There he goes!

Something from St John's, Camberwell

Last week I played a pair of intabulations on seasonal motets by Heinrich Sheidemann.  I first encountered these pieces way back in my student days, but only found a copy of the complete collection at Foyles when I was on a trip to London a couple of years ago.

I suspect that if most organists know Schiedemann at all, it is more for his short Preambulae, and possibly some of his chorale and Magnificat settings.  The intabulations are a product of a practice that allowed the organist to riff on the ideas and structure of a choral piece before the singers began.  Similar pieces were published by Gabrielli, although these were much shorter and ostensibly less interested in developing motific interest.  Schiedemann's intabulations are an example of a relatively small genre whose roots lie in a practical need -- to give the choir their pitch -- but elaborated the vocal original.  These pieces are based on motets by Scheidemann's contemporaries, so the organ pieces lie somewhere between being a transcription and an improvisatory prelude-fantasy.

The first of the pair is based on a relatively well-known piece by Hans Leo Hassler, Dixit Maria (click the title to hear the piece).  I played this as the service prelude to the main service on the Fourth Sunday in Advent, where the liturgy was built around Marian themes.

The second is a rather extensive unfolding based on Orlando di Lasso's Angelus ad Pastores ait.  This was the service prelude for Christmas Day.  I love the way this pieces opens out and expands from the first note.  It reminds me a bit of the opening music from Haydn's Creation, with that long single note at the opening of the prelude.

Out and about on Sunday

This week I'll be playing at St Paul's, Canterbury.  After the sheer quantity of work at Camberwell last week this will be a comparatively quiet morning!  There are three main points for the organ.

Prelude: Allein Gott in der hoh sei Ehr [BWV 664] -- J.S. Bach

Communion Voluntary: Intabulation on Verbum Caro Factum Est -- Heinrich Scheidemann, after a motet by Hans Leo Hassler

Postlude: Cantique (Op 3, No 1) -- Edward Elgar

St John

Hodie!

Angels 2

Angels 1

A modest proposal

I've not really paid a great deal of attention to the sad events in America in recent days.  Bits of the news coverage have seeped through, it is very sad, and one can only feel for the families who have lost younger and older members.

What's provoked me today is the National Rifle Association's proposal to put armed guards in schools.  I think this is a really terrible miscall on their part.  It does nothing to address the fetishisation of guns in the NRA, nor to address the whole question of why anyone should have the right to own a high-powered weapon.

I was on a field trip to Edinburgh in 2007 when there was an attempt to bomb the airport at Glasgow.  I remember the palpable change in the atmosphere after the event, but what really shocked me was arriving in at the train station in Birmingham a week later to find armed guards policing the platforms and exits.  It just didn't seem like the mark of a free society to have heavily-armed police patrolling public spaces.

My feeling about the NRA proposal (and it's not the first time they've advanced it) is the same.  Putting armed guards in any public place reduces its utility, and doing the same in schools can do nothing to promote social harmony.

The whole raison d'etre for the NRA is the Second Amendment.  As an amicable watcher of the US, I seriously question whether this part of their constitution is even relevant in this day and age.  It cannot be said to be a social good if constitutional rights are invoked as a means to own high-powered automatic or semi-automatic weapons.  I can't see how worries about the government turning on its own citizens are at all justified, other than the electoral needs of the GOP during a time of being out of the White House. The idea of openly or covertly carrying a gun seems obscene to me, and harks to a mythology of the Wild West that only ever really existed in 1950s films.  The US is not a lawless wasteland, but the continued use of the Second Amendment by the NRA creates the impression that such a situation could well come to pass.  That sort of rhetoric really ought to be called out for the kind of dangerous crankiness it is.

While legislation to enhance gun control is all fine and good, I think there is a fundamental issue at stake.  People have a right to live their lives in peace, without fear of random violence.  The public good is not subservient to the rights of the individual to engage in destructive acts of nihilistic violence.  More to the point, in a country where certain members of the judiciary are obsessed with the Ten Commandments, surely there can be no argument that people have the right to commit murder under any circumstances.  The Second Amendment is certainly being used to continue the conditions in which this needless conflict of principles will continue.  On this basis alone I think it is time for some real courage in raising a serious discussion about revoking the Second Amendment.

