A trip to Longview and Shreveport
March 10-11, 2010
Carol and I heard the choir of men and boys from St. Thomas Church in New York City sing in the lively acoustics at Trinity Episcopal, Longview, then drove on to Shreveport to work on the organ built by Jimmy Williams for Lucille and Bill Teague. Afterwards, we drove by Centenary College, where I spent my fresh-man year, studying organ with Mr. Teague.
Sung by the St. Thomas Choir at Trinity Church, Longview, March 10, 2010:
In Pace, John Sheppard (1515-1563)
O Lord, in thy wrath rebuke me not, Orlando Gibbons (1583-1624)
Civitas Sancti Tui, William Byrd (c.1540-1623)
3 Psalms from Vespro della Beata Vergine of 1610, Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
4 movements from Requiem (1936), Herbert Howells (1892-1983)
A hymn to the Virgin and Hymn to St. Cecilia Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Hear my words, ye people C. H. H. Parry (1848-1914)
The texts of all the pieces sung by the St. Thomas choir, except for the Ode to St. Cecelia, patron saint of musicians, were from either the Bible or the Hymnal. Those of us who are concerned about current trends in church music would do well to think about texts as much as we think about music.
Specifically, these were words and music for worship, with very few I, me, or my words.
The fact that 18 boys singing correctly can fill a large, resonant space like that at Longview’s Trinity Episco-pal Church, a building that is almost as long as that at Fort Worth’s Broadway Baptist, without the aid of microphones but with such power, beauty, great range, and clarity points up the negative effects of amplifica-tion, which encourages singing with breathy, insubstantial chest tone and limited range.
In the afternoon before the concert, we heard the choir rehearse a large work that took advantage of the acoustics at Trinity in Longview. I took it to be by Giovanni Gabrieli. It turned out, rather, to be by Claudio Monteverdi. (Giovanni Gabrieli, c.1554 – 1612, organist at St. Mark’s in Venice after 1584. Claudio Monteverdi, c.1567 – 1643, conductor at St. Mark’s after 1613.) Major, joyous counterpoint. My first brush with such counterpoint, and with the Lutheran hymnody that has come to mean so much to me, was in Mr. Teague’s teaching of the chorale preludes in J. S. Bach’s Orgelbuchlein.
The choir sang Hymn to St. Cecilia by Benjamin Britten setting words by W. H. Auden, both Englishmen who spent time in the U.S. – specifically, living for a time in Brooklyn Heights, not far from where one of our sons and his family live. From Wikipedia re W. H. Auden: “Another influential childhood experience was his time served as a choirboy. From his autobiographical sketch, A Certain World, ‘…it was there that I acquired sensitivity to language which I could not have acquired in any other way.’"
The choir sang Hear my words, ye people” by C. H. H. Parry, who also wrote I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord, one of the highlights of the recording in Kilgore years ago. (See below) C. H. H. Parry knew how to write for choir and organ in a way that made them dramatic and equal partners, the result being greater than the sum of the parts. Roy Perry knew how to play both organ and choir.
It was my first hearing of Herbert Howell’s Requiem, written after the death of his son Michael suddenly, overnight, of meningitis, at age 9. No parent, perhaps no non-parent, can hear this requiem without… See the hymntune Michael in many hymnals.
We were able to compare William Byrd’s (c.1540-1623) piece in the melismatic and polyphonic style associated with the time of Queen Mary Tudor (reigned 1553–1558), when English churches returned to the Catholic practice that permitted florid choral music with Latin texts, with Orlando Gibbons’ (1583-1625) piece, written later when choral music was pretty much limited to English and to one note per syllable, as per Protestant puritanizing.
Specific thanks:
• To Bill Bane of Trinity Episcopal, Longview, for printing out the entire texts, with English transla-tions where necessary, of the pieces sung by the St. Thomas choir last week.
• To John Scott, director of the St. Thomas choir, for economical verbal introductions to certain of the pieces that did not try to sell the pieces but that provided a background that helped us place, appreciate, and understand what we later heard.
