The year that was

Well, only a few hours and the decade will be done.

2010 started in uncertainty and ended in a bit of sorrow.  Altogether it hasn't been a bad year, but it hasn't exactly been outstandingly good either.

Before

January was taken up with thesis amendments, with the mad scurry to get the thesis back to the examiner so they could pass it.  I didn't see much outside the house for most of the month.  My birthday falls in the last week of January, but this year it passed quietly amid the flurry.

The best event in January was returning a mountain of library books, filing away a lot of paper and revealing the wood of my desktop for the first time in six months, as the photos show.  I've been relatively successful in keeping the paper mountain down over the rest of the year!

At the end of the month I put the thesis in again and worked on forgetting about it for a while.

After

February was a big choral month.  I began work at the Australian Youth Choir.  On my very first day we had a dreadful storm, resulting in flash floods all over the city.  In getting to Essendon, I ended up abandoning the car in a side street in South Melbourne, hiking to Spencer St Station and catching the Craigeburn train.

Also, the choir up at the Anglican Parish of Jika Jika started weekly rehearsals in preparation for Holy Week.  The group has been through some vicissitudes this year, as later months will show.  But for the time being, in February we achieved quite a lot: singing more in tune, listening more attentively, and tackling new things.


March brought glad tidings.  The chair of my examining committee sent news that my thesis had been accepted.

I went to a research forum at the Victorian College of the Arts during this month, and came away stunned, amazed and utterly depressed.  A bunch of people sat in a circle in a poorly-ventilated room to listen to a certain member of the staff (now departed the institution) holding forth about her evolving ideas about what constitutes research.  I was inwardly screaming something along these lines: "you take an investigative method, apply it to sources, frame questions and write out what you find.  It's not that bloody difficult unless you want to make it so."  So many of the problems at the VCA have proceeded directly from wooliness and shoddy thinking -- let alone failure to communicate and consult.

During this month I had the pleasure of turning pages for Thomas Trotter at the Melbourne Town Hall.  It really is a privilege to see such a master at work.

A further development in March was my resigning the secretaryship of the Society of Organists.  Like all small groups, the politics were perverse and silly, reflecting no glory on anyone and achieving nothing.  Given my strong distaste for small-group politics, I have enjoyed no small amount of peace since ridding myself of that burden.


April fool's day fell on Maundy Thursday this year.  After two months of preparation, the Jika Jika choir sang very well for Holy Week.  The Easter Vigil was very largely sung, rather than said.  Many people commented that it had been the best music for some years.

On Low Sunday a small committee met to get a timeline together to commence a new youth choir venture in the parish.  This took a while to get started, but the work in cultivating goodwill and support was the essential function of the committee, which they did very well.

And, most important, this blog was commenced.

May was the month in which a whole stack of university services ceased.  My library card expired, along with my email account, and the duty of selecting a graduation date.

The funeral bookings really began to take off in May.  I played for a funeral at Sacred Heart, Kew, where the family wanted a stack of Frank Sinatra songs.  The priest wasn't willing to let me into the gallery to use the proper organ, and was insisting that I use the plastic granny organ down the front.  When he relented, the priest wanted to talk about my availability to work for him!

June began with the first of a short run of recital engagements.  I played a varied program at St Gabriel's Catholic Church, Reservoir, which was received well.  I was completely silent that weekend, having been assailed with one of my several bouts of flu for the year; the priest was happy to read the program commentary, which he did with amplomb and wit!

In mid-June the youth choir commenced at All Saints, Preston.

At the end of June I participated in my first three-day intensive Performing Arts School for the Australian Youth Choir.  Things went very smoothly, mostly because the other conductor took it upon herself to organize the division of labour.  I met a good number of the other staff, and felt more settled in the organization afterwards.  The only fly in the ointment was the rehearsal manager, who took a very negative line with the students right at the start; it was very awkward gaining their trust after they had been berated at the start of each day.  Still, every silver lining must have its cloud!

Shrine of the monoped organist.

July began with another recital, this time at St Cuthbert's, Brighton.  The program was for trumpet and organ, and was featured as part of the Early Music Guild's Early Music in the Very Round concert series.  The venue was detailed on this blog, including the memorial of the one-hooved organist.

Some important developments took place in July.  Negotiations over All Saints, Preston, acquiring the organ from Brunswick Baptist Church reached a threshold point with the discussion coming up at parish vestry in Preston, and a congregational meeting in Brunswick.

And, before I forget the trivial point, this was the first time I had spent the whole of July in Melbourne for about four or five years.  July 2009 was spent in the UK attending conferences and following up archival sources.

St Francis, Mooroolbark.

August was probably the worst month of the year.  I was sick almost continuously for the duration of the month, with secondary effects dragging on for far too long afterwards.  I lost a ton of weight, all by the wrong means.

However, for all that, August remained a mildly productive month.  I completed the revisions to an essay -- Resisting the Empire? -- which will (touchwood!) be published next year.  Another recital was received well, this time at St Francis in the Fields, Mooroolbark, where Peter Wakeley very kindly invited me for a second year in a row.

KC with supervisors: Kate Darian-Smith & Warren Bebbington.

The most important event in August was The Graduation, which took place on the twenty-first.  Ms Gillard rudely intruded into this event by calling the federal election for the same day.  She was repaid in kind by being forced to negotiate herself into minority government.

Choosing the date was relatively simple from my side.  Because my principal supervisor, Warren Bebbington, is one of the high-ups in the university, he was committed to being there as acting Vice Chancellor for the day.  His role was to oversee the ceremony, introducing the occasional speaker and generally acting as Ceremonarius.  The essential point is that he was definitely going to be there.  Fortunately, my other supervisor, Kate Darian-Smith, was able to make it too -- only the fifth time in four years where both supervisors were in the room with me at the same time!

