Thomasina’s last waltz

Vigil

Late on Holy Saturday I headed off, as is my custom, to Christ Church St Laurence (St BBQ to the irreverent) for the Easter Vigil service.

This is the kind of service where it pays to arrive early to secure a spot in the pews – in this respect it’s rivalled only by the Midnight Mass at Christmas. Which is why I was very surprised, 10 minutes before it was all due to begin, to look around and see the church half empty. In all there were maybe 60 to 70 people in the congregation as opposed to the couple of hundred I’d been expecting. Strange, and disappointing. Not that this made the service any less wonderful, just less cramped and a tiny bit quicker (it finished before 1 a.m. instead of after!). 

Easter is no ordinary time in the church year and this is no ordinary service. Everything about it conspires to make it special and moving. I love the way it begins in darkness followed by the kindling of a new flame. The careful clutching of a tiny candle (of the kind they hand out at Carols by Candlelight but without the crucial cardboard finger protector) does wonders for the concentration. And this is necessary: the first substantial portion of the Liturgy of the Light is chanted at length, in this case most euphoniously by David Russell. So beautiful is it in fact that it can be alarmingly easy to tune out from the words and simply soak up the glorious sound – not what’s intended! This is followed by readings – still in darkness apart from the candles – from the principal Bible stories: the Creation, the Flood, the parting of the Red Sea (read with a great deal of expression) and so on.

Eventually, and this is the thrilling part, all the lights come on and there is a great noise with the random ringing of hand-bells and the organ making a mighty entry (this was Peter Jewkes’s party piece, which I wickedly refer to as “the theme from Babe”). This year, in a gesture I’d not seen before, the choir had also been issued with those curl-up whistles and party poppers. I distinctly saw the flutter of confetti. And why not? The risen Christ is worth celebrating. Alleluia!

Photo note: not taken in church.
PS. There was no pew sheet (another surprise) but I think the mass setting was Haydn’s Little Organ Mass, more formally the Missa Sancti Joannis de Deo. The soprano solo in the Benedictus was especially beautiful.

I'll build a stairway to purgatory!

I’ll build a stairway to purgatory

With a new step ev’ry day!

Wish it could be more, well, momentary  

But Heaven, I’m on my way!

I’ll catch a glimpse
And then it’s suff’ring, Ha ha!

Since! I’m merely human, Ha ha!

I’ll build a stairway to purgatory

With a new step ev’ry day!

No, Thomasina has not turned into a crazy religious tap dancer, it’s just how things are turning out this week. In this case: eight more sleeps before The Dream of Gerontius gets another hearing in Sydney.

It’s a strange but exhilarating piece and there’s a lot no one’s going to tell you about it.

For example, it tends to be publicised with all the usual “uplifting” verbiage that’s automatically applied to religious choral works. But a normal religious choral work this is not. Gerontius is not a liturgical setting – it’s not a straightforward mass or even a requiem – and it’s not a nice dramatic interpretation of a Bible story either. It’s kind of weird and a bit intense, with shades of Wagner (think Parsifal). It’s also a masterpiece, and that cuts through all the misunderstandings that have plagued it.

It offers a very personal interpretation of faith and death, where a requiem, whether fiery or consoling, would give us some distance. Gerontius is an old man (which is not something I have to tell those who’ve studied classical languages or who love etymologies). He’s lived life to the full and for real, which means Elgar can give him “full-blooded” music. It’s soul-baring too. Gerontius has questions and fears and he feels pain (and he needs to be a super-dooper tenor).

And Gerontius is very, very “Catholic”. Elgar was Catholic. The text is from a 900-line poem by Cardinal Newman, who, the Liminal Being reports, is about to be canonised. Gerontius dies – well and good, this happens in music. But he goes to purgatory, which is something that doesn’t happen so often in music, Iron Maiden aside. There’s a tantalising glimpse of heaven as the theology dictates, but then it’s off to join the other tormented souls. Thank God for the Anglicans, I say.

The Dream of Gerontius didn’t get off to a great start: ill-chosen soloists, poorly prepared choir (the chorusmaster died, the replacement brought out of retirement was repelled by the subject), the conductor Hans Richter got his hands on the final score only 10 days out. So, a bad performance combined with all the reservations that English Protestants were bound to have about a text that was not only Catholic but quirkily so.

Even now, when we’re a whole lot more relaxed about such things and when The Dream of Gerontius has been fully recognised as Elgar’s great masterwork, this piece continues to carry the whiff of bad press. For example, well before I first heard it, when I knew of it only by name and had only the vaguest idea of what it was about, I’d managed to acquire the perception that Gerontius was a difficult piece, long and boring.

Actually, it is long: 1 hour and 40 minutes of music. The rest of the bad press is bunkum. Because, as I discovered and as I’ve been reminding myself in recent weeks, when you actually listen to Gerontius in all its drama and deep feeling, and when you succumb to Elgar’s over-the-top gestures – the demons are my favourite, ha ha! – it’s not just good music but profoundly moving.

