Advent Calendar

Canterbury Cathedral

On this Christmas Eve, enjoy a composition written  this year by Peter Hallock, founder of the Compline Choir and its director from 1956 to 2009. The work was commissioned by the Compass Rose Society to honor Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, who retires at the end of this year. It was a setting of a poem written by Williams called “Advent Calendar”, and was performed by the Canterbury Cathedral choir at a service of Evensong on October 5th, 2012. It was also given its Seattle premiere by the St. Mark’s Cathedral choir on the first Sunday of Advent, at the annual service of lessons and carols.

The following recording of “Advent Calendar” is by Seattle’s Byrd Ensemble, and it is available in both CD or download format. The CD also contains a version of Hallock’s composition ”Night Music”, sung by the Compline Choir (more on this in a future post).

May you have a happy  Christmas.

He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

Prayers for Newtown

Prior to singing the Office of Compline last Sunday, the Compline Choir placed 28 votive candles on the steps in front of the altar in memory of the dead in the Newtown tragedy. Our director, Jason Anderson, had created a short prayer service which we sang from the McCaw Chapel (behind the altar area). We then processed from the chapel to the back corner of the cathedral, singing the Advent hymn “Creator of the Stars of Night”. Here is that excerpt:

Come and save us, O Lord God of hosts. (repeated by the choir)
Show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved:
O Lord God of hosts.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Come and save us, O Lord God of hosts.

(Prayer for the Children Slaughtered)
Loving God, whose beloved Son did take little children into his arms and bless them: Give us grace, we beseech thee, to entrust thy children Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Madeleine, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Avielle, Benjamin, and Allison into thy never-failing care and love, and bring us all to thy heavenly kingtdom; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

(Prayer for the Adults Slaughtered)
O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered: Accept our prayers on behalf of thy servants Nancy, Rachel, Dawn, Anne, Lauren, Mary, and Victoria and grant them an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of thy saints; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

(Prayer for the One Who Has Slaughtered)
Almighty and everlasting God, we lift up into the light of thy justice Adam the one whom hast taken the lives of our women and children. Where our hearts are stone return to us hearts of flesh; that grief may not swallow us up, but new life find us through Jeaus Christ the crucified, with whom we are raised by thy power; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Creator of the stars of night, your people’s everlasting light,
O Christ, Redeemer of us all, we pray you hear us when we call.

In sorrow that the ancient curse should doom to death a universe,
you came, O Saviour, to set free your own in glorious liberty.

When this old world drew on toward night, you came; but not in splendor bright,
not as a monarch, but the child of Mary, blameless mother mild.

At your great Name, O Jesus, now all knees must bend, all hearts must bow:
all things on earth with one accord, like those in heaven, shall call you Lord.

Come in your holy might, we pray, redeem us for eternal day;
defend us while we dwell below from all assaults of our dread foe.

To God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, Three in One,
praise, honor, might, and glory be from age to age eternally.

53 Years in Compline

Roxy and Bill Giddings

On September 15, the Compine Choir from St. Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle, had a party at the home of our founder, Peter Hallock, for both current choir members and alumni. Our special guests of honor were Bill and Roxy Giddings; Bill will be retiring from the Compline Choir after the September 30 Compline Service, 53 years after he started singing with the choir.

After earning a doctorate in Chemistry at Harvard University in 1959, Bill came to Seattle for post-doctoral work at the University of Washington. Whle in Boston, he had pursued his musical avocation as organist for a service for students at Christ Church, Cambridge, and very soon after his arrival was introduced to Compline by Al Campbell, an organist at Christ Church, Seattle, who sang in the Compline Choir.

Bill was introduced to his wife-to-be, Roxy, after the Compline Service, by a mutual friend who was an organist and choir director.  They were married at Mt. Cross Lutheran Church in University Place, WA on June 18, 1961.  After two years teaching chemistry at Albion College, Bill got a position at Pacific Lutheran University, near Tacoma, in 1962, where he taught until his retirement in 1998.

I first met Bill and Roxy in 1964, when as a student without a car, I hitched a ride with them to Seattle to sing Compline; the 30-mile trip was somewhat lengthier in those days before the completion of Interstate 5. I did get a car the next year, and with the installation of the Flentrop Organ in the fall of 1965, Bill began to “curate” the organ after Compline, either playing it himself, or assisting guest musicians to find their way around the instrument – a labor of love which he has carried on to the present day. Read about this wonderful tradition in my blog entry, “Post-Compline Organ Music”, from February 2011.

