Music for Sunday 3 July 2011

Readings for the week can be found here (follow the Roman options).  The psalm will be sung to a setting by Dom Gregory Murray.

The service setting will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns are as follows:

Introit: This is the truth we hold [469]
Sequence: All praise to our redeeming Lord [442]
Offertory: Praise to the Holiest in the height [141]
Communion: Forth in your (thy?!) name, O Lord, I go [571]

An idea for an APP

I saw something on the amusing/disturbing border yesterday.  Walking towards the train station I passed a tram stop where an earnest young person (earplugs firmly in place) was engrossed in fixing their playlist on the iPhone.  The person was clearly waiting for a tram, which arrived, deposited passengers, waited a moment for the person to look up and then moved on.  Is this a situation you have found yourself in before?  Perhaps you've witnessed similar scenes.

Anyway, I've spent 24 hours or more turning this over in my mind.  There's a side of me that's always open to ranting about how technology makes people do dumb things, but I don't think that would do more than keep the diminishing number of readers here amused for thirty seconds or so.  There's also a side of me that would unfold a grand philosophical shrug of the shoulders, but that wouldn't be quite as entertaining.

Instead, here's a challenge.  Given that the iPhone is here to stay, couldn't someone design an application that would allow people to get on with their multitasking without missing public transport?  Perhaps something that interrupts anything else that's running to alert the user to the imminent arrival of a tram.  I imagine an application like this could make use of the real-time tracking that Yarra Trams has introduced across the tram network.  Who's up for a challenge?

St Andrew's Uniting Church, Gardiner

It's been a while since I last did a 'sights and sounds' entry here, so when I had a call from a funeral director last week I thought the engagement would provide the perfect opportunity.

The engagement was to play for the funeral of a musician.  These sorts of funerals are always challenging.  Most funeral families have limited musical literacy outside the scope of their usual radio station or  CD collection.  By contrast, a musician's funeral often comes with clear instructions, or at least a well-developed sense of where to go for choosing the music for prelude and postlude.  The funeral yesterday was especially challenging because the person had been the organist at the church where the service was held.  (As it happens, I was hired to cover for this person at Christmas a few years ago.)  My instructions were along the lines of "play some Bach, preferably a Vivaldi transcription or a cantata movement, anything by Elgar, Greig, or Karg-Elert, and make sure to include something by A.E. Floyd, whom she admired very much."

St Andrew's Uniting Church, Gardiner, is a prominent bluestone church located at the busy intersection of Burke and Malvern Roads.  Gardiner is a hamlet that takes in parts of East Malvern and Glen Iris, in much the way that Cremorne denotes the southern end of Richmond and Hawksburn is the eastern reach of South Yarra.  (We Melburnians do love to subdivide the suburbs!)

Prior to the founding of the Uniting Church in Australia, St Andrew's was part of the Presbyterian Church. Addendum: From May 2016 St Andrew's is now the spiritual home of the Indonesian congregation from Mulgrave Uniting Church. The future of St Andrew's was a bit of a live question when this entry was written in 2011, so it is good to see that a church presence has been able to be maintained in this very prominent location.

St Andrew's was originally built for a congregation in Carlton in the middle of the nineteenth century.  When the building became redundant in the middle decades of the twentieth century it was moved to serve the needs of a growing congregation in its present location.  The architecture is bulky and muscular: the church juts up on the crest of a hill, with the next ecclesiastical landmark on the horizon being the cupola of the dome that caps Our Lady of Victories in nearby Camberwell.  The tower houses a clock which chimes the hours.

The light interior boasts a large amount of woodcarving, stained glass and textile work.  Unusually for an ex-Presbyterian church, the sanctuary has stalls rather than chairs for the minister and elders.

I've often felt that there's something decidedly monastic about these arrangements!  The centre stall is decidedly reminiscent of an abbot's chapter house throne.  That said, the little brackets for the individual wine glasses is old-fashioned Presbyterian pragmatism at it's most endearing.

The present organ is the second one in the church at its present location.  The first was a 6-rank extension organ by Hill, Norman & Beard, which was accommodated in a chamber on the north side of the sanctuary (you can see the shape of it from the outside in the second photo above).  The present organ was built in 1973 by Fincham & Sons, and belongs to that period in the firm's history when it was embracing the principles of the Orgelbewegung.  This instrument expresses the influence through its positioning in a large shallow case that dominates the back wall of the church.