__________________________________________
Our visit to Longview and Shreveport last week completed something of a circle:
• Laurence Birdsong of Longview. He brought his Hammond in his father’s Ford pickup to play for the Yamboree Queen’s Pageant every October in Gilmer – the first time any of us ever saw a white dinner jacket. He also played for my sister’s very formal and very proper high school jr-sr banquet. I, then 12, snuck in wearing blue jeans to watch him, mortifying my sister, who cried and then didn’t speak to me for a long time afterward. (She’s now of a better mind. I think.)
• Mrs. Anderson, Gilmer high school band teacher, the one who must have suggested that her mother take me in as an inquisitive musical mind.
• Her mother Mrs. Arnold, fine piano teacher and organist at Gilmer’s First Baptist Church, which had the only real organ in Gilmer. I was not one of Mrs. Arnold’s piano students, but she still invited me to go through her stack of The Etude magazines, which I did during the lunch break – she lived across the street from the school cafeteria – reading every one of Alexander McCurdy’s columns over many weeks. Mr. McCurdy, I discovered later, had been Mr. Teague’s organ teacher at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.
• Jack Williams, organbuilder from New Orleans. Mrs. Arnold respected Mr. Williams and his work-manship. He came to Gilmer to service the 6 rank Baptist Möller during a break in the recording of Aeolian-Skinner’s Vol. X, Music of the Church, at First Presbyterian in Kilgore. When Mr. Williams opened the door to the pipe chamber in Gilmer, I was like Alice in Wonderland. No looking back.
• Jimmy (Jack’s son) and Nora Williams, the remarkable organist Roy Perry in Kilgore, Helen Hewitt and Dale Peters at University of North Texas, Robert Baker and Claire Coci at Union Seminary, Otto Hofmann, mentor-organbuilder in Austin.
• Building the organ at Trinity Episcopal in Longview
• Hearing the St. Thomas Choir last week sing at Trinity a musical summary of the Music History and His-tory of Liturgies classes I enjoyed so much
• A circle completed
__________________________________________
Carol commented that the time at Centenary College was important to me. I had always looked back on that year with a mixture of gratitude and poignancy, especially since I did not have either the fingers or the mind to be an accomplished organist, but it had not occurred to me that the year was as important as she suggested. Then I went through the list: weekly organ lessons and organ class, daily practice on the fine Aeolian-Skinner organ, knowing the organ teachers Mr. Teague and William Zeagle Fisher (spellings?), singing in the St. Mark’s church choir, rooming with the Dutch exchange student Bart van Lingen (Carol and I spent a week with Bart and his wife Mieneke in Hol-land recently), classes that opened new worlds and that have stayed with me – math, chemistry, drafting, Eng-lish (an intense class of only a few students that wrote research papers weekly) with teachers that were both masters and lovers of their subjects and who were also master teachers who invested a lot in their students, the note card tacked to the religion teacher’s door: Office Hours – 2:59 to 3:00 p.m. – MWF.
We, or at least I, watched those teachers and made notes over the years on how to live. We continue to do so.
Looking back at college and grad school, I’d say that my most important classes were Music History, History of Liturgies, Hymnology, and possibly Adolescent Psychology. But it is amazing to look back at how much the drafting, chemistry, and math, let alone the English composition, have meant.
Little connections:
• The organist for the St. Thomas concert last week, Frederick Teardo, is a graduate of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, the successor to the School of Sa-cred Music at Union Seminary, where I did my mas-ter’s work.
• Noting the high quality of the workmanship and the attention to detail in the organ built by Jimmy Wil-liams for the Teague household. Working on the organ last week was like seeing Jack Williams work on the organ in Gilmer in 1956.
• Jack Williams and Otto Hofmann practiced the same kind of integrity both in their organbuilding and in their business relationships that I hope are a model for my sons and employees.
