RSCM Report: Part Three

July 26: The Lutherans and the Roman Catholics

Three days suffice to establish a routine: Morning Prayer, breakfast, rehearsals, lunch, rest time, rehearsal, activities (recreation for choristers, discussions for adults), dinner, rehearsal, Vespers.

On Friday, it ends.

This is the day that we rehearse at the churches. First, we go to the Chapel of Concordia Theological Seminary. It is the larger of the two seminaries of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, and its library has the Bible that once belonged to J. S. Bach. We do not have opportunity to see it, but it is good to simply be near this sacred relic, and to sing one of his motets in this place. We are to sing Saturday Vespers here: Pachelbel, Stanford, Bach. The Chapel is a large place with a clean acoustic, bright tall clear windows, a fine Protestant simplicity and clarity about it. The choir is in a spacious rear gallery, with a good Casavant organ that makes plenty of sound.

After that, it is on to the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, where we are to sing at the Mass on the Lord's Day. I wrote of this place last summer when the holiness of the place profoundly affected me. This year, the afternoon is cloudy so it is not quite so visually glorious. But the acoustic is always astonishing.

If Bach is the proper music to sing at a Lutheran Seminary, then Mozart is ideal for this place. We sing the Mozart Missa Brevis, K. 65, plus motets by Gabriel Fauré and Joseph Jongen, plus one Anglican who slips into the mix: Herbert Howells and his anthem "Like as the hart."

Working as I do in a liberal denomination, I have the utmost admiration for the Missouri Synod Lutherans and the Roman Catholics. From my distance, it appears that they are doing much better at holding to the apostolic faith than we Episcopalians. This is not necessarily true: with a sinking heart, I see some of the progress made under Pope Benedict XVI slipping away. And my new friend Stephen, who is Kantor at the seminary, tells me that, like Episcopalians, many LCMS Lutherans have discarded their magnificent heritage of music -- the great Lutheran chorales, the music of Schütz, Buxtehude, Bach -- for the evangelical praise-and-worship model.

Well, the old and better music and liturgy from all our traditions, as well as the theology of the Church Fathers, and the great Protestants (Calvin and Hooker and John Wesley, as well as Luther) have left many seeds scattered across the earth. They will eventually spring back to life, though they lie forgotten for generations.

July 27: O quanta qualia

O what their joy and their glory must be,
Those endless sabbaths the blessed ones see.
(opening hymn for our Vespers: Peter Abelard, trans. by John Mason Neale)

Today is Saturday, the Sabbath. We sleep a half hour later, have a brief rehearsal after breakfast, and the gift of almost two free hours before lunch, on an unusually beautiful day for summer in St. Louis -- bright, sunny, breezy, in the seventies instead of the more usual nineties. I catch up on this journal, and walk the labyrinth down the hill from the Todd Hall Chapel of St. Cecilia. It is a real labyrinth of paved pathways and boxwood walls, and this is the first time in all these Courses that I have walked it. I did not entirely believe in labyrinths until I saw their effect upon our choristers at the diocesan ministries retreat and choir camp a month ago; that was enough to convince me to try it myself.

In the late afternoon, we sing the Saturday Vespers at Concordia. There is one final opportunity to stand together with the semichorus for Psalm 84 in plainsong; it is exquisite. Mr. Kleinschmidt says after our short warmup rehearsal that he would be glad to cut a chant CD with this group, and I agree. The biggest wrinkle has been me, and the two choristers whom I have trained; we are used to a different pace for psalmody, different length of the ending notes, and it has taken us (me, especially) all week to adjust. Two days ago, Mr. Kleinschmidt found it necessary to take me aside specifically between rehearsals for correction on these matters, and I have tried to get it right. By this day, we have, and we sing as one.

[A technical note for psalmody geeks: the manner in which we sing at home is used in many monastic settings, especially among Benedictines. Mr. K. said that it is the way in which the Cowley Fathers in Boston sing, and it is the way that I learned from Fr. Farrell, of blessed memory, who in turn followed the practice of St. John's Abbey, Collegeville. We keep a steady syllabic pace, not consciously lengthening syllables nor shortening them overmuch (I call it "hiccups" when this unfortunate shortening of syllables takes place. "Enemies" is an especially difficult word in the Midwestern dialect, where the first two syllables tend to be rushed.) Most importantly, we do not lengthen the final syllable of each half-line. Instead, we allow silence at the asterisk.

