All Saints' Recital

These last three years, I have scheduled my annual solo recital on the series at Southeastern, the university where I teach, close to All Saints' Day, and the performance takes place in the beautiful setting of Lakeland's All Saints' Church. It impresses me more deeply each year how the Festival of All Saints' is such a spiritually integrated artful time as the rituals of the Church invite us to ponder the lives of all those who went before us and the arts resonate with that great heritage of being.

Here are the repertoire and my program notes for Tuesday. In the middle of the notes is a link to the improvisation I've transcribed for the recital. 




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Aux Cyprès de la Villa d’Este: Thrénodie 2                        Franz Liszt

                                                                                           (1811-1886)

Improvisation on “Sweet Hour of Prayer” (2008)               Charles Hulin

from Children’s Corner                                                       Claude Debussy

Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum                                 (1862-1918)

The Little Shepherd

Golliwogg’s Cake-walk

Intermission

Intermezzo Op. 18, No. 2                                                    Johannes Brahms

                                                                                            (1833-1897)

The Man of Sorrows (2000)                                                Scott Eric Petersen

from Fifty Etudes (1976)                                                      Donald Waxman        

            . . . Lambent Trajectories

            . . . Descent of Swifts

            . . . “Rough wind that moanest loud” - Shelley

The letters of Franz Liszt reveal his deep regard for Michelangelo, the great creator he saw as most experiencing “the loneliness of genius . . . in the course of a long life.” Originating in a period of creative struggle and adjustment to his own aging, Liszt’s second threnody was inspired by cypresses he believed Michelangelo had planted in a cloister near Rome’s Diocletian Baths. The work’s opening theme seems to reference the famous motif of the opera Tristan und Isolde by his son-in-law, Richard Wagner.

A little over ten years ago, I posted a YouTube video of an improvisation on William Bradbury’s “Sweet Hour of Prayer” along with images of my home church, Lasker Baptist in North Carolina. That tune and place are linked for me because of the ease with which I have often settled into a spirit of communion in Lasker over the years. This fall I transcribed that improvisation to play on this occasion.

The beginning of Debussy’s Children’s Corner sounds a bit like an exercise from Muzio Clementi’s technique manual, Gradus ad Parnassum. Debussy’s creative strategy is to lead the listener through impressionistic transformations of this material reminiscent of Monet’s response to the fluidity of light and color.  

According to pianist E. Robert Schmitz, in writing this suite, Debussy was hoping to provide “the finest music to complete the make-believe universe” of his daughter’s nursery. He wanted to give  her “an incentive to joy.” For example, the “divine arabesques” of “The Little Shepherd” bring the image of a shepherd to life with “the sounds of his reed and dance.”

“Golliwogg’s Cakewalk” consists of layer after layer of sarcasm.  The cakewalk form reached Debussy through minstrelsy but was based on an Antebellum dance of slaves which, in turn, seemed to poke fun at the manners and movements of plantation owners. Debussy adds his own bit of commentary by quoting the opening motif of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde followed by “the musical equivalent of hee-haw” as described by musicologist Ann McKinley.   

During this All Saints’ season, I dedicate my performance of the beloved Op. 118 intermezzo of Brahms to the memory of my parents.

Scott Eric Petersen was a fellow student at Peabody and his work, The Man of Sorrows, comes from our student days. His descriptions of each movement are as follows.

I.

Eternity. Preincarnation.

The fall of man. The conflict of the messiah. The decision of God.

The idea of the Incarnation. Eternity.

II.

A meditation on God as man. 

III.

The beginning of life.

Birth – sudden screaming cold contrast to eternal warmth and love. Pain.

Peace in mother’s arms.

Irwin Freundlich, past chair of Juilliard’s piano department, described Donald Waxman’s etudes as “The most important contribution to the literature of piano etudes for students since the days of Czerny. . .” Waxman, a product of Juilliard himself, set about applying a modern musical language to the elements of a pianist’s technique.

In the first of the etudes I am playing, Waxman invites the pianist to glide over large stretches of keys with a hint of jazz harmony. In the second, he seems to convey both the sound and movement of a swoop of swifts by stacking triad upon triad. In the final selection, Waxman recasts themes of Romanticism in a dissonant toccata based on Shelley’s poem, “A Dirge.”

“Rough wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song . . .
Wail, for the world's wrong!”

