Music at Mass Review: 11/21/10

At Parish A this week. Feast of Christ the King. The first and last tunes were good traditional numbers – Crown Him With Many Crowns and  All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name. These tunes not only are fairly musically interesting and have something to do with the feast being celebrated, but contain actual coherent theology – they assert things recognizable and understandable within the context of a Catholic Mass.

Not so the other hymns, not so!

Aside: when singing at Mass, I like my mysteries to be the mysteries of the faith – such as the mysteries of the Incarnation or of the Redemptive suffering of Christ. Not so much with the mystery being what in the world the lyrics of the songs could possibly trying to convey.  The test is that you can say, for example,  about the two hymns mentioned above that the mysteries are the Second Coming and the Kingship of Jesus and the Incarnation, and that the writers have tried to express those mysteries in poetry and song as best they could. But, as demonstrated in the songs below, that is not always the case – instead, we’re given lines that defy understanding as English words, let alone map to any coherently expressed theology.  Anyway:

Bernadette Farrell’s lyrics are almost as baffling as the popularity of her music. She penned a couple ditties that were employed as the offertory and communion songs. Let’s look at God Beyond All Names:

Zinman

Yesterday, was listening to some internet classical radio station. Beethoven’s 5th comes on – but: some unknown team of lunatics decided to

1. mix the recording so that the strings were about 6″ in front of your face;

2. record, evidently, in some sort of hyper-reverb chamber;

3. play at what I suppose was deemed to be a ‘grand’ tempo – sloooow.

Yikes. When I was 15, I decided to find out what this classical music stuff was all about. Other than by accident (such as the classical music included on  the 8-track demo tape my dad got with his new car in 1973-ish) I had almost no meaningful exposure to classical music. So I went to the public library and checked out the 5th on vinyl, because even I’d heard of the 5th. Von Karajan, Berlin Phil – AWESOME. I put the speakers to my primitive hand me down stereo facing each other about 2′ apart, put a pillow between them, and just spent HOURS listening to that LP. To this day, I can lean back, close my eyes, and pretty much play that version of the 5th back in my head

So this is a story of First Love.  And this recording on the radio was like seeing my Beatrice all dolled up by someone whose idea of cool is Malibu Barbie. NO!

Just War

Been thinking of how one would prudently apply the Church’s Just War teachings, and noticed something lacking in many people’s approach: Deciding if a war is just or not is like deciding to have heart transplant surgery, not like deciding to go to Disneyland. By this, I mean that the presumption should be that a reasonable person would do just about anything to avoid having to get a heart transplant, and only if there were overwhelming evidence that failure to get a transplant would be worse than getting one would it even rise to a decision point. Further, the potential transplant patient should acknowledge that, even if the operation is a complete success, he is still in for a long recovery, lots of pain, and a life that will never be the same.

On the other hand, going to Disneyland is fun.

This is Getting Hard to Take

Do people really think that everybody who disagrees with them about politics is

A) stupid,

B) an unwitting tool of the forces of evil,

C) an amoral slimeball, or

D) all of the above?

Really? Like, it’s us against them, Gondor versus Mordor, Rebel Alliance vesus Galactic Empire? Because, if that’s really the case, then shut up, get a gun and start shooting – what’s left to talk about? They’re just orcs and cloned storm troopers anyway – why waste your breath, just cut to the chase.

BUT – if among your opponents are some actual human beings, then ENOUGH WITH THE BASHING, ALREADY!

Currently, the Tea Party people seem to be getting the worst of it, but that changes moment to moment, I’m sure the socialists and liberals are taking their share of incoming fire, too.

While acknowledging that, yes, there are some stupid, ignorant, gullible people out there, and yes, there are evil people out there, too, who gladly use the gullible as tools (and the gullible are often gladly so used in return for getting to pretend they are with the cool kids), I’m really not convinced – yet – that the situation is so bad that it’s constructive politics and acceptable humanity to sneeringly insult and dismiss *everybody* who shares a particular political point of view I happen to disagree with.

Memo to liberals: Tea Party people have some valid points. Many of them are very aware that certain established forces are trying to co-op and neuter their movement, and are fighting it like mad. Many of them are appalled at the same exact behaviors in government and business that appall the socialists in your camp. There are plenty of goofballs in that movement, but, hey, take a look in the mirror before you start thinking there’s any higher percentage of goofball Tea Partiers that goofball Liberals.

