Years ago I attempted to publish a wedding song I had written for my older brother’s wedding in 1995. It was rejected. Sadly, I gave up on attempting to have anything published since then until now.
I received an email from my younger brother with a hymn translated by one of our WELS Missionaries currently serving in China at the Asia Lutheran Seminary. With his (the missionary’s) permission I arranged it from guitar chords and a melody line to a hymn version, and later a choir version which my choir sang for Reformation Sunday. The hymn is based on Psalm 46 and was originally written shortly after WWII when many churches were being closed by the Red Army. Anyway, he encouraged me to send it to NPH for publication. Since I used to work there and helped to edit the Altar Book as well as LAtPPY, I sent the manuscripts and mp3 of my choir singing the selection to my former boss. We’ll see what happens next.
True, I use my Music Theory degree several times a week teaching piano lessons, but I haven’t actually written anything major in several years. I’ve arranged a couple hymns Gospel-style, but as far as actually having to focus on music-writing and voicing rules, I’m a bit rusty.
Recently I’ve been working on the realization of a Chinese hymn translated by one of our WELS missionaries who also wrote two additional stanzas (just FYI–hymns don’t have “verses”, they have “stanzas”). I finished the 4-part hymn version several weeks ago, but the choral version has been a major work for me. To try to create musical pictures is one of the most challenging and exciting things about composing for me. Now that I’ve completed it, I listen to it and marvel at the musical influences that manifest themselves in this piece. I couldn’t arrange a Chinese hymn for choir without part of it sounding a bit Chinese, so for inspiration I got out my Voice/Piano score for Mulan. The hymn is based on Psalm 46, the same which “A Mighty Fortress” is based on, so the sounds of strength and battle and shout of victory are influenced partly by Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and partly by the Hans Zimmer’s maelstrom sequence in the score of Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End which is one of my favorite movie scores of all time. Although no one but me would pick up on these (and other) influences, the fact that they are there is no surprise. Every major composer drew from composers before them–even Bach was influenced by Buxtehude. I could write a lengthy post on the subject, but I digress. My point is that although I’ve really gotten rusty by not composing, it feels so good to be using that degree I’m still paying off!!
Welcome to Lutheran Carnival LI!! I’m honored to pitch in and help my brother-in-law keep this carnival going, although I must admit that I have not regularly visited the carnivals until recently.
Being a church musician and holding a B.A. in Music from a Lutheran college, I would be remiss in my duties as host if I did not select as my little known Lutheran contributor a church musician. Every “in-tuned” Lutheran knows J.S. Bach, of course, and though at times I will select an organ work by the famous Baroque composer, my favorite organ piece is by another, lesser known Baroque composer.
Meet Dieterich Buxtehude.
Diderich Buxtehude was born about 1637 in his native country of Denmark. He later Germanized his name by signing all documents Dieterich Buxtehude. He served as organist in Helsingborg and Elsinore, but most notably serving over 40 years at St. Mary’s Church in Lübeck. Although much of his music was performed in ordinary Lutheran worship, Buxtehude presented a variety of often-dramatic sacred choral and organ music in his late afternoon Abendmusiken concerts, for which he is most famous. So influential were these concerts to budding composers of his day (including Handel and Telemann), that they would travel hundreds of miles to meet Buxtehude and witness his musical genius. J.S. Bach traveled more than 250 miles on foot to experience these concerts and worship first hand.
Buxtehude’s organ works comprise a central part of the standard organ repertoire and are frequently performed at recitals and church services. His style strongly influenced many composers, including Bach. He is definitely a Lutheran to note!
On with the Carnival…
Jason Evans of Geekspaces.net submitted his post entitled “Contributing to Salvation�: a brief comparison of the Lutheran/Reformed view of who works in salvation and the Armenian view. One of the commenters also points out the difference between these views and the EO view.
Pastor Walter Snyder of Ask the Pastor presents two posts: “The Pastor and Funeral Visitation” in which he responds to the question of a minister from another church body, providing practical advice concerning The Pastor and Funeral Visitation, and “Mental Health Help” in which Ask the Pastor fields another question about generalized anxiety disorder and focuses his reply on the spiritual dimension of Mental Health Help.
Then my dear sister-in-law who is currently “growing” my 14th niece or nephew, writes about “Pregnant Women and Food” on Random Intolerance. She also describes all the neat stuff that can be done in Kansas without driving too far from Wichita in “Things I Want to Do This Summer”. It looks like the combine demolition derby is a winner.
The Aardvark featured several commemorations and celebrations over the past couple weeks. Included among these were “The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary” and the commemoration of “Justin, Martyr”.
Dan at Necessary Roughness submits two posts: “Musical Piety” in which Dan discusses listening in Christian liberty to music that seems to be anti-Christian, and “Pentecost and the Holy Spirit” where Dan offers an anecdote from Pr. Wokoma in Houston, discussing the work of the Holy Spirit.
