I Love My Choirs

We’ve had quite a week out here in the Central Valley of California. Not everyone would regard our once parched and now deluged farmlands as having been the result of “rorate caeli,” but I tend to see His handiwork in all things. At our parish, from a week ago to now as I type, the students of our parochial school performed the annual Christmas Musical twice, our Festival Choir presented a concert “commissioned” by our pastor to commemorate the 150th anniversary of our parish, and we had one helluva rollicking final rehearsal last night before tomorrow night’s Midnight Mass.

And, as it should always be, the magic of what choirs are and do, was omnipresent in last night’s rehearsal which prompts me to post this reflection. The fulfillment and joy of what choirs do at performance testifies to the beauty and grace of God’s creation and creatures and that it is offered back to Him in the form of a gift to His people is a most natural endeavor. But, who we really are is the essence of rehearsal, a pilgrim band.

For my friend RedCat I will try to keep this as direct and concise as how one lovingly strokes the downy spine of a beloved pet. (Spoiler! I fail miserably at the attempt.)

I love the kids I teach. They seem to love me. (I know they actually do love me, but I’m wired to wonder why and how that happens?) The wee ones, my youngest grandson in Pre-K among them, singing Appalachian carols like “Hurry On,” “Dear Little Stranger,” and “I Wonder as I Wander” with precision and abandon holding hands! There is no rose of such virtue. The elementary grades carrying the heavy water of singing the musical numbers in two parts while the middle school kids, especially the boys, whose voices are all over the map, give more than credible and sometimes tenderly resigned efforts. Make no mistake, they sing as a choir, in tune, legato, not English boychoir blend, but blended pleasingly to the ear.

I’ve heard plenty of school “choirs” over the last two decades where not a shred of melody could be found in the tattersall mess, and my kids ain’t one of those choirs. And then, we have my 8th grade Bell Choir kids- with precious little rehearsal time amongst their fall semester duties, undaunted by a new arrangement (mine) of the Ukranian Bell Carol, getting those running eighth note scales which none of their predecessors could aspire to master. These young men and women tortured me as sixth/seventh grade Einsteins/Lady GaGas, and this year, with Malmarks in hand, they don’t ever want the weekly bell rehearsal to end. They sigh “Just one more time, Mr. C” like a mantra every week.

Then there are our schola/ensemble singers who come together for Festival Choir concerts and Midnight Mass. Many of them go back 17 years with Wendy and I, and some pre-date our taking direction of the programs at the parish. They have put up with me and my perfectionist tendencies (that’s stating the case lightly, actually) week after week, year after year. We’ve read and sung the gamut lo these many seasons. This year, with the kind help of MOC and DS (two fine musicologists over at MSF) we took upon the task of honoring civil war and Victorian era American composers’ works. Composers such as Albert RoSewig, whose work was later disavowed (understandably, truth be told) by another Philadelphian, Nicolai Montani. And portions of a classical Mass by J. Cummings Peters that had all too brief moments of brilliance amid many more measures of warmed over Hadyn or Schubert. I added villancicos (as opposed to the Serra Mission hymns along the coastal El Camino Real) and Mexican carols that were so idiosyncratic as they were compelling in beauty and rhythm! The concert was a success.

But I love my choir ever more so after last night’s rehearsal for Christmas Mass. Some of them mentioned their disinclination to repeat the “antique” concert before Midnight Mass and I concurred. So I had gone back and reviewed past programs and pulled out folders of Marenzio, Praetorius, Holst, different versions of the plainsong “Puer natus..” and so forth, and we gleefully read through each of them heartily, with mirth and occasional mischief. And under the enamored and forgiving ear and eye of the Big Elf, democracy ruled the roost and we declared ourselves ready for Christmas! I love my choirs. I don’t wonder after so many years of wandering why we can confidently navigate Marenzio’s “Hodie…” after two or three sing-throughs.

Oh, I do rehearse any blemishes, rest assured. But they’ve become so few and far between after so long. After all, Luca and Michael and Gustav are fast friends whom we don’t visit often enough. And when they show up, we hug them as if they were “engeleinen mit eselein.” And at night’s end, one of my altos who’s resistence to square notes is well documented, offered up that she was glad we chose the plainsong version of “Puer natus…” with the broadest smile of one who’s surprised herself with that realization!

One of our number is a young person, who should be a senior in high school. She was in the 8th grade my first year at the parochial school after public school retirement. She was the brightest and the best of that class. In her frosh year, something neurologically devastating attacked her brain and whole person. Her condition was dire enough to require months of hospitalization at one of our premier university’s medical centers. Constant and profound prayers from our whole school and parish community also attended many different diagnoses and medical regimens over, at least, a year’s time. She stable-ized sufficiently to return home to her family, but her world seems forever changed. But she always loved to sing and we brought her into the parish music program to be a home and haven. This precious child of God might never return to whatever constitutes a normal life. We witnessed another former student undergo a similar malady roughly during the same period who has recovered fully. But, this beautiful, angelic-smiled girl takes her place next to Wendy and gives her all week after week. That (Dr. Dawkins and Mr. Hitchens) is my proof of a loving God.

I write this partially as an antidote to the now polluted discussions at our sister blog forum, at Pray Tell and Catholic Sensibility over what could have presented a golden opportunity for us to collaborate and push through our entrenched ideologies and biases. What was that all about anyway? An assemblage of words, sounds, phonemes intended to honor the Mother of God? And we, pastors and leaders of our own flocks, slavishly held onto our own precious staffs and territories, and collaboration, not to mention peace and harmony disintegrated and the scaffolding for a possible tapestry of joy was literally dismantled.

But, I primarily write this to remind myself that none of what we conjure and consume here, there and everywhere in our encamped blogs, no primer, no Kyriale, no historical tome, no new hymn, no old hymn, nothing that we can express with these alphabetical symbols, is greater than love.

We know how Jesus responded to the interrogation of the Pharisees, who intended to tongue tie the Lord of Lords by asking Him to qualify and quantify the commands of God. And I do love God above all else. But didn’t my Lord deliver one kick-butt rejoinder to their prideful arrogance?

Love one another….as