This week saw the 225th anniversary of the death of German composer and organist Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach died on July 28, 1750.
As the day unfolded, I found myself reading Uncommon Measure a remarkable memoir by Natalie Hodges. Hodges reflects in one of the last chapters on one of the great pinnacles of violin playing, the Chaconne from the Partita in D minor, BWV 1004.
Hodges points out the discrepancy between this single movement, and the rest of the Partita. The other movements are dance movements; the Chaconne is not. Furthermore, the Chaconne is longer than all of the other movements of the Partita combined. This has led to some theories about the reason for this movement's composition, and what it might mean. Perhaps it is a memorial to Bach's first wife, Maria Barbara Bach, but there does not seem to be much concensus about this theory. If Bach conceived of the six solo violin pieces as having some hidden liturgical or theological meaning, the Chaconne could represent the crucifixion.
Without deciding on the memorial theory, Hodges offers an exploration of this music in the context of grief. The opening and ending phrases of this enormous solo work are identical. The substance of the sections within could be understood variously as different "stages" of grief (perhaps even approaching acceptance when the music turns to major?), but Hodges points out the reality of the nature of grief: it never leaves. The opening theme comes back unchanged at the very end to drive this point home.
In searching for a recording to listen to, I came across this album by Ingrid Matthews of the complete Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin.
I was privileged to have Ingrid Matthews as a chamber music coach earlier this summer at the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin, but I didn't realize at the time that she had made this recording twenty-five years ago (the same year I matriculated as an undergraduate at Oberlin in fact).
Oberlin and Bach, in fact, go hand in hand for me. I still vividly remember my audition, which included a major Bach work. And I studied many Bach organ works over my four years there, many of them on the 1974 Flentrop organ which suits this music beautifully.
But whether it's a complex organ in a concert hall, or a beautifully made violin in a practice room, Bach in particular is a master at creating a sound world. The preludes and fugues for organ are impressive. But no less wonderful and miraculous are the universes that Bach unfolds with a single melody instrument: a violin, or a cello.
Here is a composer who was able to bring his tremendous craftsmanship to the instrument at hand, and create works that reach out through the centuries and continue to challenge, inform, and inspire generations of musicians on nearly every instrument imaginable. And with an endlessly inventive combination of a stylized set of materials, Bach finds an emotional expressivity that feels clear and authentic to those of us who perform and listen 225 years after his death.
Is it right that we bestow such a composer with "sainthood"? I can think of no more deserving composer for this honor, so perhaps it is right, in a sense. Bach was given his own feast day in 2022 when he was added the calendar for July 28, the day of his death, and he is included in the current Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2024. In the calendar revisions of 2009, Bach was previously honored alongside George Frideric Handel and Henry Purcell (the latter two riding Bach's coattails: Handel died on April 14; Purcell, November 21). Handel and Purcell do not appear on the current sanctoral calendar.
Particularly because Bach paid such close attention to every textual detail in crafting his soundworlds, I was struck with the unpleasant incongruity of the mistake in his Rite II (contemporary language) collect: the word "thy" appears just as it does in the Rite I (traditional language) collect.
I also note that the Rite II collects for Iranaeus of Lyon (June 28), Edith Stein (August 9), and Frances Joseph Gaudet (December 31) have the same error.
Sound out your majesty, O God, and call us to your work; that, like thy [sic] servant Johann Sebastian Bach, we might present our lives and our works to your glory alone; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The collect is a strong one. Bach signed all of his sacred compositions with the Latin "Soli Deo Gloria," ("To God alone be the glory"). It's so good, in fact, it's worth a correction.
Sound out your majesty, O God, and call us to your work; that, like your servant Johann Sebastian Bach, we might present our lives and our works to your glory alone; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Labels: Bach, Ingrid Matthews, Lesser Feasts and Fasts
Today is the Feast of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, 373.
There is an oft-overlooked bit by Athanasius on page 864 of the Book of Common Prayer:
Quicunque Vult
commonly called
The Creed of Saint Athanasius
Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith.
Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish
everlastingly.
And the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity,
neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.
For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory
equal, the Majesty co-eternal.
Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost.
The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the Holy Ghost uncreate.
The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost
incomprehensible.
The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal.
And yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal.
As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated, but one uncreated, and
one incomprehensible.
So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy Ghost Almighty.
