As Wendy and I were preparing to leave for Masses this morning, I tapped my charging Iphone and saw a text from our vicar informing us that our bishop, Excellency John T. Steinbock, passed peacefully away in his sleep this morning at St. Agnes ICU surrounded by family at 3:15am.
Out here, most of us with access to parish offices and rectories knew that bishop had not much time left in the valley, and to him that time wouldn’t necessarily be precious. But, as with most such communiques in my experience, the stark letters forming words on the screen came as an unwelcome, unexpected disruption to the plan for the day, the mundane or exorbitant.
I had, more out of convenience than thought, programmed “Jerusalem surge” for the Communio instead of a Rice choral setting. The Introit was a “Rice.” Arriving at the church, assembling materials in the sacristy as the first Mass was concluding, I planned to tell the celebrant that we would not sing the Introit (for habitual readers, that functions more as a prelude) and sing L/W’s “Pie Jesu” in its stead as an actual prelude. The pastor was the celebrant for the early Mass, and our youngest vicar was the upcoming celebrant. Coincidentally, the vicar had casually asked me at a staff meeting last Friday if I “liked” Lloyd-Webber’s setting. He’s a Missioner of Charity and I sometimes don’t know if his questions are loaded with agenda or not (which I love about him.) I truthfully replied “yes,” though I liked other settings more. He said, in response, that he thought it beautiful. I, at that moment, didn’t connect any dots.
After chanting the antiphon of the Introit “Requiem aeternam” after a brief announcement by the vicar that the bishop had passed, Mass began with the “In Nomine…”
The vicar’s homily was about his experiences in Calcutta with some castaway untouchable adolescents, both mentally and physically handicapped. The one whose utterances were garbled gibberish was so filled with joy that overwhelmed our vicar back then. And the other interpreted those utterances with a precision, and exactitude that was demonstrable and inexplicable. Obviously, our vicar never forgot that reality. He then was moved to tears. I, sitting in the choir, was fighting the impulse.
When Communion was upon us, I began the chant of “Jerusalem surge.” Three years ago I had used Finale to transcribe the chant for my schola’s ease, and I simply cut and pasted that version onto their Order of Music sheets out of convenience. We have sung chant longer than just three years together, and the schola watches and reacts to the slightest gesture of my conducting, so the antiphon was as vibrant as the ordinaries we chant regularly.
What I experienced for the first time today, and I knew that a conversion within me was happening during Father’s homily, was that the intelligibility of gregorian neumes finally blossomed within me, and then as I chanted the verses from Rice’s Communio. A few weeks ago, when Jeffrey posted a 1956 primer at Musica Sacra, I had a ball chanting the examples, page by page, in that volume, with confidence. But at Communion today, “Mr. ChoirMaster” finally graduated into the joy of flying with the wings of square notes born by the winds of chant.
You speak of "joy of flying with the wings of square notes born by the winds of chant". I have also recently discovered this joy. Recently while I was learning some chant, I was reading the music while I was listening to a recording of the chant I was studying. I realized that my enjoyment of the chant was greatly enhanced by my reading of the neumes while listening to the chant. The neumes allowed me to follow visually that which I was listening to and to uncover the nuances of the recitation. Reading neumes has its own beauty. I can't say I find the same beauty or pleasure in reading modern notation. Modern notation, to me, looks messy and is largely functional and mechanical. Neumes have their own beauty and help reveal the rise and fall, the ebb and flow of music in a way that modern notation doesn't. At least this is the way it seems to me. I suspect that people with more musical experience and skill than I have probably don't see things this way.
I have been slowly introducing my elementary school students to chant. I have broken it down into a section of understanding the written form and how it relates to solfege and I teach them chants, mostly by rote currently.
When we sing chant and it finally comes together, they are quiet for a moment and then they usually break out in applause.
As we are struggling to learn to write chant we are having a great time with the four line staff, movable Do clef and the square punctum. When I show them samples of Gregorian notation they are struck by the visual beauty of it.
So, hopefully, one day, they too will experience the glimpse of Heavenly Beauty that has been entrusted to us.
Thanks for sharing.
Thank you Robert and Musings for your reflections.
A CMAA colleague, Noel Jones, is creating a primary grade appropriate (pedagogical) coloring book for the wee ones using four line, square neums method.
I think he has a thread over at http://www.musicasacra.com
on this recently.