Category Archives: Lutheran

Vespers, Liturgy Hymnody Pulpit Review

Posted on by
Reply

The Rev. Paul J. Cain reviews Vespers in the Liturgy, Hymnody, and Pulpit Quarterly Book Review, whose motto is: Critical reviews (by Lutheran pastors and church musicians) of books and other resources for Christian worship, preaching, and church music from a perspective rooted in Holy Scripture, the Lutheran Confessions and good common sense. LHP Quarterly Book Review asks, “Is it worth the money to buy, the time to read, the shelf space to store, and the effort to teach?”

…an exceptional treat… a modern restatement of Renaissance-era wind bands for a sacred context… a fusion of the 16th Century and our 21st. I think Dr. Luther would be at home and J. S. Bach would appreciate what was going on… one hears a transcendent heavenly setting of “O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright”… Psalm 113 completes the trilogy of psalms in preparation for a 13th Century tune used by the Bohemian Brethren in the 16th Century. The psalm setting is hauntingly beautiful. I simply couldn’t wait to sing along. Remember that included sheet music?

The recording is at once recognizable as a liturgical service of Vespers… may be able to include some pared-down portions of the music for a congregational service of Vespers. The music is full of life, joy, and celebration appropriate for a New Year’s Eve service, a congregational anniversary, a building dedication, or an ordination.

Piffaro is blessed with skilled musicians, a creative composer in Kile Smith, and a daring record label, Navona Records. The combination produced a fresh, reverent, and timeless recording that is historically and musically grounded in the best of Christian liturgy and hymnody. What are they working on next?

The composition and recording of Vespers is inspired and inspiring.

Read it all here.

Vespers CD, Gramophone

Posted on by
Reply

gramophone_logo

Ancient practice through modern eyes and ears—the result is a success

Andrew Druckenbrod, July 2009

The trend of writing new music for period instruments has passed through predictable stages of gimmickry and pseudo-Hegelian synthesis to finally be, simply, “music”. Questions of genre and authenticity shouldn’t get in the way of our enjoying a spectacular work such as Kile Smith’s Vespers, based on ancient Lutheran liturgical German and Latin texts. Nor should they problematise the collaboration of the Renaissance band Piffaro, who commissioned the piece, and a contemporary vocal ensemble, The Crossing.

While Smith’s knowledge of Lutheran practice informs the work, the hushed awe that floats in every movement of Vespers is wholly appropriate in the generic sense. The Philadelphian composer displays a tender love for the texts of his church and Martin Luther with settings that express even the Latin or German in sparkling beauty.

The Crossing intones the chant-like passages well, but its expertise shines in the shimmering timbre it creates for Smith’s contemporary counterpoint. The flowing setting of Psalm 27 is an early example, but the a cappella hymn “Herr Christ, der einig Gotts Sohn” calls on its clearest and precise singing as it moves from four to eight and then 16 voice parts… The result is a quiet yet ecstatic work that offers a profoundly contemporary view of an ancient practice.

Here’s the link to the Navona blogsite about it, with that gorgeous photograph of Piffaro.

Vespers CD, Philadelphia Inquirer

Posted on by
Reply

Comparing Vespers to a CD by another over-50 Lutheran composer, David Patrick Stearns makes me smile and go Hm at the same time, here, in the Philadelphia Inquirer. As usual, he invites me to think. Phil Kline’s John the Revelator is the other CD, and both come in for praise, with large differences observed. I know just a bit of Kline’s music and have enjoyed it, having broadcast two of his pieces last year on Now is the Time. I have not heard what may be, to Philadelphians at least, his most-performed piece, Unsilent Night, which Relache stages every Christmas season, the city streets filled with boombox-toting audience members creating soundscapes as they walk.

