Summer at Compline

El Greco, Assumption of the Virgin Mary

In August, summer finally came to Seattle, after a cold and wet spring that seemed to go on through the end of July.  Unlike some groups that take the summer off, we sing Compline throughout the year, and the attendance does not drop off, even on really warm days.  In fact, we had about 700 people on July 31; about 300 of these were members of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, who were beginning their national convention.  Our friend Carl Crosier and his wife Katherine, a fine organist, came back to greet us after the service.  Carl was inspired by Compline while attending college in Seattle in the late 1960s; when he moved to Honolulu he founded a Compline Choir in 1976, which is still going strong after 35 years.  This August he retired as Cantor (music director) of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu.  Carl, congratulations to you!  Any time you want to write a guest blog here, just let me know!  In the meantime, you can read about their doings at Katherine’s lively blog about church music, “Another year of insanity”.

I always look forward to the month of August at Compline, especially around August 15 when Anglicans celebrate the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin, which is also the Roman Catholic celebration of her assumption into heaven (Orthodox Christians who keep the Julian Calendar celebrate it on August 28).  For over a decade now, we have sung as our anthem the Franz Biebl “Ave Maria” for men’s chorus.  This is a setting of the Angelus, a prayer originating in the eleventh century and traditionally done three times a day – 6am, noon, and 6pm.  There are three verses describing the annunciation of the angel to Mary, each followed by the Ave Maria; in Biebl’s setting, the complete prayer is only heard on the third repetition.  At Compline, we also sang as an orison the Salve Regina chant; this is the Marian antiphon normally done at the end of Compline in the Roman Rite.  There are four Marian antiphons, and the Salve Regina is appropriate to the time between the feast of Trinity and the first Sunday of Advent, which encompasses the whole of summertime.  I hope you listen to our podcast for August 14 (press the “Play” button – the Biebl Ave Maria begins at about 25 minutes into the podcast – translation is in the Angelus link above).

Our service on August 21 included both my favorite hymn and our director’s favorite anthem.  At the beginning of the service we sang as an orison the hymn “God himself is with us”; the melody is named after the German church in Stockholm (Tysk Church).  The last verse is especially appropriate during the week following the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary (listen to the podcast for August 21):

1. God himself is with us; let us all adore him, and with awe appear before him. God is here within us; souls, in silence fear him, humbly, fervently draw near him. Now his own who have known God, in worship lowly, yield their spirits wholly.	3. Thou pervadest all things; let thy radiant beauty light mine eyes to see my duty. As the tender flowers eagerly unfold them, to the sunlight calmly hold them, so let me quietly in thy rays imbue me; let thy light shine through me.
2. Gladly, Lord, we offer thine to be forever, soul and life and each endeavor. Help us to surrender earth’s deceitful treasures, pride of life, and sinful pleasures: thou alone shalt be known Lord of all our being, life’s true way decreeing.	4. Come, abide within me; let my soul, like Mary, be thine earthly sanctuary. Come, indwelling Spirit, with transfiguring splendor; love and honor will I render. Where I go here below, let me bow before thee, know thee, and adore thee.

Our anthem was Salva nos Domine, vigilantes, a setting of the antiphon sung before the Nunc Dimittis (“Lord, now let your servant depart in peace”) at Compline.  This is set, like the Biebl, for two men’s choirs, and we performed both this anthem and the Biebl using soloists as one of the choirs.  The composer is Jacobus Gallus, who flourished during the late sixteenth century in Bohemia.  Here is the translation (on the podcast you can hear it at about 21:50):

Preserve us, O Lord, while waking,
And guard us while sleeping;
That awake we may watch with Christ,
And asleep we may rest in peace.

It was cloudy today in Seattle, and September is just around the corner.  I’ll be writing again soon about a group that, starting September 11, will be singing Compline every Sunday, with live video feed!

In the footsteps of St. Columba

Monastery ruins at Templedouglas, County Donegal, Ireland

My wife and I recently returned from a trip to Ireland.  We had come primarily to explore places in County Donegal where my wife’s Irish ancestors had lived before coming as immigrants to America in the 1800s, but we also delighted in seeing the sights and hearing traditional Irish music.

Arriving in Dublin, we spent the first three days touring around that wonderful city, which included seeing the Book of Kells, a richly illuminated Gospel Book from about 800 A.D.   This and many other marvelous illuminated manuscripts were produced in the monastery of Iona, on an island off the western coast of Scotland, founded by St. Columba (521 – 597).  At the end of the eighth century there were many Viking raids on Iona, and the monks brought all their finely illustrated books, as well as the saint’s relics, to the monastery of Kells (founded by Columba about 550 C.E.) in central Ireland.  Here they were kept relatively safely until the mid-1600s, when, threatened by Cromwell’s forces, they were moved to Dublin.

