Music: Monroe Crossing

It’s 11 PM, and normallly I would be heading to bed now (if I weren’t already asleep), but I’m still pumped up from tonight’s concert. Listening to Monroe Crossing was fabulous. I enjoyed our own part of the concert too, singing the spirituals, and later singing the Bluegrass Mass accompanied by Monroe Crossing. But I couldn’t help thinking, sitting in the audience while the band performed, that all the chorale rehearsals were worth it to get to hear Monroe Crossing without having to pay for a ticket.

I don’t know whether I’m a fan of bluegrass in general now, but I’m certainly a fan of Monroe Crossing. (I even went to facebook to become a fan of them there.) They are funny, friendly, and superb musicians. Amazingly versatile, in terms of the instruments played and the styles of music they can do. Bluegrass is a meld of styles to begin with, and apparently it has branched off into a number of sub-genres. They could probably do all of them if they chose to.

One of the really fun numbers Monroe Crossing did was what they said was a cross between bluegrass and Motown – what they call “mo-grass” (say it aloud if you don’t get the humor there). As ignorant of much of pop culture as I am, even I recognized “My Girl,” even if I had no idea (until I looked it up on wikipedia) that it was a hit from The Temptations. I don’t know what The Temptations would have thought of their song being play bluegrass style, but the audience tonight sure enjoyed it.

There were Gospel numbers, including two written by members of Monroe Crossing. I liked “Into the Fire” so much that I bought the CD afterward. They did numbers that were pure bluegrass, including one written by the “founding father” of bluegrass music, Bill Monroe (for whom this band is named). Because of the upcoming holidays, the banjo player even performed a solo version of “Carol of the Bells” – on the banjo, of course.

If you get a chance to hear Monroe Crossing, take advantage of the opportunity. Even if you don’t think you’d like bluegrass, let them surprise you. As quoted in our concert programs tonight, “I dare ANYONE to watch Monroe Crossing and not get happy!” (D.A. Calloway, Silver Dollar City)

Classical Mass meets bluegrass

Bluegrass and Mass are not two words I would generally expect to find in the same sentence, unless it were a contrast between two very different types of music. When I got the email last week announcing the start of rehearsals tonight for this fall’s concert, I wasn’t sure whether I was even interested in participating. While I prefer classical music, either to sing or to listen to, I try to keep an open mind about other styles of music. But a Bluegrass Mass?

What little I knew about Bluegrass was that it was a sub-genre of country music. And the idea of a “country” style Mass did not appeal to me. (Though I imagine the right composition, well-performed, might change my mind.) But I figured it couldn’t hurt to go the first night just to hear the piece. (Besides, they always serve cookies after the first rehearsal.)

We listened to four movements from the Mass, “The World Beloved,” and attempted to sing parts of them. We’ll need quite a few more singers than those who turned out tonight (let’s hope several people had schedule conflicts or just forgot), and a lot of work to learn some challenging harmonies and rhythms. But the music itself, I decided is exciting. I don’t know how well we can do it justice (it was written for a professional choral group, while ours is just a volunteer community group). But it’s worth trying.

Apparently the fusion of bluegrass and the Mass was a challenge for the composer also. And the result was a surprise to the bluegrass group Monroe Crossing as they began rehearsing the work for the world premiere in January 2007. They had expected “a bunch of nice Gospel songs in the bluegrass tradition.” Instead they encountered “a true Mass in the traditional sense.” Their guitarist points out, “One thing people should know is that it’s not a bluegrass Mass sung by a chorus. It’s more like classical music played on bluegrass instruments.”

More that just the upbeat music itself (Barnett wanted to produce “cheery sacred music – all too rare in a medium rife with staid and even lugubrious settings”), I particularly appreciate the application of creativity and obvious talent in bringing the classical Mass and bluegrass style music together. If it had not been done so well, I would not applaud it simply for being new. But listening to the recording of VocalEssence Ensemble Singers together with Monroe Crossing, I became excited about the possibilities ahead this fall.

Classic movies: West Side Story

After watching this DVD last night, I wasn’t sure I wanted to post any kind of review. The ending is so sad and so bleak, and just thinking about it seemed likely to start the tears flowing again. But after a good night’s sleep I can think about it a bit more objectively.

This had long been on my mental list of classic films I ought to see someday. When I am actually looking for a movie to rent, however, I’m looking for entertainment – usually something a bit more escapist, with comedy and or adventure but not such serious themes as permeate West Side Story.

