Easing Back into It

Sang last night in our first choir concert of the Spring season. It went well. Some friends brought me a stool I could perch myself on. And when, during the first number, I discovered that holding up my black folder was too much of a strain on my sore abs, I lay my music down on another stool that'd conveniently been left in front of me.

I should have the music memorized by now, anyway.

It's a little frustrating to be able to do stuff like this and still not be allowed to drive or mow the lawn or even take out the used cat litter out to the trash can in the alley, but I guess that's how it goes.

And Sunday, when we have our big concert, I think I'll bring a lightweight folding music stand. Can't depend on that other stool being there.

In Today's Breaking News . . .

Got a call early this afternoon from the physician's assistant at my gynecological-oncologist's office. The lab results from my surgery were in. And guess what? My surgeon is not God. Turns out the mass he removed from me last Thursday was not, after all, a low malignant-potential tumor. It was bog-standard ovarian cancer. Stage 1A, Grade 1.

Which if you're going to get ovarian cancer is the stage and grade you want it to be. The PA said they took and analyzed "a gazillion" specimens and everything except the right ovary was negative.

So that means they got it, right?

Not so fast. Turns out the mass ruptured during surgery, so Dr. C himself puts it at Stage 1C instead.

Now I thinks to meself, I thinks, How on earth could that have happened . . . ? Did somebody poke a finger in the wrong place and Pop Goes the Weasel?

Yeah, right. That naive bit of dubiety rises from my imagining that my ovaries and other bits were just floating around loose in my abdomen and the tumorous one simply had to be picked up and cut off. No. Things in the body are adhered and attached to other things so they won't rattle around in your insides and get all tangled up. And considering that my right ovary/tumor had a very delicate-looking septation off one end of it (I know-- I saw the picture at my gynecologist's office in February), it's not surprising it should have torn a bit in the removal process.

In a couple of weeks I may well find out if my angle on this is correct, because I'm to come in for a follow-up visit with Dr. C and the PA. Still working out the logistics on getting a ride into town, but it'll be either on the 10th or the 17th.

The way I'm thinking about it is, the mass was a Stage 1C ovarian cancer, and we'll be discussing how to keep it in the past tense.

. . . Yeah, that very well could mean chemo.

Idoanwannadochemoidoanwannadochemoidoanwannadochemo!!!

Yeah, nobody does. But people take it and they get through it and come out fine the other end. And if they have to fumigate my belly, so to speak, to make sure all the cancer bugs are gone, that's what we have to do.

The Lord is good; His Spirit is with us, and I am reminded that the reason ovarian cancer is so scary is that most of the time it's not discovered until it's in a later and much less treatable stage. It's not that ovarian cancer cells are more virulent or potent than the kind that settle in elsewhere.

And even though this has turned out to be what I feared back in early February, it's not the same. Thanks to the providence of God working through my gynecologist, this mass was discovered early. And if the fight needs to continue a bit before total victory is won, so be it.

+++++++++++++++

Otherwise, I'm doing pretty well this first full day home. Swelling and bruising going down, pain well under control even without constant Vicodin. Enough energy that I have to remind myself not to do Forbidden Things. Got up mid-afternoon and came down for some lunch; then early in the evening I got dressed (yay! I can get into my corduroy jeans!) and my friend Frieda* and I went out for a stroll around my garden to see what's in bloom.

After supper she sat down at the piano and played some music she'd brought, then started in on hymns. Unfortunately, the hymnals I had on the piano ledge didn't have some of the hymn/tune combinations we wanted, and I knew better than to run (!) up to the third floor to get the hymnbooks that do. So I set my Welsh hymnal before her and she played "Sanctus" and "Aberystwyth" for me while I stood there and sang them yn Cymraeg.

Oooh, danger! danger! Don't get someone who's even part-Welsh started singing Welsh hymns at 10:30 at night! Especially one who's only five days post-op! I wanted to sing more, more-- and knew I needed to stop before I messed myself up. Not from pain-- I'm trained to do intercostal breathing, so it didn't affect the surgery site. But from pure exhaustion, that I would have ignored from the hwyl of the words and the music.

No. There are times to sing till you drop. Tonight was not one of them.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Nineteen

Saturday, 24 December, 1988
Christmas Eve
Löhenthal*, Switzerland

As for what transpired today, I got up around 9:00, took a shower, and appeared upstairs. Everyone else had already eaten but Mrs. Renzberger* produced breakfast for me. Instant guilt, even though she’d said for me to sleep as long as I liked.

The family put up the Christmas tree today. Lukas* and I did the decorating. He put on the red candles in their clip-on holders and showed me how they also use these hanging fireworks-like sparklers that one can light just for fun. I started in on the ornaments. They were, characteristically, heavy clear stained glass balls, each of all one color; though some had designs and textures molded or blown into them, most were smooth. I’m afraid I left a memorial to myself behind-- I shortened up most of the strings on the balls I hung, to keep them from sitting on branches below.

There were also a few handmade decorations and contributions from family friends, which Lukas told me the story of. And a contribution of a red-orange tail feather from Kapten Blood*, the West African parrot.

Didn’t do anything terribly useful after that except look at a French Gothic book Lukas pulled off the shelf for me, till time to go fetch his maternal grandmother from her apartment at an old-age complex near Zürich.