The console is located at the front of the church, near where the choir seating once was.  I recall the first visual impression this instrument made on me: it combines aspects of contemporary Fincham organs built for St Peter's, Eastern Hill (the case profile is identical), and St Francis's, Lonsdale Street (the treatment of the facade pipes, with stepped mouths and straight-line tops, is exactly the same here).  Of the three instruments, St Andrew's remains the least-altered.  St Peter's had a large amount of tonal finishing done on the Hauptwerk and Pedal divisions in 1996-97, while St Francis's replaced their Fincham with a Casavant in 2000.

One of the curious features of this instrument is the glass swell shutters on the front of the Swell/Brustwerk (another feature shared with the Lonsdale St instrument).  While it allows for the pipework to be seen, I'm not entirely sure this was wholly successful.  Part of this has to do with the gearing of the shutter motors: it has three positions, closed, open about 2 inches and fully open.  There's no scope to play with the first half-inch of opening, which is surely the most expressive phase of the shutter movement.  I'm not sure whether the organist at the time was a major fan of the back-to-Baroque movement, but the net effect of the limitations of the swell shutters is that the second division is more effective if you treat it as a positiv or brustwerk rather than a conventional swell, for which it does have the main ingredients.  Here's a run-down on the specification.

Great		Swell
Principal Rohrflute Octave Spitzflute Fifteenth Mixture Trompette	8 8 4 4 2 III 8	Salicional Gedeckt Principal Nazard Flautina Tierce Krummhorn Closed Horn Tremulant	8 8 4 2 2/3 2 1 3/5 16 8
Pedal		Couplers
Violone Subbass Principal Gemshorn Faggott	16 16 8 4 16	Great to Pedal Swell to Pedal Swell to Great Swell Suboctave to Great Swell Superoctave to Great

The console is generously-proportioned and shows that whoever oversaw the project gave at least some consideration to the ergonomics of playing the instrument.  I'm normally a bit dark on stop tabs when they're arranged like a row of teeth under the music desk, but here it works very well.  Each division has four pistons, settable using dipswitches.  Here is where I should make a public apology to the incumbent organist for messing with her pistons!

By now I'm sure you might be wondering how the whole thing sounds.  I did have the opportunity to make a quick practice tape while preparing for the funeral, so I thought I'd share something that was specifically requested.  The family were quite clear in wanting something of A.E. Floyd, the sometime organist at St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne.  For your listening delight I'm pleased to share his Chorale-Prelude on a Tune of Orlando Gibbons.  I recommend listening to the piece with headphones.

Music for Sunday 26 May 2011

Readings for the week can be found here, following the Catholic options.  The Psalm is being sung to Anglican Chant, using a setting by John Blow.


The service setting will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns as follows:


Introit: This is the truth we hold [469]
Sequence: Take up your cross, the Saviour said [583]
Offertory: Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendour [520]
Communion: Sweet Sacrament divine

A tale of two policies

One of the ritual acts of silliness in the present debate over the proposed carbon tax is the repeated call by the Liberals for the government to take its proposed carbon tax / trading scheme to a general election in order to secure a mandate for it to be passed in Parliament.

There is one small but significant problem with this.  The Liberals have form for introducing fly-by-night legislation without having made any commitments in an election.  Let's take a few cursory points to see how the carbon tax stacks up with Workchoices.


Carbon tax
Subject to extensive public debate over a decade or more, at least two election campaigns and a good deal of community-level concern. 

Following the 2007 election there was a public inquiry leading to high-level reports, which preceded the drafting of any legislation.

One bill made it to the division stage, but was deeply compromised in the way compensation was structured.  At the very least, the key stake-holders were clearly brought into the process.

Further high-level reports suggest that action is now imperative -- we reached 2020 levels of carbon emissions at the beginning of May.  The government continues to botch the public relations side of proposing laws to improve our performance on this critical issue.

Workchoices
Introduced as the result of a rogue election result, giving the government of the day an unexpected majority in both houses of Federal Parliament.  The policy was buried deep in the Liberal manifesto, but there had been no expectation of their ever being in a position to enact it (which kind of makes you wonder why it was there in the first place).

No public debate was entered into until after the decision was taken to present the legislation to Parliament.  It certainly wasn't mentioned in the election campaign.

Much of the act was composed on the hop.  Mostly in press conferences.  No attempt was made to give the legislation due scrutiny before it was passed.

In spite of a massive advertising spend, the effects of the bill (and the fears stirred thereby) quickly confirmed that the Liberals had little concern for the workers.  The unions showed their mettle by mounting an advertising campaign in reply.