For over five decades, Bill has held down his post in the alto section, and Roxy has driven up with him every Sunday night – an amazing accomplishment for both, when, if one were to only count 50 years of commuting every week from Seattle to Parkland, would be 2600 Compline Services, and round-trips equal to about 213,200 miles! For many of those years they drove a Checker, with either a “KYRIE” or “ELEISON” licence plate.

Bill will be back to sing with the Compline Choir for the installation of the new Dean of St. Mark’s Cathedral, Steve Thomason, on October 13, and for a special Compline Service on November 25, in which we will be doing a service of Peter Hallock’s music with choir and alumni in honor of Peter’s 88th birthday. We look forward to seeing them back often. They have given us a really wonderful example of faithfulness and the Benedictine virtue of stability.

O Food to Pilgrims Given

Caravaggio, “Supper at Emmaus” (1601)

It’s been a long hiatus since my posting in May, but I’ll try to make up for it in the coming weeks. First, I wanted to share some great news: the book I have been writing, Prayer as Night Falls: A Journey with Compline, has been accepted by Paraclete Press. I will be getting the completed manuscript to Paraclete in January; hopefully it will be published next year! More about that over the next few months…

There were so many wonderful things to write about Compline over the past summer, but I’ll focus on one of our services in August.  Here’s a link to our podcast of The Office of Compline for August 12, 2012 (just press the play button to begin listening) . The Gospel reading for that Sunday was John 6:35, 41-51, including the words “I am the Bread of Life”, and “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever…” This reading always reminds me of the story of how the men walking “on the road to Emmaus” were accompanied by a stranger, who was revealed to them as the risen Christ “in the breaking of the bread.”

Jason Anderson, director of the Compline Choir, selected music that conveyed this eucharistic theme beautifully, beginning with the chant “Humbly I adore Thee, Verity unseen” (words by Thomas Aquinas). I think our singing of the hymn for the service, “O food to pilgrims given” (sung to one of the tunes of the 16th-c. French psalter), was one of the highlights for me from the summer (listen to it at about 8:55 on the podcast):

O food to pilgrims given, O bread of life from Heaven,
O manna from on high!
We hunger, Lord, supply us, Nor Thy delights deny us,
Whose hearts to Thee draw nigh.

O stream of love past telling, O purest fountain welling
From out the Savior’s side!
We faint with thirst; revive us, Of Thine abundance give us,
And all we need provide.

O Jesus, by Thee bidden, We here adore Thee,
Hidden in forms of bread and wine.
Grant when the veil is riven, We may behold, in heaven,
Thy countenance divine.

The anthem for the service was “Jesu, dulcis memoria”, written in 2009 for the Compline Choir at St. Mark’s, Seattle by Iain Quinn (listen at about 22:50 on the podcast). Three of the many stanzas of this hymn, originally written by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, are set here by the composer:

Jesu, dulcis memoria,   dans vera cordis gaudia:   sed super mel et omnia   ejus dulcis praesentia.	Jesus, the very thought of Thee   With sweetness fills the breast!   Yet sweeter far Thy face to see   And in Thy Presence rest.
Jesu, spes paenitentibus,   quam pius es petentibus!   quam bonus te quaerentibus!   sed quid invenientibus?	O hope of every contrite heart!   O joy of all the meek!   To those who fall, how kind Thou art!   How good to those who seek!
Sis, Jesu, nostrum gaudium,   qui es futurum praemium:   sit nostra in te gloria,   per cuncta semper saecula.	Jesus! our only joy be Thou,   As Thou our prize shalt be;   In Thee be all our glory now,   And through eternity.

A month of Easters

May in Seattle; rhododendrons in Washington Park Arboretum

It’s hard to believe, but a whole month has gone by since my last post.  Four Sundays of the Easter season – four Compline services. And so much wonderful music – I’ll write about some of the highlights – but you can hear three of these Sundays broadcast on the Compline Choir’s podcast site.

Easter Sunday was magnificent as always – it is always thrilling to sing the Peter Hallock “Easter Canticle” processional as we walk the length of the cathedral, singing and playing handbells – listen to the opening of the Easter podcast ; if you want to see the words, I previously posted them on my blog “Easter Joy” last year.  Next on the podcast (at about 4:55) was the psalm appropriate for Easter, Psalm 114, which in the chant repertoire is given unique significance by being sung on two different pitches, or “psalm tones”.  Because it goes back and forth between the two, it became called the wandering (“peregrine”) tone, or Tonus Peregrinus.  Because Psalm 114 tells of the wonder of God in delivering the people of Israel through the Red Sea, I  think of the Israelites, like the psalm, wandering in the desert for forty years.