There are a few quirks among the finer points of Australian academic etiquette, none of them more prickly than graduating as a Ph.D.  Becoming a doctor of something is akin to assuming a new ontological status.  There are different ways of dealing with the title according to various university protocols, but at the University of Melbourne, you don't get the title until the testemur is in your hand.  Thus, even though my Ph.D. was accepted waaay back in March, it would not have been correct to refer to me as Dr until after I graduated.  That said, on graduation day the marshalls called us by our new titles.  I suppose if you're floating around in the Essendon gear anyway you look the part well enough.

The following day there was a big party at a club in Toorak, which was well attended.

September was busy with funerals and a couple of big weddings.  This also provided me with my most embarassing moment for the year.

I got my wires crossed and failed to double-check the time of a Sunday wedding in my diary.  As a result, lunch carried on longer than it ought to have, and I arrived at the church thinking I would have an hour to wander around and relax.  To my horror, it looked like things were getting to a critical point with guests flurrying about and flowers being distributed -- not to mention an anxious sacristan peering out towards the carpark with a look of desperation in his eye.  It turned out that I had arrived with less than ten minutes to spare.

Fortunately for me, the bride was seven minutes late.

The first international British Music conference in Australia was held at Monash University, where I gave a paper and read that of an absent delegate.  The conference was wonderful because a good number of the nineteenth century people in the UK came out.  It was good to have the opportunity to renew friendships.

October was spent navigating the further reaches of the city.  I was engaged as a representative for the National Institute of Youth Performing Arts to visit schools and carry out voice trials, and to invite children to audition for the Australian Youth Choir.  Perhaps the highlight of this work was seeing the disparity of standards in primary schools around the northern and western suburbs.  Australian Youth Choir rehearsals got a bit swamped with completing assessments -- it all comes up very quickly once Term IV begins!

The highlight of the year came in October, with the re-opening of the Grainger Museum.  This was such a long time in coming, and it is good to have the collection back in its old home.  The opening itself took place on a soggy Friday evening (the sort that only Melbourne can turn on), followed by a day-long symposium at the Con.  Malcolm Gillies spoke really well at both events.

The task of writing a paper for another symposium took up most of my spare time in October.

November proved to be one of those months where nothing stayed still.  All Saints celebrated its patronal festival on 31 October, and then two weeks later the choir toured to Brunswick Baptist Church on 14 November.

The purpose of the visit was to mark the gifting of the organ to All Saints, Preston.  The choir sang well, and a number of people at the Baptist Church came along and joined in.

The OHTA Oracle, John Maidment, attended the service.  He was very kind, and commented that he thought he'd never heard the instrument played properly before!

I spoke at G.W.L. Marshall-Hall: A Symposium, where it turned out I was the first paper in the two-day program.  My paper was titled Superman and Society, and was an exercise in contrasts, considering the ways in which Marshall-Hall and Franklin Peterson approached music history through a survey of public remarks and questions from examination papers.  The paper was well received, and I am now working on turning it into a properly worked out essay for a proceedings book.

The Australian Youth Choir wound down for the year at the end of November, with auditions, final rehearsals and the last concert for the year at the end of the month.

The state election was held on 27 November, where the government of John Brumby was defeated.

The end of November was the beginning of the annual spiral into Christmas.  Advent began early this year, and the choir toured to St Mary's, East Preston, for Mass on Advent Sunday, which was followed by the annual general meeting.  The AGM took ninety minutes, easily an hour too long, largely due to one person talking for much of the excess time.

I turned pages for a couple of concerts at an organ in a private home at the end of the month.  The instrument is quite innovative, being a hybrid pipe/digital organ.

December was simply chaos, as ever.  I had a series of rehearsals at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Hawthorn, which were very productive.  The choir sang well for the first Mass of Christmas.  All my other Christmas-related doings have been detailed elsewhere in these pages, so I won't recapitulate those events here.

The most harrowing event of the year came last week.  I woke up to find Mona paralyzed, and it was very clear that this was something from which she was not going to bounce back.  Taking her to the vet was the right thing to do, as the time had clearly come.

Mona has been a constant part of my home life for nearly twenty years, including a lengthy period when I lived alone.  She has been there when I go out, and arisen to greet me on my coming in.  And this is where I have noticed her loss most of all.

It's funny how some things just stick with you.  For example, over the last few days I have caught myself talking to the cat twice, and woken up after hearing her calling at the bedroom door once.

I notice the absence most of all whenever I come home.  The first thing I have done on coming through the door is to look at the place where she used to have her box, which is no longer there.

My consolation in all of this is remembering that a cat is one of the iconic attributes of St Julian of Norwich.  Julian is best known for the saying "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all things shall be well."  There are several redactions of the saying, none more famous than the occurrence in T.S. Elliott's Little Gidding:

Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's a quick tally of my freelance musical activities:

Funerals -- 24
Weddings -- 6
Concerts -- 4
Other events -- 16

This list doesn't include my regular work at All Saints, Preston, or St Mary's, West Melbourne.  It's been a relatively busy year for my freelance work.  It was surprising to discover that I'd only played for six weddings.  Not to mind, I've got at least three booked for the first quarter of next year.  It looks like things may be busier on the bridal front in 2011.

I haven't included a large wedge of school services.  I live near one of the major private girls' schools, and have had a steady stream of work there locuming for the chapel organist at various times.  This work is probably going to dry up next year in the wake of some timetable changes to chapel services.  On one level, it's a source of work that I won't particularly miss -- the chaplain has some peculiar liturgical habits.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A couple of books stand out as having helped to expand or clarify my worldview.  One of these was When Sheep Attack, which I wrote about here.  It helped to bring my experiences at Christ Church, Brunswick, into perspective.  In many ways it was healing book, and one to which I will return fairly regularly.