I went with him and sat there in Granny's front room, feeling very dull, as if I hadn’t a great deal to say. But silence can be a virtue, can’t it?

(On the way over I did ask about his mother and he said don’t worry, I’m not being any trouble. Well, if you say so.)

His grandmother, Frau Heimdorfer*, treated us to coffee (tea) in the complex snack bar and then we drove back to Löhenthal. I sat in the back seat, contemplated the scenery, and idly let the German conversation in the front seat wash over me.

When we returned I had just enough time to wrap my present for the family before time for supper and time to meet Lukas’s middle brother Thaddeaus*.

Dinner was all sorts of charcuterie, better than what I had in France, despite Greti’s* constant concern that I wouldn’t like it. Table conversation started out in English and a little French but gradually went predominantly into Swiss German. It occurred to me I didn’t mind, greatly. It relieved me from the necessity of having to be clever myself. And it reminded me a lot of the Coverdale College* dining hall, where due to the noise I can’t understand anything being said around me anyway. I found I enjoyed the sound of Lukas speaking German. The Swiss do it more softly and gently than the Germans do and his voice in his native language is pleasant in itself.

I wasn’t totally left out, though. Talked about England a bit, since everyone there had been there.

After dinner the tree candles were lit and the family assembled in the living room. Lukas officiated and set the mood by having the "Pastoral Symphony" played on the stereo (Handel’s, from the Messiah). Then he read the Christmas story, according to Luke, through the annunciation to the shepherds, from the NIV out of consideration to moi-même. After that, we lit the candles we had been given, passing the flame and with it a wish for peace around the circle. Then each person put his or her candle on the tree.

Then, in a move designed to destroy my peace and everyone else’s, Lukas’ mother asked me to sing a carol or something else for Christmas. Oy vay. Seems dear Lukas had given his mother a proper buildup for my vocal abilities. And, she said, none of her Kinder will sing anymore. They did to a certain age but then refused. So I was elected.

Deciding it was appropriate after the text about the angels, I gave a verse of "Angels We Have Heard on High," to everyone’s seeming satisfaction.

But I wasn’t off the hook yet. Frau Renzberger declared that after she read the company a story I was to sing again. Panic!

Fortunately the story was long. In German, of course. I caught words here and there. As explained to me afterwards, it was about a former political prisoner who had the meaning of Christmas and freedom suddenly come together for him on simultaneously hearing Handel and being given a drink of warm milk. The homely comfort and the glory of it combined . . .

I’m not sure why I did what I did then. Yes, I do, too. Instead of a traditional American or British Christmas carol, I, after some preliminary fumbling around for the proper key (I couldn’t trust myself not to crack on the high f''), sang Schubert’s "Du Bist die Ruh’." I did it because it’s in German. And I did it especially because I remembered what Lily Michaels* [a little girl I used to babysit] once said, that it reminded her of Jesus. So it seemed more in the tone of the story just read than a conventional carol would have been.

I sang with my eyes shut to keep off the nerves (I know, Dr. Smith† said never do that) and only stumbled over the words once. Still, I’m no Dame Janet Baker and maybe I shouldn’t’ve tried it. One gets that feeling when the predominant response is, "Oh, we know how difficult it is to sing before people!"

These preliminaries over, it was time for presents. They told me that if the family is going to Christmas Eve service each person usually just opens one or two, often those given by friends they’ll be seeing at church. But tonight things were running late and Thaddeaus was taking the only car back to Neigendorf*, where he lives. That meant everyone would have to walk and Grandmother wasn’t up to it. Leaving her at home alone wouldn’t’ve done, either.

So church was punted for the evening and everything was opened. Lots of socks; Lukas and his brother gave each other calendars; the former brought all sorts of things from Oxford. And there were two gifts for me. One was a dark blue-black scarf with a-- what do you call it?--oil swirl design running through it. Turns out Lukas had suggested it and his mother had picked it out. Funny, because we’d been talking about the Oxford fashion for that sort of thing at dinner and Mr. L. Renzberger had not betrayed a clue. My other present was an assortment of Swiss chocolates. Good. I can serve them for tea in my room at Coverdale.

Mine for them was hiding under the tree and thus was one of the last opened. My drawing of the Hobbit House went over rather better than my singing did, I think. And it seems to be rather appropriate, since most of the walls of the house are hung with contributions from friends and family. I immediately told them I’d need to take it back to Oxford to get it framed, but Lukas’s father said no, no, they’d get it done.

Maybe that’s better anyway. They can choose the frame style and mat color to match their décor-- or maybe choose not to hang it at all.

After presents were all opened there was more wine and more cookies and playing with the bird, who’d been let out of his cage. Me, I did not venture to pet him. Would like to keep my fingers.

The household retired to bed around 11:00, whereupon I discovered something very awkward-- Lukas’s mother had been kind enough to wash all my dirty clothes today, but she doesn’t have a clothes dryer.‡ Therefore my flannel nightgown was still very wet and I had no idea where my cotton boatneck shirt, which would’ve done to sleep in, had been hung to dry, let alone the underwear which I would need in the morning.

