Fr. Bob's Music Blog

A Little Wine & the "Enfant Terrible"

2012-02-17T16:23:00.000-05:00

Why are we attracted to the "bad" boys and girls in music and poetry for that matter? Think of the many artists who have gone before their time partly due to living rather mixed up lives. The popular thesis of the day is that many of them were prophets little understood in their own time who struggled because of their inability to reconcile to the circumstances around them.

A television show without conflict will probably never make it to air. Maybe the more intimate reality is that we are aware of our own incompleteness and artists sometimes make sense of human struggle in ways that we can't or don't articulate on our own.

In the discipline of the spiritual life that requires one to be accountable not only to God but to a spiritual confidante who is also a guide -- another person, over time the imperceptible steps toward more authentic living can unfold. Not necessarily opposed to this is what we reveal about ourselves when we "let our hair down".

In the tavern, therefore, we find a rich testimony of music that tells the human story in diverse ways. Indeed, a great deal of the folk tradition around the world owes its existence to communal experiences of being unselfconscious.

And so is born the balladeer, the chanteuse, the bard and in more the recent past, the folk musician.   The story of jazz in its many forms and the blues and of urban music also bear this mark.

Of course, not all music sung at the bar imparts wisdom or gives us something to positively reflect on in our lives. As with other things, we need to be discerning. Some things to think about:

I.         How rich a picture of human life is being portrayed? Is there only one emotion being expressed, and what is the effect of the emotional content of the piece on me?

II.        Does the piece help me to understand others or my own life in a more articulate way that will help me to live more generously?

III.       Does the piece express any openness, or hope? Many pieces of music contain lamentation and even anger. Well, so do the Scriptures in places. The question is, what is done with these feelings? Openness will allow the "good, the bad, and the ugly" of life to be exposed to the light. A piece may be dark and for good reason. Life is not always fair and there is evil in the world. But either in how we receive it or how we are invited to receive it, how are we left? Even a very great artistic statement may not always be one we are ready to receive.

It was St. Paul who said that one should take a little wine "for the stomach's sake." Catholics through the centuries have taken Paul up on his suggestion. In fact, there are still monasteries in Germany which have a monopoly in the neighbouring town to sell beer produced by the monks. And if you have only been accustomed to commercially produced beer your taste buds may be in for a shock if you taste beers produced today by Belgian and Dutch Trappist monks.

I grew up in the 70's. Aside from disco and hard rock there was a big pop music scene. One of the musicians who came out of that time was Billy Joel, e.g. "The Piano Man". Although he was packaged like a pop star, his songs come straight of the balladeering tradition. His trail was probably blazed by the popular folk singers of the 60's like Bob Dylan.

One balladeer who stands out in bridging the bar and the monastery is Johnny Cash. He lived a hard life, but through his life he became an ambassador for those who struggle in life and tried demonstrably to live a life of integrity and generosity.

Sometimes the story ends differently. Some who achieve popularity end up consumed by the confusion in their own lives that often is magnified by celebrity. We should be careful not to live off these folks and their troubles. As with any neighbour we should pray for them.

Great art is also produced by those who are healthy and in fact we can be more productive if we are leading basically healthy lives. Although no saint at least in his outward behaviour, Bach was clearly a happy guy who used his gifts generously. In fact, he enjoyed little fame in his life and yet we play more than 1,000 of his pieces today.

In the bard department, I recently picked up a double disc of Jacques Brel. He was a figure I knew nothing about, but he was a firm part of the "chanson" tradition in the 50's and 60's which is still very much alive in France, flavoured with equal parts of irony and "joie de vivre." The great Edith Piaf is the pre-eminent 20th century representative of this tradition.

In Canada we have been blessed with rich traditions of folk music. In Quebec, French but also Irish traditions are reflected. All across Canada, fiddle music derives from the souls of the country's early settlers. In Ontario we had a great balladeer who lived just a little too early to be recorded often and well enough: Wade Hemsworth, e.g., "The Black Fly Song". Stan Rogers died young but strictly due to unfortunate circumstance. He provided us with songs reflecting the beauty and struggles of working men and women, inland and in the Maritime provinces although he was from the shores of Lake Ontario. When I was growing up, Murray McLaughlin and Gordon Lightfoot came out of the Toronto coffeehouses in Yorkville (a much dirtier place then). When I see the diversity we have in our country it would be my hope that folk traditions brought from around the world will increasingly find a place here and an expression that gives people living here a vision of a rich life coming out of and sometimes despite the circumstances they may be in.

In a somewhat different artistic voice is the work of Leonard Cohen, who despite his some time bawdiness seems almost to have a Catholic sensibility about the sacredness of life and its mysteries.

I've listened to a little of Adele as well. Stylistically, she is a bit bluesy to my ears and so really part of a deep musical tradition. Her songs are speaking to many people. Her possible future legacy is still unfolding. Certainly competing with her would have been Amy Winehouse. Her struggles were very public. As a public we need to know we are not neutral. To simply listen to music that "pushes the boundaries" or to chase celebrities whose lives seem out there and mixed up may be pushing them further out. It seems to me that we need the musical prophets of our own day, but like our desire for everyone else, we need them to be healthy and safe. In a way, it is very sad to see sales of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston achieve record levels in death. What did we do to help them in life?

So the tavern may be where we start to reflect on life, but it should not be the end. Although a little wine (or beer for that matter) for the stomach's sake is okay.

As the World Turns

2012-01-16T12:24:00.002-05:00

On December 22nd my mother fell and broke her hip. She had been living in a long-term care home for six years. During that time she experienced the progress of dementia. In the month before her fall she was becoming noticeably more frail. My sister, my brother-in-law and I kept vigil at the hospital for two weeks. On January 6th mom died.

Compared to the uplifting music I write about here normally, the noises and fluorescent lights of the hospital make for a pretty stark environment. During those two weeks my mom suffered and so did we, but we also learned some very important things. We learned more about how much our mother loved us and we learned more about how much we loved her and one another.

There was nothing perfect or ideal about the situation or about any of us, but it was in these circumstances that we grew in love.

My sister was persevering to the "nth" degree. She spent almost every night at the hospital. That was well beyond my energy level. We were graced with being with my mother when she died.

From the day my mom fell to the day following the funeral seems like one long day and at the same time a period very short in duration. Many people came both to the funeral home and to the funeral itself.

My mother and father used to go to the opera and the ballet on dates (though they usually sat in the back row). A few months ago I brought a video of a comic opera that is not very often performed: "La Fille du Regiment" -- The Daughter of the Regiment. By that time, mom was not able to give long attention to very much of anything but we watched and listened to more than 30 minutes of the opera and she told me that her dad had gone to see it. And I don't doubt that. Her memory for this music was still present when much else had left her. Finding beauty in the fog -- that is consoling.

In Catholic theology when we speak of the soul we are not referring to a separated spirit, but the totality of our personhood -- what makes us a person. Music seems to have that capacity to speak to us in our personhood.

For the funeral we tried to find music that spoke to our faith in the resurrection and to this beauty. The first hymn was a quotation of St. Paul: "No eye has seen, nor ear heard of the glories that await." My father's patron saint was Joseph, so we sang a hymn in his honour at the preparation of the gifts and communion featured the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria, and O Sanctissima. At the end of Mass we sang "Lord of All Hopefulness" to testify to God's providence in my mom Eileen's life and in all of our lives. Bach's "Sleepers Awake", saw us out the door of the church.

The music dialogued with all of us and was a complement to the love-offering in prayer that so many contributed to. Thanks to so many and may the angels bring her safely home.

Christmas Shopping

2011-12-07T19:47:00.001-05:00

Not long ago, I had the chance to visit my favourite CD store. Did you say "CD" store? Yes. Even though many stores have closed some specialized ones are still around, and the CD shows no real sign of disappearing. The same thing seems to be true with 35mm film. I was talking to a salesman at at a downtown camera store. He told me that some young people in college are taking an interest in film. One benefit is that you really do need to learn the mechanics of good photographing techniques when you use film.

A benefit of having CD's around is that some rather specialized music can be recorded in a high quality manner. The media world has made recording very democratic and the internet has allowed wide distribution, but the effect on quality can also be noticed. The CD still provides a stable format for the storing and playing of recordings.

My intention at the store was do some Christmas shopping with the possible side effect that I might pick up a few recordings for myself. Of course, I can't tell you yet what music I purchased as gifts, but I spent just as much on recordings that I acquired for myself.

The most remarkable and I think significant recording is a Mass written in 40 parts -- yes 40 parts, by Striggio. It is a new Decca recording and is excellent and includes a DVD with some 5.1 tracks. For those who sing in choirs SATB is usually difficult enough. Striggio's music for the Catholic Church elicited an intentional response by the English Elizabethan composer Thomas Tallis. Tallis' piece is better known: Spem in Alium.

Recently I was in the Holy Land on a pilgrimage. I picked up one CD of folk music there, but when I came home I wanted some Klesmer music and found a nice disc. The most bizarre purchase is an "original instruments" rendering of some of the texts in German of the Carmina Burana. This obscure manuscript would not be known except for a 20th century composition by Carl Orff using some of the ancient texts. The chorus that begins and ends the piece has appeared in beer commercials. It will take me a while to feel I'm a little more inside this ancient music.

Both the 40-part disc and this disc show how complex medieval and Renaissance music is. Intellectually and spiritually it is good to be stretched. In a diverse world we all need it. This music shows that there are rewards in such exploits.

I also picked up a couple of classic Broadway soundtracks: My Fair Lady, and Man of La Mancha. The first is a rendering on the George Bernard Shaw play, Pygmalion and the latter a take on the epic novel of Don Quixote by Cervantes. The first story was meant to address issues of class and social standing in British society. Although obviously it is written for another time, it still has resonance. The second is almost the national story of Spain. It raises questions of idealism and the worthiness of living a life of seeking to right the wrongs of the world. In the end, Don Quixote appears to be an old fool, but he ends up having a profound effect. This show was first performed in the mid sixties. Each show has some really well-known songs.

I rounded out my purchases with a disc of sea shanties. My classical interests were fed by a new recording by Thomas Hampson of the song cycle of Gustav Mahler, Das Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn) with a chamber orchestra consisting of players from the Vienna Philharmonic. Wow. Biggest concentration of Stradivarius violins in the world. Cool.

I've Been Working on the Railroad!

2011-10-27T12:06:00.000-04:00

I wasn't actually working on the railroad, but I was out in the garden at the rectory trimming and pulling up plants. I'm getting ready to plant some bulbs and to change the mix of perennials and annuals in the garden. To make the work go smoothly I brought out a player for my IPod and put one of my playlists on "shuffle".

This got me thinking about the connection between music and work, especially physical work. Work songs have always been important. It is not just the rhythm either though this can help you to pace your effort. Those with workout mixes no what that is about. Words also are important. Often they tell a story: "I've been working on the railroad all the live long day!" Granted it is a simple story quite often, but it is real and direct. The writing of Ernest Hemingway could be thought of as an exemplary expression of this quality.

For many farmers of former generations from Europe and for monks for centuries an important musical element was the ringing of the bells that marked the beginning, middle and end of the work day. In Catholic countries the Angelus bell called people to prayer and also respite from their work. Although we don't ring it at 6am, we do ring the Angelus at the parish at Noon and at 6pm. It is a prayerful thing to do and it is also a reminder of the different way our ancestors conceived of time and work.

Years ago the eclectic Coen brothers came out with a film portraying Homer's Odyssey but set in Depression era Mississippi. The film starts with a chain gang work song and brings with its narrative an homage to "Old Timey" music. The film was a boon to many bluegrass musicians. The hit single that came out of it was a jazzed up version of a very traditional religious song: "I am a Man of Constant Sorrow." I have a version sung in the original style -- almost chant like.

The music we listen to now tends to have much faster rhythms. One might even call them frenetic. My guess is that we would live life better at a slower pace, especially if we sang about our stories and with some melody to carry us forward.

Aaah! Summer at Last!

2011-07-15T18:54:00.001-04:00

Graduations have just finished. There are six elementary and two secondary schools in the parish. End-of-year activities are numerous! I spent the first week after the holiday weekend, straightening things out -- they tend to get jumbled once the sprint starts at the beginning of Lent.

I had already reported that I was set to go to two concerts in June. Despite being busy I was blessed to be able to go to both. Each featured a pianist currently popular on the classical music scene and a prominent piece by Rachmaninoff. Gabriela Montero played Variations on a Theme of Paganini and Yuja Wang ( www.yujawang.com ) played the 3rd Piano Concerto.

For both concerts I was positioned on the floor on the left hand side so that I could get a good view of all that hard work. While classical music is highly developed, it really shouldn't be thought of as derived. It needs to have life and the involvement of the musicians is just as important as when a pop performer is clearly "into" their song. It is also the spirit of co-operation between soloist, conductor and orchestra members that I find very inspiring. Each role requires consistency, trust and significant personal identification with the music and the other musicians. It is very rich and is not paralleled too much in other genres except perhaps jazz. Most other music we listen to is the product of the same musicians working together. In something like a piano concerto a great many musicians come together for a short but very intense encounter.

