Chichester Psalms for Haiti

Last night we attended the wonderful Psalms for Haiti event at the cathedral in Geneva. It was very moving - beginning with an extraordinary noise for 35 seconds representing the noise of the earthquake.
A superlative choir and wonderful readers sang and spoke the Psalms in many forms.
Canon Ogé Beavoir, Dean of the Episcopal Theological Seminary, Port-au-Prince spoke movingly of the Haitian people's spirit and also of their need. the event was a fund raiser for rebuilding the Anglican Cathedral and its related social and educational facilities which were extensive before the quake.

The event opened my ears to Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, which I've never heard before. Last night's choir and organ gave at least as good a rendition as the full orchestra youtube version I've posted here. I also really enjoyed Arvo Pärt's de Profundis and all of the rest of the music and readings - especially the readings in creole. Thanks folks, it was WONDERFUL!
I've posted the full order in French and English here.

A musical Friday five from RevGal Pals

So here's today's Friday Five from Revgalpals:

The sad news of Michael Jackson's untimely death has me thinking about music and its effects on us - individually, as cultures, as generations. Let's think about the soundtracks of our lives...

1) What sort of music did you listen to as a child - this would likely have been determined or influenced by your parents? Or perhaps your family wasn't musical...was the news the background? the radio? Singing around the piano?

I realise more and more that I grew up listening to hymns and carols but also an awful lot of musical theatre. When I was a child family Christmases would always end around the piano with us all singing carols, my Grandfather playing piano and my mum violin. My working class grandparents were very talented musicians and my mother became a violin teacher when I was in my early teens. She played in all the local Gilbert and Sullivan and musical theatre amateur shows. and we children would often spend Saturday or Sunday afternoons at the dress rehearsals. So part of the sound track to my childhood would be "three little girls from school are we" or "they call it it" or "who will buy this beautiful morning?" Most of my own singing though was at church where my grandparents ran the choir. The music I listened to was nearly always "live". I realise quite how privileged this was now - though at the time I didn't always think it was so great to go to another classical concert. My own rebellion was that although I have a good voice I never learnt an instrument nor can I properly read music - something I really do regret now.

But the more I think about it, the radio was even more part of the family soundtrack as I grew up. BBC Radio 4 is the constant in my life, my third parent and additional educator. When I was child we would always have the radio on in the morning and evening for the news but also for the comedy programmes, plays and book readings. So part of the soundtrack was also Men from the Ministry, Just a minute, I'm sorry I haven't a clue, The Archers, PM at 5pm. This part of the soundtrack reaches right up to today thanks to the wonders of the digital revolution. Frankly neither then nor now is any of this in the slightest bit hip!

2) Going ahead to teenage years, is there a song that says "high school" (or whatever it might've been called where you lived") to you?

This is difficult. Middle school was definitely Abba, Bohemian Rhapsody and 10cc's I'm not in love, but then punk happened and we all started dancing in a different sort of way and music changed. I think it would have to be "Going Underground" by the Jam, for its energy and post punkness edginess, though I also love this. Truth be told I was actually listening to stuff noone else at my high school cared much about at all - Maxime Le Forestier and Marie Paule Belle. Not Plasique Bertrand but real French ballad singers, still love that stuff.

3) What is your favorite music for a lift on a down day? (hint: go to www.pandora.com and type in a performer/composer...see what you come up with!)

Miles Davis Workin' and Steamin'. Jazz wins every time but Thomas Tallis' spem in Allium can sometimes lift me too as can Golden Brown by the Stranglers.

4) Who is your favorite performer of all time?

My grandmother singing "the gentle, gentle the gentle sounding lute". She sang a very beautiful, sweet, natural and unforced soprano, with extraordinary range ... the sound lives on in my memory but sadly I cannot reproduce it. I can remember her smiling face as she sang but I don't even know the title of the song I just remember that line from it and the glorious sound ...

5) What is your favorite style of music for worship?

An international mix. I am very blessed with this at the ecumenical centre. All this week we've been singing Tenemos esperanza, if I had to choose a current favourite song it would probably be Reamo Leboga, starting slowly and building up to a fast dance tempo. At the end of July we're planning a eucharist with a Caribbean flavour: Laylolaylolaylo, Let us talents and tongues employ but also some Brian Wren Break the bread of belonging, welcome the stranger in the land.
What I partiuclarly like is when we manage to weave music and prayer together meaningfully so that the spoken words and the sung words blend.
As with most of life I'm pretty much an omnivore with styles of music for worship, I love singing the Geneva psalter - Psalm 8's "tous les poissons sur les chemins des mers" always brings a smile to my face. Praise God in music not in dirge would be what I want.