Memo to Conservatives: Socialists have some valid points. Amoral capitalism – which is what we’ve got, once you get a little past the mom and pop level of business – is compelled by its own internal logic to do Very Bad Things. Very. Bad. Liberal outrage at the injustices perpetrated in the name of profits is real, and, at least sometimes, completely valid. Not all liberals are closet Stalinists who hate America. Many love America as much as you do.

Yes, evil people and nuts are out there. But, at least as a working assumption, let’s assume that many of our fellow Americans are worth talking to in a civil manner even if they don’t agree with us politically.  For if  our opponents are, in fact, as our President put it, ‘enemies’, the rational alternative is not name-calling and sneering. If our ‘enemies’ are really orcs and stormtroopers – well, you know how that turns out.

Music at Mass Review: 11/7/2010

Attended Parish C today. Children’s Choir.

Parish C has, by far, the highest commitment to liturgical music of any of the local parishes. Adult choir, kid’s choir, two separate ethnic choirs, two excellent keyboard dudes, instrumentalists – it’s  good to see that level of commitment and involvement.

They also seem to, you know, READ THE LYRICS before foisting them off on the congregation – while ‘lame’ happens sometimes, heresy is avoided. I love that.

For the last 40 years, children’s choirs have usually meant 1) suffering and 2) near occasion of sin. It is best not to even think about the smiley-faced abominations we’ve endured. So, I was very pleasantly surprised today when the children assembled in choir robes as if they were going to be a real choir. And, wonder of wonders, they even sang a *Greek* Kyrie, and not a wimpy one, but one with a little meat to it. Cool! (I was sitting up front, and the  kid’s choir director mouthed ‘thank you’ to me, as I was probably the one person in the congregation that a) knew that Kyrie, and b) has a loud voice – otherwise, the poor kids would have not heard much of a response. as I mentioned, it wasn’t a super-easy Kyrie.)

The kids made a yeoman’s effort at a couple pieces that I’d never heard before, clearly written for children’s choir but also not silly. One sounded a bit like Faure, for crying out loud, with the kids having to follow that modal slippery-slidey-ness of that style. They weren’t great, but it was such a relief to hear them try some real music.

They did do a couple goofy songs – that Gloria *clap*clap* thing, Gather Your People, O Lord – but adult choirs inexplicably do those songs, too.

All in all, there’s still hope in the world. Kids singing chant – whoda thunk it?

My Sagan Obsession

Once in a while, I fantasize about writing a book called ‘Sagan: Demon in a Candle-lit World’.

Smart versus Dumb; Right versus Wrong

While I am of the ‘Pox Upon Both Their Houses’ Party – the party of George Washington and other true patriots – this does not prevent me from seeing good in either of them, when that good presents itself. For example, there are and have been any number of very intelligent Democrats – Clinton is brilliant man, as is Barney Frank. FDR and the Kennedy brothers were very intelligent. All these men probably are or were smarter than I am. And demographic reality suggests there are plenty more men and women Democrats who are really, really smart.

Being intelligent is a good thing. But it is a good thing like being beautiful, not a good thing like speaking the truth. For – and this is the part Democrats in particular seem to be unclear on – it is entirely possible to be brilliant, insightful, eloquent, charming, and possess all the other gifts of the intellect – and utterly and completely WRONG. It is also completely possible to be dim-witted, ignorant, provincial – and completely right.

The subtle thing here is that, while intelligence may help you understand a situation more quickly and thoroughly than those who are not as intelligent as you in that particular way, that very same intelligence comes with a set of temptations and pitfalls that are not as big an issue with the less intelligent.  Chief among these is hubris. Closely related is the need to be thought brilliant – it’s very hard for a person whose self image is all tied up in being thought smart to endure the scorn of others who are thought smart. This, I think, explains what has been called ‘the herd of independent thinkers’ phenomenon.

In other news, Snake Swallows Self

How does one make funny out of the following?

–        Carefully timing the news so that it happens too late to inspire yet more people to go to the polls AND hits the post-election news cycle so that it will get buried, the Fed has announced that it will buy at least $600B in Treasury bonds. That means one arm of the government – the Fed* – is buying debt from another arm of the government – the Treasury. In this case, the Fed is creating money (no, really – the Fed’s job is to create money ex nihilo. You knew that, right?) solely for the purpose of funding our government debt.