The way north in our rental car led us through Kells, where we stopped to get picnic food.  We hadn’t been thinking of St. Columba at all, but a man who took us under his wing to direct us to the supermarket insisted on showing us the round stone tower and oratory, where some of St. Columba’s relics had been kept.

Once in Donegal one of our journeys took us to an area known as Church Hill, where my wife’s Callaghan ancestors were tenant farmers.  The area was quite close to Gartan, St. Columba’s birthplace.  In fact, I believe we found some graves of some of her relatives in a place called Tulach-Dubhglaise, anglicized as Temple-Douglas.  It was here at Templedouglas that St. Columba received his name Colum, or “dove”, at his baptism by a priest named Cruithnechan, who was also one of his tutors.  I took the picture from within the ruins of the monastery – it is quite common for cemeteries to be built around holy places like this, so that one could be buried where saints had trod.

The Irish monks of the sixth century had been much on my mind recently, since I’ve been collecting various things of interest on the history of Compline.  I had been surprised to find that, among monastic groups, the Irish had some of the most severe liturgical practices, deriving from the third-century Egyptian monks.  The practice of “continuous prayer” had been carried over to southern Gaul (France) by monks like John Cassian (see my blog Deus in adjutorium), and these ”Gallican” chants and practices influenced St. Patrick and others who studied in Tours and Auxerre before returning to Ireland as missionaries in the early fifth century.  The ideal was to pray without ceasing, whether by oneself or in community – although there were communal times which varied from two to eight times a day.  But the main part of the liturgy was to chant the psalms in groups of three called chorae, with a common “office” being four chorae (twelve psalms), with other antiphons, hymns, and prayers.  The Irish practice of psalmody was at its most severe in the “three fifties”, where all 150 psalms were sung in three groups, along with other chants and prayers.  The rule was, no food until all 150 psalms had been sung!

There is a book of antiphons, hymns, and prayers associated with the office called the Bangor Antiphoner, which was either written or completed by Irish monks at Bobbio Abbey, near Milan.   The abbey was founded near the end of his life by St. Columbanus (540 – 615), who with twelve companions set out about 580 on a mission to the non-Christians in France.  The Bangor Antiphoner probably not only contains much of the liturgical practice in Ireland, but may more accurately reflect contemporary Gallican practice.  There were three night “hours”: at nightfall (Initium Noctis), midnight (Medium Noctis), and early morning (vigilae).  Initium Noctis, which corresponds closely with Compline, had a candle-lighting ceremony or lucernarium, twelve psalms, antiphons, and prayers.  It concluded with a rite called Ad pacem celebrandam, in which forgiveness of sins is asked “that we may not fear from nocturnal fear”.

I’d like to conclude with one of the collects from Initium Noctis (translated by my friend Bill McJohn); let it be our prayer tonight:

Now that day has run its course and night has come, let us pray to the mercy of God, that, our minds filled with divine things, we may be able to renounce the works of darkness.  Amen.

Easter Joy

Christ is risen, alleluia!  The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia!

Easter is the greatest celebration of the Christian year.  As befittting this and other great occasions, we begin Compline with a procession from the chapel behind the main altar of the Cathedral, down the side aisle, to the corner where we sing the office.  It’s been an Easter tradition since 1970 to sing the Easter Canticle by our founder and director from 1956-2009, Peter Hallock.  He wrote it for choir and handbells — specifically the “Flemish” type of handbells that St. Mark’s Cathedral bought in the 1960s.  We play the bells as we walk and sing;  we walk carefully, since the company that made the bells went out of business, and they are irreplaceable.

The words of the Easter Canticle are from three passages of St. Paul: I Corinthians 5:7-8, Romans 6:9-11, and  I Corinthians 15:20-22.  You can listen to it here (click the “Play” button to start) and follow along with the text:

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us;
Therefore let us keep the feast,
Not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and evil,
But with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more;
Death hath no more dominion over him.
For in that he died, he died unto sin once:
But in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
Likewise reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin,
But alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Christ is risen from the dead,
And become the firstfruits of them that slept.
For since by man came death,
By man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die,
Even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be,
World without end. Amen.
Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

The period of Easter will last for fifty days until Pentecost, and for all the Sundays at Compline during this time we sing “Alleluia” after the antiphon (“Preserve us, O Lord, while waking…”) of the Nunc Dimittis.  On Easter Sunday we sang, as a second anthem, the Regina caeli laetare in a setting by the sixteenth-century English composer Robert White (ca. 1538-1574).  This is one of the four Marian Antiphons, chants to the Virgin Mary that are sung at the end of Compline in the Roman Rite during the four seasons of the church year; Regina caeli is sung from Easter Sunday until Trinity Sunday.  Also, we sang the sequence (a medieval type of hymn) Victimae paschali laudes.  But Victimae paschali is a special favorite of mine – so I will wait for another entry to describe this beautiful chant.