My older son rented it (if you can call it a “rental” when it’s free, that is – Family Video gives free rentals for A’s on report cards), and as I had never seen it I decided I should watch it. I’ve always liked some of the musical numbers – we played “Maria” and “Tonight” in my high school orchestra, and besides being beautiful music they were easier to play than some other contemporary music, such as by Aaron Copland.

I had a general idea of the story, both from having read it growing up and knowing that it was based on Romeo and Juliet. The ending was hardly a surprise, therefore, but being so affected by it was. I don’t remember how old I was when I read the book (i.e. the script, in book format) – perhaps too young to really understand it. I remember reading Romeo and Juliet in ninth grade and finding it boring, and thinking how foolish the two teenagers were to throw away their lives that way.

Perhaps it is because I have more experience of love and of loss in relationships that I now find it so moving. Perhaps it is the difference between reading words on a page and seeing them brought to life by talented actors. Perhaps it is because West Side Story succeeded so well on so many levels (as evidenced by its numerous Academy Awards).

Movies: Chronos

If you don’t like art museums or concert halls, you probably won’t enjoy this movie. While it is categorized as a documentary, it is more of a music video – except that the music is to support the visual images rather than the other way around. There are no words, and no apparent message. As with much non-verbal art, it is left to the viewer to discern its meaning – or simply to enjoy the aesthetic experience.

It does start out very slowly, and I was afraid I was going to be rather bored. I like the views of the Grand Canyon (I imagine it must have been spectacular when originally showed on an IMAX screen) and the movement of clouds across the sky, but eventually you want to see some kind of action. I had mistakenly thought, from the subtitle, “A Visual and Musical Journey Through Time,” that there would be a progression from prehistory to the present. Scenes of Stonehenge reinforced this notion – but then suddenly I was viewing traffic in a modern city, its alternating rhythms enhanced by the time-lapse photography.

The juxtaposition of these two types of scenes was memorable, however. First there is the leisurely movement of light and dark across ancient, unmoving objects, so slow as to be nearly imperceptible at times. In contrast the frantic rush of cars from one block to the next, only to stop, start, stop, over and over, highlights the difference in the way the passing of a given increment of time is so different depending on the context.

Then there were unpeopled landscapes again, though this time the moving camera gave the scene more of a dynamic rather than static feel. The music continued its eerie patterns, neither the relaxing classical or “nature” music I had expected, nor developing in concert with the scenery to any apparent destination. I commented to my 9-year-old (who was initially bored but ended up watching the entire movie with me, occasionally trying to guess the locations depicted on the screen) that the music reminded me of the sort used in a movie to build up tension toward a climax. But it didn’t go anywhere, except on and one.

Finally we did begin to see more signs of human civilization, not in the presence of people but of buildings and artwork they had left behind. I particularly liked the scene where the tide rushes up (interesting to see the tide come in with time compressed in this way) toward the lonely monastery of Mont- Saint-Michel in Normandy (I had to look up this identification later in the bonus materials). The camera takes us inside, but it is as quiet and solitary as the ocean, and as it must have been for the monks who lived there in ages past.

High school musicals (not Disney’s)

When I was in high school, I had no interest in being in the yearly musical production. I had acted in school plays in younger grades, but drama was really not my strength or my interest. I liked to sing, but I had chosen orchestra rather than chorus as my musical focus in high school. And I wasn’t a good enough violinist (in large part because I didn’t practice enough) to be in the pit orchestra for the musical.

I never even attended the musicals – at least not while I was in high school. When I was home on spring break from college and found out they were doing Camelot, I went and enjoyed the show, and was proud of what my high school could do. What I didn’t realize at the time was how common high school musicals were.

My husband, an excellent singer and a pretty good actor as well, performed in high school musicals – but of course I never saw them, not having met him until we had both finished grad school. I knew he had gone to a high school even larger than mine, so it didn’t seem surprising they could put on those sorts of productions.

Then when he had graduated from seminary, and we were traveling to interviews at churches looking for a pastor, in one town they invited us to the high school musical being presented that night. It was a smaller town than I had grown up in, but they did an excellent job, and I was quite impressed. I began to realize that what I had associated primarily with my own high school must be a much more widespread tradition.

Here in Muscatine, not only the high school but both middle schools also put on a musical each spring. My son has had a part each time – more because of his love of music than his interest in drama, and I am again impressed each time with both the talent these young people have and the quality of the production, evidence of a high level of commitment not only from the students but their parents and the schools.

