An exhilarating Sunday night at Holy Trinity Lutheran, where we held our Hymn Festival, exploring Martin Luther’s Seven Marks of the Church, through Lutheran hymns—so many hymns, and A Mighty Fortress nowhere in sight. Jackie once again put together a fantastic program of music with the Chancel, Handbell, and Youth Choirs, oboist Priscilla Smith, violinist James Finegan, and cellist Elena Smith.
I commented on each of the hymns, one or two for each Mark, and managed to work in the Phrygian mode, Calvinists, Barry White, a hymn I wrote (The Word of God, in hymn + anthem concertato style), and cake.
The Marks, and the hymns:
1. The Word Dearest Jesus, at Your Word (Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier) The Law of God is Good and Wise (Erhalt uns Herr, bei deinem Wort)
2. Baptism God’s Own Child, I Gladly Say It (Bachofen) All Christians Who Have Been Baptized (Nun freut euch)
3. Communion Jesus Comes Today with Healing (Alles ist an Gottes Segen)
4. Absolution From Depths of Woe I Cry to Thee (Aus tiefer Not)
5. Ministering The Word of God (Confession)
6. Discipleship Your Kingdom Come, O Father (Noormarkku)
7. The Cross Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me? (Warum sollt ich mich denn Grämen) If You But Trust in God to Guide You (Wer nur den lieben Gott)
They had a reception afterward (cf. cake, above), celebrating (honoring? poking fun at?) my retirement from the Fleisher Collection. Lots of folks—stunning how many stayed for a good long time, I was overwhelmed by it. Two very busy self-employed friends, a programmer and an architect, gave me the same advice. They told me to say, “I’m not retired. I’m working for myself full-time!” After adding up all the things I am doing, it sounds good; I think I’ll use it.
The story goes that Stalin wanted a national hymn written and asked Shostakovich, “Will three months be enough time?” and that the composer answered, “Five days will do.”
Dmitri Shostakovich
This is how I heard it. Shostakovich didn’t get the job, but I’ve often recalled the story while writing hymns. There are differences between a hymn for church and one for a public occasion, but still enough similarity of purpose that Shostakovich’s retort haunts me. And while I can’t imagine Shostakovich holding it in scorn, there are those who sniff at something that’s just a hymn.
But, while five days might do the trick if I had nothing else to do, I find a hymn to be a tremendously difficult thing to bring off. Now, writing a tune is not hard. And writing a tune that amateurs can sing is not hard. But writing even a half-decent tune takes a good deal of work. Writing a good tune takes substantially more work. Writing a good tune that matches the tone of the text is harder still. Writing a good tune that matches the tone of the text and that bears in on the right pressure-points of the syllables is a task that just has to be sweated out. And doing all that, while making the tune singable for amateurs, enough of whom have to get it right on the first try, is—well, I’ve said it already: tremendously difficult.
There’s no rule that a hymn has to be in four parts, I suppose, but that structure seems best suited to provide the necessary support and flexibility for confident congregational singing of metered texts. This is true whether the parts are actually sung or are simply present in the accompaniment. And what Macaulay Connor says to George Kittredge in The Philadelphia Story—on how one treats a lady, especially under dodgy circumstances—applies equally well to four-part writing: Well, there are rules about that.
It’s not that a cadre of aesthetes gathered in a smoke-filled room just to harrass composers with some artificial ideal of how music should behave. The “rules” are, simply, the realization of how music actually works. Direct fifths, parallel octaves, doubled major thirds or leading tones are usually red flags signaling that a weakness is present. Your job is to find it and fix it. Singers feel it when there’s something not quite jake; often that knotty passage snagging rehearsal is exactly where a parallel fifth or a cross-relation has attached itself. Apply antibiotic, stat.
But the rub is that the weakness is usually not the parallel fifth itself. No, that effect is sometimes exactly what’s needed. No, it is usually something deeper. No: it is a lack of attention to the melos, a disregard for the flow. And to the flow, to the flow, oh!, attention must be paid. Maybe that seems too much to make of such a buttoned-down form, but there is electricity, flowing right there under the surface, crackling, daring you to touch it. But you will not touch it, will you, because fixing the problem means going deeper than you thought you could, deeper than you thought there was, deeper than what you allowed yourself to believe “just a hymn” could be.
