fifth Century.

Appropriate association: it was in 400s that Christianity largely had been swept off the European continent. At outposts like Hippo in northern Africa, Augustine kept the scriptures alive; and in far-off Ireland Saints Columba and Patrick kept Western Civilization, and scholasticism, alive, in shrouded monasteries. Slowly, Patrick made missionary journeys to Germanic lands, converting the Vandals who previously had chased and slaughtered Christians, from Rome and elsewhere.

Look, if you can, at this video of performers gathering in Vivaldi’s place to perform Vivaldi’s sacred music. You will get a taste of times when spare times of people were devoted to serving, and praising, God.

And note the great sacred environment, also a symbol of forgotten times. Today, in this Post-Christian Era, we have tunred many churches into museum, empty of spirituality. And we have turned museums in today’s equivalence of sacred places – venerating the art of music of earlier Christians into exhibitions and concerts.

An upside-down world.

+ + +

Click: Gloria

12-11-17

Sometimes we plan for something, and when it happens it seems anticlimactic. When surprised by something special, however, we usually are more impressed. That happened to me in one of the great moments of my life – the cultural-me, anyway – when I first visited Venice.

I anticipated uncountable sites and sights. Indeed I was rewarded with the many canals; the obligatory, and necessary, gondola rides; San Marco Square and the basilica’s gleaming face; Giudecca, by legend the Jewish quarter on an island across from the city; the Murano glass works; and I even rented the famous Room With a View (which is nothing to write a postcard home about, either as a room or for its vistas).

Not on my bucket list or its Venetian equivalent was anything related to Antonio Vivaldi, the great composer of the Baroque period. So I was surprised when walking along a canal-hugging sidewalk (yes, they exist) I turned a corner and was face-to-face with a sign marking the birthplace of Vivaldi; a modest sign on a modest house.

I almost dropped to my knees, animated by the unexpected encounter, in reverence.

Vivaldi is one of history’s great composers. He was a major influence in the music of his day. He absorbed and in turn influenced the characteristics of the Italian school, and the Middle-European and German schools (indeed, it was in Vienna where he died). His music made its way far north to Saxony, where no less a figure than Johann Sebastian Bach transcribed several of Vivaldi’s works.

A major contribution of Vivaldi was his codification of the Concerto Grosso and its trademark construction – solo-and-orchestra; three movements, fast-slow-fast. He wrote more than 500 such concerti in addition to many other compositions. Detractors say that, rather, Vivaldi wrote one concerto 500 times.

But letting yourself be bathed in his music chases away that idea; and you will be joined by Bach and others in your admiration. Leonard Bernstein helped fuel the Vivaldi revival in America.

The reason for this little historical tour is related to our title: like strolls through Venice, I cannot stray far. Vivaldi was a composer, but he was a priest first – nicknamed “The Red Priest” for the vivid color of his hair. He served as the director of music in a Venetian church, the Pieta; and very specifically was teacher and concert-master at the church’s Orphanage. In starker reality it was a home for wayward girls, as society once described unmarried pregnant women.

Women, many of them “girls” in terms of their tender ages, were cared for and housed by the Pieta, and they were educated in various arts and letters. And they learned to read, sing, and perform music. Through the 1700s’ first decades, they were the charges of Fr Antonio Vivaldi. Hence, a voluminous catalog of compositions, and many concerti that showcased solo instruments for talented young women.

Again, there is point beyond general history I wish to share. It resonates at Christmastime, and has relevance in this season of discussions (and scandals) related to women, of their relative subservience or assertion of rights, and their dignity. An extreme extension of a male-dominated society in Vivaldi’s time was not allowing women to perform, sing, play instruments in church; and soprano parts were supplied by castratos – castrated boys whose voices remained as boys’ sounded, even into their adult years. This was especially prevalent in France and England. At the other end was Germany, where its churches, even before Reformation, broke ranks by mixing German with the Latin, and sometimes employing women as singers. Bach did.

Vivaldi had to do so! As Director of Music in an all-women institution, exceptions were granted. The Red Priest must have been as good a teacher as he was composer, because the female musicians and singers of the Pieta were renowned.

There are many pieces of church music associated with Christmas. The Magnificat, many chorales, hymns, and popular carols. The Gloria is not, specifically, Christmas music, but that is because its spare and sweet words – “Glory to God in the highest” – are appropriate, and appropriated, throughout the church calendar. But it is performed and sung, within the church service or independently, with particular meaning during this Advent season.

Following are the English words of the Gloria. And if you are able to click on the video, you will see Vivaldi’s Gloria – possibly the most joyful and profound of the many written by many composers – performed in Vivaldi’s church, the Pieta. And, as in his day, the musicians and singers are all women (in period dress, playing period instruments, to assist our imaginations).

You will notice that the singers are arrayed in the balconies, many of them behind wrought-iron facades. This was the era’s compromise with keeping women “separated,” supposedly to keep worshipers from being distracted (ancestors of senators and movie moguls in the congregation?). OK… at first glance they appear to be in cages, but as I have explained, those women were actually liberated. To sing, perform, praise. Men, too, often were in such locations in churches – simply a practice of the time. In fact, in many churches the organ loft, with singers and musicians, was behind and above the congregation. The focus was forward, to the altar, symbols, Host, etc.

In the context of their time, Vivaldi and his female charges were iconoclasts, pioneers in the free, and equal, and of course welcome exercise of talent and worship.

If the female performers at the Pieta had commenced a tradition that continued and spread elsewhere, women might have had more freedoms, sooner won, and more broadly exercised, across the West. (Remember that, except through the influence of guilds and arcane means, even the men of 1715 Venice did not vote, either.)

Can we agree that the point of social progress is less about unfortunate timing, and more about ultimate justice? In spiritual perspective, it is not whose voices sing praise, but what they sing. And to Whom they lift their voices in that awesome church – “Glory to God in the highest!”

Glory be to God on high And in earth peace, goodwill towards men, We praise thee, we bless thee, we worship thee, we glorify thee, we give thanks to thee, for thy great glory O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty.

O Lord, the only-begotten Son, Jesu Christ; O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.

Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer. Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy upon us.

For thou only art holy; thou only art the Lord; thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father.

+ + +

You will notice something besides the floral ironwork behind which the choir sings in the Pieta. The performers are dispersed, widely around the great basilica’s perimeter. This was not an uncommon practice of the time. I noted in my biography of Bach that many churches had their anthems and choruses performed this way: in Salzburg the great early-Baroque composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber wrote several pieces for as many as 40 “parts” – singers, choirs, musicians scattered here and there, high and low, seen and hidden. For worshipers in the congregation, it must have seemed like prototypical Surround Sound!

Click: Gloria