TGIF

I know, it’s not Friday. I was too tired last night to post. TGIF means “Thank goodness it’s finished.”

I just completed a big project. Now, I didn’t know it was that big when I volunteered to do it. This coming weekend is our high school’s annual musical theater production, and for once they’re doing a musical I’m familiar with, Meredith Willson’s The Music Man. As a parent of one of the actors (Constable Locke), I looked for any area to help with that fit my interests and abilities.

The past two years I have limited my efforts to good intentions (never fulfilled) to help with the set, and bringing soda pop and cookies to be sold at the concessions table during intermission (this is required of all cast parents). I justified my minimal involvement because I am already busy enough with Cub Scouts and teaching Sunday School – plus my son’s interest in the drama program is limited to its musical aspects.

This year I volunteered to help with a show choir invitational (directing buses in the parking lot, which seemed within my capabilities), and even – reluctantly – helped supervise students at another show choir competition (this had the advantage of getting me in to the performance at no charge). When it came time to sign up to help with the musical, I was happy to find out there was a need for someone to type the program. I made sure I was at the front of the line to sign up to help so I could do that instead of feeling obligated to try to sell ads, organize volunteers, or help with costumes or makeup.

Of course, putting the program together turned out to involve quite a bit more than typing. I discovered that I had to figure out how to arrange the ads (some of which were not submitted in Word format as per stated specifications), compile a list of scenes and songs from my son’s script, and get it all put together in a form ready to be run off on the school Xerox machine.

I am reminded again why I prefer “followership” positions to leadership positions. I’m told that the cast members did a good job of getting their work done – writing out their bios for me, and learning their lines and songs for the production. But the adults are another matter. Of course, they’re all volunteers like me, each busy with work and family, trying to squeeze in the time needed for this major project along with all their usual responsibilities.

Music in our schools

Our high school band director sent out an email this week about the upcoming high school musical, and he also included a link to a petition supporting music education in our schools. He emphasized that he appreciates the strong support he has in our community, so the link to the petition is not a reflection in any way on that. But he knows that people supporting our music program would also want students elsewhere to have the same kind of wonderful opportunities.

I followed the link, thinking I would probably want to sign the petition. I’ve loved music as long as I can remember – though I found that I usually didn’t enjoy the same kind of music as my classmates. I grew up singing choral music in church, as well as attending organ recitals (our church had a beautiful pipe organ and an excellent organist). In the early grades I participated in a community children’s theater group, each year performing a musical not only in our own community but travelling to other towns as well. Later I started playing the violin, which I continued through college, and I came to love classical music.

I married a man with a wonderful tenor voice, and not surprisingly our older son is also gifted musically (he now sings bass, and participates in four extracurricular vocal groups, as well as playing the French horn). Our younger son recently joined the 3rd-5th grade song and dance team preparing for a special program on Mother’s Day at church. Physical coordination is not his strong point (nor mine!) but he loves to move to music, especially songs of praise to God.

I’ve read about how studies have shown the importance of music for learning. It’s not just the music itself that they learn, or the cultural benefits it gives them – though those are important by themselves. Music helps students with math, language, and other subjects. So efforts to cut money from the music program in order to strengthen core subjects such as reading and math are misguided, because the money spent on music education is actually helping students in those other areas.

Favorite music: hymns

I think it was a post by Renaissance Guy on favorite hymns that first introduced me to his blog, Significant Pursuit. So rather than repeat the list I gave there, I decided to make this list a bit different. There are a lot of hymns I could call favorites, meaning that I really like singing them and would suggest them for use in a worship service, given the opportunity. But I’ve noticed that some of those favorites I like primarily for the words, and others especially for the melody.

In the first group, for instance, I would include “How Firm a Foundation,” “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name,” and “O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High.” I know at least two melodies commonly sung for each of those sets of words, and while I have a preference in each case, matching the words with the other melody still produces a good hymn.

On the other hand, there are melodies that I enjoy regardless of the words. (Well, not quite regardless, because there could be a really lousy set of words – but I don’t have a preference for just one set.) Austrian Hymn by Haydn is one of those, and Ash Grove is another. Regent Square is another, although it’s hard to sing it without thinking of “Angels from the Realms of Glory.” I know at least two sets of words set to Finlandia, and I know there are others.