Another book is Theo Hobson's Faith: the Art of Living.  When I was reading this, I ran across one of Paul Keating's comments about Mahler, where he was talking about how love lies at the heart of the art.  Hobson says something similar about faith; faith is there to give us the means with which to love.

On the professional reading side, there are a lot of books which have crossed my desk, many quite good, some worthy of revisiting soon, and a good number that I'm happy to leave on the shelf for some future emergency.  The last three volumes of Richard Taruskin's history of western music formed the basis of my reading before Easter, and I hope to get back to finishing the first two volumes over the rest of the summer.  A recent arrival to complement this is Mary Natvig's Teaching Music History.

So that was the year that was.  Not the annus horribilis it could have been, but hardly what one would describe as an annus mirabilis.

Above all, the great theme of 2010 has been waiting and uncertainty.

Perhaps I have learned something about patience.

Music for Sunday 2 January 2011

This week the parish is keeping Epiphany.  The good thing about anticipating the feast is that we get to keep the Baptism of the Lord next week -- one of those rare years where it comes up.

Readings are linked here, and the psalm setting here.

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

Introit: As with gladness men of old [314]
Sequence: Earth has many a noble city [291]
Offertory: The first nowell [301]
Communion: Brightest and best of the stars of the morning [310]

The music is to be led by the adults of the choir.

Being the coolest conductor

Two days of carolling with the Australian Youth Choir has reaped a rich and sugery harvest.

Yesterday the choristers finished the rounds of the market in front of a jam donut stall.  They sang We wish you a merry Christmas, altering the figgy pudding verse to "Now bring us some hot jam donuts..." while stepping gradually closer to the stall.  (It got particularly menacing when we came to the following verse: "And we won't go until we've got some!")

And the donut vendor came through with the best donuts in Melbourne's north -- light and sweet, with a jolly good squirt of jam inside.

The choristers went away very enthusiastic about the prospect of returning for more.  All but a couple of them turned up for the second engagement, ready and eager.

Which brings us to today...

The haul was impressive: jelly desserts, sponge fingers and another box of donuts (we did the trick of stepping gradually closer with each verse, edging out the queue).

We added some extra verses (sing it if you like!):

• Now bring us some cheesy pizza...
• Now bring us some chockie bikkies...
• Now bring us some fizzy drinkies...
• Now bring us some cherry cupcakes...
• Now bring us Hawaian pizza...
• Now bring us some hot jam donuts...

As one of the choristers was leaving, he said he reckoned I was the best conductor they've had for carols -- all the other gigs have involved healthy food, not cool stuff like what we got today!

Music for Friday 24 December, part 2

You know that a major festival is approaching when the phone in the parish office keeps ringing.  Last night I had some administrative tasks to get through before choir rehearsal, and fielded three calls inquiring about Christmas eve services.

I posted earlier in the week about the midnight Mass at St George's, Reservoir.  Today I'm posting details of the music for All Saints, Preston.

11.00pm Carols, 11.30pm Procession & Midnight Mass

All Saints, corner Murray Road and High Street, Preston

The parish choir will be singing for this service, with repertoire listed below.

Readings for Midnight Mass are linked here (refer to the Catholic readings), and the psalm will be sung to a setting by Christopher Wilcock SJ.  The propers for this Mass will be chanted by the choir.

Choral Setting: Short Mass in C -- Richard R. Terry (Kyrie, Sanctus, Benedictus & Agnus Dei)
Congregation Setting: Christ Church Mass -- Philip Mathias (Gloria & acclamations)

Carols before Mass:
Once in royal David's city
The first Nowell
O little town of Bethlehem
Silent Night
Away in a Manger

Procession: Of the Father's love begotten
Sequence: While shepherds watched their flocks by night
Offertory: O come, all ye faithful
Communion: Hark! the herald angels sing

Communion anthem: Gaudete! -- Anon.

Postlude: Presto from Sonata in D for Trumpet -- Henry Purcell

Mona

Mona.

I am a cat person.  Any biographical blurb for a conference paper or a concert program has included a line about how I enjoy philosophical discourse with the cat.  It has been like my persistent identifier for nearly 20 years.

For a very long time, my mornings have been a race against the cat.  First to see who would get to the kitchen the fastest, where the morning fish is dispensed.  Then to the toilet, making sure to shut the door firmly so that the cat couldn't do laps of the bowl (why do cats follow one to the privy?).  Then back to the kitchen to put my own breakfast together.

Brushing one's teeth with a cat curling around your legs can be perilous when it comes to gargling.

Cooking can be a complex exercise when you don't know how accurately the cat is tracking (and anticipating) your path, leaving you standing on one foot with a pot full of stew, or a volatile frying pan.  Any meal involving dessert becomes a battle of wills, especially if there is any cream left in a bowl.

Apart from mealtimes, a cat's life is generally sedate and predictable.  A warm box with a familiar blanket, a place by the window to catch the sun.  A long evening curled up on someone's lap.  These are the times of feline at repose.

A younger cat is a bit like an alarm clock.  Food is dispensed at the routine times; pestering can usually be relied on to move a recalcitrant member of the domestic staff. If the morning feed is late in arriving, there's no use in some hapless cat owner cowering under a thick doona.  Priorities demand the cat be fed so that peace be restored!

This has been a fairly steady part of my daily routine for nearly 20 years, until today.


I woke up today with a dozen tasks listed in my mind, which remain un-done.  I moved through the morning routine, and then realized that Mona hadn't come out to greet the morning.  When I went to her box, I found her lying very still, but very much alive and unimpressed.  It was a great big mess, as she hadn't been able to get up to visit the kitty litter during the night.  I have just returned from the veterinary hospital, where she has been put to sleep.