Gabriela Montero ( www.gabrielamontero.com ) is also known her skill at improvisation. While dating at least some in the audience, she played improvisations based on, "The Mickey Mouse Club" and then "The Adams Family Theme". It wouldn't surprise me if Ms. Montero relaxes after a concert with some improv playing into the wee hours.

Yuja Wang is young still. The intermission interview was kind of funny as a senior classical music critic in the city tried to engage her in ready conversation. Instead her answers were brief and matter-of-fact. She likes playing the music that she plays.

Rachmaninoff is for me a composer who stretches out my emotions. I find his music full of breath. It resonates in some profound place without fail.

Spring Cleaning: The Emotional Workout of Great Music

2011-05-30T22:43:00.000-04:00

One of the things that drew me to classical music was the way it can serve up an emotional workout that leaves you with the same kind of satisfaction that a joyful bout of physical activity can. On the other hand, what I have found to be a bit difficult with a lot of popular music is how little emotional latitude it so often displays. My own life is one that will have many emotions in one day. This has become even more true in my years as a priest, where I may be celebrating a wedding and a funeral in the same day and still have to preach at the regular weekend Mass on Saturday evening. Good music helps to get me sorted out.

Just last night I sat down with the lights in my sitting room turned down, closed my eyes and unleashed the unbridled rendering of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony conducted by Herbert von Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic. The majesty and power of the first movement gives way to an almost pastoral second movement, that nonetheless contains a very deep heart beat from the first. The third movement is jubilant.

I don't know what your days are like, but I admit that sometimes I experience frustration. Inside I feel like the contesting point and counterpoint in the first movement. Like a good personal trainer, Beethoven takes me through the tightly wound feelings and gradually moves me to a relaxed and yet energized state.

This kind of experience helps me to be open and I use it sometimes to move myself into a more focused state where I can pray and reflect more attentively. The music has pulled me apart and reorganized me so that those diverse emotions from the day become more articulate, more able to play a part in my spiritual conversations.

To land gently, I played a piece by Ravel. It has a rather jarring title: "Pavane pour une enfant defunte." Literally, a pavane for a deceased child. I find the peace quite beautiful. It has a reflective tone. Who knows maybe Ravel was appreciative of the gift of this child's life? The way that the various instruments play almost in unison while lending different colours in the piece is intriguing. The long "breaths" in the piece also slow you down nicely.

I am going to the symphony orchestra here in Toronto this week for the first of two concerts that I am attending in the next two weeks. Both will feature Rachmaninov, one of my favourite composers. His piano concertos have the same kind of effect on me. This week I will be listening to the spicy Gabriela Monteiro play. I am really looking forward to it! I am also looking forward to hearing Messiaen's "Les Offrandes Oublies", which he wrote after World War II. Expect a report.

On the technical side I have an old "quadrophonic" recording with the Minnesota Orchestra and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski which has been reissued as a hybrid SACD (Super Audio CD). On a 5.1 system the original discrete four channels are reproduced. I play it on a stereo SACD player (two channels) and it sounds really nice to me. SACD's are considerably denser than CD's. Unless the disc is listed as hybrid, an SACD requires a playback machine with this Sony, proprietary technology. There are many recordings of this piece of music.

The Triduum -- Holy Thursday to Easter -- A Solemn Procession

2011-05-02T12:48:00.000-04:00

In seminary future priests live a relatively structured life. We don't live "by the bell" any more, but meal times are regular as are common prayer times. Once in a parish, however, structure can be left hanging on a thread. As a diocesan priest I am well-acquainted with the reality of being in a parish without other clergy handy. You have to go with the flow. Last Saturday was very much like that. I went from weekday morning Mass and confessions to our first of the First Communion Masses and then to a funeral, returning at four in the afternoon having started at eight in the morning. I had a couple hours to recuperate and then there was a social at the parish in the evening. Yesterday Masses finished at eight in the evening.

Holy Week and Easter, though we have many people, do provide a wonderful spiritual framework. Music and silence work together along with physical movement to convey the various stages of Christ's passion, death and resurrection.

On Palm Sunday, we began in the parish hall by proclaiming the Gospel text that recalls Christ's entry into Jerusalem. This is a joyous event and singing along with the procession with palm branches expresses it: "All Glory, Laud and Honour to thee Redeemer King . . . "

The antiphons that are interspersed during the proclamation of the Passion have a much more sombre mood: "Jesus, Remember me, when You come into Your Kingdom."

On Holy Thursday evening we celebrated the Mass of the Lord's Supper in the Parish. Again this begins as a joyful event. We received the blessed oils that had been brought from the celebration of the Chrism Mass at the cathedral on Tuesday: the Oil of Catechumens, the Oil of the Sick and the Oil of Sacred Chrism.

In the washing of the feet, we celebrate Jesus' commissioning of the apostles to proclaim the Good News through a life of service. But after Holy Communion the mood changes. Christ is about to be betrayed. The altar is stripped bare, the tabernacle is empty, candles are extinguished and a solemn procession with one vessel of Hosts is carried to a temporary chapel set up in the parish Hall. This represents the Garden of Gethsemane. Once the Eucharist is placed in the temporary tabernacle, the faithful are invited, like the apostles, to stay one hour with the Lord. The traditional chant of the "Pange Lingua" is used. And then SILENCE.

That silence is only briefly broken on Good Friday. The Liturgy on Good Friday is really a conglomeration of three things: the proclamation of the Passion according to John, the veneration (honouring) of the Cross (on which hung the Saviour of the world), and the distribution of Holy Communion. Again, the service begins and ends in silence. Once Communion is over the altar is again bare. There is one point of solemnity and of a kind of quiet joy. The saving reality of the Cross is used as the occasion to pray for its effectiveness in the world by a solemn series of prayers or invocations like the Prayers of the Faithful at regular Sunday Mass. These are ideally chanted including the responses. If a deacon is present, he chants the invitation to the assembled faithful and they respond: "For the sake of your Son, have mercy Lord."

The grand silence continues. Sacraments are not celebrated either on Good Friday or Holy Saturday. The Hosts distributed for Holy Communion on Good Friday are consecrated at the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Thursday night. In my current parish, this means consecrating approximately 8,000 hosts on Holy Thursday. The altar is full. Holy Saturday is a quiet day.

It is quiet, that is, until the Vigil. And the Vigil begins in darkness. A fire is lit outside and the Easter candle receives its light from that fire. Carrying the candle inside the darkened church the priest chants: "Christ, our Light." The people respond: "Thanks be to God!"

Small candles representing the baptismal candles of those present are lit and our cantor sings the Easter proclamation, the Exsultet. Here is a link to an mp3: http://www3.canisius.edu/~moleski/exultet/exultet.mp3.

Full orchestration, bells and vigorous choral singing reappear at the Gloria following the vigil of readings. The altar is dressed and the sacraments bubble up -- literally. We baptized or received into the Catholic Church 14 adults this year. We celebrated Baptism, Confirmation and they received their First Eucharist having spent the better part of a year preparing for this night.

All through Lent, the Church fasted from one word: Alleluia. Now, it is released and at the very end of the Mass it is repeated in a solemn chant: "Go in the peace of Christ, Alleluia, Alleluia! Thanks be to God, Alleluia! Alleluia.

In a non-liturgical note, it is usual that priests make themselves a a little bit scarce in the week following Easter to catch up on some much needed sleep and try to restore a little structure to their lives.

Tenebrae: Monday of Holy Week 2011

2011-04-21T16:26:00.001-04:00

Tenebrae: A Service of Light in Reverse

2011-04-13T17:43:00.002-04:00

Throughout monasteries, convents, rectories and many Catholic churches throughout the world, people recite the Liturgy of the Hours, also known as the Office or the Breviary. Some religious communities like the Benedictines have their own version, but mostly the Church prays the same prayers in the same order all around the world. Many people have also taken up this way of praying.

It is centred on the psalms and it includes readings from Sacred Scripture as well as many of the early teachers of the Church like St. Augustine. As part of the Liturgy of the Hours, the Office of Readings (one of the "hours") during Holy Week included services written with more elaboration to heighten the meditation on the Passion of Our Lord. At least when celebrated publicly these services were often compressed from being spread over three days into one evening. This is how the devotion we now call Tenebrae came about.

To Anglicans, it appears much like a service of readings with chant interspersed. To Catholics it is now quite different than many of the other forms of devotion we have become accustomed to. There is a particular history in Toronto, however. Monsignor John E. Ronan, a native of one of our oldest parishes St. James in Colgan, wrote a setting for Tenebrae that is sung each year in different churches in southern Ontario by alumni of St. Michael's Choir School. Tenebrae will be celebrated at St. Francis Xavier Parish here in Mississauga on Monday night of Holy Week following the 7 p.m. Mass.

To become acquainted with chant and polyphony is to touch the heart of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. Even without knowledge of Latin, the music draws one directly into contemplation, establishing a slow even breathing pattern and settling the mind. In the old days, we would say it "disposed" one to prayer. Indeed.

There is also a quite well-known local Tenebrae written by Healey Willan, choir director of the Anglican Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Toronto for many years. Mr. Willan did receive fairly wide recognition as a composer in the English-speaking world in his lifetime. There is a nice Virgin Classics disc with the Choir of St. Mary Magdalene.

Music as Confession

2011-03-21T12:39:00.002-04:00

I have mentioned the Buena Vista Social Club before. I have a video and the original album. Recently I bought a pair of discs that were issued in 2008 of the quite famous live performance given by this group at Carnegie Hall. I notice they are also now available on vinyl.

Live recordings must seem pretty risky to record companies, but this venture was unusual from a number of perspectives. The first is, that most of these musicians were already old. The chance of repeating the event was slim. They were from Cuba where it would even be a question as to whether they could leave the country again. The circumstances of the musicians were very unusual. They had thrived in the heyday of Havana as an exotic getaway for Americans in an era before DJ's and amplified instruments. Most had had a long period without playing music publicly. What effect this had one might speculate about. Maybe it was a bit like an extended retreat -- a time to continue to internalize one's attachment to the music.

Years ago I attended a concert of the then quite young British violinist Nigel Kennedy who emerged in the classical music world at a time when punk rock was of some importance in the popular music scene. His appearance lent itself more to punk rock than to white tie and tails. He soloed in one of the most famous sets of concertos for violin, the Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi. Far from the academic playing that was becoming de rigeur at the time in the classical music world, Kennedy's playing was emotive, sweeping, powerful, . . . and extremely competent. Wow! When I left that night I felt like I had been a participant in a bit of musical history at least in the cultural life of my own city.

This live recording of the Buena Vista Social Club has that same electricity! In our modern world we often discount this apparently intangible quality, but I don't think it is any different than when someone we care about has a deep and meaningful conversation with us. It is revelatory. The poet, the painter, the actor and the musician communicate greater depth when they are authentic. Acting, in particular, is often thought of as a ruse. How can someone call up authenticity and show such divergent emotions when they move from one role to another? Perhaps there are actors who are sociopaths, but I would hope that this would not be the norm. As human persons we do make judgements about the authenticity and truthfulness of others. It is true also that our intelligence exceeds our articulation of that intelligence. We can destroy ourselves with illusions, so we are rightfully on guard. On the other hand, when confronted with another's beautiful confession of soul we really do need to be moved. When someone shows us their gratitude for receiving love and their desire and generosity in returning it we need to rejoice, share in it and learn from it.

As I was listening to this album that is what I experienced, a deeply human and intelligent sharing of love. In the liner notes the producer of the album, Ry Cooder, asserts that the like of this group will not be found in the future.

There is more than enough human soul present in humanity to confess love through music. For it to be public and for it to be appreciated we need to be looking for it, acknowledge it when we find it and be open enough ourselves to receive it and express it in our lives.

Thank you Octavio Calderon, Ibrahim Ferrer, Roberto Garcia, Hugo Garzon, Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, Ruben Gonzalez, Pio Leyva, Manuel Licea, Orlando Lopez, Manuel Mirabal, Eliades Ochoa, Omara Portuondo, Jesus Ramos, Salvador Repilado, Compay Segundo, Benito Suarez Magana, Barbarito Torres, Alberto Valdes and Amadito Valdes. Ry and Joachim Cooder and Angel Domech also played that night. Ry Cooder did the spade work to bring these wonderful souls to light.

Confession is a good thing!

Casting Pearls . . .

2011-03-14T19:52:00.002-04:00

I passed a milestone recently -- in age, that is. Among the gifts I received was a gift certificate to a purveyor of media stuff, CD's, DVD's, Blue Rays, video games and the like. I went into the shop with the intention of purchasing a couple of movies. When I went to the relatively small classical music section, however, I couldn't believe my eyes. Boxed sets abounded. The prices were irresistible. People who know me think I have expensive taste. I will admit to liking nicely engineered things and I definitely do not like bad design. My priestly commitment hasn't so far required me to impose a regimen of aesthetic pollution or constant mechanical breakdown into my life. What some may not realize is my "cheap" side. I've always bought music with a view to how much it costs me per minute. That's why I still see downloads as being at a high price and a low quality. Some protocols, of course, are of quite good quality. It's just that you also have to bear the cost of storage and backup. Failing to do the latter can be quite costly. Classical downloads are also generally pretty expensive and even when they are not more expensive than the CD, they don't have the printed artwork, liner notes and so on that usually come with a decent CD.