This year for Easter we did not sing the chant “Christians, to the Paschal Victim” but instead sang a lovely hymn to the words of John of Damascus (d. 749) and music from Renaissance Germany (see the same podcast, about 8:55).  The first verse also compares Jesus’ resurrection to the miracle of the Red Sea:

Come, ye faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness;
God hath brought His Israel into joy from sadness;
loosed from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke Jacob’s sons and daughters,
led them with unmoistened foot through the Red Sea waters.

On the Sunday after Easter, we sang the magnificent hymn about Jesus’s appearance to the doubting disciple Thomas, to a old 17th-century French Noel tune (see the podcast at about 8:34).  This year soloists took the parts in quotes:

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
O sons and daughters, let us sing! The King of heaven, the glorious King, O’er death and hell rose triumphing.  Alleluia!
That night the apostles met in fear; Amidst them came their Lord most dear, And said, “My peace be on all here.” Alleluia!
When Thomas first the tidings heard, How they had seen the risen Lord, He doubted the disciples’ word.  Alleluia!
“My pierced side, O Thomas, see; My hands, my feet, I show to thee; Not faithless, but believing be.”  Alleluia!
No longer Thomas then denied, He saw the feet, the hands, the side; “Thou art my Lord and God,” he cried.  Alleluia!
How blest are they who have not seen, And yet whose faith has constant been, For they eternal life shall win.  Alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

The Fourth Sunday of Easter is named “Good Shepherd Sunday” in the Episcopal Church and other denominations, after the reading from the Gospel of John, verse 10:11: “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”.  The psalm is always the 23rd (“The Lord is my shepherd”), and we sang as the Orison the beautiful Irish hymn St. Columba (listen to it at the beginning of the podcast for April 29).  The words are a paraphrase of Psalm 23 by Henry W. Baker, first published in 1868.  It has long been our tradition to have the “death’s dark vale” verse sung by a soloist:

The King of love my Shepherd is,
Whose goodness faileth never,
I nothing lack if I am His
And He is mine forever.

Where streams of living water flow
My ransomed soul He leadeth,
And where the verdant pastures grow,
With food celestial feedeth.

Perverse and foolish oft I strayed,
But yet in love He sought me,
And on His shoulder gently laid,
And home, rejoicing, brought me.

In death’s dark vale I fear no ill
With Thee, dear Lord, beside me;
Thy rod and staff my comfort still,
Thy cross before to guide me.

Thou spread’st a table in my sight;
Thy unction grace bestoweth;
And O what transport of delight
From Thy pure chalice floweth!

And so through all the length of days
Thy goodness faileth never;
Good Shepherd, may I sing Thy praise
Within Thy house forever.

In my next post I will return to writing a sidebar about one of the more than fifty groups praying Compline throughout North America.  Until then, Happy Easter!

Good Friday

Today He who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the tree.
Today He who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the tree.
Today He who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the tree.
The King of the angels is decked with a crown of thorns.
He who wraps the heav’ns with clouds is wrapped in the purple of mockery.
He who freed Adam in the Jordan is slapped on the face.
The Bridegroom of the Church is affixed to the cross with nails.
The Son of the Virgin is pierced by a spear.
We worship Thy Passion, O Christ.
We worship Thy Passion, O Christ.
We worship Thy Passion, O Christ.

Show us also Thy glorious Resurrection.

(From Antiphon XV from the Orthodox Christian Matins of Holy Friday.  Listen to it at about 13:00 on the April 1, 2012 podcast of the Compline service at www.complinepodcast.org )

Blessings on this day, and the Easter to come.

John Muehleisen’s “Pietà” (spotlight: Compline on Bainbridge Island)

Michangelo's Pietà

The Compline Choir was privileged to sing during the world premiere performance of Pietà by Seattle-based composer John Muehleisen  on Wednesday, March 14, 2012 at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle.  The work was commissioned by Seattle’s Choral Arts, directed by Robert Bode, and was  appropriate to the contemplative time of Lent in the Christian calendar.  This is a stunning composition, with its many layers: musical, textual, and spiritual.

Pietà’s inspiration is rooted in the word itself, which in its more profound meaning is “compassion” or “mercy”.  Evoked by the Michangelo statue, we think of “Pietà” as the image of a mother holding her dead son; in Muehleisen’s work, this image is portrayed through three timelines: (1) the Passion, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus; (2) wartime poetry of loss and grief; and (3) the need for compassion in our own day.  Each timeline is emphasized in two of the six sections of the work: (1) the relationship of Mary and Jesus in Scene Three (Calvary) and Scene Four (Pietà); (2) mothers and sons in general in Scene One (The Son) and Scene Two (The Mother); and (3) the grief and loss felt by all of us and the call to mutual compassion and love for one another, in Scenes One and Six (Prologue and Epilogue).