Next Sunday, May 1, Seattle’s Renaissance Singers will be streaming their Compline service at 7pm PDT from their website; I hope you can join them.

Christ is risen, alleluia!  The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia!

Lamentations

The forty days of Lent are almost over, and now the great Easter Triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter) has begun.  Last Sunday we began Holy Week with a triumphal procession, but with the reading of the Passion story from Matthew, the tone changed from exultation to that of grief and lamentation.  Last Sunday’s Compline service and one of the anthems we sang during Lent - the Tallis setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah- express this mood of sorrow.

We began Compline on Palm Sunday (listen our podcast - click Play to begin) by singing as an orison “Drop, drop, slow tears“, as set by Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625).  The words take us immediately into a place of devotion, as they evoke the woman who washed Jesus’s feet with her tears, and dried them with her hair:

Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet,
Which brought from Heav’n the news, and Prince of Peace…

Our psalm that evening (03:45) was Psalm 22, verses 1 through 21,  in a simple plainsong setting.  The words begin “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” — words recorded by Matthew and Mark as those of Jesus, dying on the Cross.  This text not only contains its literal meaning, but stands for the whole psalm, painting a picture of who Jesus was.  It includes not only his suffering and the manner of his death (“they pierce my hands and my feet”), but, in the last verse, a proclamation of deliverance: “They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn the saving deeds that he has done.”

Our hymn on Palm Sunday (11:00) was Vexilla Regis, which dates from the sixth century, and is sung at Vespers in the two weeks before Easter, and also on Good Friday as the Blessed Sacrament is carried in procession to the altar.  The version we sang had alternate verses in polyphony by Guillaume Dufay (1400-1474).  Here is the first stanza:

The Royal Banners forward go,
The cross shines forth in mystic glow
Where He, as man, who gave man breath
Now bows before the yoke of death.

Our anthem (24:40) was a setting of In manus tuas by John Sheppard (1515-1558).  The words are taken from Psalm 31:5, and are sung every week as a short response in our Compline service, after the Chapter, a short bible reading.  Like the opening of Psalm 22, the first half of this verse was said by Jesus (Luke 23:46) as he hung on the cross:

Into your hands I commend my spirit * for you have redeemed me, O Lord, O God of truth.

On Wednesday through Friday of Holy Week during the middle ages, sections of the Lamentations of Jeremiah were used as lessons during the first part (or Nocturn) of the Office of Matins.  In the later middle ages, these were sung on the afternoon and evening of the day before, during which candles were extinguished, symbolizing the death of Christ; this became known as Tenebrae (Darkness).  It has been a tradition of the Compline Choir since its founding to sing settings of the Lamentations during Lent; you can listen here (Press Play – the anthem begins at about 20:30) to a setting of Lamentations 1:1-2 by Thomas Tallis (1505-1585).  Each verse is introduced by a letter, in alphabetic order.  This is the letter that begins the verse in the original Hebrew, but the use of it by itself in both the chant, and in later Renaissance settings, is a plaintive vocal expression of grief.  Here is the translation:

Here begin the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah:
Aleph.  How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations!  She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal.
Beth.  She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies.
(Refrain) Jerusalem, Jerusalem, return to the Lord your God.

As we enter these days of lamentation and hope, we find consolation through the communal expression of our sorrow.  May you have a most blessed and happy Easter.

Lord, keep us steadfast

The liturgical season of Lent is a time of quieting the mind and simplifying one’s life.  We do this not only by giving up things that are unessential, but by pursuing new activities that deepen us.  In the Compline Choir, we observe the season by making changes in how we sing parts of the office.  The psalm, hymn, and Nunc Dimittis (Song of Simeon) are often sung in plainsong (simple unison chant).  We also sing the same Orison (sung prayer) at the beginning of Compline each of the weeks of Lent: ”Lord, keep us steadfast in your word” (words by Martin Luther, trans. by Catherine Winkworth) — listen to it on our podcast from March 20 (click “Play” — the Orison starts almost immediately). 