In the early 1980s Jackie and I were organist and choir director, respectively, of Lower Merion Baptist Church in Bryn Mawr. 2008 is their 200th Anniversary, and they’ve asked me to compose something for their Anniversary service on September 14th. Pastor Jonathan Malone suggested something involving the following passage, which I thought was a brilliant choice:
Hebrews 12:1,2 (KJV)
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset [us], and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of [our] faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
I thought that a hymn involving the entire congregation would serve nicely for this occasion, and so I first tried to tease out a hymn text from this. Stanzas 1, 2, and 4 were worked out during a June weekend retreat I was fortunate to take part in, and here’s the final version:
1. Shall the blessed saints surround us—
All the witnesses around us—
And not guide us on our way?
Yes, the watchful saints around us
Guide and bless as they surround us:
Guide to Jesus every day.
2. Yet the chains of sin are grievous.
Who will from this weight relieve us
As we journey on our way?
Christ is ready to relieve us
From entangling chains so grievous:
Freed by Jesus every day.
3. Christ endured and did precede us,
Crucified, abused, did lead us
Up to Calvary that day.
He despised the shame to lead us,
To the Father did precede us;
Joyfully He showed the way.
4. With our vision fixed on Jesus,
While the cloud of witness sees us,
Blessings speed us on our way.
Now by faith we run to Jesus,
Author and Perfecter, Jesus,
Only Jesus, every day.
I gave myself over to the rhyme scheme insinuating itself into the first stanza, where “surround us” surrounds, and rhymes with “around us.” Or it doesn’t rhyme so much as equal, for which poets may have a term, or maybe it’s just cheating, but in any case the scheme yielded is A¹ A² B A² A¹ B. I carry that through until the last stanza, which I alter slightly for a crescendo on the name of Jesus, allowing the hymn to “look unto” Him. I keep “way” and “day” throughout, and repeat inner words within verses, also, giving what I think is a flavor of a simpler time. It ends up in the meter of 887887, which, as it turns out, is an unusual one, although I didn’t set out to make it unusual.
Here’s a listen to a MIDI version
and the music is below. If you like it, let me know, and feel free to use it. Just give Lower Merion the first crack at it on September 14th!
What kept me up at night the most was knowing I had to produce, as in be Producer, the last two days. This week was the only time we could get everyone together, including Donald and others from Chicago and Atlanta, since so many are going from one summer festival to another. George produced Monday and Tuesday and took a red-eye train to Boston for a seminar he was already committed to leading.
Monday and Tuesday I didn’t leave George’s side. George worked me into the process more and more as we went along.
Tad was the engineer and so took care of making sure everything was being taped, and kept track of all of it in the log. He also listened for sounds that shouldn’t be there.
That leaves it for the producer to listen to the music and all aspects of it: balance, tempo, wrong notes, interpretation, intonation, everything. Most of the time Donald catches these things before anything needs to be said.
Also required is calling the track numbers, and keeping everything going. Sometimes the process needs to speed up, sometimes a philosophical viewpoint needs consideration, sometimes a time-out needs to be called to listen to a new balance structure, to move someone, or just to chill.
Everyone needs to be respected, since everyone in the room is a wonderful musician
It was great having our friend Becky on the job, who sings in Quidditas with us and has worked with Jackie many times over the years
If you look at the main photo in the Inquirer article, the very tall singer to the right who looks like he has amazing dreadlocks, is Dan. He is a bass, and he is not only nice but as perky as a six-and-a-half-foot tall (at least?) bass could be. And he has amazing dreadlocks. He also has a father who has won a Pulitzer Prize in composition, and when we talked in January and I knew who Lewis Spratlan was, Dan was surprised and delighted and we talked shop for a while.
The sopranos have lots and lots of high notes in them, and this one is nowhere near the highest, but the high G Rebecca Siler holds in Herr Christ, where 15 other voices cut out one by one to leave her all by herself (“und dürsten stets nach dir,” “so that we thirst for you”), is as moving as it gets.
Actually, since Piffaro plays in A=463 rather than 440, the singers are singing a half-step higher than written. All those high A’s for the sopranos in Wie schön? Yep. Bb’s.
I was hoping they wouldn’t notice but some of them thar whippersnappers have perfect pitch
Stephen, often the tenor soloist, must be one of the most sought-after musicians in the city. Again, tremendous musician, again, tremendously nice.
Bob and Joan handle some of the most intractable instruments (bass dulcian, great bass recorder) with such a light touch. Man, do they sound good. Piffaro is the bel canto of early-music groups. I don’t know if they’d like to be compared to Donizetti, but…you know?