Mona was born in a truck depot in the Riverina area of southern New South Wales in 1991.  She came into my life in February 1992, when my father and sister brought her back to our home in Richmond.  My father has long been the sort of person to take in animals, much to the chagrin of my mother.  Mona quickly asserted her dominance in the household, being a kitten of around six months of age -- she was never entirely domesticated in so far as she always retained some of the hard edges to her personality.

Until recently, Mona was never a highly sociable animal.  The doorbell would inevitably bring on a mad scurry to some odd hiding place.  Visitors were shunned with magisterial disdain.  However, since moving to our current abode, Mona decided it was time to be the hostess with the mostess.  Where visitors were mightily ignored, they were now expected to lie still and be a good cushion.  Dinner guests would be expected to contribute to the evening treat.

Through successive moves of house, Mona gradually became an indoors cat.  This was brought about by various things -- such as moving from a fairly large suburban block to a flat on a major road.  In the last few years we have lived in a place where she could go into the courtyard when the weather was fine, a situation which suited her very well.

During my undergraduate years, Mona was like a live alarm clock.  Undergraduates sleep and wake to a timetable which still mystifies me, and I was no exception after moving out of the family home in 2000.  Mona could be relied upon to raise an almighty racket (enough to disturb the neighbours) if I remained in bed beyond 8.30am.  Tranquility would be restored instantly when I arose.

Mona's approach to my research work can be summed up in an image:

Piano practice would inevitably bring forth squawks of protest.

Mona's decline has been gradual.  In 2007 I spent nearly two months on a research trip in the UK.  I arrived home to find a 'new' (now defeated) state government, and a mildly annoyed feline.  I had been home a couple of days when Mona had a massive seizure.  Various trips to the vet revealed that she had developed many of the usual elderly feline conditions, and probably a brain tumour.  Over the last twelve months, her walking has been unsteady, with the back paws sometimes facing 90 degrees away from the front quarters.

I decided to keep Mona comfortable, for as long as she could move to feed herself and wasn't in pain, then there didn't seem to be any pressing reason to take drastic steps.  Today it was clear that even though she was not in pain, she clearly couldn't move to feed herself.  Now that I look back over the last few days, she had been shutting down since Sunday.

I cleaned her up, and we had a good half hour of time together before going out.

Anyone who lives with a cat knows that the relationship has one side to it, and that we are not really in control.  One can train a cat to live within the routines of the household, but beyond that, the interaction is largely something which the cat chooses.

Cats have an inner life which is unique and total.  To anyone who says that animals do not have souls, I reply that nearly 19 years of conversations and occasional claw-flinging disagreements convince me otherwise.

Mona has been like a persistent identifier.  All the physical marks of her being in the house -- food bowl, scratching post -- are still about for now.  But the conversation which took place around these things is no longer.

What a bloody awful day.

A-caroling we shall go

Continuing the drip-feed, here's a non-church event.

I will be conducting a little detachment of the Australian Youth Choir in a spot of public caroling for the next two days.  The details are as follows:

12.00--1.00pm

Thursday 23 December

and

Friday 24 December

Preston Central

Another, not quite midnight, Mass

I have been invited to accompany and direct the music for a midnight-mass-at-9pm on Christmas Eve.  This makes for a busy day, as you will see from other entries detailing my festive engagements!

Immaculate Conception Church in Hawthorn is one of the great gothic revival churches in Melbourne, a sprawling and complex building with a very fine tower.  Sadly, the sanctuary was mauled to pieces by some high-minded parson in the middle of the last century, thus ruining what was one of the most outstanding ecclesiastical interiors in the country.  What a pity so few parishes follow the rule of waiting a generation or two before doing drastic renovations...

The organ was built, rebuilt, overhauled and worked on by Fincham at various dates.  Interestingly, it incorporates ranks from the organ Finchams built for the Royal Exhibition Buildings in 1880.  The instrument is badly compromised by the wall-to-wall carpet in the nave, which serves to highlight the variable standard of regulation and tonal finishing undertaken at various stages of the instrument's life.

There will be a lot of music at this service, so here are some highlights:

Mass setting: Mass in G (D 167) -- Franz Schubert
Anthems:  
Balulalow -- Peter Warlock
Hodie Christus natus est -- Louis-Nicolas Clerambault

Carols from 8.45pm, Mass at 9.00pm, Friday 24 December 2010

Immaculate Conception Catholic Church

Corner Glenferrie and Burwood Roads, Hawthorn

Be early to be sure of getting a seat!

Music for Friday 24 December, part 1

Politics have dictated that there will be two midnight masses in the parish this year.

One could grumble and complain, but these things are sent to make us perfect by our quiet toil.  I'm glad not to be forced to split myself between simultaneous events, like some musical equivalent of Geraldine Grainger in The Christmas Lunch Incident.

So, this entry details the simpler midnight mass at St George's, Reservoir:

Midnight Mass with Carols

11.30pm, Friday 24 December

St Georges, corner Ralph and Byfield Streets, Reservoir

Readings are linked here, and the psalm setting is here.  Hymns are as follows:

Introit: Once in royal David's city
Sequence: Away in a manger
Offertory: O come, all ye faithful
Communion: Silent night

Information about the other midnight mass will be up on Thursday, hopefully with a taster of some of the music.

Music for Sunday 26 December

I'm going to have a rolling series of posts about music for the coming days.  There's a lot to share, so I'll do it by drip-feed rather than one long image-ridden post.

