L’Organiste – César Franck (1822-90)

This collection of fifty-nine pieces for harmonium (or organ, manuals only) has been a mainstay of many organist’s bookshelf for well over a century now. It is very common to find the old Kalmus/Universal edition in the music holdings of second hand bookshops that still sell sheet music for organ.

César Franck’s career was a remarkable one. A Belgian by birth (although Liege, the city of his birth, was then in the Netherlands), Franck’s father moved the family to allow the young César to enter the Paris Conservatoire at the age of sixteen. After leaving the Conservatoire in 1842, Franck returned to Liege for a short time before returning to Paris, where he held organ positions at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette and Saint-Jean-Saint-François-au-Marais before his appointment as choir master (1858) and later titulaire (1860) at the newly-constructed Basilica of St Clothilde. In 1872, Franck was appointed professor of organ at the Paris Conservatoire, where his students included Vincent d’Indy and Louis Vierne.

Many readers here will be familiar with Franck’s major organ works, the three Chorales (1892), and the collections of Six Pieces (1860-62) and Trois Pieces (1878). These are important works in the organ literature, and reflect Franck’s important stature as an improviser, and the symbiotic relationship of his music to the instruments on which he conceived the pieces. And no organist can escape Panis Angelicus, a veritable warhorse for choirs, and a mainstay of practically any occasion in Catholic worship.

The collection of pieces in L’Organiste represents a different strand of Franck’s composition activities. These answered a need for simple, short pieces that could be used in the Mass where the organist was either untrained – or unable – to improvise. Because of the successive waves of destruction, desecration and (eventually) final disestablishment of the Catholic Church in France flowing from the revolutions, outside the major cities most parish churches were equipped with harmoniums rather than grands orgues.

The collection is divided up into short suites of seven movements, based on common keys. The seventh piece in each suite is an Offertoire, which leads me to look upon these suites as an aid to the alternatim practices of plainchant performance that were still prevalent in France until the end of the nineteenth century. Each suite includes an “Amen” setting, which would have served as a couplet for the final dismissal at the end of Mass, or as the final interlude in a set of pieces for performance in alternation with the choir. These might be useful for an extremely short interlude, but I doubt whether there’s any liturgical action that takes under 15 seconds to perform that would be worth covering with music. Perhaps you might use these as a signal for the ending of the greeting of peace (why does it seem to take so long?) and to flag that you’re about to play the next hymn. It might be an improvement on the perpetual ritual announcement from the parson – “Now, our next hymn is, um...”

Franck’s pieces in L’Organiste seldom exceed two pages, the Offertoires being an honourable exception. Many are quite short, being a single page or slightly more. The technical standard is not exacting, but some pieces will demand more practice than others.

Some of the pieces have titles which point to their seasonal application, such as a few Noels. Many of the Offertoires could be used as postludes: some of these indicate in the title that they are Offertoire ou Sortie. Most of the shorter pieces could be grouped as pairs, making a kind of A-B-A structure if you want to make a longer service prelude.

While the collection was conceived for the harmonium, this need not be a restriction on how to register the pieces. Because dynamics are marked in, it will be useful to have two manuals, with the opportunity to shape phrases using the swell pedal. The player will be free to decide whether to have manual changes or not, and whether to use the pedal to provide extra gravitas to these little gems of ARS GALLICA.

This is a useful resource for these pieces is which contains midi-based recordings of the whole collection.

The score is available here.

Meditation in Blue on Iste Confessor – Rosalie Bonighton.

The hymn tune Iste Confessor will be familiar to those who sing from Together In Song, where it appears at number 61.  This is one of those marvellously modal tunes, and offers much material for the improviser and composer.  For those without access to a copy of the melody, it is quoted in Example 1.

Example 1: Iste Confessor melody

Rosalie Bonighton is a familiar figure on the Australian church music scene, and hers is a voice that I find personally very attractive.  As the composer note in the Southern Cross Collection points out, Bonighton’s style aims to bring idioms from jazz and blues into church and organ music.

The overall setting lilts along in a gentle 12/8.  The pedal plays a rhythmic ostinato, based on a long-short-long pattern (see Example 2).  This syncopated rhythmic figure reminds me of the amphimacer, or cretic metre, often found in folk poetry and English renaissance songs, such as Shall I die? Shall I fly? – not to mention countless advertising slogans and catch phrases such as “Lah-di-dah!”  This matches the earthy feel of the hymn tune quite nicely.

Example 2: Meditation in Blue -- R. Bonighton, pedal part, bar 1.

The basic approach to rhythm in a jazz or blues combo is to ‘swing’ – keep this in mind if the rhythmic subtlety called for by the score looks daunting.  ‘Swinging the beat’ is well established in the wider musical environment, but so much of our performance culture as organists militates against doing this.  The rhythm is easier if felt across a steady pulse, rather than adhering strictly to what is written.  You could do worse than sit at the organ bench practicing this figure while saying “Lah-di-dah.”

The harmony is based around seventh chords, as is typical for the idiom.  Many of the block chords are set in the higher inversions, which creates interesting ‘crunch’ chords when thirds are breached, or clusters created.  The harmony is very colourful, but without the sort of show-off impulse that seems to infect so many pieces that like to wear their style on the sleeve.  This piece calls for an understated approach, with subtle use of the swell box and a carefully worked out approach to the legato.  If you make the touch too smooth you will lose the sense of flow, and too detached and the piece will lack the essential singing character.

The melody appears clearly in the uppermost voice twice in the piece (at bars 5-19 and 49-64), where it is clearly marked as a solo line.  This interacts with ‘riff’ motives on the swell which occasionally move up to the great, much like the to-and-fro of a jazz combo where each part takes the foreground for a short time.

Organists wanting to find an accessible piece that makes use of familiar liturgical material will gain much from this piece, which sits in the wider tradition of the chorale fantasia.  The prevailing dynamic is pp to mf, with solo lines projected slightly above this.  The liturgical usefulness of this piece is clear; it could function equally well as a service prelude, or as an interlude – such as a quiet offertory piece, or at communion, or as a post-sermon reflection.