I finally decided to make do sleeping in my bathrobe, not being comfortable sleeping in nothing, but it was a pis aller. I’m afraid I retired in a very uncomfortable state, especially inside me: I wish I were pretty, I wish I could sing properly, I wish now I were ten years younger and could go back and do everything right, I wish I never had to cause anyone any trouble . . .
____________________________
†My voice teacher at KU
‡They had the typical European drying room, where wet or spin-dried semi-wet clothes could be hung on racks or laid flat on slatted wooden shelves and take advantage of the heat emanating from the not-highly-efficient, uninsulated furnace and water heater.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Two

Wednesday, 7 December, 1988
Caen to Mont-St.-Michel to Chartres

ON THE TRAIN-- Unbelievable, but I actually made it onto the 6:48 AM train to Pontorson (final destination, Rennes). No line at the guichet at this hour so it didn’t take any time at all to get my EurailPass validated. The guidebooks all tell you to write on a piece of paper what you think the correct usage limitation dates are, but I couldn’t find anything to tell me exactly how long a one-month pass is to go, thirty or thirty-one days. So I went for broke and put down the 7th of January as the end date, and ticket agent accepted it and wrote it in. Hope to gracious that’s acceptable. Some of the literature said something about a special stamp . . . but maybe that’s just the validation seal.


7:05 AM-- M. le Conducteur was just in. He didn’t even look that closely at the thing.

There was an older couple in the car when I got on. I'd looked around and discovered the only place to put my luggage was on the overhead rack. When it came the turn of the heavy blue suitcase, I grabbed hold and tried hoisting it over my head. Impossible. I simply could not manage it. But the gentleman saw my plight and came to the rescue. As he deposited my bag on the rack, he and his wife gave me greeting, in French.

Um, I know what they just said-- the polite response is, um, um . . .

And the gentleman said, "Mademoiselle ne pas française."

"Oui, Monsieur."

"Vous êtes l'anglaise?"

"Non."

"Hollandaise?"

"Non, Monsieur. Je suis une Americaine."

Funny! But I guess I have a lot of both English and Dutch in me, with the Zickefooses and the Lewises and the Hendrickses and so on . . .


MONT-ST.-MICHEL, 1:40 PM-- O mon âme, pour toi que reste-t’il á faire, mais brise ton orgeuil, devant si grande mystere?

Comment á dire? The coach travels the winding road from Pontorson, passes through another little village or suburb, winds through nondescript wintry fields and hedgerows, and all of a sudden, out from behind a stand of trees or a screening cottage, there it is. You think it’s a mirage but no-- "Domine! non confundar in aeternum!" You sit back stunned and say to yourself, "So, it does exist!"

You look again, and drawing ever closer and ever more distinct it rises against the horizon like a vision of the New Jerusalem come down from God-- Mont-St.-Michel, the Mount of the Holy Archangel. And you weep. C’est tout.

The bus driver drove over the causeway and pulled up on the beach, under the walls and next to the portal. Having confirmed the hour of departure-- tout en française-- I got down, one of only four passengers on this trip.

The calm and silence spread like a benediction. I looked up through the portail de la ville and saw how the sunlight, radiant in a clear blue sky, glistened on the buttresses and spires high above, striking a high resounding note off the gilded effigy of St. Michael on the peak of the fleché of the crossing of the church at the island’s summit. It was so beautiful I was overcome again.

But practical matters came to the rescue: I was out of film in the Minolta and by the time I’d put a new roll in I’d recovered my equilibrium.

Mostly.

It would be impossible to describe all the little winding streets with their stairs and bypaths leading up, down, around, but predominently up, up, magnetically drawing you to the Abbey itself. But every step brought new vistas, new compositions in stone and sky, new marvels of unself-conscious beauty, all with that blessed sunlight illuminating and highlighting the textures, the details, and the warm yellow-orange of the stone. The only sound was the slapping of the waves in the canal estuary and, as I climbed higher, the cooing and flutter of pigeons in the tower above.

I seldom saw another soul and I did have to wonder if anyone lives here at all or if the whole town has been made into a museum. I did see one young man cleaning the windows of a restaurant just inside the inner gate, but not much of anyone else. Perhaps the village missed a little of the medieval clamour and bustle but it was blessed peace for me.

I wish I had a better voice: l’ambiance, le lumiere du soliel, le jour, le Mont lui-même-- all demanded Berlioz’s "Te Decet Hymnus," and sung better than I could in my breathless way.

Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion,
Et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem.
Exaudi, exaudi orationem meam:
Ad te caro omnis veniet!

The whole atmosphere of the place led me to worship, to a desire to kneel down and pray, right there on the pavement stones of the little ascending street. That impulse I would save for the church. But first I explored and photographed (and photographed! and photographed!) all the little lanes and ramifications, with their continually-surprising compositions of walls and steps. I would let the greatest thing come towards the end.

To reach the abbey one enters a kind of porch with leaded glass windows and more staircases leading upwards. There sits une jeune femme behind a guichet and she sells you a ticket for 23F. Then you go up the steps and through an archway out into the sunlight again. The echo of the pigeons in the tower is omnipresent, like a great whirring machine. As you proceed up the way, you can see low arched doors set into the wall to your left. These were, or are, the cells of the monks. To the right, en haut, is the crossing tower and the pinnacles of the Gothic choir. The southern portal to the church was ravished in sunlight, the beauty of the whole an aweful thing to behold. Oh my God and Father!

