Summer: Time to Get Back to Regular Blogging!

Well, sometimes it is amazing how time flies. Since I last wrote life has been flying by at a ridiculous rate, I’ve hardly been able to keep up … but after saying goodbye to the 2010 high school graduates at my school I believe it is time to get back to the blogging. In the time since I last wrote I have had numerous ideas for blogs but never had time to sit down and actually write them down.

When I last left you we were heading into the Pre-Lent season. Now we’ve been through Lent, Holy Week, Pascha, the Paschal Season, Ascension, and Pentecost. Whew!

I worked on two important, but related projects during Lent. The first one Anne and I began last summer, was a complete reworking and typesetting of our Holy Saturday Matins a.k.a. Lamentations service. We were determined to finish this service in time for rehearsals the 2^nd and 3^rd week of Lent because it also required creating new booklets for the congregation. In order to prepare those booklets in time we needed to have sung through every note of the new typesetting.

This particular service of Holy Week is one of our parish favorites. The entire service is sung antiphonally, by candlelight: the first half – thru Psalm 50 – in male / female choirs, the second half – the canon to the end – in two mixed choirs. But why did this service require the many hours of labor that Anne and I and my daughter, Juliana put into it? We have been singing this just fine for years. The initial work for this service was completed many years ago by our dear friend, Fr. David Anderson. His work included, not only a new translation, but also a setting of the Byzantine melodies to the new text. His work was done in long hand before the age of digital typesetting and we have been working off of photocopies of photocopies for years. There were also a number of awkward moments where the flow of the melody and the rhythmic accent of the text gave us trouble year after year. Remember, we are talking about almost two hundred short troparia. The original melodies were formulaic and designed to have text that just works, as I am convinced it does in the original Greek. By working to make it more consistent we knew we could sing this service more accurately with less rehearsal, not to mention simply read it more easily by being digitally typeset.

The second project, similar to the first, was to go through our Holy Weeks books and typeset the sections that were the most problematic to read. As with the Lamentations service, we have been using certain settings for years, but they were not optimally readable and contained many corrections that had been made by hand. By getting the stichera and other portions of the services properly typeset and edited, including breath marks, phrasing, etc, we were better able to sing these services with less rehearsal, more accuracy, better flow and most importantly enable peace and prayer on the kliros.

In the weeks after Pascha, Anne and I went back through all of the Holy Week services made the necessary corrections and have already recopied the pages with changes so that next year when we approach these services everything will be in place. I can’t wait.

Why spend time getting organized and planning ahead? Part 2

I decided I needed to do a little follow-on from my last blog and include some samples. I just have to begin by saying that preparing for this Sunday was a classic “Thank God, I look ahead” moment! This Sunday is Forgiveness Sunday and also, for those of us on Old Calendar, the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord. That means combining normal Sunday stuff with the Triodion and Festal requirements. What struck me at rehearsal this week was that even with loads of planning, order of service printouts and a clear picture of what each of the four services would look like. (See sample of this Sunday’s printout, click to enlarge.) Everything took three or four times the normal explanation. Imagine if I had just shown up to rehearsal without that clear picture of the liturgical complexities that we would encounter?

So back to the follow-up … we have our liturgy music in one 2.5-inch D-ring binder. All pages are printed double-sided to minimize the number of pages and all pages and tabs are clearly labeled. Each tab is numbered and designates a specific section of liturgy – Great Litany, 1^st antiphon, Little Litany, 2^nd antiphon, Only-Begotten Son, etc. Within each tab, options are designated with letters and then have page numbers. Now you might wonder why we did it this way. The answer is quite simple. My husband, Ron – the engineer, said, “Numbers imply chronology and moving forward, letters are used to delineate choice.” It was hard to argue with that kind of logic. (See a sample page of our Liturgy Table of Contents, at top of blog.) So the Great Litany is #1, the First Antiphon is #2 and so forth. Within each tab the choices are labeled A, B, C, etc. So to answer my friend Denise’s question, yes it does all fit in one book, but it is a big book. Remember also, that we put Divine Liturgy music for Nativity/Theophany, Holy Week and Pascha in separate books. Our singers clip the pages to the tab before the service in order to expedite turning to the correct page during liturgy.

So the organization is clear and enables us to, literally, be “on the same page.” Once services are planned, then comes the fun part, planning rehearsals. With the beginning of Lent upon us, I have begun the process of planning my weekly rehearsals. Looking ahead at the entire season enables us to have adequate time to rehearse everything necessary for the Lenten, Holy Week and Paschal Services. Since we usually have a few extra singers for Paschal Matins and Liturgy, we designate particular rehearsals, in advance, that are for specific services or specific service music. BTW, yes we rehearse weekly, every Wednesday, from 7:45 pm (after Vespers) to 9:30 pm. During Lent or other intense Festal seasons we will often rehearse until 10 pm. We also have additional rehearsals on Lazarus Saturday and Holy Saturday. The culture of rehearsals and rehearsal attendance will no doubt be the subject of multiple blogs! My point here is that rehearsals also need structure and planning and looking ahead too ensure adequate time to rehearse.

Why do we bother with all these and many more nuts and bolts? To enable, calm and peace on the kliros and a beautiful offering of ourselves, and the worship to God.

(BTW, I apologize that I couldn't get the images in a logical place. However, if you click on them you can see the detail more easily.)

Why spend time getting organized and planning ahead?

