As I write this on 16 March 2020 it seems likely that the Session of Rosedale Presbyterian Church will decide tomorrow (by socially-distanced telephone meeting) to join churches throughout Southern Ontario in suspending public worship as part of society’s broader effort to blunt the progress of the COVID-19 outbreak that is ravaging the world, already devastatingly in some places. Should this happen I hope these notes on what would have been this Sunday’s music become part of our self-isolated community’s life. As so often seems to happen music chosen weeks ago is taking on an eerie – or – perhaps divine – connection to the events unfolding around us.

Brahms’ German Requiem, a concert work largely unaffected by the centuries-old impulse to sing sacred music in a language understood by the listener, is heard most often by English speaking audiences in its original German. As we have journeyed through offering, literally piece-by-piece, this masterwork as part of our winter (and God willing, our spring) services the option has certainly existed to go with this norm – but so too in our Protestant sensibilities has the interest in offering our congregation music and meaning as one, without the abstraction of a printed translation. A discussion of the dynamics of this choice are for another day – today, let’s look squarely at its 3rd movement, made more vivid, perhaps, by the vernacular language, and certainly by the time in which we are hearing it.

The work’s third movement sets an unanswerable question “How long will I live?” answering only with the assurance that righteous souls lie in God’s hands (Wisdom 3:1) – slightly hollow, though set in a magnificent fugue composed entirely over the rock-firm grounding of a D-pedal point, suggesting God’s abiding presence and strength. But am I one of those righteous souls? Is my loved one? What about the unrighteous souls, however determined, and the communities we share? As our days begin to take on apocalyptic tones these matters may affect some of us more than others: to the unknowable future belongs the impact of COVID-19 on our communities and ourselves, but the questions it raises certainly seem closer than mere weeks ago.

In the unlikely event RPC gathers for worship this coming Sunday, the choir will accompany this disturbingly existential offering with a short, simple and strikingly personal prayer text, set in this instance by John Rutter.

God be in my head, and in my understanding;
God be in mine eyes, and in my looking;
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking;
God be at mine end, and at my departing.

– Sarum Primer, 1558

If the assurance of Wisdom 3:1 in Brahms rings a bit hollow, this prayer strikes me (as it always does) deeply comforting. If God is in my understanding I can think and feel beyond my fear and anger. If God is my looking I can see clearly my correct course. If God is in my speaking I can offer words of wisdom and comfort when they are needed. If God is in my heart I can look beyond my own household, to a community, a species and a planet that ask, and should expect my commitment to their well-being. For me the final, and least immediately comforting petition seems to pale against the riches provided by the others to the situation in which we find ourselves – but that discussion, too, is for another day.

Today we live; today we work together.

-CD

Desolate is one of many words our language gained from England’s Norman conquerors in 1066. In English we tend to associate it with places, whereas its French antecedent desolée expresses more of a personal feeling of loss or regret. We see both meanings in today’s two choral selections, and we see two strikingly different musical portrayals.

The longing words of Psalm 42’s first three verses are in the voice of one spiritually bereft, perhaps feeling abandoned by God after daily mocking by those questioning his faith – perhaps questioning it himself all the while. The poetic image used is that of a thirsty deer longing for water, and Noel Rawsthrone’s musical depiction of this longing shifts sadly between solo and duet passages in weeping, descending melodies, and terse choral chant-like textures that bring the whole into the first person plural voice.

William Byrd’s anthem setting of Isaiah 64:10, Civitas sancti tui is a frank acknowledgment that the holy city has been made into a desert, a desolation.  The greater meaning here than the ‘mere’ physical destruction of the city cannot be understated: for God’s people Jerusalem forms the seat of faith, of power and of hope, a fact not lost on its Babylonian conquerors, now leading defeated Israel into exile. In the music, a short section expresses that simple fact, and then we hear Jerusalem and its more poetic name Sion along with the Latin words deserta and desolata repeated over and over in a strikingly serene, almost psychological way. As if to drive home the simplicity of this admission, the voices of the choir sound here for the first time homophonically, that is, at the same time rather than in alternation.

Rev. Kendall reminds us today of the sanctity of water – in the ancient world, yes, but no less in our own time and place: Canada, with its unparalleled wealth of fresh water continues to fail its First Nations in the provision of this basic life-critical commodity, and also faces the uncertainty of water sovereignty as its increasingly parched neighbour to the south increases pressure to have access within a deteriorating climate. Water gives life, gives sanctification through baptism, gives health, cleanliness and stability to individuals and nations – its loss is synonymous with desolation.

In March 2020 the world teeters on the brink of uncertainties such as a global disease outbreak and global climate emergency: let us remember that water, though plentiful in the way we know it, in many other places is already rare as music in the desert. Let us pray and work to maintain and remediate the people and places made desolate by us and our world.

-CD

The season of Lent

Today the season of Lent lasts 40 Days from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. If you try to figure this out from a calendar you must not count the six Sundays, which are technically not part of the traditional Lenten observance (and for those of us who have chosen to ‘give things up’ – interesting to know that in some traditions, Sunday is the weekly day off from those commitments!)

Ever notice the prominence of the number 40 in the Bible? From the length of the flood (40 days and nights), to Moses’ days on Mount Sinai, the Israelites’ two periods of wandering in the desert (40 years twice), to the period of Jonah’s warning to Nineveh and the period of time in which Jesus appeared to the disciples after the Resurrection (both 40 days) the number is mentioned a striking 146 times in scripture. The Bible, as it turns out, was even written down by exactly 40 people, if you count them up.

The earliest recorded references to a pre-Easter season of self-denial, introspection and prayer date from the early days of the church, in the writings of Irenaus of Lyons (c.130-c.200), but at that time it was just a few days in length: sometime after discussion by the Council of Nicea (325) Lent eventually climbed on the bandwagon of the Bible’s seeming fascination with the number 40, inspired of course by the days Jesus himself spent fasting and praying in the wilderness.

In musical terms Lent can imply many things in addition of course to melodies and texts traditional to or thematically fitting the season. Music conceived with Lent (and especially Lenten texts) in mind can often have a reverent, sober and cerebral character not so suited to more festive seasons. In some very catholic-style churches an ironically Calvinistic texture is adopted without organs and other instruments, reverting to the austerity of unaccompanied singing by both choirs and congregations. And where instruments continue to be used through Lent there is often a culture of using them sparingly, more quietly, and – dare I say it – more humbly. Even the musicians’ most beloved ‘Hallelujah!” is often put away, as though its true meaning at Easter could ever be compromised by its release in the preceding weeks.

At RPC, in addition to following detailed sermon plans (you will always find these and complete musical details published on our monthly Word and Music List in the Music/Media section of the RPC website), Lent gathers many diverse genres and ideas into our musical life, including this year our ongoing winter/spring project to sing all seven movements of Johannes Brahms’ Ein Deutches Requiem‘ where they pick up on themes of the day.

As much as sacred music at RPC reaches far beyond our Presbyterian tradition, the true riches in our Lent are often found within our hymns. This is an expression of not only the basis of the Reformed perspective on literacy, on direct congregational worship and a metrical literary tradition, but also I think of the way hymns seek to collect together the immensity of self-introspection that is germane to a personal faith, rather than one perhaps more clouded by ritual, decoration, sense and experience, or on any other beautiful thing liable to be a target for idolatry.

After all, in some sense art may be thought to be true and beautiful only when it is seen, heard or otherwise experienced by people. We with good reason build cathedrals, paint and compose masterpieces to God’s glory – but, perhaps, they become art only through people.

-CD