• Mr. Teague began every choir rehearsal in 1957-58 with the Collect that begins, “O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee…” (Proper 19, Episcopal Book of Common Prayer). I, coming from an East Texas religion that distrusted written prayers, thought the following. (1) Gibber-ish. (2) The prayer, being read rather than made up on the spot, signified a formalism devoid of piety. (3) Oh no, the same thing time after time. It was only years later that I saw the difference between Decision Theology, with its emphasis on the efforts of the human, and the Theology of Grace that ac-knowledges the divine gift that makes us able to breathe, think, pray, and sing.
Ross King, March 15, 2010
3324 Stuart Drive
Fort Worth, TX 76110
Cell: 817-658-8257
Email: ross_king_co@yahoo.com
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Hearing a museum
Is there a finer building anywhere for seeing great paintings than Fort Worth’s stunning Kimbell Museum, designed by Louis Kahn?
Google http://www.GreatBuildings.com/buildings/Kimbell_Museum.html and you’ll see what I mean.
Tonight we “saw” the Kimbell in a different light, because a trio of string players from the Fort Worth Symphony was playing classical music in the central hall. The sound was impressive – strong, clear, emotionally involving, and most of all, natural. That’s the key, natural. No amplification, no carpet, no absorbent surfaces. I stepped off 90 feet in the central hall. The sound was still strong, clear, emotionally involving, and natural.
To be clear, it is not a matter of reverberation, because there is almost no reverberation in the Kimbell. Rather, it is a matter of non-absorption. The interior of the museum is not painted black, because that would absorb light. Neither is the interior of the museum carpeted, because that would absorb sound.
There is a lesson here (hear?) for churches.
Google http://www.GreatBuildings.com/buildings/Kimbell_Museum.html and you’ll see what I mean.
Tonight we “saw” the Kimbell in a different light, because a trio of string players from the Fort Worth Symphony was playing classical music in the central hall. The sound was impressive – strong, clear, emotionally involving, and most of all, natural. That’s the key, natural. No amplification, no carpet, no absorbent surfaces. I stepped off 90 feet in the central hall. The sound was still strong, clear, emotionally involving, and natural.
To be clear, it is not a matter of reverberation, because there is almost no reverberation in the Kimbell. Rather, it is a matter of non-absorption. The interior of the museum is not painted black, because that would absorb light. Neither is the interior of the museum carpeted, because that would absorb sound.
There is a lesson here (hear?) for churches.
Friday, January 1, 2010
January 1, 2010
January 1, 2010
Dear kids and friends,
Happy New Year!
What does the future hold?
It’s traditional for older people to predict doom-and-gloom. I’m not sure. I tend to be an optimist (Shall we conduct a poll on that?). But I do think the U.S. is in for a long-term economic readjustment, principally because of the changes in manufacturing. Examples:
• The church in Virginia that was considering an organ was just then seeing the effect of the textile industry moving from their part of the world to 3rd world countries, leaving many empty factories and downtown stores. Decades earlier, the same textile industry had moved to Virginia from New England, leaving empty factories and stores in New England.
• A drive around smaller West Texas towns shows empty medium sized metal buildings that formerly contained small-scale factories feeding Bell Helicopter and Lockheed airplane plants in our county.
A straw in the wind: As an employer, our firm pays into the Texas unemployment fund. The amount that we contribute in 2010 will triple that paid in 2009. That’s 3 times as much. The fund needs more money because more people are unemployed now than a year ago.
This from William Greider: “I foresee a period of austerity in which consumption is essentially suppressed so households can save and restore their balance sheets. The economy would be driven instead by government investment in future production and the industrial transformation to a less profligate, more sustainable society. It is not World War II, but we are in an epic emergency.”
World War II? That’s the time when my parents, like Carol’s parents and the parents of my friends, raised a family in a small house with one bathroom. Greider doesn’t have the best reputation, and I don’t want to make him out as a guru. I doubt that we are in an epic emergency, as Greider writes. Furthermore, the statement “economy would be driven … by government investment in future production” makes me uncomfortable. But I think it would be wise to follow him in “…consumption is essentially suppressed so households can save and restore their balance sheets.”
So I recommend
• “…a less profligate, more sustainable” family budget, to quote Greider;
• Education.
Family budget: Save money. Don’t buy stuff. Cook rather than eat out. Play rather than be entertained.
