Tag Archives: music

Book Quote

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As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music.  And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul. 
                                  ~   Ursula K. Le Guin

I used to play the cello and it remains my favorite instrument.  I’ve verrry excited that I will see the great cellist YoYo Ma in concert in two 1/2 weeks.  Le Guin’s connecting reading with playing the cello is brilliant.  What are you reading this month?

Summer Reading Sampler

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Here’s a few lovely little bits from my reading:

From Every Little Thing by James Herriot

Siegfried’s words at the beginning of our partnership came back to me. “Our profession offers unparalleled opportunities for making a chump of yourself.”

From The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, on Temptation

Don’t underestimate the power of a temptation.  Don’t overestimate your power to resist temptation…Yes, temptations are often useful, whether they come in small packages or large.  But how can this be?  They bring us low, purge, scourge, and school us in the fire; that’s to say, they scare the living daylights out of us.

We do have some success in the fight.  But as one temptation or tribulation is dispatched, another soon takes its place.  Many seek to flee temptation altogether.  Alas, the escape route is clogged, and the refugee is destined to succomb!

Advancing to the rear, then, isn’t the answer.  We can’t hope to conquer that way.  But through spiritual cunning–that’s to say, through Patience and True Humility–we become the stronger, and the tempters have to try harder.

From Temperament by Stuart Isacoff

Below is a picture of a keyboard designed with 27 keys to the octave from Martin Mersenne’s Harmonie universelle. Isn’t it wild? Dividing the octave into 12 equal steps is a relatively new thing.  If you would like to hear how some music sounded before equal temperament you can listen here. More info on the book is here. 

I can’t find the reference, but I recall that the organ built in Spurgeon’s church in London was built with multiple keys, similar to the pciture below.

My favorite quote from this book is from dear Martin Luther.

Luther had praised the music of complexity, in which nature is “sharpened and polished by art.”  In its intricacy, he wrote in 1538, “one begins to see with amazement the great and perfect wisdom of God in His wonderful work of music, where one voice takes a simple part, and around it sing three, four, or five other voices, leaping, springing round about, marvelously gracing the simple part, like a square dance in heaven… He who does not find this an inexpressible miracle of the Lord is truly a clod, and is not worthy to be considered a man.”



Detoxing the Soul

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This verse (I Peter 1:22) from yesterday’s sermon:

Seeing that you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.

Here it is again in a paraphrase:

Now you can have real love for everybody because your souls have been cleansed from selfishness and hatred when you trusted Christ to save you; so see to it that you really do love each other warmly, with all your hearts.

                                                       ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~

Saturday we had a garage sale at/with Curt’s folks.  There were about 15 sales in one neighborhood.  During a lull Curt and his dad walked around to see what bargains might be found.  Eureka!  Three CD’s for $4 each, all in the original shrinkwrap: Gordon Lightfoot and two YoYo Ma CDs.  Gordon Lightfoot was someone we listened to in the early years of our marriage.  The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a beautiful ballad.  Does anyone remember Gordon Lightfoot?

Daily Graces

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Two things that have graced me today:  a prayer book and John Rutter’s music. 

I picked up a tiny little book at the local book fair/sale, a Lutheran Book of Prayer.  They have a month’s worth of morning and evening prayers for each day.  Part of Monday morning’s prayer is on our white board for the entire week:

Guard us against becoming selfish, careless and slovenly in the pursuance of our daily work, so that we do our duty not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.

Isn’t that a great prayer?  I need that reminder, especially, I think, in May.  While I was ironing (last post) I not only listened to opera.  I put on a CD of John Rutter’s sacred music, given to me by my dear SIL Kathie.  The great thing about ironing (I can’t believe I just wrote that) is that you can focus your mind while you work.  I listened to this CD several times, memorizing the words to my favorite songs.  John Rutter is one of the best living composers with whom I am familiar. This acapella song, in particular, grabbed me.  This seems to me a perfect prayer to put in with the graduation cards this year. 

Open thou mine eyes and I shall see:
Incline my heart and I shall desire:
Order my steps and I shall walk
In the ways of thy commandments.

O Lord God, be thou to me a God
And beside thee let there be none else,
No other, nought else save thee.

Vouchsafe to me to worship thee and serve thee
According to they commandments
In truth of spirit,
In reverence of body,
In blessing of lips,
In private and public.

Lancelot Andrewes 1555-1626

Opera and Country: Two Peas in a Pod

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Ironing is one of my least favorite chores.  So I end up letting it pile up until the basket, which is deep, is heaping over with wrinkled clothes.  Some of my favorite coping mechanisms are to listen to a book on tape while I iron, call a relative and talk all crook-necked for a while, listen to a sermon, or listen to music. 

Today I’m listening to the Three Tenors Live.  I opened the liner notes and read the words in English.  Guess what?  Opera lyrics and country western lyrics have A LOT in common:  women are fickle, my love left me, I can’t live without you, I loved you and you mock me, you lied to me!  It doesn’t have the twang and any lyric sounds better in Italian.  I’d call opera and country fraternal twins. Who knew?

Shout!

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Shout, for the blessed Jesus reigns;
Through distant lands his triumphs spread;
And sinners, freed from endless pains,
Own Him their Saviour and their Head.

He calls his chosen from afar,
They all at Zion’s gates arrive;
Those who were dead in sin before
By sovereign grace are made alive.

Loud hallelujahs to the Lamb,
From all below, and all above!
In lofty songs exalt his name,
In songs as lasting as his love.

Benjamin Beddome, 1769

The tune for this, Truro, is one of my favorites.  I’m playing this during the prelude tomorrow.

Working Out With Willa Cather

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The Song of the Lark is the story of a musically gifted young girl.  She is on vacation near Flagstaff, AZ after a grueling year of studying voice in Chicago. She spends time alone in the Cliff-Dwellers’ ruins.

She could lie there hour after hour in the sun and listen to the strident whirr of the big locusts, and to the light, ironical laughter of the quaking asps. All her life she had been hurrying and sputtering, as if she had been born behind time and had been trying to catch up.  Now, she reflected, as she drew herself out long upon the rugs, it was as if she were waiting for something to catch up with her.  She had got to a place where she was out of the stream of meaningless activity and undirected effort.

A few pages later Thea finds fragments of pottery and reflects on the role of water and pottery in the lives of the women who once lived there.  “Their pottery was their most direct appeal to water, the envelope and sheath of the precious element itself.”

One morning, as she was standing upright in the pool, splashing water between her shoulder-blades with a big sponge, something flashed through her mind that made her draw herself up and stand still.  The stream and the broken pottery: what was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself–life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose? The Indian women had held it in their jars.  In the sculpture she had seen in the Art Institute, it had been caught in a flash of arrested motion.  In singing, one made a vessel of one’s throat and nostrils and held it on one’s breath, caught the stream in a scale of natural intervals.

I am enjoying this book immensely.  It is not a breeze through book.  I read it pensively, and often lift my head and just think about the words.  I come home from working out and want to read on, but I restrict this book to the elliptical machine.  It keeps me going back!!