Meditation in Blue is in the Southern Cross Collection, available from the Society of Organists (Victoria) Inc.

Some recital highlights

Photo courtesy of SOMS

I played a lunchtime recital at St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney, last year, which was great fun.  I've loaded up some highlights from the recital.

The programme was as follows:

Rondeau from Abdelazar -- Henry Purcell (1659-1695)

Prelude & Fugue in d minor (Op. 37, No. 3) -- Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47)

Lindemann Variations -- Mark Viggiani

Maestoso from Sonata in c# (Op. 5) -- Basil Harwood (1859-1949)

As you will observe, there was a certain amount of anniversary-keeping in the choice of pieces.


The Mendelssohn piece is not commonly played, for reasons I haven't really ever fathomed.  It belongs to a different stylistic world to the other two preludes and fugues in the set; my perspective on this piece is that it really conjures the spirit of Buxtehude much more powerfully than the feeling of Bach one gets from the c minor prelude and fugue.  The d minor can certainly be analyzed as a multi-sectional toccata with an extended fugue at the end, a procedure that many organists would be familiar with from their studies of the praeludia of Buxtehude and early Bach.

The Harwood piece was chosen on account of his associations with St Barnabas, Pimlico, the site of Kensitite riots during the Catholic Revival in the Church of England.  Harwood went on to be organist at Ely and Christ Church, Oxford, before retiring on inheriting the family estates on the death of his father in 1909.  There was a certain frisson about playing such luxuriantly high church music in the citadel of Australian Evangelicalism.

The Harwood piece is interesting on several levels.  It is based on a plainsongy sort of melody associated with the office hymn for Lauds on Whitsunday and its octave.  For your edification, here is the text, which is attributed to Hilary of Poitiers:

Beata nobis gaudia
Anui reuxit orbita
Cum Spiritus paraclitus
Illapsus est Apostolis

The circle of the year has again
Brought back to us blessed joys,
When the Spirit, the Comforter,
Came down upon the Apostles.

The melody is quoted in full at the end of the movement, and you'll hear it on the vox humana.

Harwood's Op. 5 Sonata was dedicated to Walter Parratt, whose main contribution to Harwood's development as a composer for the organ was to discourage him from composing a second organ sonata shortly after the successful reception of the first.  Instead, there is a group of pieces which can be conjectured as the movements of what should have been the next sonata: the Dithyramb is known to have been in this group.  There is another organ sonata, but it belongs to a considerably later period in Harwood's life and has a completely different set of ideas going on in it.

This is an absolutely live concert recording, which means that the person minding the recording device got chatty occasionally, and you can hear the bells in the tower of the town hall next door during a couple of the pieces.  That's authenticity for you!

The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba

Better known among sticklers for accuracy as follows:

Sinfonia from Solomon -- G.F. Handel.

Recorded yesterday on the amazing two-rank extension organ at St George's, Reservoir.  It's one of those instruments which exerts a fascination for me: there's something about working with such well-conceived but limited means that encourages a higher degree of creativity in one's playing.

Music for Sunday 1 August 2010

Readings for the week are linked here.


The psalm setting is here.


The setting will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).

Hymns are as follows:

Introit: Father of heaven, whose love profound [131]
Gradual: Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee [599 ii]
Offertory: All my hope on God is founded [560 i]
Communion: Bread of heav'n, on thee we feed [513]

The postlude at All Saints will be:

Toccata [BWV 540] -- J.S. Bach

Ahem...

WASILLA, Alaska—Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin defended her use of the word refudiate, telling her critics, “Look it up in the fictionary.”
While claiming that refudiate is a real word, she reserved her right to make up new words in the future.
“Everyone makes up words—Shakespeare, George W. Bush, Levi Johnston,” she said. “The only person I know who doesn’t do it is my husband, Todd, who doesn’t speak.”
Gov. Palin also lashed out at those who criticized her use of the word refudiate, calling them “incohecent.”
In a related story, Gov. Palin would defeat President Barack Obama if she ran in 2012, according to a poll published in Mayan Prophecy Weekly.

With thanks to Andy Borowitz.

On a bender

Two recent arrivals on my bookshelf:

Music and Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century British Musicology -- Bennett Zon
Philosophies of Music History: a Study of General Histories of Music, 1600-1960 -- Warren Dwight Allen

I seem to be becoming something of an historiography junkie (well, nothing really new there!), but these are two books that I read during my Ph.D. studies.  I'm in the process of breaking parts of the thesis down into articles, which means a certain amount of revisiting sources.  I just want to put a couple of thoughts here about each of these books.

Warren Dwight Allen's book is a standard text in the field, although I admit I didn't encounter it until 2008 when it was recommended to me by someone I met at a conference in the UK.  So, I came home, took it out at the library and started reading.  I found it a bit hard to deal with at first -- it's not the sort of book where you can just dip in and out of chapter sections, so reading it through the index was probably not the best approach to take on this occasion.  The chapters dealing with nineteenth century music histories illustrate the conflict between the Great Man myth and evolutionism, and the ways in which these produced a particular mode of doing music history.  Now that I've got a bit more time on my hands, I think I'll enjoy the rest of the book!

Bennett Zon's book follows on from Allen.  This is another one where dipping into chapter sections simply will not do.  My first encounter was about dealing with the Great Man vs Evolution argument, which formed the basis of discussions in at least two chapters of my thesis.  I picked this book up again last week, and it's already sent me scurrying back to a couple of sources with a new perspective.  It's always good when a book does that!

Cranks and Geniuses -- Ten Reasons to be an Organist!

I am playing a recital at St Francis in the Fields Anglican Church, Mooroolbark, in a couple of weeks. Here are some details.

