As we live our mortal existence, we sigh away with St. Paul.  The good things we want to do, we do not do, and end up doing the very things we don’t want to do.  It is true with how we treat others, how we do our jobs, how we love our families, how we discipline our children.  It affects our stewardship.  It affects how we look at the gifts we have been given.  We selfishly and slavishly look after our own needs to the detriment of others.

It is because of our lack of goodness.  It has been so since the first human beings disobeyed God in the garden so long ago.  As we proceed on life’s way, we acutely feel these axiomatic negations of our character.  Are we really good?  Is who we are what we really desire to be?  In most cases, we distract our selves from knowing the true self.  It is just too painful to truly know and plumb the depths of our mortality.

And so much of life is living in this tension.  Yet, tension is not such a bad thing, is it?

Tension looks for a resolution.  To those of you music theorists, a V chord wants naturally to resolve to I.  A leading tone MUST lead to I or it feels incomplete.  A 2-1 suspension, wants to leave the 2 and become 1 in unision.  The tritone wants to leave the 4th and come to the 5th.  Music is, in many ways, ordered tensions with great resolutions.  Each master cadence gives us the feeling of being whole, like eating so many beans.

Hilse’ s “Meditation” has a tremendous chain of 2-1 suspensions toward the end of the piece that lingers and makes itself unavoidable as the centerpiece of the moment.  Yet, it peacefully resolves as the melodies underneath it remind you of what came before and the passing tones out of the suspension lead to I and hang out on the pedal point.  This piece is a metaphor for my life.  I hear echoes and reminders of what came before, good and bad, while living in a suspension that wishes to resolve to 1.  It cannot resolve to 1 until the 3-in-1 takes me and moves me from incompletely mortal to completely resurrected.

But the beauty of the tension of a suspension is that is is both past and now, waiting for tomorrow, which it is also part of.  Three notes sound at once and the middle dissonance is removed.  The past and future are in harmony and all is well.  The note that doesn’t belong is what makes the third so beautiful when it resolves.

Our dissonant mortality will be harmonized with our resurrected future.  We live that reality now, but it is still in tension with the past, struggling with our original man inside of us who seeks to pull us down unto death.  Yet, another kind of suspension: the second adam on the tree has made the once and future resolution possible.  This is the most beautul tension of them all!  Washed in water and hearing the words of life, the old man becomes dissonant, yet is made more beautiful when he is finally resolved and dissolved into the new.

This week I was especially surprised in chapel.  As we were exiting, completely out of left field, I got to hear Maurice Durufle’s “Prelude sur l’introit de l’epiphanie.”  I know this piece so well, that it took me about 30 seconds to notice it was actually playing–this time, not in my mind.

The way the piece starts out is so bold and unapologetic; Durufle wastes no time getting to the theme of the piece.  Where I work, we have a very nice Cassavant Freres organ, with great sounding principal; while it was designed mainly to handle Germanic baroque music, it has some very French mixtures and reeds, and some horizontal trumpets.  The organist interpreted Durufle very well and made my grey January day a much happier one.

Meditation by Walter Hilse is fantastic.  Todd Wilson renders it perfectly on the Aeolian Skinner in Atlanta.  He starts kind of slowly, a bit straightforward, light on the string stops, closed swell boxes.  Then he opens up a little more, slowly, slowly, with some ascending tonal harmony with a few good passing tones and suspensions, then he goes modal and sounds more dreamy on these great reeds.  The pedal point sets in and it reminds me of parts of Holst’s “Planets” in terms of how the tension is built, but then it gently fades away with a beautiful descending line in the principal pipes held over the strings.

But wait, it gets better!  Leo Sowerby’s “Sonatina for Organ – Very Slowly” is fast becoming my favorite piece right now.  And that’s saying something, because French, he is not.  It starts out so dissonantly, almost like Mussorgsky.  A great Klarine giving a modal line, then in fades the half-opened swell box on some salicional or gentle reeds, then comes this Langalais-like blockflute.  The melody is so haunting and beautiful, almost aqua green.  There’s a small repeated line in the strings, and he takes it into three new keys, very blusey, very jazzy, and enters the principle.  Oh Lord, at about 3 minutes into the piece, the beautiful line makes me melt.  There’s this  F – G flat – A flat -B flat -E flat – A – A flat- F line;encapsulating a ridiculously, deliciously emphasized tritone, all floating in a principle flute over the swelled string stop.  It just doesn’t get any better, or does it?

Chromaticism and accidentals all over the place, he lets the air out of the piece, almost like the sun going down, yet still playing with a few tritones, returning to the early modal dissonance of the piece, while the swell reminds you of the earlier three note themes.  Sowerby keeps the attention by messing with you, is he going to return back to where he came?  How will he end it?  Floating flute line, then a clarinet, almost like a swan singing in the distance, and a few sweet chords in the swell end it gently.

Call me crazy, but this piece is so awesome.

A few months ago I was in the upswing of my cyclical obsession with Dupre’s Prelude and Fugue in g minor.  That passed as I was discovering the joys of Mint Royale and Verve remixes on iTunes, punctuated with Portishead’s odd intervals.

Now I am dreaming Dupre’s Prelude and Fugue in f minor all night long.  Mostly the fugue.  Over and over.  Specifically, the opening 4 phrases of Todd Wilson’s interpretation of the piece on disc 2 from the Delos release of “In A Quiet Cathedral”

I can’t say enough about this awesome album.  Wilson’s selection along with quiet, peaceful rendition is simply outstanding.  Add that to Delos’ phenomenal recording techniques and you have something special.  (And 2 discs at $19.99 isn’t bad either! Although I got my copy 9 years ago in Tower Records’ annex for clearing out overstock in St. Mark’s Place, NYC.  Sadly, it’s gone now.)