The musical performance of Pietà involved three choirs, two wind instruments, tenor and soprano soloists, and percussion.  Choral Arts, an SATB chamber choir, was positioned in the front of St. Mark’s Cathedral, along with the two instrumentalists (oboes and English horns) in the center, flanked by the tenor and soprano soloists.  Off to the right were timpani, vibraphones, tubular bells, gong, and cymbals, played by two percussionists.  In the choir loft behind the audience was the Seattle Girls’ Choir Prima Voce ensemble, which became a symbol of the divine nature of Jesus, as opposed to the human nature portrayed by Choral Arts.  The Compline Choir was located between the two groups, in the rear of the cathedral in a semicircle around the baptismal font, and underneath the organ positiv division, which hangs off the front of the choir loft.  Compline Choir’s role was as the “Chanters” — singing traditional two- and four-part Orthodox chants, which set the stage for each Scene and sometimes carried the Passion narrative.  The plaintive sound of the oboes/English horns, inspired by the Bach St. John Passion, provided a musical motive of “compassion” throughout.

A moving combination of texts is used to portray grief, loss, and compassion: among them poems by Wilfrid Owen, William Blake, and Rudyard Kipling; words from Martin Luther King, the Stabat Mater, and a homily from the Requiem Eucharist and Celebration of Life for Matthew Shepard.  Particularly beautiful was the text of Mary’s “Lullaby” from Scene Four (Pietà), which was written by Choral Arts’ director, Robert Bode (I hope eventually to have a link to the musical excerpt):

Lullay, lullay, little One,
Such a gift as God’s own Son:
   Come to Earth
   Our hope to be,
Sleeping soft upon my knee.

Heu!, heu! martyred One,
Such a gift as God’s own Son:
   Come to Earth
   To broken be,
Hung so cruel upon a tree.

Ave!, ave! Holy One,
Such a gift as God’s own Son:
   Lying still
   Upon my knee,
In my arms, forever free.

The juxtaposition of sleep and death in the Lullaby is one of the foundational ideas behind Compline – our preparation for sleep at the end of the day reminds us of our preparation for end of life.  Muehleisen’s use of the Compline texts Nunc Dimittis and the chant “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit” underscored this connection.  The idea that in death we release our fears and anger, inspires us to do this in the present — as one Zen master says, “Why don’t you die now, and enjoy the rest of your life?”  It is this ego-death that enables us to live compassionately in the now.

If you want to find out more about the Pietà, John Muehleisen has written extensive program notes at the Choral Arts website.  John came to our Compline rehearsal and service several months ago, and expressed the desire at that time to write a guest blog about his experience for the Underground.  I look forward to it.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Spotlight:  Bainbridge Island, WA Compline Choir

Bainbridge Island Compline Choir

For those of you unfamiliar with the Seattle area, Bainbridge Island lies to the west of Seattle, and one gets there the fastest by hopping on a ferry and taking a 30-minute ride across Puget Sound.  Here is a description of the choir sent to me by its director. Bill Pelandini:

The St Cecilia’s Compline service is essentially the same as that sung at St Mark’s, with a couple of notable exceptions and additions.  In consideration of its host Roman Catholic parish, we amended the service to include a silent Confiteor at the beginning, added a second psalm and shortened the responsories slightly.  The service is sung in a darkened church without accompaniment. Unlike St Mark’s, the group sings from the front of the church, under the cupola over the sanctuary, which allows us to take full advantage of the acoustics.  Attendance over the years has been a consistent 50-75 – not a bad showing in a small community such as ours.

Unlike other groups, our association with Peter Hallock and the St Mark’s Compline Choir came a few years after we began.   In early 1996, we invited Peter to present a workshop for the group.  He started the session with an hour’s reflection on the history of Compline and the importance of the psalm as the spiritual center of the Office.  From there, he tackled some much needed work on vocal production, the essentials of ensemble singing and general principles of musicality.  It was an eye(ear)–opening experience that has shaped and influenced our choir ever since!  Shortly thereafter, Bill was asked to join the St Mark’s group, where he spent 14 years learning more and more from Peter, and, after Peter’s retirement,  Jason Anderson.  In the process, we became part of the “Compline Choir family,” and we continue to  look to the ‘mother choir’ for inspiration and support.

Congratulations, Bill on your 20 years, and for being the first group to chant Compline on a regular basis in a Roman Catholic parish!