2.30pm, Sunday 8 August 2010

St Francis in the Fields Anglican Church, Mooroolbark.  (Location map here)

Programme

Sinfonia from Solomon -- G.F. Handel (1685-1759)

Toccata and Fugue in F [BWV 540] -- J.S. Bach (1685-1750)

Fugue on B A C H (Op. 60, No. 1)

Sketch in C major (Op. 58, No. 2) -- R. Schumann (1810-56)

Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann -- E.T. Chipp (1823-86)

Larghetto in F Sharp minor -- S.S. Wesley (1810-76)

Air and Variations on the Holsworthy Church Bells -- Wesley

Prelude on Tallis's Canon (Op. 88, No. 6) -- C.V. Stanford (1852-1924)

Sonata in D major (Op. 65, No. 5) -- F. Mendelssohn (1809-47)

Bits and bobs

A package from Raymond Bredin, legal, civic, clerical and academic outfitters of distinction, arrived in the post yesterday.

The turnaround on the order was quite impressive, given that I'd allowed more than six weeks from sending the form in until the week of the graduation.  This is the first time I've owned anything more than the hood of my degree, which was all I needed to get by in the Sunday gig.  Of course, it's unlikely I'll be doing another Ph.D. in a hurry.

And, with a month to go, I finally got all the invitations out for the graduation party.

Palinism

Refudiate (Alaskan neologism, derived from refute and repudiate, c2010), to disprove and dissociate simultaneously.  Alt: cut and run.

With thanks to truthdig...

The VCA saga continues

It appears that the University of Melbourne was compelled to release its response to the Switkowski Review earlier than scheduled.  This landed in my email last night:

I know that many in our community have followed events at the Faculty of the VCA and Music over the past year with deep concern. Today I hope to bring good news for all interested in our visual and performing arts programs.
The University has now released its response to the Switkowski Review of the Faculty of the VCA and Music, completed in May this year. The University Council has approved the recommendations of a steering committee under my leadership to consider the Review, with input from the faculty itself and consultation with the VCA Integration Committee.
Principally, the University endorses the Review’s recommendation that VCAM continue as a single faculty, but now comprising two discrete parts to be known initially as the VCA and the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. Each part will be led by a Director, which will be a new position reporting to the Dean.
The response also endorses the Review’s recommendations on the future curriculum of the Faculty. These include suspending the proposed introduction of the Melbourne Model for the visual and performing arts disciplines based at the Southbank campus, pending a new process to consider the curriculum most appropriate to these disciplines.
This process will consider the faculty’s courses, teaching practices and the feasibility of offering an exclusively practice-based Associate Diploma and Graduate Diploma degree program. As recommended by the Switkowski Report, the review will be guided firmly by the principles that curriculum must be financially sustainable, that studio-practice remain central to tuition, and that talent-based entry be reaffirmed.
The Provost or nominee will lead the review, with a brief to report back by 31 December 2010.
The full text of the University’s response, “The Future of the Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Melbourne,” may be viewed online.
As part of the new direction, the Dean, Professor Sharman Pretty will resign from the position. The University's response has clarified that the future directions of the Faculty, and hence the role of Dean within that context, will be significantly different to that which Professor Pretty was appointed. As a result Professor Pretty has decided to step down, as such a different role is not one that she would be interested to pursue.
Professor Pretty came to us after holding distinguished appointments as an educational leader in the arts both in Australia and New Zealand, which had followed a career in music as a performer, teacher and arts manager. She proved to be a highly intelligent, articulate and committed leader and she tackled a very challenging task with great energy and resilience, informed by a wide knowledge of the advancement of the arts internationally. The University is grateful for her many initiatives and achievements, including achieving major support to secure the future of the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development, and building partnerships with the Royal College of Music London and the Shanghai Conservatory through the recent Global Ensemble project at the Shanghai Expo, and locally through the relationship with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and other professional arts organisations. Her vision for the future of the Southbank campus as a performing arts precinct of international distinction, combining our educational activities with the work of Melbourne’s professional performing companies, is one we will be exploring very seriously.
The changes we have announced today are important ones. I hope they will serve to speed our progress towards achieving a better future for our visual and performing arts programs, one of which we can all be proud.
Professor John Dewar
Acting Vice Chancellor

The withdrawal of Professor Sharman Pretty from the VCA largely vindicates the arguments about her suitability to the institution.  It is clear that the Dean's leadership style made her a polarising figure, which ultimately led to the politics of the institution to triumph over its purpose.  Many exasperated people will be relieved.

Many questions remain, notably the big one about the duplication of music between the Southbank and Parkville campuses.  Since music is to remain within the Melbourne Model structure, it would be better to make a division of the faculty to allow the graduate school to operate in Parkville (taking in performance and research) and teach the undergraduate course at Southbank.  This would be the most sensible use of the existing infrastructure, and does not necessarily imply a heavy division between the two schools.  Indeed, there is a pressing need for a career development structure among graduate students by making sure that they are at least given opportunities for tutoring at Southbank.  Making sure that teaching forms part of the graduate student experience is essential to the development of a post-doctoral career.

Other commentary on this development can be found in The Age and Crikey.

Music for Sunday 25 July 2010

This week the Parish of Jika Jika is keeping the feast of St James the Great.  It happens to be the priest in charge's name day, so it's as good an excuse as any to roll out the incense and turn a figure-8 procession.

Processions are becoming more fun, now that the choir has reached the stage of being able to walk and sing.  Last Sunday was their first turn in the procession -- although they forgot to walk out with the sanctuary party at the end of Mass.

The readings are linked here.

The setting for the week is Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757). Hymns are as follows:

Introit: We praise, we worship you, O God [98]
For the Psalm: The Lord has done great things for us [80]
Gradual: Lord, who shall sit beside thee [tune: 551]
Offertory: For all the saints [455]
Communion: Come, risen Lord, a deign to be our guest [524]

Depending on how things go at rehearsal tonight, the choir may be singing the proper communion chant for the feast.

The organ postlude at All Saints will be:

Allegro Maestoso from Sonata in D (Op. 65, No. 5) -- Felix Mendelssohn

Illiteracy

 Watch this closely, and at 17 seconds in you shall see a product of modern education:




You read correctly: "They're tricky and their sneaky..."  What a howler.