Music upon the Day

I will be playing for the Christmas day service at St John's, Camberwell, on Tuesday.  Having survived an extensive musical feast stretching into the wee hours, I'll be back for more music-making on the way to lunch.  Organ music for the 9.00am service will be:

Intabulation on Angelus ad Pastores Ait -- Heinrich Scheidemann (1596-1663), after a motet by Orlando di Lasso

Noel Suisse -- Louis-Claude Daquin

Music upon the Eve

Monday is going to be a busy day, with much music to be made.  I'll be playing for two services at St John's, Camberwell.  One is an early-evening childrens' event, where they will be assembling the crib set while telling the nativity story.  There are lots of little bits and pieces for the organ and piano to do, but you'll have to come along to find out what they end up being (it's a very free-flowing, on the moment-type event).

Midnight Mass will be preceded by a short carols service, commencing at 11.00pm.

At the conclusion of the carols, the prelude to the procession will be:

Où s’en vont ces gais bergers -- Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1724-1799)

The postlude for the whole service will be:

Fanfare from Four Extemporizations -- Percy Whitlock (1903-1946)

Out and about on Sunday

This week I'll be playing at St John's, Camberwell.  Actually, this is the start of a long shift in that church -- I'm covering while their organist is away over the Christmas break (yes, I know, odd time to be away and all that, but c'est la vie) -- so I'll be posting more about what I'm doing there in the next few days.

In the meantime, here is the music for the prelude and postlude on Sunday.

Intabulation on Dixit Maria ad Angelum -- Heinrich Scheidemann

Tempo Moderato from Sonata a moll (Op 98) -- Josef Rheinberger

Getting into the season

Comment from elsewhere

Crikey ran a story about how children prefer a Christ-less Christmas.  Actually, the article isn't as bad as it sounds, although I'd question the premise of it a bit.

Parents are quite right to reject the sanitised Christmas tableau. It bears no relationship to the gritty and unsettling story found in the Bible, which is in itself quite unsuitable for children. It involves inter-generational marriage, pregnancy out of wedlock, traveling long distances only to be rejected from bottom-of-the-pile accommodation, childbirth in squalid conditions, infanticide on a large scale, flight into refugee accommodation, visitation by strange men bearing ominous gifts, and generally hanging around with the scum of the earth.

Now, if a sanitised vision of Christmas cheer is under threat in schools, then I say good riddance. It does irreparable harm because it represents an impossibly idealised vision of human happiness. This time of year can be a pit of misery for many of us, and having to put a happy face on it only makes things worse. Most of the non-religious carols we sing seem to be about a winter wonderland, which is strange given the general lack of snow at this time of year. There are Australian Christmas carols, but who has the time to teach them in the age of NAPLAN?

Where I have a problem is the premise that sacred and secular are eternally separated spheres of influence. This is patently not the case, as the presence of figures in our public life from Tony Abbott through to Peter Jensen and Jim Wallace demonstrates. There is a predominance of a particular sort of religiosity among public figures, and this is a problem. The main public face of religion at the moment is a very rigid and antagonistic one, and it can be very hard for people to see that this is not the end of the story. Certain people get away with bandying around punitive ideas ‘because the Bible says so’ only because the majority of people don’t have the wherewithal to question it right to the very bottom. This is very bad news for women, for gay people, indeed, for anyone who does not enjoy white hetero male privilege. Unsurprisingly, it was the equivalent of the white hetero males of around 2,000 years ago who strang up some peasant from Galilee.
As far as Bible teaching and religious education in schools goes, I’d say parents are absolutely right to run for cover when religion is used as a tool for ideology. But they owe it to their children to see that they are culturally literate enough to be able to recognise the misuse of religion. Religious illiteracy only makes it easier for the pious quacks to make converts and build influence. They owe it to their children to make sure that they have enough of a handle to be able to beat the next generation of public fundamentalists of the world over the head with it.

The good news of Christmas is that in the middle of all the messiness of our lives we’re not cut off from something greater. What you call — or don’t call — that something doesn’t matter so much.

Published again!

Another book chapter has appeared, although I missed it when it came on to the market from the publisher.  The launch is next week.

