Listening to Handel’s Messiah

In the Bing search window this morning I typed, "Messiah YouTube" and then had to choose one. I chose the complete work, not just the Christmas portion. From my living room window overlooking the fresh snow, I can listen for 2 1/2 hours, London Philharmonic. This is Advent, the beginning of the church year, and although Handel wrote it for Easter, it has become a custom for Advent and Christmas. Fr. Sebastian White, editor of Magnificat writes in the December issue, "The Son given unto us at Christmas is the Man of Sorrows who will suffer and die for us on Good Friday. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who rises victorious at Easter, unleashing our pent-up alleluias."

When Messiah debuted in Dublin in 1742, such a huge crowd was expected that ladies were told to wear dresses without hoops and men were asked to leave their swords at home. I wonder how they got the word out with no internet, twitter or Facebook?

In my younger years when I sang in a choir, I was a first soprano; now I'm a tenor and only have about 5 raspy notes, and they don't seem to be in a row. But I hope someday to join the heavenly choir of angels and saints who day and night sing, "Worthy is the lamb that was slain. . . "

Random internet truth

“Saying you believe in science rather than religion is like saying you believe in screwdrivers rather than democracy. Science is a tool and nothing else, it's literally just recorded information. It isn't a belief system that contradicts religions. You can be a completely rational minded and logical person and still hold religious views. They don't conflict, in times they can even complement each other.”

I didn’t bother to look up who or what he was responding to, but this comment was at Agnus Dei performance on YouTube performed by the Choir of New College of Oxford, conducted by Edward HIGGINBOTTOM. VOL. I, recorded in New College Chapel-Oxford-England, January/April 1996.  So those beautiful boy sopranos would now be 22 years older, in their 30s or early 40s, scattered in various careers, or countries. And the music (this one played over 9 million times since uploaded in 2012) plays on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRwhkBAeheM

“The Choir of New College Oxford is one of the most celebrated and acclaimed choral groups of the UK. When William of Wykeham founded his ‘New’ College in 1379, a choral foundation was at its heart, and daily chapel services have been a central part of college life ever since. The choir comprises sixteen boy choristers and fourteen adult clerks; the latter a mixture of professional singers and undergraduate members of the college.”

“New College Choir was the first in Oxford to launch regular webcasts of choral services – to offer choral services to all who are unable to be in chapel.   One service is selected for webcasting each week, and listeners will find choral evensongs as well as major festivals and the annual carol services. The webcast services are recorded live, with minimal post-production editing; so listeners will be participating in a ‘live’ experience, as if they were sitting in New College Chapel.   

The music is offered not as a concert, but as part of the chapel’s tradition of Christian worship. “ http://www.newcollegechoir.com/page/?title=Webcasts&pid=10

Rejoice you pure in heart

I usually save the printed hymns from the Sunday bulletin, and then noticed we had sung “The Church’s One Foundation” twice in a month, once as an entrance hymn and once as a closing hymn.  However, when I looked at the attribution, they were different, with one attributed to Plumptre and Messiter, and one to Stone and Samuel Wesley.  I was pretty sure that Wesley was the one we sang, so I looked up the other combination, and found “Rejoice you pure in heart” and enjoyed this lovely choir, the Metro Singers of Hyattsville, MD . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_GBKSqtgvI 

Then I looked back through what I’d saved, and indeed we had sung “Rejoice you pure in heart.” Don’t know if the misattribution came from the copied source, or if when inserting the hymn into the template, the attribution from a previous week slipped in. 

How to lose your audience

What if each time you tuned into watch Downton Abbey you got a blow by blow detailed history of how the English Reformation under King Henry VIII destroyed the Roman Catholic monasteries and nunneries and turned them over to private owners who were the King’s buddies? With all the death and cruelty involved and the poor who were devastated by the loss of support from the church?  Or what if when looking for appropriate comments to use at a musical ecumenical memorial for the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation all you could find is a blow by blow account of the brutal Peasants’ War in which 100,000 German peasants who thought Luther would support them instead met a bloody end?   Whose mind would be changed? Would you want the Catholic, Lutheran or Marxist view with your music?

Trapped. That’s how I felt when I attended what would be a wonderful  program of choral music, and instead got lectures (called “reflections”) so inappropriate for a lovely summer Sunday evening I thought I’d walked into a micro-aggression workshop for hate whitey or black lives matter rally. Most people love the black gospel and spiritual contributions to the American religious and choral tradition, and yes, they do know the history of the pain and suffering from which they came, but please don’t use them to club us into staying away from the concerts. I'm not sure how, but even "I'll fly away" by Alfred Brumley, a white Oklahoma sharecropper, seemed to have been roped into this meme of slavery. Perhaps I misunderstood, or dozed off.

We are living in an era of unprecedented human slavery. There is more slavery today than during the 18th century Atlantic slave trade. Children are used as soldiers, women and girls are taken as sex slaves, men are forced to work in mines.  In some countries like Haiti and the Philippines household slavery is just part of the culture and many don’t even recognize it.  Most of this happens in Africa, with heavy Muslim involvement, but what church program today would discuss that hot topic?  Very little of it, unlike Boko Haram stealing Church of the Brethren school girls for sex slaves from a school in Nigeria, makes it into the evening news. 

To compulsively return to a period of history when Europeans bought slaves from African Muslims and tribal chiefs and sold them to the colonies which later became the United States which  fought an ugly war to end it, is just not good commentary for a program of music celebrating freedom in Christ.