Greetings to OLA Parish Community

I just recorded and posted a greeting to the OLA Parish Community on YouTube.  I used my laptop camera and microphone, and am not very familiar with the software yet, so it's not very high quality -- but it is heartfelt. . .

YouTube Symphony Orchestra, etc.

So, first it's Pope Benedict (see previous post), now Michael Tilson Thomas!  Although promotion has been going since December, today is the first I've seen it.  Interesting idea, and certainly one of the wonderfully creative things the internet is capable of.  It'll be great to see where this goes, and perhaps whether we might be seeing a rebirth of interest in classical music.  Click here for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra Channel, and from there you can listen play Tan Dun's 5-minute "A Symphony for YouTube."   It's a serious but fun piece, with what looks like hubcaps added to the percussion section.

Recall the old joke: A musician walking down the street in New York is asked by a tourist, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"  He replies, of course, "Practice, my boy, practice!"  Now it's "Practice and upload."

By the way, in case you are as yet unaware, I have some stuff on YouTube too:

Kapadokya Balloon Ride

Mehter Military Band

A Polish Village in Turkey!

Will there be more?  Stay tuned.

Pope Benedict on YouTube

You may have seen the news reports that the Vatican has just entered an agreement with Google to set up a channel on YouTube.  Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/user/vatican.

Before you visit, you may want to listen to the Holy Father himself speaking about the importance of internet technology in communicating the Gospel today.

Also her is the press conference announcing the new YouTube channel.

Interesting item also in the LA Times that research is finding the greatest threat to teens on the internet is other teens, not criminal predators, etc.  Here:

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-kidsonline26-2009jan26,0,1604080.story

Inauguration, Drama, and Liturgy: Simple Gifts

"Theater, as any stage veteran will tell you, is a two-way street between performers and audiences, with emotion traveling back and forth in waves of accelerating force."  L.A. Times Theater Critic Charles McNulty began his analysis of last Tuesday's Inauguration event with those words.  Actually, they also describe the meaning of Vatican II's mandate to restore "full, conscious and active participation" of the faithful in the celebration of the liturgy.

Read the full article here.  It's worth considering.

McNulty does a very good job of analyzing the Inauguration from the perspective of how words and symbols relate to one another, and most importantly relate to meaning.  The essence of word is that it conveys meaning; the essence of symbol is that it embody meaning.  The Inauguration wasn't just a show put on to enhance the taking of the oath of office.  In fact, the words of the oath, as was charmingly obvious in the botched job of it, aren't of the essence; nor is the oath itself.  The essential meaning of the event is the transfer of the office of President from one person to another, according to the Constitution of the United States.  It is actually a moment which embodies a new mutual relationship between the President and the People of the United States.

That's why, as I pointed out in my previous post, it was so significant that, by an accident of timing, the actual moment of transition (yes, liturgically this is analogous to the Consecration of the Mass--it is a real transformation!) occurred almost exactly at the moment that the "Simple Gifts" melody was intoned by the clarinet in John Williams' wonderful little four-minute piece of music.  The layer-upon-layer of symbolism encapsulated in that moment, as I reflected at some length previously, served well to embody and unfold layer upon layer of the meaning of the event itself.  Call it serendipitous, if you will.  I say providential.

The key (and sublime) significance of that music being played by those musicians at that moment of high noon was unfortunately missed by McNulty in his otherwise fine article.

"Simple Gifts" is an amazing song, and it has only one verse, which also speaks to the meaning of the event;

Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,

'Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,

To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Speaking of words, I aways find it fascinating to probe the origins of words to discover insights into their meaning and usage today.  So does Melissa Martinez, who writes a column in the Claremont Courier called "Lex in the City."  Last week she took us on a guided tour of the ward "inauguration" and revealed some surprising twists and turns.  Read it here.

Added note on Friday, January 23:  Today's LA Times' carried a brief story, expanded online, that, while the quartet actually played the music for "Air and Simple Gifts," it was too cold for the instruments to actually sound good, so it was a prerecorded version that was heard over the loudspeakers.  Fair enough.  (Aretha Franklin, singing live, wasn't so lucky.)  There's no real comparison to the "Milli Vanilli" scandal of some years back.  I would say it's more "technology to the rescue."  (There's also an LA times review of the piece by Mark Swed online.)

Inauguration thoughts; Simple Gifts

One of the advantages of my time of "enforced leisure" is that I was able to watch the entirety of the presidential inauguration from about 7:00 am (PST) until noon or so.

There were many moving moments that have already been commented upon at length in the media.  I think that the choice of Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery to give the invocation and benediction was right on, both of them unashamedly affirming our Christian and cultural heritage and at the same time recognizing that the diversity, even unbelief, that is the essential constituent of our free society.  

However, for me, there was also something that went almost unnoticed by many, yet I think it is one of those symbolic moments that speaks volumes about the kind of change that will deeply affect the spirit of our nation.  President Obama chose to precede his moment of swearing-in with a wonderful little piece of serious classical music, composed for the occasion by John Williams, "Air and Simple Gifts, " played by violinist Itzhak Perlman; cellist, Yo-Yo Ma; clarinetist, Anthony McGill; and pianist, Gabriela Montero.  (Click on the names for more information about the music, the composer, and the artists.) Here it is:

In itself this choice is significant.  However, the delicious symbolic value of this four-minute performance is that it began at 11:59 am, and so approximately one minute into this piece, at just about the time the "Simple Gifts" theme was first played, Barack Obama actually became the President of the United States. 