Stearns rehearses the differences in music from composers who he says start from different philosophies: Kline has tension, shards, and angst, Smith has refuge, spiritual solidity, and solutions. While it would be ungracious to quibble in the face of a tremendously positive, even expansive review, I can’t help thinking that there is hardly anything more existentially problematic than the Introit for Vespers, Psalm 70 (and a big reason I found it such an attractive candidate for setting):

Make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O LORD. Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul: let them be turned backward, and put to confusion, that desire my hurt. Let them be turned back for a reward of their shame that say, Aha, aha. Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: and let such as love thy salvation say continually, Let God be magnified. But I am poor and needy: make haste unto me, O God: thou art my help and my deliverer; O LORD, make no tarrying.

What a sorry state the Psalmist David is in. I never noticed until composing this that it ends as it begins—so obvious, but so cast against type for what we think of as a praise text. If I had written the Psalm, I would’ve ended it at “Let God be magnified” and have done with it. Then it makes a nice Problem  Stated / Problem Solved. Just like TV, and a much easier ending for the composer. (The music for “Let God be magnified” I also use in the raucous ending of Magnificat.) But David, after all that, after getting to the “solution,” after finding the right place to be, falls right back to his former state. This is one of the many reasons Scripture compels: the more we discover of ourselves, the more of us we find already discovered in it.

But Stearns’s review impels me to listen to John the Revelator, as I look forward to any likenesses or differences that may occur to me.

Vespers interview 1

Posted on by
Reply

In March the record company sent me questions, the answers to which would be included in a press packet going out with the release of the Vespers CD. I haven’t seen the packet, but here are Navona’s questions and my answers, with my thoughts almost three months later. I’ll break this up into multiple posts, since I do go on.

1. Did your upbringing with Lutheran Liturgy make this an especially personal project?

Very much so. I feel at home with this; using these texts, and this order, and these chorale tunes seems natural to me. Fifteen years attending a German-language Lutheran church in Philadelphia not all that long ago was also a fantastic immersion into the sound of German—the language and the chorales. I became familiar with chorales that aren’t really known to Americans, and learned how best to sing them. They are amazingly beautiful and strong works of art.

…“and learned how best to sing them,” pretty cheeky, that. I remember what I was thinking: that chorales need to have energy. Basically, we Americans sing them too slow. I knew, being raised Lutheran, that I was supposed to like “A Mighty Fortress,” for instance, but I never really did, not a whole lot anyway, and now I know why. At a larghetto tempo with full organ—which was standard American service performance practice—it is not only interminable and stodgy, but fatiguing as well. All those C’s (or D’s in some hymnals) hammering away at your larynx take their toll. I don’t mean that we have to go back to the off-beat Renaissance rhythm of the original, either. That’s fun to break out every once in a while, but even the ironed-out 4/4 version can be done well if the tempo is picked up (although much of the chorales are Renaissance music). Don’t heave the full diapason over the congregation like a wool blanket for every verse. What is even worse is that “A Mighty Fortress” is the alpha and omega of many Americans’ knowledge of Lutheran chorales. There are so many gorgeous, exciting, snappy ones that should be aired out. And they’re not too hard. Some of these were written for children. But don’t get me wrong: I didn’t figure this out. Jackie did, and if I can learn, so can everyone else.

First review of Vespers CD

Posted on by
Reply

This reviewer must know what it’s like to be a composer; he knows all about harmonic calamities! Jeff Simon in The Buffalo News writes:

What a beautiful and remarkable thing this turns out to be… altogether gorgeous and haunting. And when, out of some necessity of text and some version of harmonic calamity, a sudden dissonance arrives that out-Gesualdos Gesualdo, you remember that Kile Smith is a 21st century composer living in Philadelphia who has, almost like some Borgesian Pierre Menard (who wrote “Don Quixote” out of his own modern needs), synthesized all of this anew… a piece of contemporary music that, in its very different way, deserves to be mentioned along with Rachmaninoff’s “Vespers.” The performance here is stunning. ★★★★

The complete review is here.