These boxed sets were from a couple of major labels. A lot of them are now corporately related anyway. What caught my eye is that the recordings involved were either well known or the featured artists or orchestras were of unassailably good quality. I bought the Mahler symphonies by Ricardo Chailly and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. The first nine are by Chailly and this orchestra in digital recordings. I bought a collection of the bulk of Puccini operas recorded mostly in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Beethoven piano works with Alfred Brendel and also another set with Vladimir Ashkenazy were also a great buy. All the Mozart symphonies on the Archiv label and Mozart's piano concertos also with Ashkenazy went to the checkout. I bought something like 50 discs altogether with each package only costing me between $25 and $35 dollars.

On the one hand this was a tremendous opportunity to strengthen parts of my collection. I also can't imagine the time involved if I had to download all this material. It is wonderful in some ways to see major labels giving access to high quality music at a very reasonable price. The other side of this question though raises concerns. If this is the way that the labels are now able to make money what is the future of high quality recordings of current and future classical artists and orchestras? Some orchestras are releasing in-house recordings. One critic I read recently wondered about whether this might lead to mediocre material. The labels are in touch with what kinds of recordings people actually want to buy and listen to. Judging by our own local orchestra in Toronto, I'm not altogether sure they have a grip on the pulse of the potential purchasers of their recordings. One thing is that those who have the time, money and inclination to go to concerts do not always overlap with those who might be interested in listening at home or on their portable device. And those who do go to the concerts may well already possess one or several recordings of the piece they have just heard. Maybe there is a push here to orchestras to think a little more about music-making, performance, and, dare I say, entertainment. Even high brow music is human after all.

The cost of making a good classical recording is high and a bit like Formula 1 racing, it has an effect in other parts of the industry. The improved clarity and dynamics of recordings have been driven by the acoustic demands of unamplified instruments. Less of this going on will have some effect on technical developments in sound recording.

The modern internet-based world has allowed self-publishing even like this blog to be something that anyone can pursue and yet we also want to differentiate ourselves. Instead the complexity of the chatter seems just to increase. What makes a person a great musician is of course talent and practice and the chance to listen to others who have achieved a high level of musicianship.

We need to continue to remaster old recordings and to nurture and develop new ones including evolving some way to ensure that our ears and those of a new generation of great musicians have the chance to be treated to sounds that truly inspire.

Am I Digital or Am I Analogue?

2011-02-28T17:03:00.000-05:00

I remember near the end of high school the use of digital music playing equipment was just beginning. The CD player had been introduced. It was a kind of miracle. Though you might hear people wax about the wonders of vinyl it is true that vinyl had its shortcomings.

Compact cassettes, reel-to-reel and records all had in common a system for modulating sound either with a magnetic impulse or a physical variance in the terrain. Not long ago I showed the grandchild of a parishioner my turntable and I put a record on it. As we listened to the music I heard myself saying, " . . . and there are no computers being used to make this sound." Wow! You can actually see the bumps on the record and the tiny little needle at the end of the tonearm that follows those bumps.

Television sets use pixels as do our computer monitors. If you put enough of them together they appear to present a smooth image. The same is true in movies. A series of still photos moved in sequence at a sufficiently fast rate will appear to our eyes as smooth action.

We are really both analogue and digital. We don't think pixelated thoughts or make pixelated movements with our arms. A good athlete is smooth. But we do know that at the deepest level of human life that we have yet observed there is a mathematical order that can be described. We call it the human genome. I remember in high school too, talking about the nature of light. Is it a wave? Or a particle? A wave is kind of analogue and a particle is pretty "digital". This duality touches the whole range of quantum mechanics in physics.

What we lived with in listening to our records was hiss and then quite a few pops. You couldn't make the sound very portable either. We listened to AM radio. Talk about poor fidelity! 8-track tapes came along in the early '70's and then compact cassettes and players were available in cars. The Sony Walkman came along, joining the small transistor radio as a means of portable personal music. Sound systems moved from furniture-like cabinets to separate components. Teenage males really liked to be able to boast that they had their own sound system.

The CD took all this portability and improving fidelity brought it a big leap forward. For the first time you could have a really good clean sound without spending gobs of money a big sound system. CD's were also easy to care for and transport around relative to records. Faithful recordings were often made onto compact cassettes to produce dance mixes and so on for parties at home.

As a I began to listen more to classical music in my university and seminary years I really looked forward to the clarity and the complete lack of hiss that CD's afforded. Another big benefit is that they were up to 80 minutes long. At last a whole symphony or act of an opera could be listened to without interruption. In fact, the length of classical tracks seems to be the subject of marketing confusion in the download world of today as they are so much longer than the tracks of popular forms of music.

Classical and jazz music labels realized the sales potential they had in reissuing older recordings with the new clarity of digital technology. Purely digital recordings were exciting because of their new levels of dynamic range. As time went on some voices suggested that CD's sounded a bit strident and that the old vinyl had warmth that was lacking in the new digital technology. Some people today still choose to have amplifiers that use tubes for this reason. There are sonic limits to the root digital protocol called "PCM", but I'm guessing that unless you've got really superior equipment including your ears, that these things are really a matter of taste.

There is a resurgence in vinyl and in the sales of turntables that may have started with DJ's, but now extends to a wide variety of musical genres. The new vinyl records are expensive. I haven't forked out the money yet. I think the best reason to have a turntable is to troll old records. It takes some effort to hear the vitality of old recordings played on a scratchy record, but sometimes it is well worth the effort.

The opportunity that digital technology provides is the way one can seamlessly manipulate recordings. The virtue that analogue methods present is that they are less mediated than their digital counterparts. For music, at least, the goal should be a direct connection between the person making the music and the listener. How does the sound engineer figure? Gently, I hope.

Chanters, Drones & Drums

2011-02-08T15:07:00.001-05:00

Cabin fever has set in. It is the middle of winter and the need to fly the coop has come to me. One of the places I go sometimes on my day off is to friends who live near London, Ontario. Monday nights at this home are bagpipe nights. Two daughters and one son are involved with their dad in the local fire fighters' pipe band.

The skirl of the bagpipes is one of those things that goes to your bones. Bagpipes are by no means the domain, however, of the Scottish. In fact the pipes in various forms can be found almost all around the world. The Scottish pipes are distinctive for many reasons, prominently their volume. They are loud! The political history of the pipes is also another interesting thing to investigate. Suffice it to say that the English, through their empire, were big exporters of the sound. Today the pipes are preserved through Scottish festivals in different places around the world.

The pipes have a nine-note range, which limits repertoire, but for the martial music and dancing music for which the instrument is famous there is nothing like the sound. Playing them is not easy. You need to have a lot of wind in your lungs, but the techniques required for "grace" notes and other kinds of ornamentation and transition are acquired only with much practice.

Another problem, at least in practising, is the sheer volume. At home you practice with only the "chanter", the part that goes in your mouth. To actually get ready for a parade or for competition you need to develop your ensemble sound and for that you need to play full bore. In any enclosed space this is LOUD!

The music which is produced, however, is very powerful. Many people are familiar with the plaintive sound of a single piper playing "Amazing Grace". For my friends, playing in the band is a family experience and a community-building one. It is wonderful to see their children express the music that is within them and you can see it informing the rest of their lives.

For a while Canada had the world champion pipe band, hailing from Simon Fraser University in

British Columbia.

Off to the Symphony

2011-02-08T10:21:00.001-05:00

Last Saturday night I was off to our symphony hall in Toronto, named after a newspaper magnate, Roy Thomson who was around long enough ago that he received a title from the Queen, Lord Thomson of Fleet. That "Fleet" as in Fleet Street in London, England, where the publishers of newspapers have traditionally been located.

The Toronto Symphony is going through what a lot of orchestras are experiencing these days -- the need to lower the average age of their audience. As part of this effort, the orchestra has made tickets available at a discounted price over at least one of the two summer months (July or August) during the last couple of years. The prices are good and what I like just as much is being able to choose my seats. I am quite content to sit at the back of the hall for a large orchestral piece, but if there is a soloist, especially a violin soloist, I like to sit as close up as I can. The sound may not be as balanced but the emotional involvement with the musician and the rest of the orchestra is much greater.

The concert on Saturday featured not our own symphony orchestra but the National Arts Centre Orchestra from Ottawa. The two major pieces were the "Emperor" Piano Concerto and the Second Symphony of Beethoven. The soloist was Jonathan Biss. See, http://www.jonathanbiss.com/. He is a 30-year old American player who is becoming quite established in his career. The orchestra's conductor was Pinchas Zukerman.

I brought along one of our seminarians to be, and settled for a pleasant evening. What you cannot replicate when playing a recording is the actual fact that the music comes from each instrument when you are listening to a live performance. Also present on Saturday was a broadcaster who hosted chats before each piece. This setting up of the audience I think is a good thing especially for those not already familiar with a great deal of classical music. It also gave a certain lightness to the evening that helps one to be more open to the music.

In my own disc collection I have the von Karajan collection of the 9 Beethoven symphonies with the Berlin Philharmonic, which today would be seen as being a bit heavy on the cheesecake, and I have the collection of symphonies with John Elliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique. For the piano concerto I have a very intellectual recording by Alfred Brendel.

Christus Natus Est -- Christ Has Been Born!

2010-12-27T13:59:00.000-05:00

At my parish we celebrated four Masses on Christmas Eve and four on Christmas Day. Our choirs had been preparing for quite a while and the singing, the decoration of the church and the congregations gathering dressed-up and focused on the feast was a beautiful experience.

This is two days after and I am safely and quietly ensconced in Ottawa at my sister's home, so I have the leisure to update this blog. With Boxing Day as a statutory holiday here in Canada, many have at least some time this week to be together.

The principal Christmas feasts are Christmas itself and Epiphany. In some European cultures, in fact, Epiphany is the feast with the greater amount celebration and gift-giving associated with it. The word "Epiphany" literally means a "showing". The wise men experience a showing or revelation of God present in the world. They see by God's intervention what others may not see in an apparently ordinary infant. For Christians, it is that God is revealed, shown to us, that His presence is not a secret that allows us to experience the gift of a world made whole in Him.

The celebrating is our response. It is a joyful freeing of our inhibitions, a time when we allow one another to be generous and kind. If you have been shopping on Boxing Day these may not be the thoughts that leap immediately to mind.

The Christmas carol as a musical form then, is meant to communicate joy and to most especially to be accessible, i.e., we can all sing them. They are not virtuoso pieces but ones meant to have meaningful melodies and words that stay with us. In the English language in North America, a disproportionate number of carols come from either the English or German choral traditions. These old hymn books in fact collected hymns that come from a variety of places and countries.

Even in a largely secularized world it is clear that even the melodies resonate still with many. In the airport on Christmas Day afternoon I heard many a carol playing over the terminal's sound system.

Despite the fact that stores will be taking down their Christmas decorations by next week Christmas season continues for two weeks until we have celebrated the Baptism of the Lord.

Post-Modern People Living Victorian Lives

2010-12-26T14:55:00.002-05:00

A week before Christmas I had the pleasure of participating in two evening sing-a-longs in people's homes. The first evening was a tradition that I have been going to for the better part of ten years now. A couple I know well live out in the country and have built a nice home on some ten acres. It's a bit of an unusual house. There's a plane in the garage and a pipe organ in the bedroom! The plane is currently under repair, but the pipe organ (two manuals) is in fine working order. One of the organists from the parish where I first served as pastor comes out with his wife and children and plays carols on this 140-year old instrument.

Neighbours, friends and this year even visitors from Germany were present for the evening's fun. We eat, socialize but most importantly sing together. It is a happily uninhibited affair. Song sheets are shared and fooling around with the notes is not frowned upon. Young children, teenagers, young adults, middle-age folks and retirees are all at home with one another. Sometimes we sing for two hours -- this year was more like an hour and a half.

The next night I was at a home in downtown Toronto where a pre-Christmas soiree has also been a family tradition for a long time. Our hosts are very gracious and also believe in people making music together. The chosen instruments for this year's singing sessions were bagpipes (you read that right) and jazz electric guitar.

Time was that people had to make their own fun. It is a loss, I think, that we do it so little now. In the 19th century sheet music was sold in the same way that downloads are purchased today -- a piece of sheet music was the "single" of its day.

I see it happen a bit in my own parish. Many of my parishioners are from Goa, India and from the Philippines. Both cultures have a healthy tradition of playing music as a form of entertainment. I was a little surprised to learn of the broad acceptance of American country music especially in Goa, but at least one reason is clear -- it is playable and singable.