Theresa of Be Strong in the Grace reflects on the very visual concept of drowning one’s self daily in the water of their baptism in “Drowning Myself Daily…”
Confessing Evangelical submitted “Praying the Catechism”. The Small Catechism has been called “the only catechism that can be prayed”. John H picks up on that suggestion by proposing an office-style form of daily devotion based on the Catechism.
Hummie’s World gives us “I do not like change!” Hummie remarks, “I am always writing about my daily life and how I see God in it…this is my recent writing. If you would like to see others, hit the “God and Me” tab at the top. Also, I would like to highlight my new site of Christian writings ..www.looktolord.blogspot.com…great for church secretaries…I’m still trying to get stuff up there.”
My own contribution is the significance of spiritual adoption in the post “The Best Adoption Ever!!!”
In addition, Dan at Necessary Roughness recommended this post regarding women in today’s society to the carnival.
So that’s it for Carnival LI. Sorry I did not initially get all the submissions due to a filter mix up. Thanks to all the contributers, and thank you for allowing me to host.
I’ve been in Montana for a week now visiting family and playing for services. Even now as I type my fingers hurt from the intense organ playing and practicing this weekend. It’s been a great trip scrapbooking and playing for church. Last night, though, was a wondrous experience for this music geek.
As we were driving home along the side roads of open ranges, I actually saw deer and antelope playing. And wild turkeys. There were a few discouraging words from my brother as we got lost and a couple of clouds, but for the most part we were driving through “Home, Home on the Range”. Very exciting.
At least according to the Anchorage School District which hires so called choral conductors/music teachers. I went to a students’ high school choir concert tonight. She brought her choir music to her lesson last week and could hardly sing it because it was too low! This girl is a Soprano II, maybe an Alto I on occasion, and her director had her singing Alto II! She was growling those low notes, struggling to get that low (which, by the way, is very unhealthy for your vocal folds). So I decided to check out this teacher. I know every director has their style, I didn’t know untrained elementary teacher was one of them. Let me illustrate. Wait, I’m blogging, can’t illustrate too well. So let me describe:
1. Conducting with fingers spread apart. Choir members don’t really need to see where the ictus is, let them figure out where the center of the beat is on their own. Or pick a finger, any finger.
2. Why conduct with expression? Who cares if every song is the same droning volume? Hey, if your conducting expression never changes, your choir’s expression will never change. Isn’t that the best way to handle teenagers?
3. Don’t bother teaching breath support. Sopranos and Tenors can just go along singing flat. Better yet, give a solo to a soprano without breath support! That’ll make everyone cringe during “O Come All Ye Faithful” so they won’t notice it’s a CHRISTIAN song.
4. Don’t bother with a closed cutoff. Just make explosion gestures with your hands so they don’t know exactly where the cutoff is. Those machine gun sounding t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t’s are so, like, cool sounding and stuff.
5. Oh, I almost forgot, every other “i” in Latin is pronounced “ee”, but when your choir is singing “Gloria in Excelsis”, make sure to switch to English pronounciation just for the word “in”.
And here’s the shocker: the conductor’s biography. I replaced the names with asterisks.
*** has performed all of her life in community, church and scholastic choirs. A graduate in music education from Baylor University, *** is the choir director at *** High School and a private voice instructor. She has also conducted choirs and taught music courses for the Anchorage Festival of Music and the Suzuki Institute. Born and raised in Alaska, she is currently pursuing her Masters of Education from the University of Alaska Anchorage.
How crazy is that? And she teaches voice lessons? You’d think if she was a voice teacher she’d at least teach her choirs proper breathing! That’s a basic!!! According to my student, she hasn’t brought up breathing since the beginning of the school year.
Now I will share what my $30,000 music education, 4 semesters of choral conducting, 10 semesters of voice lessons, and 6 years of singing under great conductors has taught me:
1. Keep your fingers closed. A choir member needs to see where the ictus (not to be confused with ichthus, the Christian fish) is on every beat. That’s the center of the beat that keeps everybody together. This is accomplished by the longest part of the arm (that would be the middle finger) doing a little “flick”–almost as if there was a drop of water on the end. Directing with your fingers spread apart means that there cannot be an ictus because there are now 5 points at the end of the arm instead of one. So which finger do you follow?
2. Conduct with expression. If you conduct methodically the choir will follow you the same way. So if your conducting expression never changes, your choir’s expression will never change.
3. A choir member that does not learn breath support will always be flat. Now, flat basses aren’t so bad, but flat sopranos? **shudder**
4. Give a closed cutoff with your hand unless you want the sound to fade away, then you use a gentle form of the finger explosion.
5. Latin has only 5 vowel sounds when singing: ah, eh, ee, oh, oo. That would make it “Glohreeah een Ehkshehlsees.” Please, for me, when you sing “Angels we have heard on High” in church this Christmas, please sing “EEn”.