But my list of favorite hymns this time will be those where that are favorites because of both the words and music, and because the music seems to suit the words particularly well. If there are other words to these melodies, or other melodies used with these words, I’m not familiar with them – and not particularly interested in learning them. Sometimes words and music have been associated with each other for so long that it is distracting to try to use one without the other.

My first example of this is “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” It is a Latin hymn (though I don’t think I’ve ever sung it in Latin), based on a style of music called plainsong. The simple, almost plaintive melody carries perfectly the longing of a people for the One who will deliver them. Yet in the chorus it calls us to rejoice, even while we are still waiting, confident that He will come.

Favorite music: Greatest Hits of 1720

This was another of the cassettes loaned to me by my colleague at the school where I taught in 1982. I had long loved classical music, but had never found so many favorites on a single album. I had played the Pachelbel canon in a small orchestral group while I was in college (a friend who was a music major formed and directed the group), and hearing it played professionally was so much better.

I’m not sure if I had been familiar with Bach’s Air for the G String before, but I quickly came to love it. Likewise I could listen to the Adagio in G Minor over and over without ever tiring of it. Some of the other tracks were new to me, but there was nothing in the album I did not like. I knew people who thought classical music was boring, and it was hard for me to see how they could not hear the exquisite beauty of these compositions.

I don’t know how much it was my parents’ influence that led to my love of classical music, and how much the fact that I played violin in the school orchestra. As a child I had not appreciated my father’s insistence that we attend concerts at church. I didn’t like hearing the soprano hit high notes, and I tired of hearing the same line of Latin sung over and over again. I liked the organ recitals better than the choral concerts, but even so it was a long time to sit still.

But by the time I was in high school, I realized that I liked the music we played in orchestra far better than anything I ever heard in the mall (a rather novel way to shop, at the time, and a fun destination when I was out riding my bike, even if I had no money to buy anything). I wasn’t an especially good violinist, and I got tired of the rather monotonous harmony that the second violins often had to play. But I become fond of Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, and even Copland’s Rodeo and Dvorák’s New World Symphony eventually won me over. Baroque music was by far my favorite, however.

Favorite music: St. Louis Jesuits

I do remember when I first heard music by the St. Louis Jesuits (in contrast to the music of Simon & Garfunkel, as I posted yesterday). I was 20 years old, my first year out of college, trying (without much success) to teach French and Spanish at a non-denominational Christian school.

An older staff member (she was probably about the age I am now, which seemed pretty old to me at the time!) loaned me several cassette tapes, and I loved a few of them so much I promptly went out and bought my own copies. I’ll get to the other two in a later post, but the one that I loved most was Earthen Vessels by the St. Louis Jesuits.

I was struggling (generally on the losing side) with depression, so much so that the school administration required me to begin seeing a psychologist as a condition of continued employment. I didn’t find those visits particularly helpful, but listening to the words of Scripture set to music gave me strength to face challenges I would just as soon have avoided.

Until then, the only Christian music I knew, aside from hymns sung in church, was two varieties of contemporary Christian music. There was the music that was allowed at the fundamentalist college I had attended (such as music by Bill Gaither and by John W. Peterson, some of Amy Grant’s early songs, and the like) – nothing that sounded like a Christianized version of secular rock music. Then there was the music that was not allowed – Petra, some of Amy Grant’s later songs, and no doubt a lot of names I had never heard of because I had never cared for rock music of any flavor.

I wasn’t sure what to think of music by a group of Jesuits. I was accustomed to thinking of anything from the Catholic church as being suspect, as the fundamentalist churches I had attended considered the Catholic church to be apostate, though perhaps somewhat less so than the liberal Protestant churches, because the Catholics at least took the Bible seriously.

I had once or twice been in a Catholic church because my parents had a blind friend who sometimes went on vacation with us. As she was Catholic that meant taking her to Mass, and as she was blind it meant sitting with her and trying to make sense of frequent changes between sitting, standing, and kneeling.

I didn’t remember anything remotely inspiring in the music, prayers, or homily at those churches. (To be fair, I didn’t find much except the music inspiring at the Protestant churches we visited with my father.) Perhaps the music of the St. Louis Jesuits was just starting to make inroads on the Catholic parishes back then.

But from the first words and notes that came out of my tape player when I inserted the Earthen Vessels cassette, I felt a joy and a peace – as well as a longing for a closer relationship with God – that were for the most part foreign to me. I listened over and over to “Though the Mountains May Fall” and “Be Not Afraid,” and reminded myself throughout the day of their message about the ever-faithful love of God, no matter how challenging my circumstances.