This Sunday is being kept as the feast of the Holy Family with a memorial of St Stephen.  Because people will probably be a bit churched out after all the festivities of Friday and Saturday, there will be one celebration in the parish this week:

9.30am at St George's

Corner Byfield and Ralph Streets, Reservoir

This is the final week for one of the parish organists, so there will be a small reception after Mass to wish him well.

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

Introit: Once in Royal David's city [312]
Sequence: Unto us a boy is born! [293]
Offertory: Come, your hearts and voices raising [297]
Communion: Child in a manger [319]

Quote of the week

The use of Latin in the liturgy is a "bit like silence with sound."

From an erstwhile blogger in Brighton, UK.

Getting some limelight

I've been in two of the local newspapers in the last week.  It seems that someone sent the local Leader a tip about the gifting of the organ from Brunswick Baptist Church.

The story can be seen -- with a short video of yours truly clogging it through a bit of The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba -- here.

Two small quibbles.

The sound quality on the video isn't the best, but it gives you a sense of what's there.

As with all local newspaper pieces, there is a little bit of garbling on various details.  Those who know will see what's not quite right.  One could communicate with all the precision of cut glass, but journalists have to be economic with words.  Sometimes the twisted tendrils of the history of an instrument can threaten to crowd out the story they want to tell.

I'm just delighted the story made it to print in the week the reporter said it would appear.

The story ran in both the Preston and Moreland Leaders.  If I have the chance, I'll try to scan the paper versions some time soon.

Music for Sunday 19 December

This has been a busy week, so here is a quick run-down of music for the week in the parish.

Readings are linked here.  The psalm will be sung to Anglican chant.

The setting will be the back half of Michael Dudman's Parish Eucharist (Together in Song, 756).  The choir will be singing the Kyrie from the Missa de Angelis, along with the introit, offertory and communion sentences.  Hymns are as follows:

Advent wreath: Come thou, long expected Jesus [272]
Sequence: Behold a rose is growing [294]
Offertory: Long ago, prophets knew [283]
Communion: O come, O come Emmanuel [265]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We had our annual Advent carols last Sunday, which went well.  Attendance was a little down on last year, but the singing was as lusty as ever.  The choir sang well, and many people made positive comments.  Now we slip down the slope to Christmas....

Cutting Lambeth out altogether

According to the Wikileaks cables "the pope's offer" was interpreted by the British ambassador to the Holy See as a potential source of tension between Canterbury and Rome.

The pope's move was bold, even if riots and the revival of punitive laws has yet to transpire.  How people who have premised their Anglican identity on dissension from the polity of Anglicanism can be expected to suddenly discover the charism of obedience is a little beyond my comprehension.  If Rome was the answer they were looking for all along, why didn't they take that jump sooner?

Anyway, amid the smoke and fury of bishops taking the plunge, I saw this and immediately thought of Anglicanorum Coetibus.

Brunswick Baptist Church

All Saints choristers (plus some BBC Friends!), 14 November 2010

A few weeks ago, the congregation of Brunswick Baptist Church gifted their organ to All Saints, Preston.  Since then things have been proceeding quietly.  There's all the sorting out that goes along with getting organ builders onto the project, not to mention setting a timeline for the removal, storage, work and eventual installation of the organ in its new home.  These things take time.

In the meantime, I'm about to embark on documenting the sound of the organ as it presently stands.  Some of these recordings will land up here, no doubt.  I hope it will be possible to carry the documentation through to the completion of the project, too, so the the end result can be compared.

All Saints is extremely fortunate in the gifting of this instrument.  I've posted other information about the organ elsewhere on the blog, so I' won't repeat what's already available.  Someone asked me what the difference between the organ currently at All Saints and its (soon-to-be) replacement is: my reply was that it's like switching from analog to digital.  A high-quality instrument opens possibilities, where a poor instrument effectively shuts those possibilities out.

This track features the foundations on the Great (open and stopped diapasons, coupled to the pedal bourdon), and the Swell reeds (cornopean + oboe; the latter covers some of the notes which don't sound in the former).  There are a couple of ranks which will benefit from better regulation, while the action is a little on the sluggish side (the original tracker action has been hooked up to pneumatic machines beneath the windchests).  Many organists devote time to concealing poorly-voiced ranks and playing with extreme variations of touch to overcome idiosyncratic actions.  As counter-instinctive as it seems, the aim of this little project is to make a warts-and-all record of the organ, right down to highlighting some of those things which I would normally work to hide.


Here it is: Wachet Auf [BWV 645] -- J.S. Bach.

World Choral Day Proclamation

Today is World Choral Day.  To find out more, visit the International Federation for Choral Music website.

Sing Choirs of the World!
May your voices take springs
there where fire burns.
May your songs put roses
there where battlefields lay.
Open furrow and sow love
to harvest fruits of hope.
Sing to liberty where despot rule,
Sing to equality where poverty nests,
Sing to love where hate prevails.
May your singing direct the world
so that peace takes over wars,
so that all will cherishes earth,
so that all race or color discrimination is banished
so that we will be together as sisters and brothers
so that this planet rejoices with your voices.

An aphorism

Music is not a thing.

Music is something that we do.

Music for Sunday 12 December

This is the one (and only) crazy week in Advent in the Parish of Jika Jika.

Services in the morning will be as per usual.

The readings for Sunday are linked here, although the Psalm will be sung in its longer form to an Anglican chant.

The setting will be half of Michael Dudman's Parish Eucharist (Together in Song, 756), with the Kyrie from the Missa de Angelis.

Hymns are as follows:

Advent wreath: Come, thou long-expected Jesus [272, vv 1-3)
Sequence: Hark the glad sound! [269]
Offertory: Tell out, my soul! [161]
Communion: Jesus, remember me [730]

In the evening the choir will be out and singing for a second time in the day:

A Service of Carols for Advent

Hymns, readings and choral music for the Third Sunday in Advent.