Now as a bonus you wanted a video of any of the above well folks here's Humph, lovely guy, great jazz musician, but here he isn't playing. Rest in peace Humph and thanks for the laughter. And if anyone wants to come round to play Mornington Crescent please note that our household applies the Berlin-Prague rules.

Singing and dancing from Kenya and Greenland

International visitors to the Kirchentag always get a special welcome. This year despite the credit crunch more than 3,500 people from overseas will attend. For the first ever Kenya has topped the list as the country with the highest number of visitors, for many of the Kenyans this is their first time outside Africa, they have taken holiday from work to be here and their flights will have cost them proportionately much more than the Europeans will have had to pay for their travel.
their presence really changed the atmosphere at the international welcome hour as well. When the choir from Nairobi began to sing the Kenyans in the hall sang along, clapped, stood up and became part of the praise, their presence changed the dynamics in a good way. to their voices from the south was added an extraordinary voice from the North, from the "roof of the world". A singer from Greenland invited us to close our eyes and listen ... so we did and it was quite extraordinary: a breathing, howling, quiet, loud lullaby-screaming song without words. Amazing.

Multiple identity - the faith(s) of Felix, Abraham and Moses Mendelssohn

You may be able listen again to a fascinating programme about faith, identity, integration and music made by Sheila Hayman, a descendant of Felix Mendelssohn's sister Fanny

I’d always known about the Mendelssohn connexion, and I’d always felt the sense of not quite belonging in our family – my father has been, in his life, a Jew, a Lutheran, an Anglican, a Quaker and a Moslem - but I’d never connected the two until a family gathering four years ago, when I heard about Moses Mendelssohn for the first time.

The programme charts Felix's response to and promotion of Bach's music and also shows how his dual faith inheritance can also be traced in his music.

Hayman talks to conductor Kurt Masur, an Aryan boy in 1930s Berlin, forbidden to listen to Mendelssohn, and Claus Moser, a Jewish boy in Berlin at the same time, forbidden to listen to Beethoven and consoled by Mendelssohn. Steven Isserlis shows how Mendelssohn's own struggle between his two faiths can be heard in his music.

The Moses, Abraham and Felix Mendelsohn story is of integration, translation, language learning, of taking the path of rationalism and then of conversion when this did not fully satisfy society of the time. It is also interesting to see something of a dual perspective coming out as his work progresses, one part of "Elijah" is regularly used in Orthodox Ashkenazi synagogues as the scrolls are returned after being read. Even though it is not Jewish music as such it sounds Jewish and so is sung.
The story is of course also one of anti-semitism, Wagner and Schumann's musical anti-semitism - no doubt fuelled by not a little professional jealousy - and wider anti-semitism in German society of the 19th and 20th centuries. Despite the last practising Jew in the family having died in 1870s, Mendelssohn's descendants in the 1930s including Sheila Hayman's father, either have to flee or to distance themselves completely from their Jewish roots in order to survive.
Meanwhile it struck me that the two pieces of music most chosen for traditional weddings in Britain are by Mendelssohn and Wagner.
The programme is a moving account of the struggles of a mixed identity, bringing together philosophy, religion and the arts, well worth a listen if you get the chance to hear a repeat. There is also an interesting personal account of how part of the family escaped the death camps here.

Concert for Gaza

Apocalypse on the Spree

December marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of the French composer Olivier Messiaen (December 10, 1908 – April 27, 1992). To mark the anniversary, Dr B writes from the German capital, the Berlin radio station RBB organized a concert at the Watergate, a scene club venue next to the Spree on what was the border between East and West Berlin, with spectacular views of the river and the brick gothic Oberbaumbrücke bridge. Philippe Jordan and members of the Staatskapelle Berlin performed Messiaen's "Quatuor pour la fin du Temps" (Quartet for the end of time), a musical setting of the Book of Revelation. Jordan pointed out that Messiaen was "extremely Christian, or better put, Catholic" in his outlook. The choice of the piece was not accidental for it was written in German POW camp, and the rather unusual choice of piano, violin, cello, and clarinet,was constrained by the fact that having been taken a prisoner of war at Verdun after the fall of France in 1940, these were the only musicians he could find in the camp at Görlitz in eastern Germany where he composed the piece - first performed before 5000 prisoners of war and prison guards. The piece is a musical setting of the Book of Revelation, but the "end of time" also refers to Messiaen's use of time in his choice of rhythm and harmony, and maybe also the situation in which he was composing. Messiaen wrote that the first two parts of the piece describe the Angel, who in the Book of Revelation will appear to announce the End of Time, a towering figure straddling the earth, one foot on the sea, the other on land. The Angel of Time appears once more in the seventh section.Overwhelming as the Angel is, Messiaen sees colours and vibrations, for the End of Time is not negative, but leads to metaphysical union with concepts beyond time and space, which in the Book of Revelation means oneness with God (hat tip to classical iconoclast).