This chapter came from another conference paper, actually the first piece of writing I did after the thesis was completely out of the way.  I spent about four years running hot and cold on George W.L. Marshall-Hall, probably a reflection that he's an unavoidable fact of writing about music history in Melbourne even when you're dealing with someone else.  I admire his gadfly side, insisting on absolute freedom in the development of the students at his conservatorium, but I still find it very hard to square this with the realities of having to teach something about music in a useful way.  My paper was called Superman and Society, which summed up the effort of trying to tease out some of the similarities and differences between Marshall-Hall and his successor in the Ormond Chair of Music, Franklin Peterson.

More about 16 December

In a couple of weeks I'll be performing in a nice Sunday afternoon concert at St Gabriel's Catholic Church, Reservoir.

It's a varied programme, mostly showcasing music the ARCappella Choir is performing around the traps at the moment, along with some Christmas music.

And the Hallelujah chorus from Messiah.

This is where your humble scribe comes in.

I've also been asked to contribute a couple of items to the programme, so here's what I'm planning.

Allegro Giocoso (Op. 150, No. 7) -- Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

 Suite from Henry V -- William Walton

Happy St Andrew's Day

Spoof?

Coming up

St Cecilia's day

Out and about on Sunday

This Sunday I'm back at St Stephen's, Richmond.  This is a very special week, as the parish is hosting a visit from Esther de Waal, one of the most widely-respected voices for Benedictine spirituality.

It's also the feast of Christ the King, one of those feasts of recent institution that it's tempting to regard as the last gasp of the feudal order.  I've often wondered if this is really a replay of themes from Ascension day, in much the same way that August 6 is an elaboration of the second Sunday in Lent, although that might be a reflection of how the three-year lectionary oscillates between various themes.  This year we get stuck firmly in the praetorium with the "my kingdom is not of this world" reading, which is original to the feast.  This is a challenging reading to think through in terms of good organ music for the liturgy; where does one start?  Here's my best answer for this year.

Agnus Dei -- Frank Martin

Allegro Giocoso (Op. 150, No. 7) Camillle Saint-Saens

Unusual bridal request

I played for a wedding yesterday, and when I met with the couple a few weeks ago they had an unusual request.  I usually say yes to a clear and definite idea and this was one I simply couldn't resist, so here's the original, followed by someone-not-me playing it on the organ...

The time of year

In Safeway it's been Christmas for a little while already.  At the end of October, there was a distinct feeling of dissonance as imported Hallowe'en "traditions" vied for aisle space with way-way early Yuletide goods. But now it's just back to the pre-emptive flogging of festive paraphernalia.  This is that odd time of the year, where we're stuck between seasons.  Summer has arrived -- at least psychologically -- since the Melbourne Cup was run.  People are beginning to see that the end of the year is near, and in a week or two the end-of-year break-up party round will be starting up.

If you sing in a choir, then you'll most likely be getting into the swing of knocking off the easy bits of your coming carols services and other December commitments.  I've been practicing carols with a couple of choirs lately, although things only seem to start coming together after the racing carnival is done.  This year I only have to worry about getting the performance of a few things to work well, rather than generating the structure for the whole shebang, as has happened in the last few years.

The hardest task in any carol for most choirs is remembering that there are vowels in the phrases below.  Best to practice it nice and s l o w l y...

Sir Douglas Mawson waited patiently at the door

 

St Bartholomew's Op Shop, Burnley Street, Richmond.  And yes, that really is the name of the Jack Russell in the foreground...

Truth in the inward parts

It's been a big couple of months for the churches, with a couple of state parliament-level commissions and Monday's announcement of a federal Royal Commission into abuse of the young and vulnerable in various institutions.  Of course, the most prominent institution likely to be investigated by the Commission is the Catholic Church.

There is a side of me that feels for Cardinal Pell.  Ever since he became Archbishop of Melbourne, he has been exercised by dealing with victims of various sorts of abuse at the hands of clergy, not to mention various abortive suggestions that he himself might have been involved.  He has attempted to act in ways that attempt to meet the needs of these people to be heard and have their stories acknowledged, and to make some degree of compensation.  There can be no doubt that he has acted with sincerity in his own heart.