The attempt at verse is appallingly inept, so I suppose one minor error of syntax doesn't really add up to much.  Still, this could have been biting and witty -- had it been written by someone who knew what they were up to.  I just hope the poor singer got the proper award rate for lending his voice to this dismal effort.


Update, 22/7: The video has been pulled down from Youtube.  Harumph.

Update #2, 24/7: Found in a cache, so it's embedded here again.  Enjoy!

Mel's latest gig

With thanks to Truthdig.

It begs the question

The Organ Historical Trust of Australia runs a list of redundant instruments, which sometimes turns up a fascinating gem.  More often than not, some unpromising-looking organ turns out to be a little more fascinating in real life than it appeared on paper.  Being the organist of a church where the organ is desperately in need of a lovingly-set, small-but-destructive fire, I watch this list fairly regularly.  The instrument I play from week to week has reached the stage of ready to die.

Sometimes I see instruments listed which beg the question: why would you even contemplate saving it?  This is one of those cases (or grilles, as it turns out!) where the historical instrument at the core of the organ has been so comprehensively compromised by later work that it would be pointless to attempt to retrieve any of it.  The historical part of the specification listed below appears to be the Great, which was built by George Fincham in 1893 for the Princess Theatre, and sold from there to the present owners in 1895.

GREAT		PEDAL
Open Diapason Clarabella Dulciana Principal Flute Fifteenth Swell to Great Sub Swell to Great Swell to Great Super	8 A 8 8 4 4 2	Open Diapason Bourdon Principal Bass Flute Octave Quint Fifteenth Great to Pedal Swell to Pedal	16 A (metal bass) 16 D 8 A 8 D 5-1/3 D 4 A
SWELL
Violin Diapason Gedact Salicional Gemshorn Flute Salicet Twelfth Fifteenth Tierce Oboe Sub Octave Super Octave Tremulant	8 8 B 8 C 4 4 B 4 C 2-2/3 C 2 C 1-3/5 C 8

(The letters A, B, C, D following numbers indicate unit/extension ranks.)

Now, before courting a return rant, I should point out that the fact that the instrument is listed by OHTA is no endorsement of the historical value of the organ as it stands.  However, it is very easy for a reader with little knowledge of the organ scene to assume that an organization with "historical" in the title will be making an implicit statement about the preservation value of any instrument profiled on its website.

This instrument was a single-manual organ until 1960, and I presume that the Great represents the original specification.  The Swell is simply a contemporary extension organ model that Fincham was churning out by the dozen in the period, which coincided with the big post-WWII expansion of the churches.  These instruments consisted of the following ranks and extensions:

(Violin) Diapason: 8, 4, 2
Gedackt / Flute: 8, 4, 2 2/3, 2, 1 3/5
Salicional: 8, 4, 2 2/3, 2
Bourdon: 16 (on pedal)
Mixture: III (mostly repeating ranks)

These instruments generally had two manuals, with a different rank used to extend for mutations and softer upperwork on each manual.  The whole soundboard was enclosed in a swell box, and the action was a direct electro-magnetic affair which makes the pipes spit when they speak.  I have played instruments of this model in Melbourne as well as country Victoria.  The only saving grace for these instruments is a resonant building; many of the churches equipped with these organs are notably dry on this front.  The best that can be said is that organs like these are better than nothing, but no less dreadful for that.

If you compare this with the specification of the Swell above, it is clear that this standard extension specification is what lies behind the new work of 1960.  Along with electrification of the action, probably new soundboards, and the provision of a standard console, it could be argued that any historical material -- consisting only of pipework -- has had its character compromised in various ways.  The aesthetic properties of the instrument as an object have been utterly destroyed: the original casework was probably burnt.

Sometimes an organ reaches the end of its useful life, and there is no point in trying to keep it functioning and in one piece.  An instrument like this has gone somewhere else: it keeps up appearances, but underneath it all, there's no will to live.

New page -- The Index

I've been writing a series of articles for Organ Australia over the last few months exploring simple music for the reluctant-to-average organist.  Organists come in two speeds in matters of technology -- broadband and dialup.  I am hoping that one of the major contributions this series will make is to provide an easy way in to finding scores on the internet, drawing on the most active public domain archives presently available.

I am an inveterate lurker around sites such as IMSLP and the Sibley Project -- not to mention the Choral Public Domain Library, the Werner Icking Archive and so much else.  The availability of good quality scores on the internet is simply mind-boggling.  This is a decidedly mixed blessing, however.

So, I've decided to have a crack at categorizing some of what's on the internet.  There's a new page on the blog, called The Index.  Go and have a look there for the long explanation of why I've put it up, and click on to see what you might find.

Is it a Colour or does it also Function?

I'm in the early chapters of a fascinating book on the augmented sixth.  In the past I looked on projects like this with the same sort of bemusement with which I viewed histories of a single year.  Fascinating projects, ultimately revealing in some way -- but, to what end?

The question that's in my mind at the moment is this: how do we describe the augmented sixth in a simple way?

Every university music student is tortured by French, German and Italian sixths at some point in their studies.  They're bewildering, but fascinating.  No understanding of music since the early eighteenth century is complete without some account of these chords.

I have niggling feelings about augmented sixths.  I think this has to do with their double implication, that the members pull in opposing directions.  It's like a rupture in the harmonic tissue.

There's a second question going through my mind, related to the notional history of the chord's origins.  It's clear to see how the augmented sixth arises out of voice leading -- a type of contrapuntal accident, but full of spice.  So, when is it more accurate to describe an augmented sixth as a colour, rather than in purely functional terms?

Music for Sunday 18 July

The readings for the week are linked here.

The mass setting will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).