It might seem to us that such traditions belong to former times, but they show us that we find something in these social experiences of music that can't be replaced with pre-recorded music and a pair of headphones. Singing is a great way of being together, and we need more of that. It is a good idea that is neither post-modern nor Victorian.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel

2010-12-16T14:42:00.001-05:00

While a local radio station happily announced that it would be playing Christmas music from the last week of November until Christmas Day all day every day, we who follow the liturgical calendar of the Church are singing along with the rich hymns that accompany the Advent Season.

One of the things I really like about many of the Advent hymns is that they are sung in a minor key or at least include a few sharps and flats. Try the Old Basque Carol, for example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfSBzd2ddPk&feature=related.

These hymns communicate God's coming from a place of stillness. As we shall soon revisit the simplicity of the manger scene we will come to a new experience of God's presence dwelling with us by entering into the realm of the simple, the quiet and the still.

In Canada, when winter comes fully we are blanketed not only visually with snow but also aurally. Snow absorbs sound and visually it makes the confusing world we live in seem more uniform -- all in white. So we are invited rather naturally to experience the world in a new way.

It has been traditional among some of our Christian brothers and sisters to attend performances of George Frederick Handel's most famous oratorio, "Messiah". The "Alleluia" chorus that is the central point of the work, though, is not announcing Christ's birth, but His resurrection. Only the first part of the three parts is devoted to a scriptural meditation on the incarnation or birth of Jesus. This work, however, has been a feature of the English world's observance of this time of year for the better part of two centuries. There will be many performances in Toronto and environs including "sing-a-long" versions.

I have two recordings. One is very Victorian conducted by Georg Solti and the other is on original instruments led by Trevor Pinnock with a more historically accurate group of singers and choristers giving a performance much more like that of the 1740's when this piece was first performed.

Hail Holy Cecilia!

2010-11-22T21:17:00.002-05:00

Today is the Feast of Saint Cecilia patron saint of music and musicians. The story goes that she sang on her way to her martyrdom. Her name is listed among the early martyrs of the Church of Rome and she is included the list of martyrs (the martyrology) in Roman Canon, referred to now as the First Eucharistic Prayer of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church -- that's your regular RC's to most people.

Composers like Henry Purcell wrote musical odes to St. Cecilia. It provides the opportunity for a little holy revelry. While it is not a name commonly heard these days, at least in the circle of my Irish relatives it was certainly in use a hundred years ago.

Her feast is a chance to appreciate the gift of music. It is a talent, like so many in our world, that we actually know very little about. It is part of the intelligence of our species. While practice and technique are important as in any sport or discipline, talent occupies the greater place. Music flows out of us once we are able to release it. And for those of us who lack one or another critical element like pitch, fine motor skills and inerrant rhythm, we still receive these things with joy and wonder.

We can love to listen and I imagine my synapses being marvellously rearranged by what I am hearing. What little we know of Cecilia's story is enough to tell us of the way that even under the most dire circumstances music has the capacity to support in our humanity what is most elevated and good.

Music for the Dark Days of the Year

2010-11-22T21:00:00.006-05:00

There are theories that we associate sounds with colours. In Toronto (about 43 degrees north latitude) the colour of light changes quite dramatically as we approach Christmas. In October, as the angle of the sun declines relative to the earth we see more shadows and we are still hurrying home in the twilight. What I notice the most, however, is that the blue of the sky takes on different tonality. It is more grey. The sky is still blue but that blue is leaning toward a darker base colour. And then in November clouds and changeable weather take over. There is a dull general light as if we are all living in a room with a north-facing window. This dullness is eventually broken by cold crisp winter days where the lack of foliage on the trees and the reflectivity of the snow make our world feel bright again. There is nothing like a cold winter morning walking down the street feeling your nostrils almost freeze together.

The cloudy days of November are at least sober if not somber. There's music for this time of year. Evocative acoustic instruments can be quite beautiful. The acoustic guitar or its early predecessor the lute call forth warmth to take the dampness out of the air. Certain composers also come to mind.

Bach wrote for draughty German churches. Erik Satie is a composer whose writing seems to carry something of an existential ennui. The chromatic music of Ravel brings a sleekness to dull days. Personally, I'm staying away from the tonal composers of the long line like Part and Tavener. They are a little on the heavy side for me as the days are still getting shorter. I was recently in attendance at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto for Leos Janacek's "Glagolitic Mass". That was both modern and uplifting. See, http://www.leosjanacek.com/glagolitic.htm.

The sound track to the Lord of the Rings could be both stimulating and in sync with the season. Also in the dramatic department, Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite is really good.

Here is a video for the most famous Satie piece:

Hallowe'en, All Saints & All Souls

2010-11-01T21:42:00.000-04:00

HALLOWE'EN

All Hallows Eve literally means the evening before All Saints (those who are hallowed or made holy). Traditions are far and wide that connect this night and some others with an eerie awareness of the life of the dead. At least in my growing up this was mostly innocent fun, a time to dress up and be dramatic. When you think about how we live here in North America most of the time this isn't something we give ourselves the chance to do very often. In Quebec there is a mummering tradition still very much alive on Ile d'Orleans outside of Quebec City. The time, however, is closer to Christmas. In Newfoundland and the Maritime provinces costumed mummers also make the rounds.

Our society, unfortunately, seems to think this is the time for blood and guts. In my life as a priest not only does this seem to be at odds with the way of life I profess; I see more than enough of people's actual struggles to find the dramatization of violence and inhumanity in any way entertaining.

It is interesting, however, to think that in a society that denies the presence of evil that there is a fascination with the macabre. Perhaps life is more frightening than we are willing to admit and these kinds of scary games strengthen us at least in our own minds. I do think that's why many of us like roller coasters. They are fearful but in a controlled way.

This acknowledgement of fear and the presence of evil, then, recognizes something real to us. In our pursuit of virtue in the Christian life we do have to be aware of the scope of life. Like Christ we want to bring love and charity, but like Christ, in doing so, we will also encounter the darkness that still is around us.

Musically these emotions are to be found in many places. For foreboding you can't do better than the Dance of the Knights from Prokofiev's ballet, "Romeo & Juliet". Camille Saint-Saens, a church organist and choir director wrote one of the more playful Halloween pieces I can think of: Danse Macabre. Another French composer, Hector Berlioz in his Symphonie Fantastique which I have mentioned before evokes some of the angst that we experience in approaching death. Peer Gynt by Edvaard Grieg is another piece that deals with these subjects through a dramatic representation of a folk tale.

For a very Christian treatment of death Sir Edward Elgar set Blessed Henry Cardinal Newman's poem, the Dream of Gerontius to music as a kind of oratorio. In a more abstracted way you might try listening to Beethoven's Pathetique piano sonata. On the dark side there is a section of Smetena's Ma Vlast that gets little play because of the violent scene in folklore that it portrays, Sarka.

ALL SAINTS

There are well known hymns sung on this day in church. What springs to my mind are also liturgically based prayers that have been set to music like the ancient Te Deum, literally, "You are God". Part of the prayer says: "The glorious company of apostles praise you. The noble fellowship of prophets praise you. The white-robed army of martyrs praise you." All saints have poured out their life for the Good News. It was an early understanding of the Church that those whose lives were saintly but who were not actually martyrs were to be seen as confessors of the faith. Well the Church has many martyrs and even more confessors whose names are no most intimately to God and less so by us.

In the symphonic realm I can think of Gustav Mahler's famous "Resurrection" Symphony in which the "chorus mysticus" sings God's praises. The great outburst of Beethoven's final movement of his 9th Symphony is probably the most exuberant piece affirming the new life of resurrection. Even Faure's Requiem is filled with such peace and trust in God that sanctity is what is being celebrated. A more eclectic and modern take might be Olivier Messiaen's Chants de Terre et de Ciel, "Songs of the Earth and of the Sky". I have a lovely recording of this sung by Suzie Leblanc on the Atma label.

ALL SOULS

Prior to the Second Vatican Council it was traditional for each priest to celebrate three Masses on All Souls Day. This was a departure from the other days of the year when they would normally celebrate one. The routine celebrating of two, three, or sometimes in necessity four Masses in a day did not exist in the same way then.

So it was normal to enter the church on All Souls Day and find more than one Mass going on. One might go to a side altar and find a priest beginning Mass there while Mass at the main altar might be reaching its conclusion.

Conveyed in all this is the clear understanding we have of this special day in the Church year. We are called to pray for the faithful departed so that they may enjoy the fulfilment of their hope in heaven.

Musically, there is a vast collection of requiem Masses. One piece, to me, that stands out as a great way to pray and contemplate our call to God through His merciful love is the famous Misere mei, Deus, of Gregorio Allegri, written in the first of the 17th century. This piece that uses the best known of the penitential psalms, Psalm 51 provides a piercing, beautiful and yet simple explication of the text that cannot help but pull one and one's prayers out of oneself. As an historical note, it was traditionally performed in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican during Good Friday service, having been composed for this very purpose.

MUSIC & THE FINITUDE AND INFINITY OF LIFE

There are very few studies of the relationship of music to the life we treasure here on earth and the life we long for beyond our human grasp. My own view, however, is that music is a very intelligent response to this most fundamental of human longings and that is, therefore, also intelligible.

Perhaps when we have developed a little more in a ways of understanding our own acts of knowing we will be able to see this connection more strongly and apply it to our daily living more practically. Then again, perhaps, the object will not be to verbalize it but to recognize it as another kind of human language. This makes sharing directly and personally our experience of the evocative power of music something that can help to elevate us and bring us closer to our true home.

Music & Technology

2010-10-12T17:48:00.000-04:00

Music as long as we are talking about the use of instruments rather than the human voice has always been a technical exercise. Instruments need to be made. Even found objects need to be compared with one another. Kids love to experiment with banging different sizes and shapes of pots, for example. Even with the human voice, however, technology has been applied from very early times.

Ancient theatres employed walls and materials above the performers of ancient dramas (which often employed a chorus) to help project the human voice. The shape of the theatre itself is also very important. We see this same attention to natural acoustics in the design of concert spaces and theatres meant for the performance of opera.

Until the advent of electrical magnification of sound many public spaces paid attention to the need to project sound. The band stands and band shells that dotted our parks in North America a century ago were constructed with the purpose of aiding the broadcast of acoustic music. Go into some older churches and you may find elevated pulpits. Virtually all will have a roof above the preacher, not to hide him or protect him from the weather inside church but help project the voice. I've seen ingenious ones which have a clamshell shaped roof, suspended and with a counter-weight to allow it to be raised and lowered to optimize the projecting effect taking into account the height and timbre of the speaker.

Instruments also, although mass manufactured are still in significant numbers hand-produced. I wonder if "instrument maker" is something young people consider as a career these days. There are a few requirements of course -- perfect pitch and dexterity being two of them.

In pianos, for example, the technical aspect of a piano's construction plays a very significant role in the piano's overall tone and its relative ability to distinguish and blend the sounds that it makes. The success of the action has much to do with how well the piano may be played quietly (hence the name "piano" = "soft" or "in a low voice").

Technology is used widely now including the digital alteration of singing voices to put them back on pitch. At what point does this become manufactured? Certainly we need to ask ourselves why we listen to music. If it is simply something to block out quiet or it is to merely be able to say that I listen to what others listen to, then I think it is prone to a lot of manipulation that can take something that has rather direct access to our hearts and minds and put it to less than human uses.

Music is an expression that is profoundly shared between the artist producing the sound, the instrument maker, those who support the work of the artist in sound amplification and recording and those who listen.

As listeners and consumers of music, we need to be careful. Just as we are what we eat, we reflect more than we realize what we listen to.

Roots Music

2010-09-11T14:08:00.000-04:00

The summer has passed quickly. Here in Ontario the summer is really two months of warmth and sunshine. This summer was quite hot by our standards. We had many days in the 30 degree Celsius zone. June and September are temperate months, with June being blessed for its very long days as we approach the summer solstice.

As a child those eight weeks seemed to stretch out far into the future. And then the Canadian National Exhibition would start somewhere just after the middle of August. Then, I knew school was just around the corner. In the evening down by Lake Ontario a T-shirt would certainly do during the day but by the evening something long-sleeved was in order.

This summer I travelled around visiting friends, but I did manage to get to the "Ex" on Labour Day and take in the Canadian International Air Show. Like many of you I have now firmly landed on the other side of Labour Day and the fall flurry of activity has begun.

In our parish we have been blessed over the summer to welcome a tenant. Catholic Biblical Canada is now headquartered at our offices here at the parish. A direct benefit has been having access to the extensive biblical library that is part of the resources of the association. Another benefit for me has been the opportunity to listen to some real "roots" music.

As you are probably aware the Psalms from the Hebrew Scriptures are in fact songs. I think I've also already mentioned that the roots of our chant tradition comes from the chant used in Jewish worship. I remember meeting a gentleman on the subway many years ago. I think was still a teenager. He was a cantor in a synagogue attending a cantors' convention in the city.