And yet they are not three Almighties, but one Almighty.
O Lord, who established your servant Athanasius, through wisdom, in your truth: Grant that we, perceiving the humanity and divinity of your Son Jesus Christ, may follow in his footsteps and ascend the way to eternal life, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Labels: BCP, Lesser Feasts and Fasts
Commemoration of Octave Day of Holy Innocents
Innocent babes were killed for Christ's sake, yea, the unrighteous king slew the sucklings : now they follow the Lamb wherever He goes, they are without fault before the throne of God, and say continually : Glory be to you, O Lord.
V. Herod was exceeding angry, and slew many children.
R. In Bethlehem Judah, the city of David.
We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Labels: Christmas, Holy Innocents, Lesser Feasts and Fasts, prayer
We're not observing the Feast of Jackson Kemper this year since the date falls on a Sunday. But if we were . . .
About one such lonesome spot amid the wet forest the following veracious conversation between a settler and an inquiring stranger is reported to have taken place. The melancholy, monotonous, monosyllabic replies tell volumes. "What's your place called?" "Moggs'." "What sort of land thereabouts?" "Bogs." "What's the climate?" "Fogs." "What's your name?" "Scroggs." "What's your house built of?" "Logs." "What do you have to eat?" "Hogs." "Have you any neighbors?" "Frogs." "Gracious! Haven't you any comforts?" "GROG."from "An Apostle of the Western Church Memoir of the Right Reverend Jackson Kemper Doctor of Divinity, First Missionary Bishop of the American Church With Notices of Some of His Contemporaries" by the Rev. Greenough White, 1900
Labels: Jackson Kemper, Lesser Feasts and Fasts
It's the first feastless week of the year. There are no feasts (lesser or greater) this week in the church calendar.
Why, only last week we were treated to such niceties as Monnica (with two n's, mind you), Dame Julian of Norwich, and Gregory of Nazianzus.
Back in January, we had a feastful week with the Confession of St. Peter (transferred), Fabian, Agnes, Vincent, Phillips Brooks, and the Ordination of Florence Li Tim-Oi.
So, this week, no excuses, no distractions -- except maybe here on the blog. Use this week to recover; there's another feastful week coming up August 9 (Laurence, Clare, Flo Nightengale, Jeremy Taylor, Jonathan Myrick Daniels, and the Ever Blessed Virgin).
But another feastless week shows up on Advent 3.
Labels: Lesser Feasts and Fasts
Tonight: a total lunar eclipse.
Last August?
The previous total lunar eclipse.
Eclipse Feasts: The August 2007 eclipse was on the feast of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. The next, Tuesday 21 December 2010 will be on the feast of St. Thomas, the Apostle (liturgical color red -- once in a red moon?).
The Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music in the Episcopal Church is considering whether to add to Lesser Feasts and Fasts a commemoration of the four U.S. Army chaplains killed on the USAT Dorchester on February 3, 1943.
In the Episcopal Church calendar, February 3 is a commemoration of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden.
So the proposed commemoration of the Four Chaplains would be on February 4.
Labels: Lesser Feasts and Fasts
April 24, 1915 marks the anniversary of the first modern genocide, a planned attempt by the Ottoman Turks to exterminate the Armenian people and the first act of "race murder" of the 20th Century. Over the course of the next several years more than one million Armenian Christians died. Yet a century of genocide was just beginning. The "quip" by Adolph Hitler on the eve of the Holocaust of "Who remembers the Armenians?" emboldened the Nazis to exterminate millions of Jews and Gypsies during the period of the Second World War. Yet there would be more as the decades of the century continued. The communist Khmer Rouge campaign of death in the 1970s in which 2 million Cambodians perished; the attempted destruction of Iraq's Kurdish population by Saddam Hussein in the late 1980's; "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims and Croats by Serbians in Bosnia in the 1990's; the massacre of more than 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda during 100 days in 1994; and as the last century ended, the beginnings in Sudan of the still unfolding tragedy in Darfur. Arguably, the 20th Century was the century of genocide. To honor the memory of the countless victims of ethnic cleansing and race murder, and to corporately pray that such tragedies are never again repeated, the Church must call the faithful to awareness and prayer by the annual commemoration of "Genocide Day" in honor of all who have perished.2006 General Convention Resolution C043
Labels: Lesser Feasts and Fasts
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