Tibi omnes angeli,
Tibi coeli et potestates,
Tibi cherubim et seraphim
Incessabili voce proclamant:
Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus,
Deus Sabaoth!
Pleni sunt coeli et terra majestatis gloriae tuae!

Mon cher Hector has been in a similar state, and I have the advantage of him-- I am a Christian. But at last I began to understand what he meant by "Les grands transports."

The south door is the Mass entry only. To visit the church one goes through the little bookstore and out into the wide court before the western face. There are abbots buried under its pavement, but of course that used to be inside the nave-- I think-- until three bays of it collapsed in the 18th Century. And you can see mason’s marks-- or are they positioning codes? on the pavers.

From here you can see far out to the west, south, and to the north, where then, at 11:00 am, the signature shadow of the Mont spread across the tidal flats.

The west front is handsome in an honest, homely way; they must’ve done it to match the old Romanesque one after the disaster. I learned later that the spire that now surmounts it all is a 19th Century contribution. In that case, it’s an instance of when the Neo-Gothic improvers actually accomplished their goal. There was sort of an anti-climactic onion dome before. The new spire gathers all the energy from the rocks and buildings below and sends it straight up to God in a transformation from material to spiritual that is more than metaphor. And suspended between heaven and earth sanctus Michael signifer acts as God’s agent for the final defeat of Satan, our accuser, and oh, Lord, may that actually happen soon.

One of my fellow-passengers from the bus came out of the church just as I was about to go in. And so I had it all to myself.

The light, filtered by the cames of the glass, was playing in softly-formed arches on the stonework of the choir ambulatory and reflecting gently off the plastered groin vault of the side aisle. Mon Dieu! qu’est-ce tu as fait!

The Romanesque nave has a wooden barrel-vault shaped ceiling but the choir is loftier and has a ribbed vault with bosses. There is an oculus, about four feet wide, in the center of the crossing. It has a trap door, through a hole in which passes the bell rope, to the tower above.

I could describe all the architectural features; heaven knows I’m used to writing such essays by now. But I will, God willing, let the slides speak for me on that.

Before I took more than one or two pictures I did sit and pray-- there were no kneelers in the nave-- I can’t say I told God this in so many words but I was most grateful for the opportunity to be private in that place. I prayed for my vocation, that God would show me what He wants me to do in Architecture once I return to America, or if He still wants me to be an Architect at all, and if not, Lord, what do You want me to do? I sang the old 15th Century [Johannes Ciconia] Gloria, and though it was done softly the acoustics are sensitive enough that it still set up echoes. I know it sounds overweening to say so, but somehow, when I went over by one of the crossing piers and aimed my camera up at the north nave elevation, something told me the Gloria was in order. I kept raising my camera as I sang it, thinking Oh, I could shoot and sing both, but each time I knew it wasn’t right. There is a marked difference between an act of worship, however inadequate, and merely testing the acoustics.

I’m afraid I tripped over the French language at one point, and it was on a word I should know. No, I do know it; I was just reading in meanings. I do the same in English . . . At the boundary of the choir and of the choir ambulatory there were signs in French notifying visitors that the consecrated Host was in the sanctuary, so kindly do not enter the choir, except for-- and there was a word I thought meant "priest." But I’ve known for ages that "priere" means "prayer"! But I saw what I expected to see and that was that. And so I did not enter at all.

Visits to the church are supposed to be limited to one hour so I pulled myself away and walked out into the cloister and into the refectory. I was soon joined by a couple as I was making a circuit of the cloister garden. One of the Mont wardens came in and told us-- en française, á bien sûr!-- that the church was closing for the morning. But he showed the three of us through the Salle des Hôtes [Guest House] and the Chapter House/Scriptorium, into the crypt with its great pillars, past the treadwheel, and through various other chambers, though far from all there are, until we were ushered through another long room, at one end of which was another bookstore, and thence into the foyer with the ticket booth.

But I had already made up my mind to go to Mass, even if I haven’t been for several years, and when I was halfway down the stairs I remembered that the south door to the church was the other way. So I climbed back up and remet the warden chap, who was talking with the priest. The latter told me, in English, Yes, go back on up, but keep in mind there’s no leaving in mid-service.

I wouldn’t dream of it, especially not today.

There were seven laypeople in the congregation for Mass, along with the priest, two co-celebrants and three deacons. Their deacons are deaconnesses, nuns, probably, making me wonder how the little community here is set up. (I saw some of them coming out of the little cells in the wall about the time I turned around to go back up to the church.)

I was able to understand the French well enough to recall where we were in the service. I could tell the priest’s homily was on an Advent text from Isaiah. But it would have been much better had I been able to participate in the chanted responses more confidently. The overtones made our little group sound like a picked choir. It was glorious.

And it was good to sit there in the choir pew and think of all the saints who have gone before and those who are now yet struggling, to pray for the Coverdale* silent retreat that starts today and the college’s ordinands’ vocations and to thank God for Nigel* and how he models the grace and light of Christ for me.

When it came time to stand, I found I was shaking on my feet. But it was from tiredness or nervous excitement. Not from cold, not at all from cold-- even though I’d laid my car coat aside and was wearing only my blue velvet jacket over my sweater and shirt, even though I could see everyone’s breath. Amazingly, my perpetually-cold hands and the rest of me felt warm!