The role of the cantor is very important and the skill involved is highly developed. In our tradition too, music is very important. There is the old adage: To sing is to pray twice. Both in the East and West of Christianity singing and chant have been central to worship. The cantor, however, is someone who generally starts off the chant, leading others into song whether a designated choir or schola or in more recent years the whole of the gathered congregation. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy from the Second Vatican Council emphasizes the pre-eminence of full participation in the rites of worship. That is why for Catholics getting familiar with our roots in chant is so important.

As I write this the Jewish people are celebrating Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the New Year and on the 18th of September, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement the most solemn day of prayer in the year.

Recordings may be a bit difficult to obtain. You may want to go to Jewish cultural centres and search a bit. There are both new recordings and remasterings of old recordings in circulation. Perhaps not too surprisingly, though, some are available on ITunes, like the one I've shown here.

Bards, Ballads and Beauty

2010-07-28T15:43:00.000-04:00

Words are important particularly when they tell a story. Stories hold interest because they articulate some kind of truth about life, sometimes our own life, sometimes of those we might know or identify with and increasingly of the family of humanity itself.

When I was still very young the hippie generation was growing up just ahead of me. There had been a subculture of protest for at least thirty years prior. Even in the 1920's there were a fairly large number of adherents to socialism and communism. In the 1930's, however, in the face of the Great Depression it was not ideology that drove people's concerns but desperation. The prairies had become a "dust bowl" driving people from the land. John Steinbeck's famous novel, "The Grapes of Wrath", chronicles something of this experience.

The father of the musical expressions of the concerns of working people in the United States was Woody Guthrie. In the 1960's his songs rang true for a new generation who had lived in the shadow of the results of World War II and in the social straight jacket of the Cold War. The leading social issue of the day in the United States was (and perhaps still is to some degree) segregation, a social system that offered different access to social goods according to race. In 1937 a famous jazz concert occurred in Carnegie Hall in New York led by Benny Goodman. The band was racially mixed. Culturally, this may have been the start of change.

This segregationist social structure put many Americans at a disadvantage. The United States Supreme Court began the change in a decision called Brown v. Board of Eduction in 1954. Eventually this transformed into two different but related social issues: desegregation and integration. Forced integration of schools became a flash point in the 1960's.

The threat of nuclear war also played heavily on the public psyche. By the 1960's both Russia and the United States had accumulated sufficient weapons to destroy the population of the world several times over. Increasingly the world was not making sense.

In the Toronto I was growing up in part of this movement was being expressed in a then seedy part of town called Yorkville -- yes, that Yorkville, the one with all the trendy shops now.

Joni Mitchell, Buffy St. Marie, Ian & Sylvia Tyson, Gordon Lightfoot, Robbie Robertson (later of "The Band") and Neil Young all had stints at the coffeehouses that were spread around Yorkville. Internationally the Beatles also had a significant role to play as well as the many musicians who came to Woodstock in 1969. And that's about when it peaked.

Only a few years later a US president was very nearly impeached, Israeli athletes were assassinated at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich and OPEC formed and raised the oil price causing the first oil crisis. The free love that had been advocated as the antidote to a militarized world also saw limits. In 1981, the US Centres for Disease Control had identified AIDS. The naivety of the peace movement was swept away to a large degree by the increasingly complex world that was washing onto everybody's shores.

Sometimes it is desperation that brings us great art and important messages. The bard or the poet has a noble mission. In the free and open society we live in, however, that freedom can also be simple license. Stories are powerful. Words are important. They can enrich us or they can also hurt us. Holding on to a story too long can lock us into a way of living that leads to spiritual death and conversely hearing the right story can be transformative, help us to heal and become a little more whole, able to accept and live life more fully.

In the 1950's the beat generation (the immediate predecessors to the hippies) recited poetry to a beat. Unless I am mistaken hip-hop or urban music is really much the same. And like the folk musicians of the past, the early hip-hop artists reflected the environment in which they were living.

The challenge I see is in the aspirational aspect of this music. In the end, real human love and a soul honestly searching for and conversing with God are far better aspirations than settling for a too gritty life that restricts our natural desire to be wholly what God has made us to be. It is a service to hear with clarity the struggles of life that too many of us ignore. But to celebrate oppression or to perpetuate it is surely hurtful. And what is more common is to boil down good art into something that is simply more marketable, to "gentrify" it. That's what happened to jazz, to rhythm and blues, rock and roll, to folk and now even to hip-hop. Therefore, choose carefully!

We need bards and poets who listen deeply and with respect to the whole panorama of people's lives and who are articulate enough to share it so that we can be reminded of our obligation to and bond with one another. I think this kind of story telling transcends ideologies which tend to get locked by historical circumstance.

No wonder our society seems to want to keep religion a private affair and yet our faith needs to be lived out every day and have its social as well as personal meaning.

Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot and Neil Young have managed to have the staying power to be appreciated perhaps more deeply now than when they were initially well known.

The Scriptures, our prayer life and life together in the Church support our own understanding of life but even secular prophets like folk musicians sometimes hold the mirror up to humanity in a way that can help us to live more convincingly a life that is truly Christian.

I hope you find some inspiration from one of my favourite folk musicians, Stan Rogers who gave dignity and hope to so many.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT-aEcPgkuA

The Latest Trolling at the Music Shop

2010-07-09T12:45:00.000-04:00

Recently I wandered into one of the major music and media sellers in a large local shopping mall. The weather was really hot and I, like many others, sought refuge in the artificially cooled air of the mall. I stopped in at the "Apple" store. It was crowded and casually interactive in the sort of way that is projected in the ads.

A little later I wafted down one of the hallways of the mall and stopped in at the media retailer I mentioned. It was almost empty despite stocking music, videos, emblazoned hoodies and T-shirts, music player paraphernalia, video games and a new aggressive loyalty program.

The clear answer was that the download now reigns. This is really a return to the era of the single, rather than the album.

I have spent time browsing ITunes. Visually it does not provide the amount of information that a visit to a physical outlet does, but it is focused. You can find what you already want very quickly and the computer is very good at showing you other things you might be interested in. It isn't very good, however, if your tastes happen to be pretty diverse or if you want to discover something new.

That's what I enjoy the most about "trolling" for music in a physical store. You often do walk out with something you hadn't been thinking about at all when you went in and these finds can turn out to be the best.

On this trek I walked out with a fairly eclectic disc of music by the French baroque court composer Marc Antoine Charpentier, and a package of the CD and DVD of the original "Three Tenors" Concert given at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome in 1990 during the World Cup that was then taking place in Italy and two discs of movie music.

The Three Tenors disc was great. This concert occurred in the evening of the opera stage careers of Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo. The third singer, Jose Carreras was still relatively young. Carreras demonstrates the most delicate voice of the three. Domingo as I have alluded to already has really been the whole package, solid voice, sensible musical discipline and good acting skills. Pavarotti, however, in this concert was really in his element not only because the concert took place in Italy but because it was a pops concert where he could let loose. Listening again to this concert reawakened for me the recognition of Pavarotti's raw talent. Long before Paul Potts, Pavarotti literally brought the house of 6,000 spectators down with his rendering of "Nessun Dorma", from Puccini's final opera, "Turandot". For the encore I switched from the CD (better sound quality) to the DVD. All three singers, Zubin Mehta, the conductor and the whole orchestra are so clearly having fun. It is not often that you describe classical music as fun, but this concert is truly a landmark in fun in classical music.

The two movie discs were biopics of the jazz age composer Cole Porter and the great French chanteuse Edith Piaf. The musical approaches of the two discs are very different. While stylistically paying attention to the era of the music, the Porter disc uses contemporary singers like Alanis Morisette and Elvis Costello singing in the way you would expect them to. The Piaf disc uses carefully remastered recordings of the chanteuse herself, new music composed to complement the Piaf material and a contemporary singer providing new recordings done in the Piaf style. The latter is more faithful than the former but each shows the vitality of the musicians they honour and of the times they lived in.

Piaf's life was very difficult and she lived in difficult times, through the Second World War. Porter lived and composed in the years following the First World War. There's a French connection. He lived in Paris for a while.

The music of both of them speaks of a certain quota of decadence and consequent ennui. Porter's music, however, is more deliciously indulgent. Piaf's singing carries the tinge always of burdens borne.

The passions that are celebrated and sometimes painfully acknowledged in the music of both comprise a secular response to what would otherwise seem hopeless and depressing -- a world gone mad. The First World War saw senseless killing on a scale that had never happened before. Empires fell. Monarchies were toppled. Lives and the means of making a living were shattered. The great influenza epidemic of 1918 killed even more people worldwide than the war had.

And yet the 1920's emerged as a decade of relative prosperity for those left behind, but also a time when the old frameworks for understanding and interpreting one's life experiences had been upended.

When war broke out again this madness returned and with a vengeance and spitefulness that people had pretended was not present.

This is one reason the spiritual life is not about only one's own soul. It is also about how those who listen to the soul whom God is constantly addressing, in turn address the sorrows and challenges of the world in which all souls live and die.

After self-indulgence and ennui, just as after war and injustice, must come reconciliation and peace. Dona nobis pacem.

And so, while we enjoy the convenience of the computer sorting and suggesting, and while we live with our own preferences and likes, it is good to go out into the public square, the real one, where we rub up against something new that takes us to new places by telling us stories we haven't heard before. This is the virtue of the physical encounter at the store and the merit of an album that presents a story of some span of an artist's work.

Oh Canada!

2010-06-25T17:55:00.000-04:00

"It shall be lawful for the Queen, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate and House of Commons, to make laws for the Peace, Order and good Government of Canada . . ." Oh, the stirring words of section 91 of the Constitution Act! Unlike our great neighbour to the South, Canada's constitution is not blessed with evocative words and as a country we don't really seem to have a coherent governing ideology. There are significant moments in the development of the country and there is a clear parliamentary heritage, but we are not a people steeped in poetic myth.

One of the few occasions that this is different is when we sing our national anthem. The World Cup is on right now -- so nationalism is rife at least among the 32 countries that made it to South Africa. Of course, when a Canadian hockey team wins an international tournament that is big nationalistic stuff here.

Music is certainly significant in our emotional identification with others who share our national, cultural or ethnic identity.

Our national anthem was composed by a Quebecois gentleman, Calixa Lavallée. The English words and the French words do not dwell on exactly the same themes. The melody has some measure of grandiosity but is generally flowing and pleasant.

This stands in some contrast to our neighbour. There is a whole range of nationalistic music that is part of the sentimental storehouse of most Americans. The words were written in response to a defence of Fort McHenry against the British navy as part of the War of 1812. The melody is strong and the tone of both words and music quite militaristic. "God Bless America", and "Hail to the Chief", are also well known. John Philip Sousa provided a whole list of marches including the US national march, "The Stars and Stripes" and the march of the Marine Corps, "Semper Fidelis" -- "always faithful".

In Canada we now rarely sing "God Save the Queen". In the first decade of the 20th century one popular tune emerged that is still heard from time to time, "The Maple Leaf Forever", a somewhat jingoistic tune promoted by a political lobby referred to as the "Canada Firsters". Of course, in Britain, the land whence our constitutional existence arose, still lustily sings "Rule Britannia" and "Land of Hope and Glory", though these sentiments now seem pretty historical.

National identity does allow us to be attached to the common good in an important way. In an increasingly interdependent world, however, it is also clear that nationalism has some sensible limits and that an important personal and even spiritual identity many of us are now developing is more global in its perspective.

More on the Human Voice

2010-06-17T11:34:00.000-04:00

Our ears are like so much of the rest of us, formed by nurture but also preprogrammed in some way by nature. So while my tastes may be very different from yours it is possible that something of what I experience and enjoy in music is shared. In that vein, I thought I would spill some ink on the voices that I enjoy the most, hoping that you may also find them enjoyable.

As I have said elsewhere, in the world of jazz, there has been no greater voice than that of Ella Fitzgerald. Her voice is creamy and warm. The way she joins notes and slides between them is remarkable. That's a dangerous thing to do. It is so easy to simply sound off key.

In the development of jazz the music transitioned from its marginal roots into something more commercial and palatable for a "white" audience in a still largely segregated United States. Sometimes the songs Ella recorded are a little too milquetoast, but that's what the record company execs wanted and the public certainly bought. On the other hand, her talent overcame the limitations of the material she was sometimes asked to sing.

As an aside, this same pattern of moving from marginal to mainstream has been characteristic of most forms of popular music in the las sixty years. I don't think these transitions have been uniformly successful.

Another voice I really enjoy is Isabel Bayrakdarian. Her "popular" credit is that she sang on the soundtrack to "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers." Her voice is one of those pure soprano voices with a lovely dash of colour but without much in the way of vibrato. In an earlier generation, Kathleen Battle would have represented such a voice, delicate and comfortable in the higher parts of the soprano register.

Ms. Bayrakdarian sings regularly with the Canadian Opera Company. I think she is going to appear in a couple of different operas next season. Her recordings, however, span a variety of music especially from her familial homeland of Armenia. Christianity is in the heart and soul of that country. The vast majority of Armenians are Orthodox Christians like Ms. Bayrakdarian herself. There are also Armenian Catholics whose rites are virtually the same as their Orthodox cousins.