The problem is that the structures and protocols Pell initiated in Melbourne have fallen far short of vindicating the trust of those who have worked through them.  When the Archdiocese submitted a dossier of 600 or so cases of proven sexual assaults by clergy to the Victorian parliamentary committee, the immediate question was whether these were really everything the church had to show, or simply all it was willing to acknowledge.  More worrying, there are a number of clergy or religious who have been transferred out of Australia under fortuitous circumstances, leaving a trail of unanswered distress in their wake. Then there's the behaviour of the Melbourne Archdiocese's own Independent Commissioner.  As long as any questions persist about the actions of the Commissioner in relation to tipping off clergy about potential police investigations, or of processes conducted in a way that effectively re-traumatises people, it is hard to avoid the feeling of taint about any process under his watch.

Cardinal Pell's press conference from yesterday makes interesting viewing.  I admire the fact that he has moved from a position of denying the need for any investigation to cautiously welcoming the establishment of a Royal Commission.  This is a big step to take publicly in a matter of days.  His particular assertion that sexual abuse has occurred across the spectrum of religious institutions is quite right, but I would question his underlying suggestion that there is some sort of unpleasant sectarianism at play.  To the extent that any sectarianism is involved, it is about time the adoption of secret agreements, gagging clauses, in-house investigations and all the things that have hung around the Catholic Church's protocols so far were exposed and tested in a public forum.  He is right to have distributed copies of the protocols on sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Sydney at his press conference, but this won't be the end of unease with this document.

The really deep problem is that the Catholic Church has never consistently implemented a protocol for mandatory reporting of any sort of sexual or non-sexual assault.  Actually it goes right to the heart of Catholic spiritual discipline.  The Irish Church is currently embroiled in a massive argument about the role of the seal of the confessional with these sorts of offenses, and a similar discussion is about to open up here.  I think it dubious whether a rapist would really regard their 'conquests' as something to be confessed; what if such a person believes their behaviour is of therapeutic value to the victim, and therefore probably morally neutral rather than sinful?  One would hope that any confessor hearing a victim's testimony in the confessional really ought to make absolution conditional on them going straight to the police.  To do otherwise is a massive betrayal of what confession is meant to be about: there is no grey area here.  Moreover, the Cardinal's own rather curious perspectives about sexual orientation effectively condones the conflation of being gay with being a rapist, as if they are qualitatively the same thing.  If you doubt, take a very deep breath and look somewhere like the mad little world of Australia Incognita, where the portmanteau term "homosexual paedophile" is not uncommon, and defended with all the ideological might of the right wing of the American church, where good methodology always defers to strongly-held opinion (which felicitously happens to coincide with the Magisterium). With friends prone to promoting daft self-validating 'research' like this, Pell hardly need fear any enemy.

The take-home message from the Cardinal's press conference might well have been to tell anyone likely to come forward in the future to do the right thing and report to the police before attempting any process of reconciliation with the Church.  He could wait a day or two and suggest that it's time the Catholic Bishops talked seriously about taking sexual assault matters out of the hands of their lawyers and instead appointing a referral person for each diocese, whose sole function would be to send complaints directly on to the police without hearing or recording any information.  Investigation, justice, and a non-negotiable commitment to integrity must come before reputation management.  That would have truth on its side.

Quote of the week

I feel as though I stand at the foot of an infinitely high staircase, down which some exuberant spirit is flinging tennis ball after tennis ball, eternally, and the one thing I want in the world is a tennis ball.

Annie Dillard

Found here.

After the madness...wow

Practice aides

More from St Ignatius

Here are a couple of items from the concert at St Ignatius a couple of weeks ago.  Click the titles to hear the recordings.

Prelude in G -- Camille Saint-Saens
Prelude and Fugue in c minor -- Felix Mendelssohn (note, it's two files, so two links)

I was playing this recital somewhat handicapped.  I was knocked off my my bike while riding to work the previous Monday by a car coming out of a blind driveway.  I was riding on a shared path, not on the road.  No bones broken, but a lot of tendon strain up my left arm, as I landed on my left hand and all the energy of the fall stopped at the elbow.  The bruising has started to go down, and in the next few days I'll be off to a physiotherapist in order to make sure things are healing up the right way.

The main effect of the accident was that I had a lot of pain in the left arm and right leg, although I retained enough mobility in the limbs to still seriously contemplate playing an organ recital just a few days later.  Playing trio textures ended up being less stressful work than dealing with the big block chords in the Mendelssohn, although I think the microphone was far enough away that you don't hear me saying 'ouch' through most of the piece.