Hymns for the week are as follows:

Introit: Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation [111]
For the Psalm: Justice alone is the way of the Lord [5]
Gradual: Blest are the pure in heart [448]
Offertory: The God of Abraham praise [125]
Communion: Here, gracious Lord, we see you face to face [516]

Organ music at All Saints will be:

Postlude: Allegro maestoso (Op 55, No 7) -- Flor Peeters

Francophiles of the world unite

 

'appy Bastille Day!

 

Read this!

Just a small sampler of something that resonated very powerfully for me.  This is an extract from a valedictory speech delivered at a school in California by a retiring humanities teacher.

The increasing tendency to see schools, colleges and universities as businesses has led to a focus on what most clearly results in immediate economic reward. And while economic growth is important, a myopic fixation on the short term has dangerous consequences. Just last week, the L.A. Times ran a front-page story asking if a college degree is still “worth the cost.”

And recently there has been serious talk of encouraging new college students to choose a major, to focus early, and to graduate in three years. While I realize that there are real reasons for some to finish in three years, most of the articles I’ve read suggest students refrain from taking classes that don’t apply directly to a career.

Don’t do it. If you can afford it, explore whatever interests you. Learn another language and spend a year abroad. Take a few courses in philosophy or in ethics along with the courses in accounting and microbiology. Life right after high school, in college or not, should be a time where it is normal to discuss random topics all night long—stopping only when the sun takes away the dark and reminds everyone that a new day is coming.

What I want you all to realize about this more “efficient” educational future is that whatever remains untested, or whatever is not immediately applicable to a career, becomes unimportant. The humanities and the arts, creativity and music, are being diminished at every level.

Consider how many times you have heard reference to a crisis in math and science. Now consider how many times you have heard it reported that, as a country, we suffer from a crisis in the study of history and literature and music. I keep waiting—but such a news report suggests a comedy skit more than a serious warning. 

Without much discussion, without any discussion, we are allowing decision makers to discard programs that develop skills that I believe are needed to make life richer and foster an appreciation for diversity. We are allowing others to discard programs that, I believe, are needed to keep democracy alive. Your significant contributions to maintain many of these programs in Irvine gives me hope that many, maybe most, of you agree with my concerns. But how long can this community hold out against national trends toward more efficient, businesslike schools, and severely limited opportunities?

I ask each of you—graduates, educators and parents—to remain concerned with our collective future by, at least, being wary of reactionary pressures toward educational efficiency. Significant learning is often accidental.

Read the rest of this splendid piece here.

I am often challenged about why one should spend time -- and lots of it -- teaching young people to sing.  This is why.

A real education revolution does not rest on putting computers in every school.  Treating technology as an end in itself is of no educational value whatsoever.  It is an example of the obscenity that underlies debate over education policy here in Australia -- be it performance pay for teachers, or punitive approaches to youth unemployment ("earn or learn").  Ideological education is left to the political parties, who promptly act to withdraw support from any activity not aligned with their interests (so-called "voluntary" student unionism, for example).

A real education revolution would involve the abandonment of every ideological position available under the present terms of debate.

Since when was it good policy to impose blinkers on every student in the pursuit of accountability in schools?  Discuss.

Some useful links

I've been trying to get a set of group activities sorted out for my white level choristers over the last few days.  Things are going really well, and once the present group graduates on to their light blue level (materials ordered last week -- thanks RSCM online!) we'll be looking for a few more white level choristers to swell the ranks.

There is now a stable group of nine choristers, along with a couple who are still wavering.  There is a good spread of ages, which means that there's two clear cohorts, with about half quite young, and half older.  This makes breaking the larger group into two smaller groups a viable proposition; it's possible to give each chorister some personal attention at each rehearsal.

Last week was a testing week -- all present passed the tests about following the service.  This includes knowing what is in the pew sheet, how the order of service works, and how to find various things in the hymnbook.  Once they pass these tests, they get a cassock and sit up the front.  When they pass some musical foundation tests (plus any special tasks that may be set) they get a surplice and a medal with a white ribbon.  This will be be the point where the choir goes from being a provisional idea to a concrete reality.

Still, in the meantime, I'm working quite hard on developing the program materials for the training scheme.  I decided to put the white level together for myself, so that there would be enough covered to ensure that choristers would be on their way to sight reading simple hymn tunes by the time they've done it.  The division of the group means that one part goes off with my assistant to work on rhythm, while the other group stays with me to work on pitch.  After half and hour or so, we swap.  There's a general warmup at the beginning, and a group activity at the end -- the latter usually competitive, and aimed at reinforcing the concepts covered that day.  Sol-fa knockout is proving to be a real hit!

In my wanderings, I've hit upon a couple of useful websites with material for interval recognition.  This is all-important, given that I would like my choristers to be on the way to bullet-proof in about six weeks' time, which is when I expect the older group will be completing white level.  The surest way to teach interval recognition is by a series of songs where each interval features prominently (I remember vividly learning Maria, working madly on the tritone).  The web has megatonnes of material in this direction, but I was especially impressed by Earmaster, which provides a link to youtube for each song, which is useful for quick and memorable reference.

In the Jungle also has a useful list of songs, and a very good commentary on tuning issues as they apply to each interval.

Virginia Commonwealth University Music Department has a very comprehensive list of interval songs, but you'll have to find the music for yourself.  Much of it is replicated at Earmaster.

This site has some interesting advice on integrating interval practice into your physical training routine.  They don't recommend taking medical advice before commencing the program, but I reckon it would be a good idea...

There are a few good web applications for testing yourself on interval recognition.  Here is one, although the midi quality is a bit suspect on my computer speakers.  There's also a song list, which links to youtube.  The testing part is like a multiple-choice quiz, so plenty of fun to be had!  I'm not sure how to integrate this into my teaching program, at least for white level, so perhaps there's scope for it at some later stage.

On a lighter note

Some very old sketch comedy from youtube.  There's a theme to these videos, which will become apparent.  Sir Joh was Queensland's gift to comedians in the 1980s, and I remember the Jana Wendt skit very vivdly.