One of her albums is called "Joyous Light". She sings liturgical music of the Armenian Church. Beautiful, haunting, evocative, spine-tingling are just some of the descriptors I could provide. In a more recent album she sings the songs of a legendary Armenian folk musician, Gomidas. I've found all her albums to be very enjoyable and they've made me want to play them again and again.

Another singer I really enjoy is Cecilia Bartoli. She is what is termed a mezzo-soprano, that is, her range is slightly lower than that of a true soprano. She is not short on colour or vibrato! She is a pre-eminent "colouratura" singer. This generally puts her in the realm of some specific opera repertoire, particularly earlier operas by composers like Handel and Mozart although I have a very nice DVD of her singing in Rossini's, "Cenerentola", or "Cinderella". She sings with conviction and she acts with aplomb, something that does not always happen in opera. Sometimes you get the musical performer without credible acting.

Like Isabel Bayrakdarian she has also shown an interest in recording more obscure music. She has resurrected a great deal of material by the "red priest", Antonio Vivaldi. In the recent past she came out with a disc of music sung by the 19th century sensation Maria Malibran. For ordinary mortals the only way we can imagine the musical past is through efforts like these that show us both the beauty of the past and the transient nature of the present.

Cecilia Bartoli is one of those people who is a force of nature. Aside from interest in the music she sings so well, her personality, love and passion will shine right through -- and just maybe you will be hooked.

The Human Voice -- Tones & Overtones

2010-06-04T16:29:00.000-04:00

Is it our experience in the womb that helps us to respond positively to deep sounds? What makes every human voice different is a recipe of frequencies being broadcast at the same time. Sometimes we talk about the timbre of someone's voice, or we might notice that some people speak or sing from somewhere deep inside themselves while others' voices project from their nasal passages. The human body has many resonance chambers that impart personality to our voices.

If you look at the arrangement of instruments in music, almost any form of music at all, tones and overtones are layered upon one another. In a developed form of music like that for the pipe organ, the pedal notes provide a base or a kind of tidal rhythm that gives depth and momentum to the melody, harmony and counterpoint being played.

In a rock band, the typical orchestration is an electric guitar, an electric bass guitar and drums. This basic arrangement is derived from jazz and blues: a lead instrument in the range of the human voice, an instrument in a lower register to provide a drone and a rhythm instrument to punctuate the music. Added to these instruments could be reinforcement in any of these areas. A keyboard could be used to supplement all three.

The bagpipes do the same. There is a chanter that does the speaking part, the drones that provide the bass, and the physical technique of the player who punctuates the notes by the way he or she breathes and manipulates the fingers.

It is with the human voice, however, that we can find an instrument that needs no supplement. Every element of orchestration is to be found there. To illustrate this point dramatically all you need to do is look at singers from the jazz tradition who do what is called "scat". Probably the best example right now is Bobby McFerrin. Bobby McFerrin & Yo-Yo Ma -- Mockingbird

Some people find it hard to understand what the attraction of opera is. Why would someone listen to singing the word's of which are even hard to understand when you know the language being used? A big part of the answer is the marvel of the human voice.

You may remember or know of the popularity of the three tenors, Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras. Each was a "divo" an opera mega-star. When they sang together at the World Cup in Rome with the ancient Baths of Caracalla as a backdrop they took the rather specialized world of the opera singer and became a popular phenomenon -- for the very same reasons. The human voice is a marvel.

Pavarotti, who has since died, was not the best performer sometimes, and he was not a great actor on the stages of opera, but he had a magnificent and apparently effortless natural ability. Domingo, in his career, has been more of a complete package. His voice in its heyday had wonderful timbre and resonance. He acted well and he has been a public person of grace and dignity. Carreras, whose voice has been noticeably finer and less powerful than the other two accounts for a somewhat different opera repertoire that also has remained popular.

Canadians have nothing to be shy about. Richard Margison, Ben Heppner, Russell Braun, and Michael Schade have achieved international acclaim. Among women, Suzie LeBlanc, Isabel Bayrakdarian, Karina Gauvin, and Sondra Radvanovsky.

In popular music you can easily think of arresting voices who might not be very technically attractive but that have depth and texture. Johnny Cash certainly comes to mind. And then there are extraordinary voices in the popular music realm too. Roy Orbison was such a voice for me.

Jazz is full of great voices. My own bias is toward Ella Fitzgerald. I don't think she could sing a bad note. Maybe it would more true to say that even a bad note from Ella was way better than a good note from almost anybody else.

There is no greater instrument than the human voice. It touches profoundly. Choose well and listen with care. The depth and texture of life and love is there.

Ma(r)y . . . Renewed Life

2010-05-13T14:07:00.000-04:00

The month of May is traditionally a time for prayers seeking the intercession of Mary, the mother of Jesus. It is naturally appealing in a way too. May, at least in the northern hemisphere is a time when the ground is fruitful. New life is bursting forth.

And there is something both new and cyclical about it. The prayers that are used and the hymns and music, in particular, are familiar. They are used again and again.

In my years at St. Peter's Seminary in London, Ontario, we used to return to the chapel (I've included a photo of it) after our evening meal. The lighting in the chapel would be subdued and a spotlight illuminated the statue of Mary. We prayed each night for the alumni of the seminary and then sang together a hymn in honour of our Blessed Mother.

Sometimes it was chant like the Salve Regina; other times it was more contemporary hymn. Sometimes it was accompanied with organ but often it was not accompanied at all. The chapel there has wonderful reverberation and delivered a great halo of sound, making rather musically indifferent seminarians sound like they were disciplined monks from Solesmes. Perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration, but we sounded pretty good.

Even though we did the same thing five nights of the week, this ritual never became boring for me. It was comforting in a way. On its own that can be a bit spiritually dangerous. It can give us the excuse we are looking for to stay the same. It can also be a doorway to deeper prayer, appreciation and openness to conversion. Even though I did the same thing each night, my life had changed each day. Ritual can be like a milestone marking the progress of our spiritual journey -- progress that thankfully we are unaware of most of the time.

This is why we often sing the same hymns whether in honour of Mary or in the various liturgical seasons. Our attachment to certain Christmas carols can be very strong, for example. While anthropologists, historians, philosophers and theologians might have varied theories around ritual, the power of ritual remains to embed things that are deep and to propel us into new life adventures.

So ritual is a powerful gift that needs to be used responsibly. That is one reason I rejoice in the long experience of the Church. This is something the Church has been doing for a very long time while helping its members to flourish spiritually and humanly.

What am I Listening With?

2010-04-23T12:10:00.000-04:00

That's a great question and it has many answers. Let's look at two things: our ears and the sound equipment we use.

With our eyes we are immediately aware of the stereo quality of our vision. It is what allows us to see in three dimensions. Some of us, me included, can't take this for granted. My left eye is very weak so I don't see the left side of my nose. I don't see in three dimensions. Maybe that's why I like photographs so much -- that's the way I see! I recently went to a 3-D movie at the theatre and got some sense of it, though I suspect the way that most people would see it would be dramatically different.

The same is true with our ears. Some people have less hearing in one ear than the other, but since we aren't like bats and don't rely on echo location very much we don't think much about the aural stereo image that our ears can render. I've also noticed that ear lobes on people are shaped very differently. Have you ever cupped your ears when listening to something intently? The lobes are there to direct sound into our ear canals. So there is also a lot variability in our hearing to say nothing of the different patterns we experience during hearing loss.

The other part of the equation in listening to recorded music is our equipment and its set up. I used to sell cameras at a popular camera store chain when I was an undergrad. I learned there although equipment is important the skill of the user was even more important. With sound equipment how well the equipment is set up can make very great differences in the quality of the sound reproduction. Even very small differences will dictate whether we hear an effective stereo (3-D) image or not. If the stereo image is jumbled then we don't even necessarily clearly hear what instruments are being used or how many of them there are. A good stereo image, in other words, is what allows us to hear the musician(s) who are playing the music. I think that's an important step in accessing the poetry and evocative quality within music.

I should also say something about multi-channel sound systems, home theatres. In these configurations the stereo image of the sound is being made deliberately fuzzy in some way to increase the area over which a three-dimensional sound image may be heard, so everybody watching the movie gets a similar sound experience.

So much of North America seems to be built on "more" and "bigger". I sometimes wonder whether this is the way of life we are trying to preserve. In general it seems that people are spending significant amounts of money on their big screens, but the sound system does not get the same priority.

Even if you have a small stereo in your house, setting it up correctly can help the sound quite a bit. Let me list important factors:

Positioning of the speakers,
Isolation of equipment,
Source material, i.e., CD, MP3 etc.
Method of amplification,
Quality of connections,
Quality of equalization, tone controls or other manipulation of signal, i.e., THX etc.
Quality of components.

You may notice that I have put quality of components last on my list. That's because I think the first thing to do is to get the maximum result from what you already have and then figure out if you want to go any further.

Positioning of Speakers: Imagine that you are creating a triangle of equal length between the right channel the left channel and your ears. Once you have done this, experiment with angling the face of the speaker cabinets toward you. Depending on the design of the speakers and the characteristics of the room you are in, this can change things dramatically. You also need to get the speakers away from the wall. I would say a minimum of one foot. I have my speakers about 1 1/2 feet away, i.e., the back of the speaker cabinet to the wall. The speakers should also be at ear height if at all possible. The most common problem I have seen is that the speakers are not far enough apart. Use a ruler and measuring tape to make sure that the speakers in the same alignment from the wall. If the material covering the speaker can be removed and put back on again when needed to protect the cones, then it may be helpful to remove the fabric when listening.

Isolation of Equipment: When I bought sturdy speaker stands with pointed awl-like feet, I could not believe how much clearer the whole bass section of recordings became. It was the best $160 investment I ever made for my system. In principle, the same holds true for any component, but the reward is the greatest for speakers. To keep my pointy feet from damaging the floor I first used quarters and then I got some stone floor tiles to place under the speaker stands.

Source Material: You may know that MP3 files are compressed. That means that a computer program pretends it knows what to put in the blank spaces of the file when it plays it. There are different sampling rates. Generally, the higher the sampling rate, the less the computer has to pretend it knows. Of the widely used methods, Apple's Lossless, is the most CD-like in its quality, but the files are still pretty large. Other formats are now coming out that actually exceed CD quality. If you are listening to acoustic instruments (as opposed to electric or electronic instruments) or to the human voice recorded naturally (as opposed to the electronic manipulation of human voices common among popular music producers), then the quality of the source is more important.

Method of Amplification: Of all the components in a sound system upgrading the quality of the amplifier will have the greatest effect on the sound at the other end. It may also reveal to you the limitations of other parts of the system, including whatever player you are using or the speakers. Inexpensive amplifiers use a form of digital amplification. As with most technology, improvements are happening all the time, but suffice it to say, that any amplifier does distort in some way. A more significant investment will mean a design and components meant to minimize the distortion and to render evenly the different frequencies and volume of the source material.

Quality of Connections: This is one of the easiest things to do to improve your sound system. With good quality connections you are trying to preserve what one component has produced so that the next can take full advantage of it. With the coming of HDMI connections have become both easier and better in quality. Even with this new technology, something that is a little over-engineered is better than something that is under-engineered. With traditional stereos you may be using what are termed RCA plugs. Quality makes a big difference with these. The speaker cable is also very important even with inexpensive speakers. If you change nothing else in an inexpensive system, try changing the speaker cable to something that is of better quality.

Quality of Equalization, Tone & Manipulation of Signal: Home theatre receivers have all kinds of circuits to manipulate the signal. They can take a two-channel stereo signal and turn it into 5.1 or even 7.1 channels of sound. They can provide those channels equalized in different ways to make you feel you are in a concert hall or a movie theatre. The quality of these circuits has a significant impact on the clarity of sound and whether the signal sounds natural any more. Rooms also have to be pretty large to properly make a 5.1 or 7.1 setup work, to say nothing of the cost of six or eight speakers rather than two. That's why I prefer a good stereo setup. I have only two speakers in a relatively small room, but they are clear, accurate and the amplification is able to provide good bass. With a good stereo image I don't really need a centre channel. I do miss hearing the sound of helicopters coming in from behind me, but I find that a small sacrifice for the much more dynamic sound I get without any tone manipulation at all.

Quality of Components: A player, an amplifier and speakers are at the heart of a sound system. Each is important. If you have never invested in a better system, I would recommend visiting a specialized retailer. The big box stores simply don't have the expertise. Specialty stores are often staffed by people who are musicians. They have trained ears. Figure out your budget and buy within it allowing for good speaker cable, stands, and component connections. Spending $1,000 to $1,500 on a good stereo, you may be surprised at how it compares to a similarly priced home theatre system, where speaker and component quality will not be the same. When buying a flat screen TV you may also have been told of the advantages of a rather expensive power bar. It was good advice, both for the protection of the equipment and for the quality of the sound and picture. If you are connecting a receiver or amplifier to this power bar, look to see if it has a "high current" circuit. This is meant for those components and it supplies large amounts of power rapidly on-demand making the amplifier "breathe" much better. If the bar has filters it will also help to render cleaner sound and picture results.