Published!

A few years ago I spoke at a conference about the circumstances that lead the University of Melbourne to decline an invitation to sponsor music examinations by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music here in Victoria.  The paper was rather playfully titled Resisting the Empire? After the conference I was invited to submit a tidied-up version of my paper for publication.

Well, these things tend to travel the long way round.  The paper ended up being a chapter of my thesis.  I still feel it was one of the stronger chapters; it certainly contributed something that was completely new.  The journey from conference paper to thesis chapter to book chapter brings things full-circle.  It's very exciting to see it finally out in print, although I've still got a little bit of a wait for my copy to arrive.

The book is now published, so to find out more go and visit the page on the Ashgate website.

Fakery

Artificial voixes celestes, manufactured at St Bartholomew's, Burnley.

Click here to listen.

Things cats know: Hallowe'en edition

A random organ case

Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Kew, where I played for a funeral a couple of years ago.  Here's a closeup of one of the cases.

And the console.

It's a surprisingly effective instrument for Reger and Karg-Elert.  Finally, here's a view in the opposite direction.

Out and about on Sunday

Next Sunday I'm back at St Stephen's, Richmond.  Apparently I did such a good job over the last couple of months, the organist has decided to take a week away so they can have me again...

The parish will be keeping All Saints Sunday, so all those people who were getting around in Hallowe'en costumes last weekend turned out to be a touch early.

Here's what I'm planning to play.

Largo from Sonata V [BWV 529] -- J.S. Bach

Grands Jeux -- Francois Couperin

You can leave your hat on...

Music in the bear-pit: a modern parable in aid of funding policy...?

Things cats know 2

A moment of sunrise and moonshine

Text with translation here.

Out and about on Sunday

This week I'm playing at St Bartholomew's, Burnley, again.  They're about to receive their new director of music, so hopefully many good things will be afoot there in the near future.

The organ music this week will be as follows.

Aria-Prelude -- Joseph Jongen

March -- Percy Grainger

In spring

Things cats know 1

Just in case you can't make it

Here are a couple of tracks from a practice tape of the programme I'm in the middle of performing right about now.

Trio Sonata in e minor [BWV 528] -- J.S. Bach
   Adagio-Vivace
   Andante
   Un poco Allegro

Prelude in G (Op. 109, No. 2a) -- Camille Saint-Saëns

These sound best if you listen to these with earphones.  There is one movement -- the Andante from the Bach -- that was balanced more effectively in the building than on the recording.

One of the many things I've enjoyed about preparing this programme is the opportunity to re-explore a lot of the colours in the instrument.  It was built by George Fincham in 1874, and initially placed in the Fitzroy Town Hall.  It was exhibited in the Intercolonial Exhibition of 1875, from where it was sold to the parish priest at Richmond, and installed on a balcony at the back of St Igantius's the following year.  Since then it has been moved to a chapel on the north side of the building (by the compass; liturgically it's the south), and most recently to the south transept (again, by the compass).

One feature that strikes a lot of people on seeing this instrument for the first time is the unusual pattern of decoration on the facade pipes.  In the nineteenth century it was common to paint the visible portion of the facade pipes.  I think Fincham was proud of his metal casting, so he chose to have a sparing amount of stencilling, while allowing the metal to be seen.  The effect is very rich, and I can imagine it would have been very striking when all the paint and gilding was fresh.

What really strikes me most is the classical conception of this instrument.  Both manuals have a logical chorus design, capped off with mixtures and reeds.  The pedal includes an 8' Principal, which is a very useful stop.  There is a blank spot where a stop knob for a pedal reed might have been intended, which would follow on from the structure of the manual divisions.

It would be nice to say that this was an 'untouched' example of Fincham's work.  It's certainly one of the most significant.  Somewhere along the line the swell lost its oboe, which was replaced by some well-meaning soul with a very throaty clarinet.  I'm a bit ambivalent about whether this was necessarily a bad change in and of itself; certainly an oboe would be more characteristic, and probably more useful.  A more pressing issue is the lack of wind.  Either the blower is too small, or someone has done something well-meaning (but ultimately malevolent), but the bottom line is that the whole thing falls over when you use a large amount of foundation stops in a big combination.  In putting today's programme together, I wanted to see what could be done to make the instrument sound happy making a musical sound in the bigger combinations.