Magnificat 2009

Posted on by
Reply

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Abington crops up in the calendar here and previous years a good bit and that’s because it’s my church, Jackie is the Director of Music, and I volunteer, or am sometimes requested by same Director, to produce music for various services. I am happy when these opportunities arise, as they afford me twin advantages. They provide me with useful labor (one of the grand, unheralded purposes of life), and they provide me with useful education.

There is no school quite like the Thursday night choir rehearsal with 12 or 15 singers who, in spite of having many duties and cares with which to occupy their lives, nevertheless show up week after week to prepare music for the upcoming services. They carry with their various and wide-ranging musical abilities a willingness to perform correctly what is put before them. And they each carry one more item to every rehearsal: an hourglass, through which pour the sands of patience. Some hourglasses are small, some large, and each has a different rate of flow. But they each carry one, and the composer can only hope that if the top empties out, they are in the mood to turn it over.

This is the school that will reveal to you—more quickly and more efficiently than any other—the distance between your actual and your imagined compositional prowess.

We are hosting a brief service Wednesday, January 21st at 7 pm, an ecumenical Vespers in honor of the Year of St. Paul, with a Roman Catholic church from just down the road, Our Lady Help of Christians. After the Vespers will be an airing of the ongoing Lutheran and Catholic dialogue on justification. And after figuring that out, we’ll serve coffee (we are Lutheran, after all) and refreshments.

I’ve written a Magnificat for the Vespers, and again, church music confronts me with the task of composing something that must be grasped, not only in a small portion of one rehearsal by a choir, but immediately, in church, by the congregation. For this to be successful, as much as a composer can calculate success, the effect has to be almost instantaneous and worthwhile, as much as anyone can calculate worth.

Other than the Music Director, the responsibility for bringing this off rests on not one person who performs music for a living. Oh, there are a few singers in the choir who have training (from whence arises the sanguine descant), but everyone has chosen another line of work. The Cantor part will be taken by two girls, 11 and 13. I have been taken to school over and over again in these situations and (usually) enjoy the education. And you might not think so, but I can tell you it’s exciting, watching all those hourglasses.

Here’s a MIDI version, and the score. Took some doing to get it all on one page. Yes, I know about, and am quite fond of, the (double) direct fifths. Mind the repeats!

magniefac81cat2009

How brightly shines

Posted on by
Reply

Michael Lawrence has posted some nice words, some awfully nice words, about Vespers at The New Liturgical Movement. It meant a lot to me when, referring to my setting of “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern,” he said, “This is a tune that had gone sour for me—until I heard this performance.” I’ll have to ask him sometime what went sour and what could possibly have changed his mind from what I’ve done, but in the meantime I’m tickled as can be that some folks are enjoying the snippets from the premiere on YouTube; there are a few out there but I think this is the one Michael watched.

People commented on Michael’s post. I wrote this, which is also an update on the CD:

“I can’t say enough about Piffaro, The Crossing, and Donald Nally, all of whom brought this about. It’s a (quite remarkable, as I think about it) collaboration between two giants in their respective fields, an early-music instrumental group, and a new-music choir. We indeed recorded this in late July, which gave me a chance to do a little rewriting after the January 2008 premiere. We’re editing the recording now, and we expect an early 2009 release on Parma Recordings. This Vespers is my attempt to write a piece filled with the spirit of Renaissance-era German church music; it includes chorales and chant, and is played on the instruments of that time. My rewriting on this (especially on the Deo gratias), by the way, was itself inspired by my wife’s and my attendance at the glorious Colloquium in Chicago.”

And I’m not kidding about that last part; I wrote about it here. There were some middling changes I made throughout the Vespers after the premiere, but I did some major rewriting on “Psalm 27” and “Deo gratias,” and the Colloquium helped to re-plug me into some sacred electricity to finish those off. Don’t know exactly when the CD’s coming out, but it can’t be too soon for me.