What is next? There are big changes in players coming. Computers can already be hooked up to equipment. It will be normal to access your music files either from your computer or from a computer component with a hard drive connected to your sound system. There are also many good speakers available that can be mounted in-wall or in-ceiling. This makes it possible to hide the sound equipment from sight and still enjoy the music.

As with the spiritual life, I think that simple is often better. Making good use of what we have is both sensible and not very expensive. The goal of all this technical talk is not the equipment but our connection to the musician who is pouring themselves out for us. Enjoy listening!

Holy Day Holidays

2010-04-10T21:11:00.000-04:00

After I had celebrated the 10:30am Easter Mass at the parish, I drove on a very sunny afternoon to Ottawa to stay a few days with my sister, brother-in-law and their now young adult children. I arrived on time for Easter Dinner and had the constitutionally required sleep in the next morning.

Later in the week I ventured with my sister to the Museum of Civilization in Hull across the river from Parliament. We enjoyed our visit. At the end of our time we visited the gift shop, and much to my sister's surprise I came out poorer.

I made some new musical acquisitions. The museum not only exhibits important parts of the social history of Canada, but it engages in cultural activities too. I found some CD's. I was thrilled to find a collection of the fiddle music of Jean Carignan, the much-loved and certainly awesome player of folk music in Quebec. I have listened to the better part of two of the three discs. What I am most enjoying is the way that his music blends both his Quebec heritage and the influence of Celtic music which also has had a significant history in Quebec.

Like many folk musicians Jean Carignan grew into his craft and blossomed into an artist. While he did not sight read music until later in his career, he listened intently to recordings of violin music from different genres including classical music. He practised and practised. He built a style that is still very much distinctive and free from the rules of technique that one might learn if classically trained.

Folk music has the great virtue of directly speaking to us of life and of real people's lives. There is something that is a revelation and a joyful one to be found in folk music. It is music of the heart. Carignan was wise enough to seek out musicians from other disciplines too. The virtue of classical music is that it is noted down. With recordings and with musical notation the vitality of musical performance can be communicated through time and space. Unless preserved from musician to musician, folk music has risen and fallen according to social circumstance and taste. Like the way we understand the importance of biodiversity for our health, we need to preserve the breadth of human musical experience to benefit from the wisdom and joy of life that we have shared through folk music. In whatever expression it has around the world, it is our "soul" music.

I also picked up a disc of harmonica music by Gabriel Labbe, and a recording called, "Once in French America", a collection of music that was typical of the early years of Quebec settlement. Both these discs were also supported by the museum. The website of the museum is www.civilization.ca. There is an online version of the museum where you can view many artifacts. It is a great way to make our history available.

I think this entry is making me think about story-telling in music, life and spirituality. That may be an entry to come.

Alleluia!

2010-04-05T18:07:00.000-04:00

This is the week of Easter, the time that those of us who are Christians rejoice in the news of new life given to us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Needless to say there is a great deal of sacred music written over the centuries for this feast. There will be more than enough space in this blog to fill in at least some of that rich tapestry. For now, I would like to reflect on the human experience of joy and its expression in music.

As with other human emotions joy can be a surface experience or it can be a deep and transformative one. If conditioning was the measure, then the more superficial expressions of joy can be found everywhere. We are told by advertising that joy will be found by buying one thing or another. Deep joy is something that has a dimension of fulfillment but also leaves us open to life. It is not the last word.

In the classical music realm there certainly is raucously joyful music. The "Alleluia" chorus from Handel's oratorio, "Messiah", certainly comes to mind as does the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the famous "Ode to Joy". But there are equally joyful pieces that are placid and beautiful. Mozart's, "Ave Verum Corpus", the "Pie Jeusu" of Gabriel Faure's Requiem, much of Resphigi's music based on folk tunes, especiall his "Ancient Airs and Dances", and Beethoven's Triple Concerto and his Fantasy for Chorus and orchestra, are but a few examples.

Whatever music it is that evokes joy in you, it is a good thing to tear ourselves away for a short time from the stresses and the many unresolved issues we meet each day to bask in a moment of deep joy that puts in touch with really living.

Listening in the Busy-ness of Life

2010-03-26T15:27:00.000-04:00

Eleven days is almost an eternity in the electronic media world. How do you evoke a desire for stillness through a media that abhors anything seemingly blank or empty? In fact, that explains in some way my absence from this electronic diary about music and spirituality. Over the last couple of weeks I have been visiting a variety of parishes helping out with confessions. There really isn't anything that is more priestly, except perhaps when we attend the dying and their families. Yesterday I anointed one of our elderly priests, Fr. Alex Takacs, who was ordained almost 61 years. He died this morning. So, in the last two weeks I have walked on a great deal of holy ground. Please keep Fr. Alex and his family close in prayer.

In what is assuredly a musical extreme, the modern American composer, John Cage, "wrote" a piece called 4'33", which is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. I don't know how you would handle the copyright or the royalties. It is interesting to think, however, that our modern life is so noisy and busy that someone actually thought of composing silence. Well . . . maybe that's what we need to do sometimes. Compose some silence for ourselves.

In the Latin Rite of the Church in which I minister the liturgical rites contain within them an explicit structure built on the use of silence. There was a film, "Into Great Silence", released originally in 2005 that followed the lives of monks at a monastery in the Chartreuse mountains of France. Filmed alone by the director over a 6-month period in the monastery it captures a view of the "inner" life of the monastery. There is an invitation in it, as we all long for peace and tranquillity.

As I along with Christians and Catholics all around the world prepare for the celebration of the Easter Mysteries, let us find in the stillness the unfolding of life, death and resurrection.

The Art of Listening

2010-03-15T12:17:00.000-04:00

Have you ever thought that listening has many different colours? How many of us today say that we are good at multi-tasking? Marshall McLuhan, the great Canadian media guru, described television as a "cold" medium. As we became accustomed to watching television we also became used to a kind of passive reception of information. And I have to say, that despite all the apparently interactive aspects, many video games (though not all) leave the bulk of imaginative activity to the programmer and not the player.

For many centuries musical composers also wrote music that was to be half listened to. It is sometimes described as "incidental" music. It is music to eat dinner by, music to socialize with. I might even suggest that much of popular music listening is about having a shared social experience. There is much writing these days about how people relate to music. It does seem to be true that the music we listen to as adolescents tends to be the music we continue to listen to. What is playing in the background of our imaginations as we listen? Important life experiences and moments in our development might well have a musical association. But as we become adult, music shouldn't become something that merely helps us to reminisce.

I have always admired musicians who develop in their careers. There are also those groups of musicians who continue to pump out more of the same. I wonder how much of the way we listen to music is emblematic of the way we treat our life and relationships? It might be something to ponder.

For me, music is at its best when it is evocative, when it pulls out of me emotions and an appreciation of the non-verbal ways that we are disassembled and reassembled each day.

But for this deeper kind of listening to happen, I need patience. I need to listen at least sometimes when I am able to give the music my attention. I need to consciously let go of the other burdens of the day and relax.

One of the attractions that I have had over the years to classical music is that so much of it is layered and provides a rich emotional story-telling quality that becomes a workout for the mind, emotions and spirit. After such an experience, I am refreshed and ready to look at the world with fresh eyes. Symphonies and concertos (symphonic pieces written to feature a solo instrument) have been my favourites in this kind of listening.

I have also found sometimes that a piece of music I thought I would like has turned out to be flat the first time around. I might pick up that recording months or even years later and suddenly it is speaking to me. In our 99 cent download (the return of the single) era, the idea of listening to a whole album is not very popular. Hang on to the album and listen to more of it months or even years from now. Maybe it will be different. The album invites us to give ourselves over to the music. I think that's the advantage of listening to the radio as well. A life where we had to intentionally control every aspect would eventually be degrading, limited by our own imaginations and not stretched enough.

So whether you are listening to music or you are involved in the relationships of your daily life, you could benefit from reflecting on the kind and quality of listening that you are doing. It is true that what we need most is attention.

A Rhythm for Prayer

2010-03-05T11:59:00.000-05:00

Song and poetry have been part of human history for as long as we can tell. They have figured in religious practice for just as long. When I was growing up in the late 1960's and through the 1970's there was great interest in eastern religions. The Beatles might have made the idea popular. Yoga is still popular as an exercise, a way to relax and a spiritual practice. This attention to mindfulness of the body and the spirit, however, is something common to many other religious traditions.

Chant is at the forefront of Jewish religious practice. It is characteristic of the rites of Roman Catholics and of eastern Christianity, Orthodox and Catholic.

Chant is a music based upon the human breath. It is ancient. In the West, the reform and documentation of chant is linked to Pope Gregory I.

A healthy young person's resting heartbeat is 60 beats per minute. The interior rhythm of the breaths of Gregorian chant follows the rhythm of a healthy human body at rest. This is why it lends itself so much to relaxation. Even listening to chant can be a great help to relax and to clear one's mind in preparation for prayer. After some frantic days, I will sometimes put on a recording of chant to do just that. It brings me back to a more centred place from which I can give attention to God.

Often our evaluation of music is based on how much it pumps us up. Music that is not stimulating is seen as boring or depressing. It may not be the music that is depressing. It might have something to do with our own fear of facing some difficult truths about ourselves. Moving to the relaxed rhythm of chant is an opportunity to empty out the unhealthy things we are holding onto and to allow us to become open to what God wants to fill us up with.

I have collected a number of interesting recordings of chant. I suggest starting with some simple straightforward recordings of texts that even now are part of worship sometimes. The other thing to look for are albums that have a complete service recorded in a monastery with organ and bells. This helps to place the material in context and gives you a better feel for the dynamic of chant used in worship.

In the image here, you can see the traditional notation of Gregorian Chant. It looks a little different. The actual technique of the singing is also a little different.

These are some of my current collection:

Jubilate Deo, Choeurs des Moines de L'Abbaye de Melleray [Choir of the Monks of the Abbey of Melleray], Studio SM, Paris, France, 1989. Reissue of an earlier recording. Very good for becoming familiar with some of the "standards" of chant.

Canto Gregoriano, Coro do monjes del Monasterio Benedictino de Santo Domingo de Silos [Choir of the monks of the Benedictine Monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos], EMI Records, 1994. This album enjoyed quite widespread popularity at the time it was issued.

Chant byzantin, Soeur Marie Keyronz, Chorale de l'Eglise Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, Harmonia Mundi, 2008. An exposure to Byzantine chant.

Chants de L'Eglise de Rome, Ensemble Organum directed by Marcel Peres, Harmonia Mundi, 1998, 2005. These chants predate the Gregorian reform and truly give you a visceral feel of the ancient roots of western music.

La Divine Liturgie de Saint-Jean Chrysostome, Chorale Sofia & Dimitre Rouskov, Harmonia Mundi, 1976, 1999. The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is the most frequently celebrated form of Mass used by the various Byzantine rites. This recording is in old Slavonic.

Old Regular Baptists: Lined-out Hymnody from Southeastern Kentucky. Smithsonian Folkways, 1997. A form of singing in worship designed to be singable and clearly chantlike. The harmonies and length of musical line give a kind of drone to the music that comes from a deep place in the human heart.

The Imitation of Christ

2010-02-25T20:58:00.000-05:00

Although this phrase is associated with the spiritual classic by Thomas a Kempis, the notion of saintliness by trying to follow the way of life Christ teaches us is found in many spiritual writers and in many great works of western literature.

One with a distinctive musical expression is based on the novel by Victor Hugo, Les Miserables. Rarely do epic stories translate easily to the stage. In recent years in Toronto we experienced an attempt with Lord of the Rings and earlier with Napoleon. Hugo's novel is expansive but the play introduces us very successfully to a panorama of characters presenting very different attitudes toward life. Some of the most attractive end up being the most retrograde.

The conversion of Jean Valjean, the central character, is subtle and realistic. The play begins with his release from an unjust sentence of ten years for petty theft. He is bitter, and understandably so. When a bishop offers him hospitality, a warm meal and bed, Valjean sneaks out in the middle of the night with silver candle sticks that he can cash in.

When found by the authorities, rather than turn him in, the bishop offers further generosity by giving him even more silverware. He then addresses Valjean alone and admonishes him to see his life as now being "bought for God". While a bit of a salesman's trick, Valjean begins to reflect on his life. He leaves behind his old identity and embraces a new one. This departure from the past both violates his parole and yet is a kind of baptism into a new life of goodness. While written long after the French Revolution, Hugo's preference for true justice over the letter of the law is clear.