The three sopranos sang the Magnificat canon over and over and over and over and over again, always perfectly, never tiring (not that I could hear), and continued to smile at me
I cannot say enough about how Donald ran the sessions
I will always remember the look on Priscilla’s face when we finished Wednesday night, the toughest stretch of all, she and Tom as the Greek chorus on soprano recorders with the Psalm 27 antiphon, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” while the storm raged outside in the dark, and after that session how my daughter came up to me with wet eyes and gave me the biggest hug because she was so proud. But I was prouder.
After the intense final session with the choir, Thursday is for Piffaro alone, to get the last two instrumental sections done
O süßer Herre Jesu Christ is a child-like chorale, set for the whole band on seven recorders, all imitative and inverted and retrograded and augmentated (I mean augmented), all of which I now forget how I worked out, but I know it was painstaking
Two sections, the second homophonic, Tom leading from Alto I to get the cutoff and entrance just so
The main challenge in this is tuning. Piffaro has quite specific ways they tune, depending on the era of the music. The entire Vespers was a melange of listening and adjusting for them, as it goes in and out of modality and tonality, in and out of simple and complex chordal structures. Voice-leading was constantly in the forefront of my thinking.
Chords with seconds (I write lots of those, it seems) are a new experience for them. Playing them is not a challenge; tuning them is not a challenge; deciding which way to tune them (out of two, three, six different ways?) is.
Nun danket, the triple canon, comes last, and at last! We decide I might as well conduct it. They can play it, but it’ll cut down on the recording time.
Six recorders and sackbut for this. Greg can make the sackbut take on any role: a hero, an ingenue, a flute, even…his musicality is eye-popping. His ff subito 16th-note run at the end of Deo gratias, up to G, was as big, bright, open, clear, hammered, and light as I could wish, plus he did it that way about 38 times in a row.
Sopranos are in 6/8, in canon at the 3rd; tenors are in 4/4 in a perpetual canon at the fifth; bass and great bass are playing the chorale in 3/2 in octaves, in canon with the sackbut at the octave (actually in the same sounding range as the great bass, since all recorders sound an octave up)
I conduct it in 3/2. Basically they have to ignore me and play their own mensuration, and I have to not mess them up. Because it’s so intricate, once you lose the line it’s pretty certain you won’t find your way back in. Mostly I try to be a strict metronome, but I give cues when I can, and am astonished to see them looking at me. How do they do that?
This makes me nervous.
They pretty much get it within the first two takes, but we spend another hour on various things, including different ways to play the O. Henry ending.
I ruin one take because in my too-vigorous cutoff my left hand brushes against my shirt pocket, causing the turnpike receipt encased therein to crumple ever so slightly. Everybody hears it.
One final run-through, even though we have everything. We milk the last silence after the ending. I hold my hands up and hold my breath. At last, Tad’s voice comes through the monitor: “’kay.”
The article by David Patrick Stearns came out Wednesday, 23 July, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, which you can findhere. It also includes a link to audio they did for the Creatively Speaking radio show, airing Saturday at 11 am. The photos of (1) Donald conducting The Crossing and (2) Priscilla and me are the best, because I’m not in (1) and Priscilla is in (2).
The article catches the utter uniqueness and the sense of marvel we all have of the entire project, I think. Stearns includes quotes from Donald Nally and Joan Kimball that I’ll always remember. Quotes that didn’t make it in are words from me to the effect that, that any of this happened at all is due entirely to (1) Joan and (2) Bob Wiemken of Piffaro. OK, I composed for about eight months but if I had done that on my own, (1) it would not have turned into this Vespers, and besides (2) it would not have gotten all this notice. And what Donald did in (1) first preparing the premiere and (2) now navigating the recording has simply stunned me. And what a joy it is to work with (1) top professionals in their field who (2) are nice people.
One thing that Stearns wrote surprised me: “self-expression is essential to Smith’s religious music…”. I take it as a generous compliment from him (and that the piece has resonated with him or anyone is tremendously gratifying to me), but I’m surprised by it because I’ve never felt it to be true, or at least, it’s the furthest thing from my mind. I have no intention of expressing myself, in music for either sacred or for secular use. My thought only and always is to serve the text, the musicians, the listeners. That sounds awfully grand and over-the-top humble-pie-ish, but I don’t mean it to. It’s just that it’s the only thing a composer can accomplish, to serve. Besides, I don’t see that self-expression is ever held up as a goal in my religion, or in anyone else’s, for that matter, so I don’t think it’s worth bothering over.