But it does belong to that category of work where, if you don’t understand where it’s coming from you could easily end up feeling as unsympathetic as the grouchy chorusmaster of the premiere. To that end, and in response to requests, I’m linking here to an SSO audio feature devised and presented by David Garrett: The Dream of Gerontius – A Catechism. It’s based on a pre-concert talk and, as the title would suggest, it uses questions and answers to get to the heart of Elgar’s spiritual inspiration. [The feature is streaming only, 24 minutes.]

The churching of music

When I was about 20 I attended a high Anglican church service for the first time. I took myself off to Christ Church St Laurence not for spiritual reasons but to hear the Australian premiere of a Renaissance mass. It was fascinating and beautiful. Musically satisfying too – Neil McEwan runs the best parish choir in the country. But it was also daunting.

Everyone around me knew what was going on, while this birth-certificate Anglican who’d been attending a Baptist church in Sydney’s bible belt hung onto the order of service [you can tell where this is going] for dear life and concentrated very hard on standing, sitting, and generally responding at all the right times. (Genuflection was a whole ’nother story. Oh boy!) Even with a musical background that included singing masses and exploring the acoustic potential of plainchant in the stairwells of the Seymour Centre, I found it hard-going. The whole thing was uplifting, but slightly discomforting at the same time. Still, something must have been right and CCSL saw me again, many times. I ended up joining the Evensong Choir and still revel in the mysteries of the Easter and Christmas vigils. (Ok, the something that was “right” had a lot to do with the music, but the music wasn't all.)

I can imagine that attending a orchestral concert for the first time as an adult (children enjoy a different kind of introduction at a stage when they’re used to being bombarded with new things) could be a lot like my first high Anglican experience.

In all this I’m not saying that an orchestral concert is a religious experience, although many concert-goers could probably point to an intensely “religious” moment from some point in their musical lives.

But there are certainly parallels with the religious service: a dedicated building (the concert hall), the high priest at the altar (conductor on podium), the acolytes (musicians), the sacred text (the score) handed down from on high by the creator (composer), the hushed and respectful silences, the ritual participation of the congregation (audience) in fairly set ways at set times, the relatively sombre formal garb of the performers so they don’t in their individuality distract from the object of worship.

Also, and this is an important one, I think, there is the sense of joining with a community of like-minded worshippers (concert-goers) all focussed forward on the same thing (the music), even as one is alone. (I say “alone” because, even if you’re with companions, there is little to no social interaction during the performance itself.)

The church is an ancient thing, but for concerts these parallels emerged in the 19th century as symphony orchestras and formal concert life took modern shape. Whether they’re good for the life and future of the 21st-century classical concert is the important question.

Nerdy postscript: Christopher Small makes for interesting reading on this subject. I recommend his article on performance as ritual in Lost in Music: Culture, Style and the Musical Event (Sociological Review Monograph 34).

Easter Sunday

Yesterday I came across this disturbing piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail. Rev. Gretta Vosper, a minister of Canada's United Church, has decided to remove all mention of Jesus Christ, God and so on from the services; no one prays; and apparently no one is saved (at least not through Jesus' death and resurrection). For Rev. Vosper it's important to shed "no-longer credible myths, doctrines and dogmas". These are replaced with cosy things such as the "renewal of optimism and the human spirit". The 18th-century hymn Jesus Christ Has Risen Today is "vosperised" so that the congregation sings "Glorious hope has risen today". She has written a book, With or Without God: Why the Way We Live is more Important than What We Believe. And no I haven't read it, but the title is alarming enough. First there's the suggestion that God is somehow optional [in the Christian church]. Then there's this idea that the "way we live", which going by the news article seems to translate as participating in community love and giving people fresh starts and new chances and working out for yourself what is holy and sacred (all couched in very human-centred terms), is more important that "what we believe", i.e. faith.

One commenter (a self-professed non-church-goer) says "Put good living back into faith? What a terrific idea. It's not for the meek of heart. It's for those courageous enough to live by the rules and to make the world a better place NOW!!! not wait around for heaven and the judges score."

Two problems with that: Rev. Vosper isn't so much suggesting putting good living back into faith (which might otherwise be a commendable thing) as replacing faith altogether (she wants to get rid of all that messy and unpalatable "theological detritus" — stuff like the resurrection and salvation). The other problem is that mankind, being fallen and all that, has proven consistently and reliably unsuccessful at being "courageous enough to live by the rules and to make the world a better place", which may just be why God had to send his Son. (A third problem is this misbegotten idea of the heavenly "score card". A fourth problem is the tricky matter of the rules themselves.) C.S. Lewis says all this more eloquently and persuasively in Mere Christianity and more entertainingly in The Screwtape Letters.

Another commenter declares that he would love to go to a church with "wholesome fellowship and all the singing and uplifting (genuine) morale boosting" without the "divisive, anachronistic teachings". Oh, and he also loves the "ambience of churches", just not the "fairy tales" designed to frighten and manipulate. I guess a nice club with lots of music and some beautiful architecture would suit him well. Some kind of concert subscription, perhaps?

As for me, well I'm a sucker for great music and fantastic ambience too (my Easter was spent at the vigil at Christ Church St Laurence: bells and smells and more frocks than David Jones, as they say, not to mention one of the best choirs in the country). But without faith the whole thing would be empty and meaningless and completely without power.

Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia. Alleluia.