This story was very controversial with the Church at the time of its writing. It portrays quite modern ideas of sainthood. Now it is much easier to read Valjean as a saint whose love is clearly shown to be Christ-like. Throughout the story he is a man of his times, doing good where he can. It is his love for others that is victorious in the end, not the student revolt against the government of the day that also figures in the story. "To love another person is to see the face of God," is peacefully proclaimed at the end of Valjean's earthly journey. He sings of his faithfulness to the promises he made:

On this page,
I write my last confession.
Read it well, when I at last am sleeping.
It's a story of those who always loved you.
Your mother gave her life for you,
then gave you to my keeping.
. . . Forgive me all my trespasses and take me to Your Glory.

Valjean shows us that there are saints among us, saints who arise from difficult circumstances, saints of profound love and commitment. While the range of characters we encounter in life do include even some of the despicable sorts Hugo shows us in the story, there is great goodness to be found. Valjean has many helpers and allies who support him as he strives to live a selfless life of love. Maybe you and I are ones called to be like Valjean too.

A Lenten Pilgrimage

2010-02-19T14:55:00.000-05:00

Tonight, I will lead the traditional Catholic devotion called the Stations of the Cross. The stations are a series of meditations on the journey that Jesus took from his condemnation to his burial. The Christian experience of pilgrimage is very long. From the earliest days, people wanted to travel to the places associated with Jesus' life, death and resurrection. The places associated with the apostles also became important places of pilgrimage. In Spain, even today, the shrine of St. James, Santiago de Campostela, is an important pilgrimage site.

People still follow the medieval route from Paris all the way to the shrine. There are places to stay along the route and pilgrims often meet up and become companions on the road. It is this experience of the travel that is just as important as the goal.

The Stations of the Cross became a way to travel to the Holy Land without needing to travel there, at a time when the trip was virtually impossible anyway. By taking some time in our own local parish we can travel with the Lord on his journey to Calvary. There are many different Ways of the Cross. Most use the biblical accounts of the Lord's Passion at their centre.

My own take is that these words and the prayers that go with them, are intended to bring us to a state of reflection. A little time of silence at the end of each station is beneficial, and then we share in the "travelling music" of the Stations.

Traditionally, the Latin text, the Stabat Mater is used. This is often sung in a simple chant tone in Latin or in a modern language translation. As much as the words of the meditations at each station, the music sets the reflective tone for the journey. The music helps us to recognize the element of travel, movement both physical and spiritual.

Many composers have written travelling music for the stations. Domenico Scarlatti who was an almost exact contemporary with Bach and Handel wrote one. Pergolesi and much later Antonin Dvorak. The Scarlatti and Pergolesi could find themselves into a celebration of the Stations, but Dvorak's is a monumental performance piece, like the St. Matthew and St. John Passions of J. S. Bach.

I remember a much more contemporary recording of the Stations by New Orleans musician Aaron Neville in his distinctive falsetto-sounding voice. I think the disc is still on the shelf somewhere at the last parish I served in and my attempts so far to get another one have been in vain.

The Stations are a particularly durable and flexible devotion because the meditations used and the music employed can be varied so much. Even for personal and private prayer the Stations afford hospitality to any style of praying. Silent meditation, or the recitation of common prayers at each station is just fine.

Tonight I will try to give myself over to the journey, and I hope that as we all pray together gathered in the church, we may be transported and changed so that the love Christ had for us when He made that journey may be shared with us in the way that will be most fruitful. As the Stabat Mater proclaims, Mary's love for her Son and her journey with her Son shows us the faithful love we need to long for.

From the Ashes . . .

2010-02-14T18:58:00.000-05:00

If love is the most common theme in music and is something we talk about all the time, then the more sobering themes of Lent are certainly counter-cultural. The ancient Greeks described the quality of hubris in observing how humans can reach too far and then fall badly. They illustrated it in the story of Icarus.   Despite the inconceivable illustrations of violence and upheaval in the 20th century, we continue to see the onward march of human progress as the solution to suffering.

Our social and political lives are extensions of our personal and communal journeys. We are living a fantasy if we do not recognize our struggles, pains and losses. Instinctively we are afraid that we will become and remain depressed. In response we use music to help us to reflect on our own difficult experiences and sometimes on the tragedies of life shared by a wider portion of the human family.

I would like to highlight one extraordinary modern work by Henryk Gorecki, a Polish composer who was born in 1933 and is still living. What is referred to in the West as the Second World War that involved almost the whole of Europe and included the Shoah, the death of at least six million people of Jewish descent, still casts its shadow on the culture of Europe, North America and the Middle East. Many died in the conflict, but all of the physical, emotional and spiritual brokenness that the war spawned has had its effect on subsequent generations too. My own father who came back from the war took until 1961 to marry. The wars of the last hundred years have left us speechless, and as the use of media make the task of peace ever more daunting to us, there is a genuine danger that we will become frozen or retreat into a falsely protected life.

It isn't surprising that we have taken quite some time as a human family to come to some terms with what has happened. The horrors of the war were far too hard to talk about in the aftermath.

And so, in 1976, Mr. Gorecki gave the world his third symphony, often called the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs". For those who think classical music is made of Strauss waltzes this piece uses the whole orchestra as a kind of breathing apparatus, like the breath of the whole human family. It is certainly sombre in tone, but not entirely. There is spark and beauty. But the brightness only comes when pathos, sorrow and lamentation are given their due.

The solo singing of one soprano seems diminutive and yet springs out of the dominant and clearly shared lament that pushes us to a kind of stillness or reverence at the heart of what is dreadful human experience.

One text used is a lament from the collection of the Holy Cross Monastery from the latter 1400's:

My son, my chosen my beloved
Share your wounds with your mother . . .

In what I find the most moving of the texts a young 18-year old girl scratches a prayer on a prison wall where she is being held by the Gestapo:

No, Mother, do not weep,
Most chaste Queen of Heaven
Support me always.

It is very odd that at times we feel no need of rescue or redemption, that we think there is nothing wrong with us. At the very same time we are confronted with the wounds of so many sins, thankfully, most not of our own making. And we might ask quite reasonably how can we escape this human brokenness? It was G. K. Chesterton who so wryly observed: "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried." Alas, we can't easily escape our greed, strong preference for self- (and not other-)preservation, and our frequent and creative acts of justification.

It is a Christian theme from Scripture and from so much of literature that a personal abandonment to God is somehow the answer. This is quite different from giving up as it leaves us totally open to life and what God chooses to reveal to us. It is this so necessary quality that I find when I am carried by the long breaths, sighs and then shards of light that appear in Gorecki's remarkable work. There is hope and great beauty in the human condition.

The ashes of Ash Wednesday are the burned palms of the previous Palm Sunday. From, what St. Paul calls, the folly of the Cross we confront that same brokenness that we have seen in our own time, but this time on a universal scale. Let our turning away from sin bring us a rich embracing of the Gospel.

How Do I Love Thee . . .

2010-02-13T18:32:00.000-05:00

Although St. Valentine is not celebrated as a feast in the Roman calendar his name still is very much in the list of saints. Like many early saints, not a great deal is known about him, and like many early Christians he paid a heavy price for his faith. One legend says that he sent heart-shaped messages to other believers who were in prison.

So while the prayer of the Church is preparing us for the soon to arrive season of Lent, St. Valentine lightens things up a bit. Today we connect him with romantic love.

Love songs are as old as music, I'm sure. They are certainly in the Scriptures. The Psalms and the Song of Songs of the Hebrew Scriptures testify to a singing tradition about both divine and human love.

Love songs are often what we are imprinted with as we launch off into the world as emerging young adults. Unfortunately, I was born at a time when disco reigned. Not too many of my generation are hurrying to put on that music now.

These songs of memory are ways for us to be propelled back to the events of our adolescent life. By themselves, they don't have to be great songs sung by great singers. At one moment these songs became binding agents -- something to stick us together.

Love is more. It draws us into deeper intimacy. That intimacy usually requires us to burn some calories, to make real efforts to know and care for another or for others. There are many love songs for all the different stages of relationship.

Personally, my own view of love tends to be coloured with a bit of humour, because I am all too aware of how much our human frailties and eccentricities wreak havoc with our best intentions.

So here are few suggestions from among the almost infinite list that could be made:

There is a wonderful folk music tradition here in Canada and we pay so very little attention to it. One remarkable bard was Stan Rogers. His "45 Years From Now" is a wonderful testimony to his love for his wife. Another track is "Lock Keeper" where he prefers the stability and close love of family and friends over the roving life of the sailor.

There are many recorded version of "The Dutchman" a touching story of an elderly couple. The husband is suffering with cognitive impairments and the wife sensitively shows him care and love. The recorded version I have is by our local man, John McDermott.

In many of the songs of Stompin' Tom Connors you hear the story of love, couple love, love of country and, of course, some disappointments in love too. Some of his wackiest ones are, "The Ketchup Song", and "A Real Canadian Girl".

In the historic and funny vein, I have a disc by Mary Lou Fallis and the Victoria Scholars called Primadonna on a Moose. It unearths old sheet music songs of 19th century Canada. I like, "Take your Girl out to the Rink" and "Snowshoe Tramp". Lines like, "we make couches in the snow" make me think of heavily dressed Victorians out in fur coats and wooden snow shoes with their pockets stuffed with food and refreshment escaping a little of the social conventions of the time.

In the classical world there are many love songs of course. The better known ones include, "O Mio Babbino Caro", from the opera "Gianni Schicchi" by Puccini. There are many recordings. Among the ones I have is one by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, a woman of Maori descent from New Zealand who became very famous on the world's opera stages a generation ago. Great parts of Puccini's opera "La Boheme" capture the joys and conflicts that co-exist in love. And there are many others.

I think of the voices of Kathleen Battle and Leontyne Price singing from the great library of Gospel music capturing love that is both human and divine.

Happy Valentine's Day. Give thanks for the love that is in your life.

Song of Bernadette

2010-02-10T22:02:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is celebrated as the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes in the Catholic Church. St. Bernadette saw an apparition of Mary at Lourdes. Today, the shrine is a place of pilgrimage especially for those who are sick.

It is sometimes surprising to find Bernadette appear in unusual ways even today. I have in my music library a wonderful little song that is part of Jennifer Warnes' "Famous Blue Raincoat" album of Leonard Cohen songs. The "Song of Bernadette" proclaims with fresh lyrics the redemptive love revealed by St. Bernadette's faith and trust. The words are beautiful and the song is a collaboration between Leonard Cohen and Jennifer Warnes:

There was a child named Bernadette
I heard the story long ago
She saw the queen of heaven once
And kept the vision in her soul
No one believed what she had seen
No one believed what she heard
But there were sorrows to be healed
And mercy, mercy in this world

So many hearts I find, broke like yours and mine
Torn by what we have done and can't undo
I just want to hold you, won't you let me hold you
Like Bernadette would do

We've been around, we fall, we fly
We mostly fall, we mostly run
And every now and then we try
To mend the damage that we've done
Tonight, tonight I just can't rest
I've got this joy in my breast
To Think that I did not forget that child
That song of Bernadette

So many hearts I find, broke like yours and mine
Torn by what we've done and can't undo
I just want to hold you, won't you let me hold you
Like Bernadette would do.

It is wonderful poetry and the music on the album is matched very nicely to the words. We are all hoping and sometimes we find it hard to sustain that hope. This certainly is what was challenging in Bernadette's simple trust. People were afraid to hope. What she told them was too fantastic.

In our day, it is sometimes hard to admit that we need healing. The social mythologies we live with so often tell us that we can be whatever we want to be and that whatever we think and feel is good, even when we have a nagging feeling that this is not always the case.

We do need healing so much in our world. There is great suffering. And the truth is that there is hope, but it is not a naive hope. It is a hope that meets life as it is. We are torn, and we can't undo all the hurts by ourselves. We need to accept help. There is mercy in and for this world.

Music an Aural Window to the Soul

2010-02-08T21:33:00.000-05:00

We all listen to music. It is a companion that goes along with our social life. For me, it accompanied me in my journey to the priesthood. Listening to music has become an important feature in my life and for my spirituality.

Like poetry, it opens up the imagination. The whole panorama of human emotion and experience is available to us through music.

There are many words devoted in praise of different genres of music. There are learned works providing musical scholarship. In an increasingly speedy world, however, the largest part of music is still, loud and fast. I hope to be a messenger to broaden some musical horizons, to place music within some of its personal, historical and social contexts, and to most of all link music to our longing for God.

In a world of journalistic and scientific facts, such exploration of things not readily prone to quantification seem out of place. The purpose however, is to share, what the French philosopher, Gabriel Marcel, referred to as "disponsibilite", a fundamental openness to what is to be revealed.

Music for me, has always been something magic. It just takes off and goes somewhere and invites you along for the ride. It often shows up at important times. These days, I hear the Ave Maria sung at many weddings.

I think that's the place to start on this journey in and around music. What has been the sound track for the most memorable, poignant or jubilant moments in your life?

From my vantage point music puts us in touch with that pull that takes us outside of ourselves. And I think it can become a window on the soul that animates us in our quest . . . a quest that opens us more and more.

In my Christian life it helps me to say, "Yes," to whatever lies ahead. Music is breath and heartbeat, word and song and sigh and hope and desire and acceptance. It is so very much, us.