Now if you REALLY want to be a great conductor, you should furthur your study with this guy.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to go hear and see the symphony perform Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, the “Ode to Joy.” The fact that Beethoven was deaf and mad and could still write this masterpiece is pure genius. I love Beethoven. He really was the bridge between the Classical (think Mozart) and Romantic (think Chopin) periods and was so forward in his compositions at the time they weren’t always accepted. Adding soloists and a huge chorus to a symphony? Switching the Scherzo and Adagio movements? Unheard of! Add to that the double fugue in the finale which Bach probably never even thought of and it is just–I don’t even know the word for it!!! What an experience! I’d blast the CD in my apt. while at college but that doesn’t come close to this performance. WOW!!!
Yesterday one of my piano students played two lines of one of his pieces in the wrong meter. This means that although each measure had only 4 beats he had counted wrong and played each measure as if it had 6 beats. We went through the lines with me counting the written meter, then I asked him to play the whole piece again. He replied, “The right way or can I play it my way?”
Here was a dilemma. Do I correct him, have him play the piece as written and that’s the end of it? Or do I use the opportunity to teach some music theory? Well, being that I have a degree in and passion for Music Theory, not Performance as so many other teachers, I told him, “You may play it your way IF you can tell me what time signature you’re playing those two lines in.” With a little coaching, he was able to figure out that he was playing in 6/8 time, not 4/4. We then went through all the notes in those two lines, changing them a little so that they would be correctly written for the new time signature. The result? One very excited young piano student. “I wrote my own song!” he exclaimed. I explained to him that when someone takes a song that someone else wrote and changes it a little, we call that arranging. So he had arranged his first piece. That boy was so excited after his lesson I could hear him yelling outside all the way to his van, “I arranged a song! I arranged a song!” To me, that boy’s excitement was worth so much more than if I had been a “normal” teacher and just corrected his timing. I love my job!!!
Last night I was reviewing some music history at the request of one of my students and came across this simple fact:
Bach was considered old fashioned in the latter part of the Baroque period.
Isn’t it interesting that Bach was considered outdated before he was even dead? Stylistically, Bach didn’t change all that much. His works do not show a huge development as a composer as, say, Beethoven or even Handel (who was much more popular than Bach at that time). Probably explains why outside of Bach’s six motets, the Goldberg Variations, and the Brandenburg concertos I’m really not much of a Bach fan.
I LOVE this quote from John Cage–it really fits me!
“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”
(John Cage was an innovative 20th century composer whose works include 4′ 33″, one of my favorites to perform!!)
Had the server been up and running I would have commented on this sooner, and even as I am writing this in OpenOffice the server is down. But the good news is the new server is being built right here in our office.
Anyway, I figured I should comment about this since I’m a degreed musician and all.
It is exciting to discover new pieces by already composers, but this is probably more exciting from an educational standpoint to see how it fits into his development as a composer, as the article points out. I would be more excited and anticipating its recording if it was a contata or motet. It was not uncommon for composers to write shorter pieces for individuals’ special occasions and I am not surprised it was only found in a private collection. What is interesting about this piece is that it is not a typical Bach work—a strophic piece which is similar to our hymns where one melody or accompaniment is used for several verses. It is also composed for a single instrument and voice which is atypical of Bach who usually composed on a much larger scale. Bach’s works are, as a rule, much more polyphonic and developed. It will be interesting to follow this discovery, but don’t expect it to be the caliber of the Goldberg Variations. While I’m more of a Romantic than a Baroque person myself, I can just imagine my college professor’s excitement at this finding and I’m sure his Theory and History students will be well-informed of it!
The service was great today. First of all, we used the order of Matins (now called Morning Praise in CW) which I have always loved–Matins and Vespers are my favorite liturgical services*, despite the fact that I still like the TLH versions better. Why did they have to change a couple notes? Usually as musicians we edit music to make it better, but changing a few notes here and there in the Te Deum actually does it a disservice. Why take a good thing and mess with it? While we’re on the subject, we also sang “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less,” one of my favorite hymns. But in the third phrase of the first stanza the great WELS hymnal editors changed the words from “I dare not trust the sweetest frame” to “I dare to make no other claim.” What is that??? I happen to like daring not to trust the sweetest frame! It fits with the allegory of building a house using the right materials!!! Even in the methobapticostal version I sang at the Alliance church they kept the original wording.
And while we’re on the subject, why did they change “And take they our life, Goods, fame, child, and wife” to “And do what the will—Hate, steal, hurt or kill”? That’s not what Luther wrote! Honestly, I really wish I could be on the next hymnal committee to change some of this stuff back. Poetry is a powerful thing and some of the changes really weaken the poetic idea.
I’ll save the rest of my thoughts on the service today for tomorrow’s post.
*Note: While this post may sound otherwise, I still give the liturgy probably only a 65% approval rating (sorry, Mr. Geologist, but you’ll just have to deal with that).
Being that I have a music degree and conducting experience, I found this hilarious.
I try to check the daily comics from this site every week day because some of them are quite funny. I really need to lighten up, so these often help!