Featuring the Choir of the Anglican Parish of Jika Jika, 

directed by Kieran Crichton.

7.30pm, Sunday 12 December

St George's, corner Byfield and Ralph Streets, Reservoir.

Advent Carols

A Service of Carols for Advent

Hymns, readings and choral music for the Third Sunday in Advent.

Featuring the Choir of the Anglican Parish of Jika Jika, directed by Kieran Crichton.

7.30pm, Sunday 12 December

St George's, corner Byfield and Ralph Streets, Reservoir.

Music for Sunday 5 December

After last week's intense togetherness, the three centres are back in their respective houses this week.  This time next week I will be fretting about the Advent carols.

There are some weeks in Advent where one comes out with Handel echoing in one's ears.  This isn't one of those weeks.  This is a Bruckner week.  We get that wonderful passage from Isaiah 11: A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

Bruckner set part of this text very memorably in one of his motets.  I sang in this piece aeons ago as a young organ student, and recall wondering why Bruckner's orchestral music was so, well, monotonous, compared with his choral writing.  Of course, now I know you just have to lie back and let Bruckner's symphonic runaway train flatten you.  It's not the destination so much as the journey that matters.  When it comes to his choral music, his language seems much more concentrated, with the form more crisply articulated.  He still plants the big idea early and works it through, but you sort of get the feeling he respected his singers in a way that didn't extend so much to players of certain wind instruments.

But coming back from the mountain, readings for Sunday are linked here.  The Psalm will be sung to Anglican chant, using the Liturgical Psalter rather than the tatty (not to say maddening eccentric) Catholic translation.

There is a bit of variety across the parish about the service setting.  At All Saints we're using the Kyrie de Angelis, but taking the rest from Michael Dudman's Parish Eucharist (Together in Song, 756).  St George's will 'just' be doing Dudman.

As mentioned last week, the introit hymn has been displaced to after the blessing of the candle on the Advent wreath.  Surprisingly, when the choir sang the introit sentence last week a few people in the congregation chimed in.  Either some people have sung the Burgess chants before, or the formula is so predictable it's easy to pick up.  The next couple of weeks will be the time to tell.

Hymns are as follows:

Advent wreath: Come, thou long-expected Jesus [272, verses 1-2]
Sequence: On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry [270]
Offertory: There's a light upon the mountains [276]
Communion: Eat this bread, drink this cup [714]

Happy St Andrew's Day

Specious piffle from The Age

So, Ted Ballieu has one hundred days to display his mettle in government, according to The Age.

I have to say that The Age carried some good coverage over the last few weeks, compared to the increasingly hysterical primal scream we affectionately call The Australian.  There are some things I would quibble about.  They didn't really cover the policies of the Greens; most of that coverage was given over to the shafting that erstwhile party of the so-called Left graciously endured from the ALP franchises.

In spite of now having a dedicated arts page, the print edition of The Age didn't really provide much in the way of substantial discussion of arts policy.  OK, Labour kept it back until last Thursday, and the Liberals somehow didn't manage to release anything at all.  Both parties have something in their platforms which could have been rolled out.

Artists and their patrons vote as well, after all.

The commentary on economic issues was fairly uniformly excellent.  Tim Colebatch is easily one of the best economic writers around.  He connects the dismal science up with wider cultural issues in an engaging way.  But with the genuine diamonds come the fake items too; so much of the news-level coverage remains obstinately he-said-she-said.  Politics as celebrity gossip really doesn't cut it at all.  If you want a single reason for why the public appears disconnected from politics, why not start by looking at the go-betweens in the media.

One of the things which brought Kevin Rudd off the rails was his insistence on keeping every jot and tittle promised between his ascension to the ALP leadership and the washup of the night of the long knives.  His became a government obsessed with making announcements and 'winning' each day's media coverage.  It ended up putting the horse before the cart, with the predictable result of many announcements making for very little genuine progress.  Impatience bred inertia.

And commentators in the press kept setting 'tests' for him to pass.  Then they got fretful if he didn't 'pass,' or took out the sledgehammer if he somehow failed to take their advice.  Some of it was good, much of it eminently ignorable.

But Ted Ballieu has to prove himself over the next four years.  Some of his party's ideas for dealing with pressing issues are good; some things, like armed security personnel on public transport, could well be recrafted into better solutions like -- oh, I don't know, what about something a bit random and retro like staffing more train stations all day?  It's an instant winner: job creation, improvement of the customer 'experience' on public transport, and likely to improve longstanding problems with fare evasion.  The law and order auction was absurd: yet another token of how stultified public discourse has become.

The aspirations of a few crazy weeks of electoral politics must be tempered when they meet with the daily reality of having to make policy in government.  Citizens should rightly expect that it's going to take rather more than one hundred days to get the ball rolling.  No-one can ask much more than this.

In the meantime, I hadn't realized Fairfax was trying to shift a mile-high pile of fertilizer.  Perhaps they should put another of those &*#@ing wrap-around ads on The Age to irritate their readers even more.

Jonald Bradman Out For Six

Jonald Bradman, Australia's leading cricket player, has conceded defeat in the only match that matters.  He was bowled out for six in his first Test.

Sadly, we shall never know what sort of a captain he would have been as this is his second Test match as leader.  Bradman succeeded to the captaincy when former Victorian captain Steve the Smooth retired unexpectedly in 2007, and was widely expected to win the weekend's Test and finally experience leadership off his own bat.