But there are other very good ways to sing the psalm tones, and Mr. K. is following a different tradition. In this style, the important syllables are stretched slightly for emphasis, as is the final syllable of the half-verse. "Sing it into the room," he said, instead of "clipping it short."

Most importantly, his method works better for a large space such as the Concordia Chapel, and would have been essential had we sung psalmody at the Basilica. My method, however, is perhaps better for the intimate chamber-music acoustic of our church at home.

I ought to be a good enough musician to adjust, and it was good experience for Mike and Mark, thoroughly trained in my methods, to sing it a different way.]

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I have been notably unemotional this week in rehearsals and liturgies, when I have at past Courses been a notorious wellspring of tears, as bad as some of the teenage girls. Today, it finally gets me. I am overcome by the second hymn at Vespers, the chorale "Herzlich Lieb."

Lord, thee I love with all my heart;
I pray thee, ne'er from me depart;
With tender mercy cheer me.

Earth has no pleasure I would share
Yea, heav'n itself were void and bare
If thou, Lord, were not near me.

And should my heart for sorrow break,
My trust in thee can nothing shake.
Thou art the portion I have sought;
Thy precious blood my soul has bought.

Lord Jesus Christ,
My God and Lord, my God and Lord,
Forsake me not! I trust thy Word.

In part, this is because we sang it at home with our combined choirs a couple of years ago. In large part, it is the fine seriousness of this text and music. They take matters of life and death with seriousness, and do not sugarcoat them. They say with honesty what needs to be said.

Lord, let at last thine angels come,
To Abr'ham's bosom bear me home,
That I may die unfearing.

And in its narrow chamber keep
My body safe in peaceful sleep
Until thy reappearing.

And then from death awaken me,
That these mine eyes with joy may see,
O Son of God, thy glorious face,
My Savior and my fount of grace.

Lord Jesus Christ,
My prayer attend, my prayer attend;
And I will praise thee without end.
(Martin Schalling, 1532-1608, tr. Catherine Winkworth)

In part, it is the spirit of Bach in this place, his use of this chorale in the St. John Passion, and his motet that we shall soon sing. And in part, it is simply the singing of it with these choristers my friends.

Mario, standing beside me, is concerned when he realizes that I cannot sing. "Are you all right," he asks, concern in his whisper. I nod, the tears running down my face and blotching the music. I believe that he understands; if not, he will someday.

We sing the Stanford "Beati quorum via," so unbearably beautiful, and the Bach motet. After struggling all week on my part, it suddenly gels today, attaining the needed balance between strong German consonants and long legato lines. There is, again, a seriousness about this graveside motet, especially the earnestness of the counterpoint in the final phrase, that is fitting for me, for this place, for this time. The motet seems to gel for everyone, and it is the best we have sung it all week.

I am again overcome, this time by the sermon, given by Stephen Rosebrock, the Kantor of this place, and based on the Chorister's prayer. He speaks of the role of choral music in our lives and our formation as Christians, of the transcendence that happens when we sing. I see others wiping their tears, including our director Mr. Kleinschmidt, for Stephen has spoken to our hearts.

Then comes the Pachelbel Magnificat (I make a foolish mistake right at the beginning, coming in a beat ahead of the rest of the choir, but sing the semichorus sections cleanly), the trebles' anthem on the Choristers' Prayer, and we are done.

Done, that is, save for one last dinner at Todd Hall -- Mexican food, sufficiently fine to please even our Hispanic choristers. This is infinitely better than last week's food in Richmond: aluminum pans of rice, chicken, beans, cheese, toppings, bags of tortillas and taco shells, all spread on eight foot tables in Wilson Lodge. I am in heaven here among my friends, and eat far too much. It is a fine and relaxed evening: all too short, for tomorrow has an early start.

[Look for the concluding part of this Report on Tuesday]