Education: Schools and libraries.
The same Massachusetts that lost all that textile manufacturing several decades ago now has the highest high school graduation rate in the nation.
If I were the City of Fort Worth, I would expand the public library hours. Every time we visit our local branch library (we check out a lot of novels), it is full – I mean full – of patrons. There are lots of teenagers working on school projects. Many of the adults are working with tutors and on computers on ESL projects. There are lots of children and young persons browsing the books and magazines. I’d call it Literacy Live. These are people pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, using books as boot hooks. If they succeed, it’s a better future for all of us. That library needs to be open Sunday afternoon and every evening of the week.
On the other hand, maybe we are better off, like Texas Tech (I spent a really good semester there in 1958 and would have stayed if the organ bug had not bit so hard during the Thanksgiving break), to pay the football coach$2,540,000 a year. Or like TCU, reportedly paying their football coach a base salary of $1.7 million a year through 2014.
It’s easy to find coaches’ salaries on the Internet, but it’s hard to find how much the players (employees) are paid. Whatever it is, I’ll bet it’s not enough.
-- Ross King
Dear kids and friends,
Happy New Year!
What does the future hold?
It’s traditional for older people to predict doom-and-gloom. I’m not sure. I tend to be an optimist (Shall we conduct a poll on that?). But I do think the U.S. is in for a long-term economic readjustment, principally because of the changes in manufacturing. Examples:
• The church in Virginia that was considering an organ was just then seeing the effect of the textile industry moving from their part of the world to 3rd world countries, leaving many empty factories and downtown stores. Decades earlier, the same textile industry had moved to Virginia from New England, leaving empty factories and stores in New England.
• A drive around smaller West Texas towns shows empty medium sized metal buildings that formerly contained small-scale factories feeding Bell Helicopter and Lockheed airplane plants in our county.
A straw in the wind: As an employer, our firm pays into the Texas unemployment fund. The amount that we contribute in 2010 will triple that paid in 2009. That’s 3 times as much. The fund needs more money because more people are unemployed now than a year ago.
This from William Greider: “I foresee a period of austerity in which consumption is essentially suppressed so households can save and restore their balance sheets. The economy would be driven instead by government investment in future production and the industrial transformation to a less profligate, more sustainable society. It is not World War II, but we are in an epic emergency.”
World War II? That’s the time when my parents, like Carol’s parents and the parents of my friends, raised a family in a small house with one bathroom. Greider doesn’t have the best reputation, and I don’t want to make him out as a guru. I doubt that we are in an epic emergency, as Greider writes. Furthermore, the statement “economy would be driven … by government investment in future production” makes me uncomfortable. But I think it would be wise to follow him in “…consumption is essentially suppressed so households can save and restore their balance sheets.”
So I recommend
• “…a less profligate, more sustainable” family budget, to quote Greider;
• Education.
Family budget: Save money. Don’t buy stuff. Cook rather than eat out. Play rather than be entertained.
Education: Schools and libraries.
The same Massachusetts that lost all that textile manufacturing several decades ago now has the highest high school graduation rate in the nation.
If I were the City of Fort Worth, I would expand the public library hours. Every time we visit our local branch library (we check out a lot of novels), it is full – I mean full – of patrons. There are lots of teenagers working on school projects. Many of the adults are working with tutors and on computers on ESL projects. There are lots of children and young persons browsing the books and magazines. I’d call it Literacy Live. These are people pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, using books as boot hooks. If they succeed, it’s a better future for all of us. That library needs to be open Sunday afternoon and every evening of the week.
On the other hand, maybe we are better off, like Texas Tech (I spent a really good semester there in 1958 and would have stayed if the organ bug had not bit so hard during the Thanksgiving break), to pay the football coach$2,540,000 a year. Or like TCU, reportedly paying their football coach a base salary of $1.7 million a year through 2014.
It’s easy to find coaches’ salaries on the Internet, but it’s hard to find how much the players (employees) are paid. Whatever it is, I’ll bet it’s not enough.
-- Ross King
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