Self-expression in any case is a chimera. It doesn’t exist. And if it does, it can’t be captured.
But that has little to do with the article, which was a delight. Our buddy Don just called from Florida and said it made me look good, so I’ll take that!
But a severe storm system moseys up from the Carolinas, decides that our church roof would be a delightful place to spend the day, doesn’t move for six hours
Hear thunder all that time, and wind and rain. And thunder. Which means the microphones hear it, too.
Air conditioning problem doesn’t seem so bad now
See rain of both vertical and horizontal varieties, black clouds, hail, lightning, Margaret Hamilton on a bicycle if I’m not mistaken, all out of the prettiest picture windows.
Even prettier when the power goes out
Tad turns off, then unplugs the computer about 30 seconds before the power goes out
He already can hear an airplane before anyone else can, now he knows when lightning will strike?
I resolve always to be Tad’s friend
Unbelievably, we record Deo gratias and Psalm 113 before dinner, plowing through takes just so we can get two in a row with thunder in different places
If the CD has thunder on it, we all agree, we’re just gonna live with it
Will look into, like, the new age market, you know, Forest Vespers, Seashore Vespers, Thunderstorm Vespers
Christa’s triple harp sounds scrumptious on Psalm 113
Everybody likes the new Deo gratias. My favorite note in Vespers (don’t tell anyone), the low E at bar 59 on Bob’s octave bass dulcian, is like they gave you all of the saxophones from Stax Records that ever backed up Sam and Dave only now with more fiber all in a delicious chocolatey shake but just before they shove you toward the castle with a torch and a pitchfork and a slug of Jägermeister, and it also makes you want to put on Elvis’s 1973 Aloha from Hawaii (via satellite!) white sequined jacket and slide on one knee and fist-pump.
Notice I said it makes you want to do that. I wouldn’t admit to anything of the sort.
The 900-lb gorilla in the room, Psalm 27, we finally tackle at 7 pm, must finish by 10
Joan’s suggestion for the colla parte instruments to double the voices—2 bass recorders, sackbut, and bass dulcian—is right as, um, rain, and sounds like an organ. Wish I could take credit for it.
How did it get to be 9:08 so fast?
At 9:17 it dawns on me that we’re going to make it. Donald has sliced and diced this quite long Psalm, juggling the easier and tougher sections like some table-side chef at a Chinese / Japanese / Thai restaurant.
They have table-side chefs at Chinese / Japanese / Thai restaurants?
We finish exactly at 10; everything’s covered
This was the last session with the choir, lots of hugging and compliments and who brought the champagne?
An almost inconceivable amount of work from everyone, at such a high level from everyone, and everyone as sweet as can be
Four more sections recorded, including Vater unser, which we knew would be difficult, mainly because of tempo. It’s a long piece (nine verses), and although I mix the ensemble up to keep changing the landscape, it’s still a lot of music to get through. The choral harmonies are very rich, which makes us want to slow it down. The solo verses want to move faster. Donald finds an excellent tempo, and the choir produces a lightness of expression that just nails it. It’s just slightly faster than at the premiere, but with some elasticity.
So much comes down to tempo, and what’s perfect one time is perfect only for that time
Instruments sound fantastic
This is a very nice space for recording, St. Peter’s Church in the Great Valley. The voices and instruments have a natural bloom here, don’t have to fight for anything. It’s an easy sound, although finding the right placement of the performers takes some time.
Magnificat is recorded, and we make one last adjustment to the harp at the end. The Gloria Patri comes out of left field, and the coda comes out of the left field of left field. Wickedly fast, everyone wants to laugh when it’s over. I was thinking the Magnificat is the song of quite a young girl, and while all of it is innocent, the ending is just plain giddy.
We capture the hymn Herr Christ, as the singers make magic. This is where they are one to a part in the third verse—16 voices—and they are strong and expressive as can be. This is a special piece. Donald and The Crossing are special musicians.
Priscilla and I run off during dinner break to a Chinese / Japanese / Thai restaurant in a shopping mall. Not bad. There are Chinese / Japanese / Thai restaurants?
An exhilarating Sunday night at Holy Trinity Lutheran, where we held our Hymn Festival, exploring Martin Luther’s Seven Marks of the Church, through Lutheran hymns—so many hymns, and A Mighty Fortress nowhere in sight. Jackie once again put together a fantastic program of music with the Chancel, Handbell, and Youth Choirs, oboist Priscilla Smith, violinist James Finegan, and cellist Elena Smith.