THAT debate

It's been an interesting week for anyone in an interest in Australian refugee policy.  For regular readers of newspapers, followers of current affairs by whatever media or just regular conversationalists, the whole topic has been unavoidable for the last few days.  Blame it on PM Gillard, who asked us to let it all hang out.

There have been a couple of interesting items about this in the Fairfax papers.  Richard Ackland wrote this piece which was published yesterday, which began by surveying Australian immigration panics of times past:

Over the aeons there have been any number of ingenious tricks played by Australian officialdom to stem the tide of human traffic. In the gold rush of the 1850s and '60s, Victoria invented a hefty poll tax levied on the masters of ships bringing Chinese to the colony: £10 for every Chinaman on board.
This was met with more ingenuity. The ships pulled in at Port Adelaide or Robe and the Chinese would walk to the Victorian goldfields. South Australia soon cottoned on to the poll tax idea and Manning Clark described the consequences: ''Within a few months of the passing of the act the streets of Robe which had teemed with Chinese were almost deserted; the cats of Robe began to return.''
The arrival of the ''other'' has always unsettled Australia.
In the early 19th century, pastoralists pushed to bring in more boatloads of criminals from England. Apparently they liked the slave labour. The urban middle class, craving respectability, were appalled, as were the freedmen who had to compete with convict labour. And paying to import Irishmen wasn't popular. The upwardly mobile were anxious about sovereign debt, of all things.

 Go and read the rest here, including the comment thread.

Then today, The Age had a piece on the opinion page by Catherine Ford.  I'm going to quote a good chunk of this, because it really sums up the problem underlying this whole issue.

''OK, get this down in your survey,'' Mick told him, shifting his weight to a pile of capsicums. ''The government has very, very seriously f---ed up on this.''
The boy blanched but began to take notes.
''These people aren't coming out here on leaky boats because they feel like a little holiday,'' Mick told him. ''They're coming here because they're terrified of what's going to happen to them if they stay. They have no future where they come from. Do you understand?''
The boy nodded and scribbled.
''Now, what I can't understand,'' Mick continued, his voice rising, ''is why we want to make them suffer all over again by putting them in such a remote place, way out in the middle of a frigging desert, where nobody can reach them, hoping that most of us will forget about them. Again, why are they doing it?''
The gathering shoppers, the schoolboy and I stood silenced, galvanised by his urgent, honourable, incandescent questions. The boy fielded them, literally, as it occurred to me every last one of us residing in this country should be made to. Impressively, he wrestled with the subject, and before an audience of impatient, attendant strangers.
''They put these people there,'' he answered Mick, uncertainly, ''because they have to process them. And a desert's probably a good place to process somebody, isn't it?''
''Processed?'' Mick cast around at his customers. ''Can you believe this? They've got kids talking like this now! That frigging word.''
He turned to the boy. ''You ever heard of Villawood?'' The boy shook his head. ''Villawood's in Sydney, mate, right near the city. It's a s---hole, and I'm not saying put them there, but at least people can visit it. Who's going to drive to the WA desert to check on these people?''
The boy looked befuddled. ''But we have to put them somewhere, don't we? They can't just come straight in off the boats. They're illegals.''
''They've brainwashed you!'' Mick barked. He'd forgotten, it seemed, the real object of his anger, or else, like those of us who are similarly provoked to frustration and despair by the uncertain fate this country has consistently dished out to asylum seekers, he'd lashed out indiscriminately. I felt for the boy, taking the weight for something so grave and serious, a matter that properly belongs, after all, with mature, compassionate and politically engaged adults, men and women who have agency enough and a sense of moral duty to act on the matter.
''I want you to take your survey away and have a think about this stuff, OK?'' Mick said briskly. ''Take it home, go into your bedroom, lie down, and think bloody hard about it, because it's not right how we're treating these people. We have to let them quickly into towns and cities where they can start working, start living again.''

I really cannot recommend this piece more highly.  It really does hit the nail on the head.  Go and read the whole piece.

The whole issue of asylum seekers has been rendered toxic over the last decade or so.  I still remember the big argument over Pauline Hanson's maiden speech in Federal Parliament, way back in 1996.  In a sense, her ghost is what haunts this issue.  The most memorable lampooning delivered to an Australian politician was dished out to Hanson by the writers and cast of Fast Forward, who depicted her offering a map of Australia stamped with the word "FULL" as a special offer at her fish and chip shop.  Sadly, at the time, such maps were a favourite of footpath graffiti.

Whatever the merits or problems of the various international conventions about refugees, the Australian government has taken an unreasonable line for a very long time.  I thought the trickery with our maritime borders might set an unfortunate precedent, or at least come back to bite us some time.  Moreover, given our role in conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan, we are among the factors that makes it difficult for people to remain in their home countries.

More wedding music

I've had the chance to upload some more samples of organ music for weddings.

You will now find the complete range of pieces for signing the register, and nearly all of the pieces for walking in.

I've got a couple of further opportunities to get some recording done this week (including re-doing some very nasty sounding tracks), so hopefully this aspect of the blog will be complete very soon!

Check out the Wedding Music page.

A bit of Frescobaldi

Here is a short Toccata from Fiori Musicali, by Girolama Frescobaldi.  This was one of the pieces on the programme from the concert last week, and I recorded it during a practice session at St Cuthbert's Presbyterian Church, Brighton.  The piece which follows this Toccata is the famous Ricercare for keyboard and obbligato instrument, in this case a trumpet.  Sadly, I didn't have time to get a recording of the second piece.  Maybe another time.

I think Frescobaldi is one of the more difficult composers to get one's head around.  He's a bit like Cesar Franck: it's very easy to get the notes right, to get the basic sound right, to play things fast, slow and every extreme in between, but there's something else that you either 'get' or don't 'get.'  I found Frescobaldi a huge challenge to grasp as an undergraduate.  I suspect that being more occupied with reading books about music and being a big thought bubble precluded engaging with his music on the emotional level it seems to demand.  There's something intense about the guy.  This shouldn't come as a surprise, given the times and places in which he worked, which you can survey from the short biography on Wikipedia.