Bradman never really recovered from the infamous Bodyline series of 1996, when he faced up against Jeff the Invincible.  Sadly, his legitimacy as leader was never to be given the imprimatur of the fans in the grandstand, although he made a good showing of his achievements so far, having played terrific games in water pipes, Port Philip Bay, Albert Park, the metropolitan transport system, not to mention his several innings with former Canberra kapitan Kev, and present captain Jillian.

Bradman will be retiring to his farm in western Victoria, leading to a seamless transfer of leadership in the Spring Street Cricket Club to members of the opposing team.  A certain amount of inter-generational uncertainty will ensue in the Lygon Street Fortress.

Voting

Well, that's the second election for the year down and dusted.  I voted after waiting some time in a muddy, rain bedraggled queue.

The ordering of my preferences ended up being something of a surprise.  I am a strict and comprehensive below the line voter for the upper house, which is just an extension of the method for preference-based voting in the lower house.  As a number of letters to the editor in various daily papers have pointed out, the direction of preferences is ultimately up to the voter, not the parties.  One is not obliged to follow the how-to-vote card.

Several things have irritated me in the closing days of the campaign.

Gratuitous mail-outs have been returned to sender (one bounced back: grrrrrr!), and various street-level promoters told to put their handouts in their own pockets.  Perhaps the one occupation which ranks slightly lower than politics in Australia must be electorate officers, party apparatchicks and the like.  Which would be why the same people eventually tend to wash up as candidates.

But the winner of the "if only I could strangle it with impunity" prize is the media habit of reporting opinion polls as news.  This is a cancerous habit which it behooves all thinking newspaper editors and their correspondents to break as soon as possible.

Advent Carols

An Advent Carols Service

Hymns, readings and choral music for the Third Sunday in Advent.

Featuring the Choir of the Anglican Parish of Jika Jika, directed by Kieran Crichton.

7.30pm, Sunday 12 December

St George's, corner Byfield and Ralph Streets, Reservoir.

What to do with political junk mail

Electoral mail-outs are far and away my pet hate for the year 2010.  In the federal and state elections I got my information from the source -- looking at the various party platforms on the web.  Of course, many voters are not as scrupulous in this regard, but it does cut out the static of being told by sundry Dear Leaders to fear the Greens.

I would welcome a mechanism which allowed one to opt out of party mail-outs.  The various stutterings about the major parties keeping electoral databases highlights the essential privacy issue at stake: it is very rare for a political party to seek the consent of the voter whose personal information is accrued in this way.  I wouldn't call it corruption so much as an unwelcome incursion into people's space.  It is at least as intrusive as cold-call surveys, fundraising appeals and sales pitches.

As a voter, the thing I resent most is the use of plain envelopes.  At least the sender address allows one to put it back into circulation.  I've lost count of the number of mail items I've sent back in this way through the two elections this year.

Message to Labour and Liberal:

• Sending electoral material in this way is mightily rude for those of us who would prefer not to receive it.
• Unidentified envelopes have become a dead give-away.  Make it obvious who the sender is so that I don't have to waste my time matching up the sender address before putting it back in the post.
• There are better uses for your postal budget.  I've found one which gets two bangs out of one postal charge:

Something to sing along to

Kyrie de Angelis, sung by the Benedictine monks of Silos.

Music for Sunday 28 November

I think everyone has a different sense of how Advent looks and sounds.  For me, the accent of the season is decidedly German -- Bach's organ chorales for this season are an important part of my repertoire, and I've lost count of the number of years where I've done performances of various movements from his cantatas for the season.  This year is no exception.

Equally, some of the art I turn to at this time of the year has a decidedly northern European accent.  Albrecht Durer's engravings dealing with the end-of-times seem to take on a sharper edge during the next four weeks.  Likewise, in my reading, Thomas a Kempis comes back to the fore.  Blake is my Advent poet with similar intensity to T.S. Eliot for Lent.

One of the challenges of having a youth choir is helping them to understand why we sing some of the music that we do, and how it fits in with what's going on in the liturgy.  Some things, such as the Advent wreath, are pretty self-explanatory.  Kids are natural pyromaniacs, so anything involving lighting a special candle gets their attention.  Likewise, the change of colour in the vestments and other penitential features of the season -- such as giving the gloria a rest -- are easily understood.

I've assembled a little teaching exercise linking up the words of Zion hears the watchmen's voices to the readings associated with Bach's 140th Cantata.  The Gospel reading in the Lutheran lectionary for the year 1731 was the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.  The words of the hymn will be found here, although Bach's famous setting only uses the second verse.  The choir will be singing this piece for the Advent carols on 12 December, so it will be good to give them a richer sense it.  Perhaps the hardest thing is going to be getting them to understand that they're jumping through the same hoop as for their (by now) well-worn favourite, Jesu, joy of man's desiring; those who 'get it' will be the ones to drag the rest along in the performance!

Here's a sprightly performance of Zion from youtube, with Ton Koopman.

But back to this week...

There will be a joint parish mass at St Mary's, East Preston, followed by the Annual General Meeting.

I've alluded to some general seasonal variations in the service for the next four weeks, but there will be some local variations as well.  The choir will be singing the proper introit for the week throughout Advent, using the Francis Burgess psalm tone formula.  As we already use the Burgess tones for the offertory and communion sentences, this will make a nice set of chants to use at other times in the year.  Having arrived in the church, there will be a short service of light for the Advent wreath, including a hymn which gets longer with the season.  It's an old trick, but a good one!

The chant theme will be carried into the first part of the service, where we will be singing the Kyrie de Angelis.

The setting for the Sanctus, acclamations and Agnus Dei will be Michael Dudman's Parish Eucharist (Together in Song, 756).  