I think there could be something to physical self-denial, if it were offset by a high level of spiritual excitement. Maybe that’s always the way it’s been. You’re so caught up in God you forget yourself and mundane things like what would be nice to have for lunch.

I did receive Communion, RC or no. You know my feelings on that. It was right.

Afterwards, I wended my way out and around where I hadn’t been before, along the tops of the outer towers. The sky was starting to sport some clouds but it was still quite warm out for this time of year.

Pretty soon, I passed on to one of the restaurants, La Terrasse Poulard (everything is "Poulard" something here) and decided I’d go in and have one of the famous Mont-St.-Michel omelets. So I did, with cuttlefish in sauce. And that is where 1:40 found me.

I wish I could say my exalted mood survived lunch. There’s nothing like surfeit to knock the poetry out of one. The omelet was huge and, true to French custom, left warm but undone inside so the whipped egg made a kind of sauce. Then I had almost two large bottles of mineral water and a piece of tart aux pommes. (The second bottle of water was on the house, because after drinking two-thirds of the first one I poured out the last glassful and discovered a small spider had committed suicide in it. One does not think of the implications . . . )

Oddly, after I left the restaurant the streets I visited were ones that were being repaired. Or that led to houses or areas of the abbey that were under reconstruction. Or those from which I could see TV antennas on a hotel or two, or the plastic bubble skylights somebody had stuck on the roof of one of the houses . . . More tourists were arriving by now, mostly French but still bringing an atmosphere contrary to the sensations of the morning. I was rapidly falling prey to prose.

But I had thought about this in the church, during Mass! No matter what sort of spiritual experience we may have, the realities of daily life will intrude and must be dealt with. Roofs need to be repaired and other people, including ourselves, can be difficult. But let us, let me, take the strength and the awe and the sense of God’s presence gained in worship and in that deal with the world, instead of working on the world’s terms. You let yourself get tied up in a worldly point of view, and all is lost.

[Here ends the entry for the day. But at 4:00 PM I caught the return bus to the mainland and the station at Pontorson. I collected my checked luggage and took the train on to Chartres, where I checked in at the Youth Hostel, aka L'Auberge de Jeunesse.]

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour, Day One, Part One-- Introduction

I'm breaking my entry of the first day of my 1988-89 Christmas holiday journal into two parts, because the first of it happens entirely at the college in Oxford. I have the fanciful idea that it would be amusing for you to see the helter-skelter way I began my trip, and what I was, for a month, departing from.

The contemporary record doesn't include an account of the weekend immediately before the start of vacation, and a few words on it might provide illumination both on my state of body and mind and on some events later on in my European trip.

Saturday the 3rd I took part in a performance of the Berlioz Te Deum with a group known as the Oxford Classical Chorus, but it was really the Keble College choir. Our conductor was the Keble organ scholar at that time, Charles Hazlewood, who has since gone on to do a thing or two . . . but I still say his greatest act of musical daring was attempting to put on the Te Deum with only thirty or so singers (Hector wrote it for, what, 400?). The full rehearsal that afternoon went magnificently. Inspired, I went home to Coverdale College* to hurriedly finish my charcoal gray wool dress with the white lace collar to sing in-- I'd started it the previous summer at home in the States but it still wasn't hemmed and the buttons weren't sewn on. I made it back to Keble in good time to sing, but as I mention in the Paris portion of my diary, I did not do well at all. I'd been getting by all term with following our lead 2nd Soprano and hadn't actually memorized the notes. But on the night, my friend wasn't in good voice and our tenors (all six of them) wimped on the "Tibi Omnis Angeli." I could feel the choir's confidence plummet all around me, so I decided to give my section a strong lead. And I led them straight into destruction, wrong notes everywhere, especially in the "Tu Christe Rex Gloriae." Mea culpa! mea culpa! mea maxima culpa! As things got more and more ragged, Charles slowed down the tempo, thinking it'd give us the chance to find our places and catch up. More like run us all out of breath, especially on the "Judex Crederis." Total disintegration! Mortification on wheels! Perverse thing was, the Coverdale* principal, whose son was playing in the orchestra, said that was the best the Keble orchestra and chorus had sounded in years. Yes, I know. Their previous performances (under previous student conductors) don't bear thinking of.

I may have gotten some sleep that night; I don't remember. I know I got only one and a half hour's worth the Sunday night, since I was desperately trying to finish the last two Michaelmas term essays for my final Medieval Architecture History tutorial on Monday. Miraculously, I managed to get them both done in time. I use that adverb on purpose, because I hadn't even started the research on the second one; in fact, I fell asleep over my books and dreamed of a good line to take on it, and woke up ninety minutes later and wrote it down.

So I survived my double tutorial Monday the 5th, and biked back to Coverdale* not to relax, not to pack for my Europe trip, not even to clear out my room to make it ready for the American conference guests who'd be coming in. No, I had to help set up scenery and get ready for my bit part in the college Christmas pantomime, a brilliant (in my opinion!) topical parody on Aladdin penned by one of the Coverdale* ordinands. I and my two female American fellow-lodgers had a singing turn as Three Little Maids, as in The Mikado.

After that, there were not one, but two dances, and after that . . .

Well, I'll let the diary tell the story.

But I think this is long enough for one post. I'll get us on the road in a post hereafter.