The recordings were made during the day yesterday, so there is some ambient noise from people wandering around, automatic doors rumbling open and shut, and some officiously inconsiderate prig rattling keys (why do some people feel the need to do this?).  There's also a fair amount of action noise; one of the joys of playing old instruments.  Maybe I'll have an opportunity to station the recorder further from the organ at some stage, which might help to eliminate that source of extra-musical sound.

On the upside, the Bach piece was recorded in one unbroken take, although I had to break it up into separate tracks to keep the file sizes down to a reasonable level. It's a piece that usually comes off second-best during rehearsal -- it is a very demanding piece to work on over time -- but seems to come together just right for performances.  That probably tells you more about me than the piece...

If you're at a loose end this afternoon

Who's for Biblical marriage?

In the light of the video in the last post, something that's been doing the rounds for a while.

You have to watch this right to the end

I thought this was going to be another of those scary-weird speeches.  If nothing else, it serves to highlight the old canker about how the more things change, with a nice twist at the end...

From the backlog

Just a random selection of pieces from earlier entries.

Canon in C -- Robert Schumann

Prelude on a Theme of Orlando Gibbons -- A.E. Floyd

Erbarme Dich -- J.S. Bach

Coming up

Out and about on Sunday

This week I'm filling in at St Bartholomew's, Burnley.  St Bart's is  a daughter parish of St Stephen's, where I've been playing for the past few weeks, so there's a certain aspect of continuity about all of this.

The main organ music moments are the prelude and postlude, so here's what I'll be playing this week.

Sonata IV [BWV 528] -- J.S. Bach

Prelude and Fugue in c minor (Op. 37) -- Felix Mendelssohn

Recital programme for Sunday

On Sunday I'll be playing a short recital at St Ignatius Catholic Church, Richmond.  It's part of a series of three recitals being held in aid of the Richmond Hill Churches Food Centre.

The programme for St Ignatius will be as follows:

Sinfonia from Solomon --G.F. Handel

Sonata IV [BWV 528] -- J.S. Bach
   Adagio-Vivace
   Andante
   Un poco Allegro

Prelude (Op. 109, No 2a) -- Camille Saint-Saëns


Prelude and Fugue in c minor (Op. 37) -- Felix Mendelssohn

Recent practice tapes

Over the last few weeks I've been making practice recordings of various pieces in preparation for services at St Stephen's, Richmond.

Only three really turned out satisfactorily for sharing, so I thought it might be worth gathering them together here.

Click on the titles to hear the pieces.

Cantilena -- John Longhurst

Forlana -- Gerald Finzi

Tuba Tune -- Dulcie Holland

Before Eve, the Apple

Coming up

Another new look

I thought it was getting on for time to do a little freshen up of the template here.  The dynamic view was taking a bit of time to load, and really wasn't completely natural for a largely text-driven effort such as this.

The new template returns things closer to a classic Blogger interface.  All of the expected material in the right-hand sidebar is now available to view without relying on retractable menus.

The background image is from a series of photos I took about four of years ago on one of my rides through the city.  It was a warm December day, so the sky was very clear.  This particular view was taken from the Main Yarra bicycle trail, and shows the Yarra River at the Swan Street Bridge.  The large building to the right of centre is Melbourne Central, which dominates the top of Swanston Street.

Out and about on Sunday

This week is the last Sunday for my time playing the organ at St Stephen's, Richmond.

It's been one of the more interesting gigs I've had this year.  There's not a choir as such, but a singing group has been meeting for a while.  Over the last eight weeks we've done a fair bit of work to build a more confident sound, and the results have been noticed.  The regular organist is probably going to find a more energized and efficient choral group when he gets back.

The organ music this week is as follows.

Adagio-Vivace from Sonata IV [BWV 528] -- J.S. Bach

Sinfonia from Solomon -- G.F. Handel

Out and about on Sunday

The locum continues at St Stephen's, Richmond, this week.  I finish up there next week, and then on to another place.  Here's this week's pieces.

Fugue in c minor (Op. 37) -- Felix Mendelssohn

Un poco allegro from Sonata IV [BWV 528] -- J.S. Bach