This is actually a multi-level question that can be addressed from a variety of different directions. Interestingly, my daughter -- who now lives on the other side of the country -- and I had a similar idea today about why we plan ahead. In fact, I laughed out loud when I looked at her Facebook status this evening, since earlier in the day I had the almost identical thought:

“The truth about my constant state of preparedness and anti-procrastination is that it stems from true laziness. By taking the time to prepare ahead, then when it comes time I can do ’it‘ (whatever that may be) so much faster and thus sleep later, or leave earlier, or whatever it is I am attempting to be lazy about!”

Juliana is right! I am organized and plan ahead because of a strange sort of laziness. If I plan in advance, I can go into an almost automatic pilot when the time comes to do whatever the task is, with less worry that it will come off well. This has considerable implications for the work I do in church music.

On this wacky liturgical day, the Sunday after Theophany and the beginning of the Triodion, I decided to look ahead and plan the music for the Sundays between now and the end of Lent – the order of service for the next eight Sundays. For me that means creating a WORD doc that will be printed up and copied for each of the music stands. Each week at rehearsal the singers will take that sheet and “clip” their books in the order for Sunday. Assuming I have done my preparation well and made no mistakes, little or nothing will change for those weeks from the work that I did today. Then, on the Sunday itself, the singers will literally be on the same page. Transitions between liturgical actions and music will for the most part be fairly seamless and a certain peace and calm will be present on the kliros and in the nave. OK, I am exaggerating a bit – things do occasionally come up – but the possibility for peace and calm on the kliros is real and tangible.

Short history, for background purposes: Years ago when Anne and I first began working together as a team, we had to spend a ridiculous amount of time sorting and filing music. We have always had a choir of 25 – 40 singers and that means having 8-12 books ready to go for Sunday morning, including our personal conducting copies. We finally realized that it was big pain to take that amount of time each week prepping books and filing music. There had to be a better way!

Thus begun our 25-year journey to the perfect choir book organization!

At St. Lawrence Church in Felton we have several volumes of choir books –for each volume we have one for each music stand and director, each sectionalized with numbered tabs for each section, and choices within sections indicated with letters. We have books for: Divine Liturgy, Vespers, Matins, Nativity/Theophany, Pascha, Weddings, Funerals, Holy Week, Presanctified Liturgies. Perhaps I have forgotten one? Our system has grown and been improved over the years, but the basic system we put into place so many years ago is still intact.

Our Divine Liturgy book, lovingly call “The Big Black Book,” contains all the music for the year, except for the Nativity, Theophany and Paschal seasons. This most-used book has EVERYTHING for Sunday Liturgies for the year, except menaia commemorations that fall irregularly on Sundays. Yes, I mean everything – all troparia and kontakia, all prokeimena, all koinonika, all festal music, including antiphons. By having the sections organized by number and letter our Sunday schedule might say: Great Litany-1B, 1^st Antiphon 2C … Trop of Res 9-D, Trop for Feast 10G … Choir members are responsible and able to be on the correct page at the right time, no ambiguity. OK, honestly there are some choir singers who are better at “clipping the books” and turning the pages than others. But in a pinch almost any of them could do it.

So back to my premise about laziness …

Creating the system of organization did take time … hours, days, months, years of time … but now that it is in place, liturgy and prayer is MUCH easier. It is easier to prep, and more peaceful to enact. Rehearsals can also go more smoothly. The singers can easily turn to Cherubikon 17H, page 5. And I can make a schedule for music for 8 weeks in advance and print it up for the choir, knowing that nothing will need to change and it will be understood.

Beautiful singing and worship of the Triune God can happen calmly and peacefully, with the possibility of hearing the angels join us.

Questions, questions, questions ... answers?

Last Sunday morning, the first of the New Year, I woke up with my head buzzing with questions. But these weren't questions for which I wanted answers, but questions that others have asked or might ask me about why I do what I do with my time and energy. So, as I pondered these questions this week, and continued to create a lengthy list, I decided perhaps the best way to deal with them was to create a blog with each entry answering one of these questions. It is curious to me that all of the questions can be answered quite simply by two overarching reasons, but that for each question these were quickly followed by details of greater and more unrelated specificity. In other words, although the basic premise of each answer is same, the minutia of each answer has its own detail or path.

So here are the list of questions:

• Why do I spend hours typesetting clean, readable editions of old favorites?
• Why am I so fussy about how a text is set to the melody?
• Why must the accents of the text follow the accents of the melody?
• Why do I spend hours in rehearsal preparing for a feast, when I know many other parishes don’t?
• Why is it important to strive for beautiful singing and rendering of the liturgical text, motion, moment?
• Why does it matter, so much to me, that the church calendar line-up with the civil calendar?
• Why do I think that the creation of new compositions of liturgical music is as important as preserving the old favorites?
• Why do I insist that the English we use in church be elevated but understandable?
• Why does it drive me crazy when the rhythm/pitch/tempo of the choir/chanter is out of sync with the clergy who are serving?
• Why don't I care if there are 4, 16 or 40 singers, so long as they have rehearsed?
• Why have I spent hours copying, organizing and creating choir books?
• Why do I "kill trees", in order to copy the order of service for each music stand, for each and every service?
• Why do I bother to work on vocal technique, sightsinging and other "musician things" with amateur singers?
• Why do I bother to create recordings of what we do in the parish?
• OK, really folks the list goes on and on ... but this is enough for now.

The simple two-part answer to ALL of the above:

In whatever I do, whether it be in church or out of church, I strive to do my best for the glory of God. Secondly, it is because I want to help bring children, teens and young adults from the ugliness, and sadness of this world, to the light of Christ and to the historic church.

I realize the the above are simplistic and without detail, context or back-up, but it is my starting point and the starting point for this blog. I promise to post more details about various questions, in no particular order, over the next days, weeks and months. Read if you like; otherwise, feel free to find another blog that might suit your fancy more.