Amateur Hour

The Pittsburgh Symphony tried something a little different this year. As usual, the orchestra and the Pittsburgh Mendelssohn Choir and guest soloists put on performances of Handel's Messiah. But this year, they decided to make tonight's concert into an audience sing-along. A very limited sing-along, restricted to four or five picked choruses, but a sing-along nonetheless.

A good description of it would be "amateur hour."
Not just amateur singers, but amateur concert-goers.

The place was packed, and I think a lot of people were there because it was Christmastime and it was The Messiah. Here and there before the concert people were openly (not clandestinely, like some people I could mention!) taking pictures inside the hall. Obviously they'd never had an usher put the fear of the management into them! An absurd number of ticketholders came in late-- far more than usual-- and the ushers let them in, while the music was going; what could they do?

In the row below me sat three young girls, maybe fourth or fifth graders. They were dressed in their holiday best, their long hair pulled up in tufted knots. But unlike the children on opening night, they made no attempt to pay attention to or follow the music. By the end of the first aria they were pillowing their heads on each other's shoulders, and by the conclusion of the second chorus they had burrowed their faces into their coats and were dead to the world.

Until the second half, that is, when something in the music roused the young lady in the seat just below mine and she started beating time by slapping her program on the back of the seat in front of her. Bored of that, she then commenced tapping her little patent-leather-shod foot on the concrete floor. Her father (presumably), the group's only chaperon, said and did nothing.

For that matter, neither did I. It didn't quite cross the line into disruptive. It was just-- amateur.

But you could say I got them back. Not on purpose, and much to my regret. I was not in good voice tonight. I'd had a busy, tiring day and this bronchial crud is making a resurgence. What's more, they didn't have scores available for borrowing; they only printed the words to the choruses for audience participation in the program. Me, I'd brought my score. The two women to the right of me had brought their scores. Other people scattered here and there through the auditorium had brought their scores. But seemingly, none of the people who'd brought their scores sang bass, tenor, or alto. That, or all the amateur basses, tenors, and altos wimped out. That left the job to us sopranos, tired or not, bronchial-crud-ravaged or not.

Hey, I was hitting the high gs and even the as just fine-- long as I could sing them forte. But bring it down to an mf or a p-- pathetic. No breath support whatsoever. Wobble, wobble, bobble!
I'm thinking, let's try this again in a smaller venue where the audience is the chorus. I haven't heard of any churches in the Pittsburgh area that do an audience-participation Messiah, but it'd be fun to find out.

Hwyl and Hiraeth

I've had this blog going since 2005 or so, and never once have I reported anything about the annual Pittsburgh St. David's Welsh Society Gymanfa Ganu. But this year I shall.

What, you may ask, is the gymanfa ganu? How do you even pronounce it?

It's pronounced "Guh-MAN-vuh GAH-nee," and it literally means a singing assembly, ganu being the mutated form of canu, which you Latinists will recognize as a form of cantare, to sing. It's a custom that got started in the Noncomformist chapels of Wales in the 19th century, partly to give people a social and religious outlet now that heading down to the pub for a pint was frowned upon, but much more it was an expression of the emotion and singing spirit of the Welsh which outsiders had remarked upon since the Middle Ages.

In the old days, the people-- not a separate choir, but all of them-- would stay after Sunday Chapel or maybe reconvene after Sunday lunch to sing hymns a capella in four parts strictly for the joy and hwyl of it. But sometimes their sessions had a more deliberate purpose, for the song leader, or arweinyddion y gan, would be rehearsing them to meet in one place to join in sacred song with the members of other capelau in the region. And when that cymanfa took place, the fervour and hwyl would rise enough to float several full-sized battleships.

Contemporary Welsh-Americans do not meet for cymanfoedd ganu as regularly as our ancestors did in the Old Land. But everywhere there is a Welsh St. David's Society of any size (Welsh societies are always dedicated to St. David, the patron saint of Wales), they will arrange to meet once a year to sing in four parts the old hymns, raising the roof of the church with heart-swelling emotion and praise.

This year the Pittsburgh gymanfa was held at the Community Methodist Church in Whitehall, Philip Aley of the church at the organ and Tim Slater, our conductor of several years, our song leader.

Traditionally the arweinyddion y gan has the prerogative not only to choose the hymns to be sung and which verses, but also how fast, how slow, how loud, how soft, whether specific verses shall be taken by the men or the women, low voices or high, whether a verse was sung well enough or needed to be done over, and how many times the chorus was to be repeated. And unlike contemporary-music worship services where this is all strictly planned out, rehearsed, and noted on the PowerPoint slides well ahead of time, at a cymanfa ganu the song leader decides much of this according to the hwyl he or she feels going in the place, leading the singing people as the Spirit leads him. If a chorus is repeated several times ( a repeat being signified by rotating the right the index finger in the air), it's because the power of the occasion demands it, not because the overhead projector slide says "(4x)" on it.

Tim was no different, and the sound he got out of that congregation was so vastly different and better than what I experienced in church this morning as to nearly make me weep. It had nothing to do with greater numbers; it had everything to do with the choral heritage of the Welsh.