The readings will be found here.  The psalm will be sung to Anglican Chant.  The hymns will be as follows:

Service of Light: Come, thou long-expected Jesus [verse 1 only, 272]
Sequence: The advent of our God [271]
Offertory: Wake, awake, for night is flying [266]
Communion: Dona nobis pacem, Domine [713]

Bright Cecilia

Today is the patronal feast for musicians and poets, the feast of St Cecilia.  If you want to read her legend, you can find the life of St Cecilia in the Golden Legend.

I remember the first time I heard G.F. Handel's setting of John Dryden's Ode on St Cecilia's Day.  It was electrifying, and set me off in search of both more Handel, and a good dose of Dryden.  As things turned out, Handel stuck, but Dryden didn't really -- I ended up being more of a fan of Alexander Pope, especially after meeting the bilious Epistle to Arbuthnot.  It still makes me laugh out loud, and I do enjoy the frisson from the sheer cattiness of it.

But back to Handel's Ode.  This is one of two such pieces composed for the celebration of St Cecilia's day in London, this one in 1739; Alexander's Feast is the other (setting another poem by Dryden), composed in 1736.

In the 1739 Ode, Dryden and Handel work their way through the orchestra, with meditations on the properties of harmony and music to bring the world into order.  You can find a copy of the poem by scrolling down the page here.

The opening sequence is the predictable formula of overture, recitative and chorus.  By the time the tenor arrives to summon us out of our elemental rest, you can almost feel the universe vibrating away in perfect tune.  It's important to distinguish between the use of terms here -- the universe is made by harmony, the musica universalis so perfect it is inaudible to mere human hearing.  That which we can hear is musica mundana, somewhat lower down the scale of value in the Platonic order, but no less affecting for that.

The soprano follows on with an aria posing the question "what passion cannot music raise, and quell?"  I love the description of the origins of music here -- Jubal struck the chorded shell, and his brothers stood amazed.  How rare for anyone to gape at music!

Of the instruments, we get the organ (obviously!), the lyre, the violin, and the flute.  However, the instruments that really get the show off the ground are the trumpet and drums.  Hark!

This is probably the aria and chorus tenors and choristers love to hate -- try saying "the double double double beat of THE thund'ring drum" as quickly as possible on your own, then getting a dozen or so people to match up perfectly, and then add a healthy number of string players and a timpanist to the mix.  But look very closely at this video: you will see natural trumpets, and what stunning players they are.  There is so much that just makes your jaw drop in this performance.

Skipping over the soft complaining flute and sharp violins, one reaches the part of the piece where the existential rubber hits the road, as it were. No organist can ignore it, given that it is this instrument which sets things spinning on their eternal coil in the climax of the poem.  Given that St Cecilia's attribute in iconography is the organ, this is where all the classical music theory meets with mid-eighteenth century ideas about music and theology.  (If you look closely at the picture at the top of this entry, you'll see a small portative organ between the violin-toting angels.  Curiously, it looks as if one could only play this particular organ while kneeling, for which purpose a nice cushion has been placed before it.)

The cadenza at the end of the aria in this performance is real fun.  It's worth recalling that Handel was known for his virtuosity as an organist.  The organ theme carries on in the following aria, where we get Orpheus quelling the savage brute followed by angels dropping by because they mistook earth for heaven when Cecilia was at her practice.  (Oh that this would happen to me!)

Style

A very kind correspondent sent me a link to a site titled I Write Like.

It's a pretty diverting website.  You paste in a chunk of something you've written, hit the button, and an algorithm generates an analysis of your style.  It then tells me I write like the following:

H.P. Lovecraft
James Joyce
David Foster Wallace
Arthur Conan Doyle

It seems that my style changes according to the subject.  Lovecraftian prose results from writing about organ music (maybe it's appropriate enough, given Lovecraft's profile as a pioneer in weird fiction).  I write with a Joycean accent when delivering my findings about the development of public music examinations in Melbourne.  Wallace appeared in response to a short political essay.  And my doctoral thesis was apparently written in the voice of the narrative of Sherlock Holmes!

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

Music for Sunday 21 November

Well, another lectionary year is done.  Only five weeks to go until Christmas, and then the summer break.

All Saints has a couple of windows with images associated with this week's feast.  One is in the north aisle, towards the back of the church.  It's a rather pretty window, and the picture to the left gives you a good impression of the colours.  Something of a fantasy in imperial purple...

The other image is in the chancel window.  It's a long way up the wall, and consequently difficult to photograph without a large lens.

The end of the ferial weeks means that the music will be taking a more restrained turn until Christmas.  This means Dudman makes a comeback, and some more plainchant will be used than is usual.

So, for the last time until Christmas, the setting will be Philip Mathias' Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns as follows:

Introit: Come let us join our cheerful songs [204]

Psalm: I was overjoyed [78]

Sequence: Hail Redeemer, King divine! [237]

Offertory: Hallelujah! sing to Jesus [517]

Communion: Let all mortal flesh keep silence [497]

The choir will sing an anthem: Lead me, Lord -- Samuel Sebastian Wesley.

Things you always wanted to do

There's a video going viral in certain quarters of the Pope's recent visit to Santiago di Compostella, where the Botafumeiro (a large thurible) was swung especially.  Of course, it's usually put in flight on Sundays and feast days.

Because Compostella was one of the great pilgrimage churches, it is thought that the Botafumeiro was originally made so that a large amount of incense could be burnt in order to ameliorate the smell of people who had walked from France.  There's a physics side to it, however -- it may also have functioned as one of those little monastic experiments looking at pendulums.


Youtube has a host of videos of the Botafumeiro, and I thought I'd link one that gives a good view of how the Tiraboleiros get the great vessel to fly.

Now, if you've always wanted to give swinging the Botafumeiro a try, you can do so without leaving the comfort of your present location with this online simulator.  You might want to watch the guys in the video for some tips...