Our Father . . .

Concluding a week of performing and teaching in the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia, I had the privilege of sharing the following message at Forest Hills Presbyterian Church in Martinsville, VA on July 28, 2019.

Thank you for the opportunity to be with you again and to contribute a little bit to your ongoing conversation about faith. When Jeff invited me to speak on this particular Sunday, I took a look at the lectionary readings and immediately knew I wanted to focus on the Lord’s Prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer is a compelling topic for many reasons.

It is the model prayer Jesus gave his disciples.

It is a profound expression of Christian theology.

It can serve as a rule of life establishing our identity and our priorities.

And it comprises a formula that has been embraced by all sorts of Christians from Eastern Orthodox to Southside Virginian Presbyterian and incorporated into their worship and other spiritual-formation practices.

The idea of doing justice to all those things in a few minutes this morning is overwhelming. So I have decided instead to focus on how the Lord’s Prayer has supported me in my own journey, and in so doing, I think I might be demonstrating how all those things can be relevant to one’s daily steps of faith. It is my hope that this meditation refreshes your sense of God’s presence wherever you are on the path today.  

The prayer begins OUR

This very first word tells us we are not alone. When we pray this prayer we are reminded by Jesus himself that we are part of a family called by God, and responding to God, together.

Our FATHER

Compare for a moment that prayer of Abraham bargaining with an austere deity he thinks is bent on destroying the residents of Sodom. The tone of Jesus’ prayer is so different. Jesus, who was, according Philippians 2, “in the form of God” tells us our relationship with God is that of a child to their father.

Our father WHO ART IN HEAVEN

With the addition of this next phrase, Jesus goes further and lets us know we should not expect to see this father in any conventional way. He specifies that this father is in heaven. This God who is related to us in the closest possible way dwells in a realm that is, for now, simply beyond our reach. In other words, the God of Christianity is both imminent (meaning very, very close) and transcendent.  This is an answer and an assurance to any and all who sometimes wonder as I do, “Where is God and why do I not feel his presence?”

Our father who art in heaven, HALLOWED BE THY NAME

There are oceanic depths to these four words. They invite us to contemplate the sublime mysteries of that transcendence, to contemplate that the wonderfulness of this God infinitely exceeds all the efforts that can ever be made to express it.

The Kaddish prayer used for worship and remembrance in Judaism resonates with this hallowing.  A portion of it reads as follows:

May His great name be blessed 
forever and to all eternity.                                                         
Blessed and praised, 
glorified and exalted, 
extolled and honored,
adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One. 
Blessed be He,
beyond all the blessings and hymns, 
praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the world.

Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.

Jesus knew that in Caesar’s empire, assertions of kingship were interpreted as intolerable opposition on the earthly plane. The crucifixion of Jesus is a testimony to that reality. But here, at the heart of Jesus’ prayer, he is calling for an end to harmful ways of living in this world, not just in the next. To pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth is to be caught up into Christ’s kingly desire for loving-kindness, for the flourishing of shalom, for grace and peace as Paul puts it. To pray this way is to bless the world in ways that move beyond ideologies and politics to address the pain of each and every person with the empathy Jesus embodied.

Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven. GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD

Daily bread has some limits; Jesus teaches us to pray for enough but not too much. And notice again those plural personal pronouns. This is not a prayer for my daily bread. It is a prayer for our daily bread, a prayer that all of us would have enough. What better way to bless the world than to make sure everyone has enough both physically and spiritually? The next part of the prayer flows directly from that idea.

FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS

Perhaps we have no greater need, or more daily need, than that of forgiveness. Sometimes we seem unable to believe God is willing to forgive us. Other times we struggle to forgive ourselves. Both situations can be intertwined and call for deep reflection on who Jesus says God is and who he says we are. Jesus does not command or even encourage us to forgive here. He declares forgiveness as an unquestioned aspect of our identity. It has been suggested that we are the most like Jesus when we forgive and forgiveness is one of the most powerful things when it comes to transforming lives and relationships.

Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL

Here we are likely to focus on our own individual shortcomings, the specific things we have been taught are sins and always seem to be causing us to stumble. But again, this is not the prayer of individuals. This is the prayer of us all together seeking deliverance from the works of the evil one. Hearing the words of the morning prayer of the Iona Community in Scotland can help shift our perspective in that direction. Their prayer goes like this:

BEFORE GOD, 

WITH THE PEOPLE OF GOD, 

WE CONFESS TO OUR BROKENNESS:
TO THE WAYS WE WOUND OUR LIVES, 

THE LIVES OF OTHERS 

AND THE LIFE OF THE WORLD

Again:

BEFORE GOD, 

WITH THE PEOPLE OF GOD, 

WE CONFESS TO OUR BROKENNESS:
TO THE WAYS WE WOUND OUR LIVES, 

THE LIVES OF OTHERS 

AND THE LIFE OF THE WORLD

And a voice responds with this blessing:

May God forgive you, Christ renew you, and the spirit enable you to grow in love.

AMEN

St. Patrick the Enlightener

St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin

The interesting thing about St. Patrick at this stage in our course is that the material and traditions about him come from three distinct layers.

There's the banishing of snakes and the shamrock teaching, first appearing in the 18th and 13th centuries respectively.

Before that there were hagiographic works such as St. MacEvin's Tripartite Life from the 9th century.

And earliest, Patrick's Confessions, words he purportedly wrote in his later years, possibly to defend himself and his ministry.

As can be seen from the opening sections copied below, Patrick's Confessions project a sense of humility and an earnest orthodox faith.

1

My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers. I am looked down upon by many. My father was Calpornius. He was a deacon; his father was Potitus, a priest, who lived at Bannavem Taburniae[Nota]. His home was near there, and that is where I was taken prisoner. I was about sixteen at the time. At that time, I did not know the true God. I was taken into captivity in Ireland, along with thousands of others. We deserved this, because we had gone away from God, and did not keep his commandments. We would not listen to our priests, who advised us about how we could be saved[Nota]. The Lord brought his strong anger upon us, and scattered us among many nations even to the ends of the earth. It was among foreigners that it was seen how little I was.

2

It was there that the Lord opened up my awareness of my lack of faith. Even though it came about late, I recognised my failings. So I turned with all my heart to the Lord my God[Nota], and he looked down on my lowliness[Nota] and had mercy on my youthful ignorance. He guarded me before I knew him, and before I came to wisdom and could distinguish between good and evil. He protected me and consoled me as a father does for his son.

3

That is why I cannot be silent – nor would it be good to do so – about such great blessings and such a gift that the Lord so kindly bestowed in the land of my captivity. This is how we can repay such blessings, when our lives change and we come to know God, to praise and bear witness to his great wonders before every nation under heaven.

4

This is because there is no other God, nor will there ever be, nor was there ever, except God the Father. He is the one who was not begotten, the one without a beginning, the one from whom all beginnings come, the one who holds all things in being – this is our teaching. And his son, Jesus Christ, whom we testify has always been, since before the beginning of this age, with the father in a spiritual way. He was begotten in an indescribable way before every beginning. Everything we can see, and everything beyond our sight, was made through him. He became a human being; and, having overcome death, was welcomed to the heavens to the Father. The Father gave him all power over every being, both heavenly and earthly and beneath the earth. Let every tongue confess that Jesus Christ, in whom we believe and whom we await to come back to us in the near future, is Lord and God[Nota]. He is judge of the living and of the dead[Nota]; he rewards every person according to their deeds[Nota]. He has generously poured on us the Holy Spirit[Nota], the gift and promise of immortality, who makes believers and those who listen to be children of God and co-heirs with Christ[Nota]. This is the one we acknowledge and adore – one God in a trinity of the sacred name.

The hagographic material adds episodes such as Patrick's great Lenten vigil, on what's now known Croagh Patrick, during which he proved the virtue of his stubbornness. That account begins at the bottom of page 66 in The Tripartite Life.

 

The writer of The Tripartite Life leaves nothing to chance in drawing our attention to the parallels between Patrick's stature as apostle to Ireland and the lives of key biblical figures. In one place he writes:

A man of truth, indeed, was this man, with purity of mind like the Patriarchs; a true pilgrim like Abraham; gentle and forgiving of heart like Moses; a praise-singing psalmist like David; a shrine of wisdom like Solomon; a chosen vessel for proclaiming truth like Paul the Apostle; a man full of grace and knowledge of the Holy Ghost like John . . .

We concluded our time together by praying the famous Lorica of St. Patrick.