Music for Sunday 19 June 2011

Readings for the week can be found here (following the Catholic options).  The psalm will be sung to this setting.

The service setting will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns are as follows:

Introit: Holy, holy, holy! Lord God almighty [132]
Sequence: Father of heaven, whose love profound [131]
Offertory: We give immortal praise [118]
Communion: How shall I sing that majesty [tune: Kingsfold, 585]

A piece that makes you go "YES!"

Asylum Seekers go from Nothing to Zero

Why can't we have more politicians like the current phase of Malcolm Fraser?

Music for Sunday 12 June 2011

Readings for the week can be found here.  The psalm is being sung to an Anglican chant.  Some good responsorial settings can be found here.

The service setting will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns as follows:

Introit: Come, Holy Spirit our souls inspire [396]
Sequence: Come, Spirit blest, Creator, come [397]
Offertory: Come down, O Love divine [398]
Communion: Filled with the Spirit's power [411]

Twenty years on

Today marks a small personal anniversary.  Twenty years ago I found myself lingering at the gate of Holy Trinity, Benalla, wondering whether or not to go in.  As it happens, the choice was helped by the appearance of one of the clergy, who said hello and extended the hand of welcome.

That was on the Sunday after Ascension in 1991.  Weekly worship has been an unwavering part of my life ever since.

The history of how I landed at this particular church gate on that particular Sunday is still surprising to remember.  My family was based in nearby Violet Town for my first twelve years, and we moved to Benalla to allow my father's business to have the benefit of a larger town, greater proximity to services and so on.  Moving from a small town to a larger one was liberating, and set the groundwork for the move to Melbourne less than twelve months later.

My early religious experience was in the Uniting Church, but there is a fair swathe of Anglicanism among both sides of the family.  As a cub-scout I was taken on the obligatory church parades, one of which, in 1990, was  to Holy Trinity, Benalla.  On that occasion we were holed up in the Lady Chapel (formerly the organ chamber), where the only view was directly into the smoke-filled chancel.  Having come from a background where the services were very plain and simple to something that engaged all five senses was overwhelming.  My whole notion of what worship is about changed from some vague idea of learning to be a good person via coloring in activities in the kiddies corner to being part of the great procession to glory.  Uniting Church worship suddenly seemed shamefully threadbare -- worse, actually -- willfully boring.

I should hasten to add that the Uniting Church wasn't all bad -- far from it.  Two people in the congregation took a close interest in me, both highly formative influences.  I remember a pastoral visit from the minister when I had chicken pox (aged 10), and somewhere in my bookshelves I probably still have the Garfield comic he gave me as an entertainment to while away the days of itching, not scratching, and stinking out the house with the odour of calamine lotion.  That minister transformed the grounds at the Violet Town Uniting Church.  It was said that every time he had a stressful week he started a new garden bed.  There were a lot of new garden beds over his years of ministry.

What attracted me into Anglicanism -- and has ultimately kept me there -- is the worship.  As a Uniting Church child I found it odd that we were subjected to a staged talk before being herded out into the halls at the back of the church for Sunday School.  Much of the biblical teaching was woefully inadequate, both on spiritual and pedagogical grounds.  There was nothing that connected Bible study to worship, and the effect was ultimately one of excluding children from the corporate worship of the congregation.  Bearing in mind that that worship still followed the paradigms of pre-1978 Nonconformity very closely I shouldn't be too hard: it would probably have been equally tedious to me.  The highlight of the service for the adults seemed to be the collection.

The effect of ceremonial, incense, music, fine carving, and good architecture at Holy Trinity, Benalla, was an electrifying sensory overload.  No Sunday School meant that the young folk worshiped alongside the adults -- indeed, many were involved in the serving team.  At Holy Trinity I can now see that the needs of younger people were met by a deliberate policy of inclusion in the existing structure.  When confirmation classes were announced I leapt at it.

My time at Holy Trinity, Benalla, was brought to an end when the family moved to Melbourne in January 1992.  The formative experience has remained with me.  Today is a day of thanksgiving for twenty years of life as an Anglican, in all it has meant -- mixed blessings and all.

Music for the Sunday After Ascenion, 5 June 2011

Readings for the week can be found here.  The psalm will be sung to an Anglican chant setting.

The service setting will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns as follows:

Introit: Hail the day that sees him rise [369]
Sequence: The head that once was crowned with thorns [378]
Offertory: God is gone up on high [371]
Communion: Alleluia, sing to Jesus [517]