We sang "Calon Lan" ("A Pure Heart; Calon Lan), "Jesus Calls Us" (Hyfrydol); "Come, Gracious Lord" (Llef), "Dring i Fyny" ("Hear Him Calling"; Dring i Fyny), "I Bob Un Sydd Ffyddlon" ("Onward, Christian Soldiers": Rachie), "Lead On, O King Eternal" (to both Lancashire and Llangloffan), "How Firm a Foundation (Joanna/St. Denio), "Mae d'Eisiau Di Bob Awr" ("I Need Thee Every Hour"; Need), "Jesus, I Live to Thee" (Penpark), "Men of Harlech" (just for fun), and "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah" (Cwm Rhondda).

Tim did something a little different this year, having Phil the organist play soft transitions between the numbers. Very effective. And he programmed several hymns which we in America sing to other tunes, to expose us to how our cousins in Wales sing them even today. It was a clever way to organize it. My only complaint about this was that, unlike many others, I grew up singing "Lead On, O King Eternal" to Llangloffan, but the hymnals have changed and I rarely can anymore. I was glad to see in the program that we'd be singing three verses of it today, but after two verses sung to that tune Tim on a whim reverted to the more common and less interesting (and non-Welsh!) Lancashire!

Tim's Pittsburgh Welsh Choir, which started in 2003, has improved under his direction prodigiously the past five years, particularly in the a capella work. They did a setting of "This Is My Father's World" that was stupendous. He's also got a strong contingent of men who could be positively brilliant if he'd work them on their legatos. If they don't watch it, the PWC or some part of it are liable to find themselves entered in the eisteddfod (music and poetry competition) when the National Festival of Wales is held in Pittsburgh, Labor Day weekend of 2009.

Our tenor soloist was the reliable and sweet-singing Ken Davis, who again this year was joined for a duet by soprano Bronwen Reed Catalano.

The hwyl was high in the Methodist church in Whitehall today, and if there was any hiraeth (unsatisfied, heartfelt longing), it was probably mostly in me. Hiraeth because we never can sing long enough or enough verses at a cymanfa. Hiraeth because as years go by, fewer and fewer people bring their red and green Welsh hymnals and sing in parts from the music, depending instead on words printed in the program or projected on a screen, so that the glorious tradition-- and effect-- of part singing is dying out. Hiraeth because due, I guess, to bad sightlines with the organ, Phil rarely picked up on the chorus repeats Tim signed for, and due to the fact that the church needed us out early in the evening to make way for another group, he didn't push it. And hiraeth because here in Pittsburgh we never, ever sing enough Welsh.

Good grief, I can sing "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah" in English in any church almost any Sunday of the year! I can program "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah" in English in any church whose pulpit I happen to be supplying almost any Sunday of the year! So Tim, Tim, why do you persist at cymanfa after cymanfa at putting it in with no Welsh? Aaaaaghh! I am naughty-- I sing it all in Welsh anyway-- but it's not the same as when everyone else is doing it, too, whether they've got all the pronunciation right or not.

And hiraeth mingled with hwyl at singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in company at the opening of the assembly and the Welsh National anthem, "Mae Hen Wlad fy Nhadau" ("Land of My Fathers") at its end. "Mae Hen Wlad" in Welsh, always in Welsh; the day we sing it in English is the day we turn in our red dragons and yellow daffs and go home and degrade ourselves with MTV. I'm glad and grateful to be an American, and my ancestry is a mixture of all kinds of peoples, Hessian, Prussian, Bohemian, Dutch, Irish, even-- gadzooks! --English. But the Welsh part of my elder heritage is what I identify with and am moved by the most, and to plant my feet and sing from memory the anthem of old Cymru somehow roots me in something both enduring and strong and also achingly sad and far away.

And isn't that unfulfillable homesickness the essense of hiraeth, and doesn't getting together to sing the old hymns fill one with hwyl!

Da iawn, Cymry, da iawn.

Are We Smiling Yet?

Sandy at Curly's Corner invited me to come round to her place and pick up this cute award, which came to her by way of her good blogging friend Carol at Charli and Me. Sandy's passing it out to everyone on her blog roll as well as anyone who stops by to read her blog. Thank you so much, Sandy!

By their example and in the spirit of their kindness, I'm also passing this lovely little award on to everyone who stops by to read my blog as well as those already on my Favorites list. Every blog I visit can give me reason to smile . . . in some way or other . . . so feel free to pick this up for yourself and pass it along.

But of course there is one tiny little catch..... The tag that goes along with the award. The tag is this: Name five songs that you are embarrassed to sing.

. . . Five songs I'm embarrassed to sing. Hoo-boy! If my pipes and my wind are working, I'm not exactly embarrassed to sing anything . . . that is, if it's actually singable and it won't scandalize the parish (when I've got a parish) . . .

But then, there are those songs I'm embarrassed to sing, where the scandal comes because I am embarrassed to sing them. Here, then, is my own Hall of Shame:

1) In the Garden. Yes, I'm aware that a lot of very nice people get a lot of comfort out of this hymn. Maybe that's you (are you smiling yet?). A lot of people also get a lot of comfort out of Sugar Frosted Flakes. The perpetrator of this religious ditty, C. Austin Miles, claims he was inspired by the story of Mary Magdalene coming to the empty tomb of Christ the first Easter morning. If so, his Mary Magdalene and Jesus of Nazareth were a pair that would warm the cockles of Dan Brown's heart. A prettier lovers' tryst you never stumbled upon. Gnostic, sentimental, unbiblical. And I'm supposed to sing this? Feh!