I love how the prelude has the same gentle arpeggios all throuought the movement, and then gives way to a sentinel principal expressing the theme, with the string stops breathing underneath and then taking the theme again, dueling with the principal pipes.  The Aeolian-Skinner does not disappoint as the artist makes great use of the swell and great.

I bought another interpretation of this piece on iTunes,  from Naxos’ Organ Encyclopedia series.  While Janette Fishell plays well, (Props to anyone who can play Dupre!) she does not have the same fluidity and softness that Wilson achieves.  What’s more, she closes the swell too much at times, and it squeezes the sound.  Other times, she loses momentum and it feels like the fugue is almost lost.

The piece ends gently, with the same ending chord progression, almost exactly like the fugue in g minor.

While the prelude and fugue in g minor are evocative of a rainy day, riding on a train, this piece is more evocative of a botanical garden on spring night, where the clouds are purple and the sun is illuminating the horizon in that honeysuckle orange, pouring through tht trees.

I got up this morning with Harold Melvin’s “Wake Up Everybody” in my head.

There was a PSA when I was growing up in NYC the ’80s encouraging people to become teachers and mentors to others that used the first few verses of this song. It made an impression and stuck in my head all these years.

But I never heard the whole song until I found it on youtube and iTunes this morning.

I was struck about the excellent message and honest entreatment to live a life of love and service. It was like an exhortation from a musical pulpit to live a Christ-like life. After the first few verses and choruses, the song goes into a kind of “Hey you, in X vocation, do a good job!” type of challenge.

My favorite lines are “You preachers: Stop preaching what you teach! Teach the TRUTH! Wake up preachers” and “Politicians: Stop lying! Why don’t somebody help the poor people?” and finally, “You businessman: Stop cheating, stop cheating, stop cheating, cheating!”

“It don’t matter, what race, creed, or color, everybody, we need each other.”

I was recently listening to Ji-Yoen Choi’s solo organ recording, where she plays the Reddel Organ at Valparaiso’s Chapel of the Resurrection.   I have really enjoyed Jean Langlais over the years, and Choi’s rendition of the Fete for Organ is just so lyrical.  At 16 seconds in, I closed my eyes, and was transported back in space and time.  The small, brassy mixture she uses, which is so typical of Langlais, flooded my heart with so many memories.

Not only is this very similar to John Cook’s Fanfare in terms of the sound of the mixture, but so many Christmas pieces we sang in the chapel lent themselves to this type of registration.

As the years pass, I find myself longing to return to the Chapel of the Resurrection – it is my most favorite place on earth.  It is where the scriptures were opened to me like never before. It is where in word and song, I learned the truth of God’s unstoppable grace – I am not held accountable for my sins – and that God has forgiven my sins only because of the work of Jesus Christ.  What pure Gospel this is!  Romans 7 and 8 came alive for me as part of the text for Bach’s motet, “Jesu Meine Freude.”  Life changed for me because of that place and time.

The Advent-Christmas vespers was such a warm time amid a cold, wet, flat campus.  Life happened indoors as it slowed down out of doors.  The soft lighting, the bright sounds, the joyful praise we raised to our Christ, is so remarkable.  It is a glimmer of things to come.  It was a time of discovery, a purer time, where there was more simple knowledge-spiritual milk-to learn and digest.  Now, I must grapple with the heavier stuff, the knowledge of self, the understanding of the bondage of the will, original sin’s grip on us, our lot that is thrown in with Adam, the human misery – the fact that I am surrounded by death.

Is it a wonder that naturally, I want to be there?  Again and again.

There is where the light would stream, vaulting and barreling through the 5 storeys of glass.  There is where I received the body and blood in the bread and wine, in the most dazzling setting.   I could not but admit God’s unsearchable greatness; I could come with no merit of my own, to receive the great gift of Christ’s living presence, at a time when I knew practically nothing.  I just enjoyed God and what he had done for me.

So the sights and sounds of that place fill my heart, and are readily called to the fore of my mind with small triggers.  (How I thank God for the art and music that has been used to draw me to him!)

And such it is, that I am drawn to that place.

And not just that Physical place, but the Spiritual place that was uncluttered by years of trials and doubt.

It took me many years to realize that God creates  new experiences and new ways to enjoy Him and his presence.  You can never go back, but you can truly appreciate where you have come from, and take that with you on your journey.  Our journey that leads heavenward will end in a place that is even better than my favorite place on earth.  If what I had at VU is but a fraction, a mere dot on the head of a pin, of the joy and splendor of heaven, I can barely wait to get THERE. To that place. To a glimpse of that SPIRITUAL place, better, because I will have known all the sorrows of this life, while truly knowing an unending joy.

That is my home, my Furusato of the eschaton.

So, as the year draws to a close, and I enter into my 10th year since I graduated and left THAT place, I, very Janus like, look back and smile, but look forward and long for that day when our joy is made complete by Him.

I just read this at Ultrasonic Scattershot, a blog about uncommon music by Bill Stachour. This guy’s comments are spot on! Please read to learn more about great Durufle Recordings.

http://ultrasonicscattershot.blogspot.com/2007/09/three-recordings-of-maurice-durufls.html