I've often speculated about which later composers bear the closest affinities with Frescobaldi.  After all, he calls for a high degree of rubato, a type of flexibility in tempo that we associate with the unmeasured preludes of Louis Couperin (well, you kind of have the freedom to make the rhythmic shapes up for yourself there...) or perhaps more immediately with the piano music of Frederic Chopin.  On another level, there's the sheer contrapuntal genius, and the only figure who bulks large in this direction is Bach.  Then there's the emotional intensity of everything: is it like Mozart, with his giddy changes of mood, or are we heading in a more serious direction -- Beethoven's, Berlioz's, and Brahms's deep sincerity and reserve?

So this is the challenge to us moderns.  We can think through style with an incredible array of reference points, but when we take Frescobaldi to the organ we ultimately have to make a choice about the sound.  This was always my biggest hangup about playing this music, given that I acquired a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of registration practice as an undergraduate, combined with the necessity to always compromise with the organs one has to play from week to week.  There are no really good examples of sixteenth century-style Italian organs in Australia, which featured split registers and individually-drawn ranks.  So the compromise has to be between what I think might be the sort of sound an Italian organist of a particular period might have chosen in approaching a small toccata of this type, and the instrument I have available.  What is the tonal colour that fits the genre most closely?  I know that toccatas such as this one could be registered in a variety of ways, including a chorus, using smaller groups of flutes, a solo diapason, or the plaintive Voce Humana, an undulating flue stop (not the vox humana, which is a short-length reed stop).  I have chosen to try to 'fake' the Voce Humana by using the swell Open Diapason with the Voix Celestes.  It's up to you, as the listener, to decide whether the effect was successful or not.

Listen to it here.

A proper noun

What would be the proper noun for the driver of a ute?  I know that roadhog is applied to the 4WD driver, aggressive roadhogging twit to drivers of those dreadful SUV/civilian military vehicles.  But there has to be a proper noun which evokes everything about a ute driver in exactly the same way that the term "Volvo driver" evokes a certain type of driver.  This is a long-time dilemma of mine, having known many people who drive utes.  So I think the problem is fixed.  Here's the word:

UTENIST

Being, the driver of a ute.  The collective noun would be a consort of utenists.

You need to be careful with the keystroke errors on this one, otherwise you have something quite different.

The last collective noun I heard for a group of these guys was: a mild tuning headache...

Inter-dominion rivalry?!

This from Yahoo news:

It has happened once again - travelers heading for Sydney, Australia have taken a major wrong turn and ended up in Sydney, Canada.
Italian couple, Valerio Torresi and Serena Tavoloni, in their mid-20's, realized the mistake when they went to board the connecting flight on Tuesday night – to no avail.
It was then realized, the couple's travel agency in Italy had made an error.
"The ticket said only Sydney," said Torresi. "The agency doesn't know Sydney, N.S. The travel agency is wrong... a great wrong."
The travelers, who had not previously ventured outside Europe, made the most of their unexpected detour – receiving free accommodation from a local hotel and a lobster meal by a reporter interested in their story.
A local guide also took them to see the sights with the help of an Italian-speaking resident.
"The people are very kind and very friendly," said Torresi. "I think it's a beautiful place and I see Canadian life, and it's great."
"We were lucky," added Tavoloni.
The couple hopes to fly out Thursday for Australia, where they plan to tour the country for 48 days.
This is not the first time such a mistake has been made. Last year a man and his grandson from the Netherlands spent time in Canada by accident, a woman from Argentina in 2008 and a British couple in 2002.

The moral of the tale?  Don't book through an Italian travel agent -- surely the ticket price was too good to be true, given the different distances between Italy and Sydney, Nova Scotia, and Sydney, New South Wales.  So secondly, always double-check the destination if the price looks like an outrageously good deal.

A ruminative reccomendation.

I worked for one of the most fissiparous parishes in Melbourne until a couple of years ago.  At the outset my job was to build a new choir from scratch, and all I inherited were three people who declared their desire to be shot of the place. By the time I left, there were nine people turning up on a regular basis, of whom about half had learned to sing and read music through their membership of the choir.  This allowed the performance of simple polyphony from week to week, and gave strong leadership in hymns and other congregational music.  One day I was called to a meeting with a churchwarden and the vicar and offered the choice between taking an immediate settlement or being sacked in three months' time.  I was pushed out at just the moment when job satisfaction had become more than a real prospect.

Going to work felt like walking through fire for a very long time.  Every step forward was accompanied by a thumping regress -- most memorably, a full quarter of the choir membership walked out after a parishioner decided to walk up to the organ and begin hurling expletives at me during the first hymn at Mass.  That person never apologized, and lapsed into ingratiating praise every time we crossed paths.  No acknowledgment of the damage he had done; I think he was silently proud for knocking over a lot of hard work.

Nor was this man the only one, and I wasn't the sole target.  My most distressing memory is the parish Annual General Meeting one year, which took the form of an orchestrated attack on the vicar by a few members of the congregation.  This resulted in his taking extended sick leave, and destroyed his marriage as the prelude to his departure from the parish nearly six months later.  At the AGM he was not permitted to say a single word without being verbally abused.  Every possible sensibility was offended on that occasion, and in the events following.

People behave strangely in churches, and the smaller the parish, the more intense the fighting.  It's usually the people most committed to a definite vision of a place that kick up the biggest stirs.  They mangle every functioning thing in sight, with a special emphasis on clergy and musicians.

This is why I was pleased to receive a copy of When Sheep Attack by Dennis R. Maynard.  Maynard is an Episcopalian priest who has a wider career in consultantancy, where he has worked across the US and Canada (more info here).  The premise of Sheep is that there is an identifiable set of behaviours displayed by parish antagonists, and that the purpose of this behaviour is the breaking down and subsequent removal of successful leaders -- the emphasis is on clergy, but the ramifications for other professionals involved in parish leadership, such as musicians, is obvious.