We have a President who not only knows the value of symbol but also has a real understanding of and appreciation for the importance of the arts, including classical music, for our cultural and social well being as a people. Whether or not that translates into funding is, in my opinion, less important than the renewal of a social and cultural atmosphere that values and promotes our traditions of beauty.  So many things of timeless value have been allowed to simply drop off the "radar screen" of popular awareness, often for crass economic reasons.  I hope we can recover something of what is on the verge of being lost.  

This four-minute piece of music marked not only the most significant moment of the day--indeed the moment that gave meaning and purpose to everything else that day, including the Oath of Office--it also encapsulated a microcosm of America itself.  The four players were an Israeli-American violinist, a Paris-born Chinese-American cellist, a Venezuelan-born pianist, and an African American clarinetist from Chicago.  The piece itself, composed by a New-York-born musician equally at home (and equally respected) in both concert hall and movie theater, is based on a traditional American hymn tune.

You can't get much more quintessentially American than that!

Hear a really neat interview with Yo-Yo Ma from a few days ago (unfortunately you'll have to put up with a 30-second commercial first):

And as I was watching the ceremonies, a memory came back to me of the last (and only) time that I stood on the Capitol Mall for a historic event.  Chance (or Providence) put me in Washington DC on July 4, 1976, for the Bicentennial celebration.  I was on my way back from Rome, having just completed studies in liturgy, and was staying for a few days with Bob Hovda, one of my mentors, who lived just a few block away.  We went there for the evening fireworks and concert, but I remember very few details, except that no tickets were required and there seemed to be a lot of very ordinary folks around enjoying what seemed like a big Independence Day party.

I was also very impressed with the letter that Chicago's  Cardinal Francis George, who is President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), sent to President Obama, as well as the message from Pope Benedict XVI.  If you haven't seen them, please click on the links and read them.  They are both wonderful and very significant documents to help chart the role that we as Catholic faithful can and must play in this administration that presents both hope-filled opportunities and signficant challenges to us.

Finally, it was wonderful that I never once, thoughout the whole day, heard the expression, "kick ass."  I hope it, too, gets permanently retired from our national vocabulary.

Celebrating Martin Luther King Day: K of C, and African American Classical Musicians

I received an email today from the San Gabriel Valley Chapter of the Knights of Columbus with this press release about a rather unknown facet of their history.

SquareOne Publishers Re-Issues Knights of Columbus 1924 Black History Classic

Here's the Amazon link to the book, W.E.B. DuBois, The History of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America.  I think it is significant that the Knights of Columbus was at the forefront of promoting equality and racial harmony in the United States long before it was an open topic for discussion.  Perhaps it's because the KofC had its origins in an immigrant population that suffered significant and sometimes violent discrimination at that time: Irish Catholics, factory workers and coal miners.  (Remember he song, "Sixteen Tons," made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford?)

The Wikipedia article on the Knights of Columbus briefly tells Fr. McGiveney's motivations in founding it, 125 years ago:

The primary motivation for the Order was to be a mutual benefit society. As a parish priest in an immigrant community, McGivney saw what could happen to a family when the breadwinner died and wanted to provide insurance to care for the widows and orphans left behind. He himself had to temporarily leave his seminary studies to care for his family when his father died.  In the late 19th century, Catholics were regularly excluded from labor unions and other organizations that provided social services.  In addition, Catholics were either barred from many of the popular fraternal organizations, or, as in the case of Freemasonry, forbidden from joining by the Catholic Church itself. McGivney wished to provide them an alternative. He also believed that Catholicism and fraternalism were not incompatible and wished to found a society that would encourage men to be proud of their American-Catholic heritage.  It was also founded in order to show that American-Catholics were patriotic and loyal citizens of the United States.

I also did not know that Carl Anderson had been a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights before becoming Supreme Knight in 2000.

Not quite on this day, but on January 7, 1955, Marian Anderson became the first African American to sing at the Metropolitan Opera.  

The role that African Americans have played in classical music in the USA is unknown and underrated.   Perhaps the greatest was William Grant Still, who became the first African American to conduct a major American orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, in 1936.  He was active in the concert and motion picture scene in Los Angeles until his death in 1978.  His daughter, Judith Anne Still, maintains the William Grant Still Music website, with a lot of information, and also sells recordings and sheet music.

There's also a wonderful website on the African Heritage in Classical Music where one could immerse oneself profitably in a world that I daresay is new and unknown to most of us.  Let yourself spend some time there.  It could be one of those "aha!" experiences that are mind-broadening if not life-changing.

Blind Artist in Turkey

I just received an email from Aydın Eroğlu, our wonderful guide in Turkey for our Early Christian World Pilgrimage.  He sent the link to a brief (almost 10 minutes) and marvelous video clip about a blind man, who was born without eyes, named Esref Armaga who lives in Ankara, Turkey.  The unique thing about him is that he is a painter, with a distinctive style, wonderful sense of color, and uncanny perspective.  Apparently he has occasioned some groundbreaking brain research into the function of those parts of the brain that process visual imagery, as you'll see in the video:

It's quite a testimony to what the human person, and the human brain, is capable of.