In the same vein is

2) He Lives. "You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart!" No, you poor creature, you know He lives because the Holy Spirit has revealed that fact to you in the Holy Scriptures! Your feelings will tell you all sorts of lies. Go through some horrible tragedy, and your heart will tell you God has abandoned you, even though He's right with you all along. Feelings are great, if they fit the facts. But even if they don't, the truth of what God did in Jesus Christ keeps on going and you can grab hold of it by faith. That's how I know He lives. That's a song worth singing, not a poor pitiful piece of pietistic poetry set to a circus tune.

(So are we smiling yet?)

3) Here I Am, Lord. The basic idea of this hymn is fine. It's about responding to God's call to serve Him in the world. It's used a lot for ordination and commitment services, and appropriately, too. But there's this phrase in the chorus: "Is it I, Lord?" I'm sorry, but without fail that reminds me of what Judas said to Jesus just before he betrayed Him. And what's up with this "I will go, Lord, if You lead me"? Am I supposed to proclaim that God might call someone to do His will, then carelessly forget to guide that person into how and when and where? I sing that, and I feel like I'm putting conditions on my obedience. Before God, that's something I'm embarrassed to do.

4) Any modern "praise" chorus where you could excise the word "Jesus" or "Lord" and put in "Baby" instead, and it wouldn't make a dime's worth of difference. See my DaVinci Code reference under Embarrassing Song No. 1. Especially when I have to stand there for ten minutes singing the same damn words over and over twenty times. Are the Catholics right about Purgatory? That's where these perpetrations make me feel I am. Embarrassing.

5) Any good traditional hymn that's been bowlderized and politically-corrected by modern hymnbook editors, a la the efforts of the committee that patched together the 1990 Presbyterian Hymnal. Witness what was done to Be Thou My Vision, one of my favorites. As a woman, I was never offended by "Thou my great Father, I Thy true son." Give me credit for some sense: It's about relationship, not sex or gender. Never mind! That line is out, out, out! Ditto the parts about "High King of heaven." That title for God brought us the rich Irishness of the hymn, with its echoes of all the petty chieftains pledging fealty to the high king at Tara, now signifying the desires and demands of our lives bowing the knee to Christ as universal Sovereign. That's gone, people! We don't want to offend anybody with any reminders that there might be a hierarchy in creation, with the uncreated Lord at the top, oh, no! I'm surprised the wise editors left in the part about "Ruler of all" at the end. But I guess they knew they had to draw the line somewhere, and they wanted a ruler to draw it with.

This version embarrasses me so much, I won't program this hymn without putting the unaltered version in as an insert in the bulletin. Preferably with the third verse that's always excised from American hymnals:

Be thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight;

be thou my whole armor, be thou my true might;

be thou my soul's shelter, be thou my strong tower:

O raise thou me heavenward, great Power of my power.

That's something I'll never be embarrassed to sing.

But O, Sandy! Are you embarrassed you passed this award on to me? Are we still smiling?

"And the home of the brave!"

A photo or two before and after our successful rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Pirates' game this afternoon. The acoustics were actually pretty resonant there around home plate of PNC Park. And happily, the stands blocked the wind. Pretty chilly for the 1st of May.

This was a grand experience, but it raised a question that's been bothering me for quite awhile: Why doesn't the crowd at sports events or at patriotic observances ever get to sing the National Anthem any more? It really isn't that hard to sing. If you can't hit the high notes, don't hit the high notes. The tune started out as a drinking song, for goshsakes. Let the citizenry jump in and have a go at it, like we used to in dim ages past-- oh, around five years ago.

It's as if we expect some professional artist or special group to be patriotic on our behalf. Kind of like sending the troops over to do our fighting for us. Yes, they are specially-trained, and we can't honor their dedication and sacrifice too highly. But it doesn't take the rest of us off the hook. It doesn't make us into spectators. It doesn't mean we can sit back and watch as if their fight has no claim on us. If--(God forbid) when-- the terrorists strike on our shores again, we're all combatants. That's how we need to think of ourselves, even if we never strike a physical blow in freedom's cause. Even if we only respond with courage and determination and resourcefulness in the face of atrocity. But how are we going to get ourselves into that mindset if we can't or won't even sing our own National Anthem for ourselves? That is not a job that should be left to the pros!

" . . . and Scatters the Frost like Ashes"

"Our Fearless Leader considers whether we'd sound better singing against the wind"

(Here you see what an amateur blogger/HTML formatter I am. If I knew how, these photos would be in the same post.)

"He Spreads the Snow like Wool . . . "

Winter is making a curtain call in southwestern Pennsylvania, and points north and west. The 24th of April, and it's 29 degrees, snowy, foggy and soggy.

So who are these crazy/intrepid people braving the lugubrious weather up on the roof of the Mount Lebanon Presbyterian Church? It's our little pick-up choir, come up to put the final touches on our rehearsal for singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Pirates' game next Sunday. We're suffering for a good cause, to benefit the renovation of the Strand Theater in Zelienople. Not this afternoon; next Sunday at the game. We all hope the weather will be more civilized on the 1st, but if it isn't, we'll be used to it!

(Don't even ask me about being used to the way the Pirates are playing so far this season. I try not to think about it.)