The essential argument of the book is that these antagonistic behaviours are prompted by the sorts of embedded power structures which contribute to the familiar pattern of inertia in parish life.  Clergy (and others) whose activities promote growth in numbers and vitality threaten these structures.  It rocks the boat, which sets off a spiral of controlling behaviours. Furthermore, a parish which has disposed of one vicar is likely to do so again.  Maynard uses the term 'dry drunk' to describe the behavioural pattern of parish antagonists:

The characteristics of those on a Dry Drunk parallel those identified by our participants as those of their antagonists.  High control needs, anger, resentment, envy and jealousy with an egocentricity verging on narcissim.  Underlying this behaviour is an unattainable standard of perfection for the person they choose to project all their resentments on.  The obsessive-compulsive part of their personalities removes any possibility of forgiveness.  they won't let go of any real or imagined wrongs done to them.  Revenge becomes the driving force in their lives...the behavior patterns of the Dry Drunk can and do occur in people who have no history of any substance abuse.  Folks who have never done a thorough spiritual and moral inventory of their own lives get caught in the controlling behaviors that inevitably lead to anger, resentment, and revenge.  Because they have not dealt with their own sins they become fixated on the real or imagined sins of others...Dry Drunk behavior is possible in people who are chemically sober but still need to be healed spiritually themselves.

It should be emphasised that these behaviours are set off by a successful leader, not by your average run-of-the-mill parson with no great expectations of transforming the world by pumping up the parish program.  Antagonists prefer things to remain dull and quiet with not much happening, and react against a successful leader who brings in newcomers.  It's their church, and they want the casting vote against any sort of growth in the congregation.  Paradoxically, these are the very people who mutter darkly about how numbers are down and 'we need more young people,' the problem being that once you get these young people, they're not the 'right' young people.  Every possible attempt to bring about the desired result is landmined to the hilt.

Maynard's suggestion to anyone caught in the firing line with these people is to put procedures in place to counter gossip and innuendo tactics (covenants to stop triangulation, making sure that rumours are countered publicly with fact, make sure the probity of financial matters is beyond dispute, exposing the financial contributions of the antagonists as a way of answering their inevitable slurs about fiscal rectitude), chase the antagonists out, or get out while you still have your health.  Dry drunks are cunning, and will eventually manage to subvert any potential source of support, poisoning the well of goodwill that should flow from a successful program.  I experienced this: the churchwarden at the meeting where I was offered jump or push had been protesting his unreserved support for the music program only days beforehand.

There are other issues raised in the book, such as 'untouchable' staff members (including retired associate clergy; we might add to this the political animals who inhabit the choir stalls), who can be a lightening-rod for discontent.  The use of mugging tactics on committees, public confrontation, dropping suggestions to previous employers and ongoing harassment after you leave are all familiar to anyone who has thought long and hard about their experience after an intensely difficult posting.

Looking more widely, I would suggest that this book has a strong explanatory potential for anyone wanting to gain a productive a grasp on the tactics abroad in the prosecution of present arguments within international Anglicanism.  This slim volume should sit on the shelf next to books such as Chris McGillion's The Chosen Ones, Muriel Porter's New Puritans, Michael Hampson's Last Rites, Wesley Carr's The Priestlike Task and Stephen Bates's A Church At War.  It makes a useful commentary to the arguments presented by each of these authors, as it draws the treads of each of these books into a useful and coherent framework.  Antagonist behaviours are on proud display at every level of the church, and I think Maynard cracks the problem very elegantly.  I'm of a mind to make a gift of this to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, as well as local prelates and every leading musician I know.

Clergy and musicians often fail to take care of themselves, and because of the intense investment of goodwill involved in a successful music program, musicians are especially prone to attack.  It's not simply enough to get on with the job, and to do it well.

Anyone with an interest in group dynamics will find this an illuminating read.  If you have survived more than five minutes in the boxing ring with a group of bullies, this will be a very healing book. It may prove to be the best $20.00 or so you'll spend this year: consider it an investment in your peace of mind.  You are not alone.

You can read an extract and order the book from this page on Amazon.

Music for Sunday 11 July 2010

How many names can a Sunday acquire?  If you want to be comprehensive, it is Proper 10, or the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (surely this works better in Latin?!), or the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, or the Sixth Sunday after Trinity.

Whatever you prefer to call the coming Sunday, the readings for the week are linked here.

The psalm setting the parish is using this week will be found here.

If you turn up at All Saints or St Georges, the setting is Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass [Together in Song, 757].

Hymns for the week are as follows:

Introit: Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us [580]
Gradual: God of freedom, God of justice [657, tune: Picardy, 497]
Offertory: What does the Lord require for praise and offering? [618]
Communion: Sweet sacrament divine

The communion hymn is a request from someone in the congregation.  This has to be one of my all-time favourite melting moments, although it is easy to overdo the stop changes as you follow the text.  Every organist gets revved up in the third verse, especially "ark from the ocean's roar...save us, for still the tempest raves / save, lest we sink beneath the waves," which usually results in a shattering cloud of full swell and shimmering upperwork in full flight.  For me, the real challenge is in the fourth verse, where the final lines cry out for a literal treatment -- "sweet light, so shine on us, we pray / that earthly joys may fade away" -- down to a single 8' flute, if possible.

I haven't been putting up organ music for the last couple of weeks.  The reason for this is that I've been preparing for a recital (which was last Sunday), and choir rehearsals have been going to the nail before Mass.  So, just a little bon bon for the postlude for All Saints this week:

Processional -- William Mathias

Service preludes will make their return in due course.

The Cup Game

Here's the mighty cup game.  The first video has instructions, the second is an awesome cup game playoff...





At the winter intensive where I was teaching last week, there was a crazy cup game playoff on the final day. The game is pretty good for reinforcing the sense of a pulse -- there's no way you can keep up if you aren't feeling a regular structure under all the rhythmic stuff that goes on in the game.

Enjoy...