This simplification gives us more time to rehearse a more complex anthem, which is sung at the end of the Compline service.  There are many choral compositions appropriate for Lent, especially settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. When Peter Hallock founded the Compline Choir back in the spring of 1956, he had in mind the vocal forces that could sing the Lamentations settings by the Tudor composer Thomas Tallis (1505-1585) — and for that reason invited a group of men that could sing this piece, set for altos, tenors, and basses only.  We’ll be singing the first of the Tallis Lamentations in April, and then Hallock’s own setting for choir and solo cello on Palm Sunday.  We started Lent by singing a motet by Tallis on the text “In jejunio et fletu“.  The words are from Joel 2, vs. 12 and 17, and were used as a Responsory at the Office of Matins for the First Sunday of Lent.  Here is a link to a performance by several groups, and a translation:

With fasting and weeping, let the priests say: “Spare, O Lord, spare Thy people, and give not Thy heritage to destruction.” Let the priests weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, “Spare, O Lord, spare Thy people!”

The Second Sunday of Lent the Compline Choir sang the motet “Ne reminiscaris, Domine”, by Jacobus Vaet (ca. 1529 – 1567).  This is a piece not heard very often, as opposed to the ”In jejunio”.  It was new to the Compline Choir; Jason Anderson, our director, had made a special edition for us.  What a blessing it is to be a part of a group which is able to meet on a Sunday night, rehearse a new and difficult piece like this, and perform it on live radio an hour-and-a-half later — not perfectly, of course, but with a good degree of credibility.  My favorite part is the ending, where on the words “Thy most precious blood”, there is a change to a slower triple meter — it almost seems like time itself is standing still — a very haunting effect.  (Listen to the podcast from March 20 – the anthem begins at about 19:44).  And the translation:

Remember not, Lord, our offenses, nor the offenses of our forefathers; neither take Thou vengeance of our sins.
Spare us, good Lord, spare Thy people, whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy most precious blood.  And be not angry with us forever.

I’ve also made room in my life so that I can focus on more silence and reflection.  I attended a day-retreat at St. Placid Priory on the first Saturday of Lent, where we spent the day with Morgan Atkinson, who showed his documentary film “Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton” (here’s a sample), as well as selections from several other films.  I’ve been subscribing to the daily messages from Abbey of the Arts (see a link on the right), which during Lent are reflections drawn from the writings of the desert fathers and mothers.  I’ve also started submitting sections of my book, Compline Reflections, to a writing coach — a Lenten discipline that I plan to extend through the summer.

May you be steadfast in your observance of this special time of the year, as we enter into Spring and look forward to rebirth and new life.

Mountain height and deep valley

Mount Tabor, one of the possible sites for the Transfiguration of Jesus

In the last week we have seen the transition in the Western Christian liturgical calendar from the season of Epiphany to that of Lent.  We shift from reckoning the days after the birth of Jesus to looking forward in time to the celebration of his death and resurrection.  Following the last Sunday of Epiphany, Ash Wednesday begins the countdown of forty penitential days before Easter (there are also six Sundays during this time, but they are not counted as days of penitence).

On the Last Sunday of the Epiphany, the readings in the Episcopal Church have as their theme the Transfiguration of Jesus.  Even though there is an official feast day in August for the Transfiguration in the Orthodox, Roman, and Anglican calendars, I always look forward to remembering this event at the end of Epiphany, as well as saying goodbye to the ”Alleluia”, which we won’t say or sing again until Easter.

The Transfiguration commemorates the day when Jesus and some of his disciples went up onto a high mountain.  Here Jesus’ face “shone like the sun” and he was seen talking with Moses and Elijah, and God’s voice was heard: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” (Matthew Ch. 17).  This event has much in common with Jesus’ baptism (see my posting earlier this year) in that God’s voice is heard, accompanied by dazzling light.  For Christians, it is the ”mountaintop experience” analagous to that of the Jewish people receiving Moses’ revelations from Mt. Sinai.  And it is the kind of transforming experience that we need to keep before us as we enter the spare times of Lent, where we strip away much that is superficial in order to focus and prepare for the passion and resurrection of Christ.

At Compline on the Last Sunday of Epiphany we sang many wonderful Transfiguration texts. I hope you have time to listen to them all, but the one I kept singing to myself this week as Lent began was our hymn, “Christ on the mountain peak” (listen to it on our podcast, click the “Play” button – begins at about 9:44):

Christ upon the mountain peak stands alone in glory blazing;
let us, if we dare to speak, with the saints and angels praise him. Alleluia!

Trembling at his feet we saw Moses and Elijah speaking.
All the prophets and the Law shout through them their joyful greeting. Alleluia!

Swift the cloud of glory came. God proclaiming in its thunder
Jesus as his Son by name! Nations cry aloud in wonder! Alleluia!

This is God’s beloved Son!  Law and prophets fade before him;
first and last and only One,  let creation now adore him! Alleluia!

As we move into the season of Lent, let this be our prayer:

O God, who before the passion of your only ­begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Collect for the Last Sunday of Epiphany, Book of Common Prayer).

The Seattle Compline Choir and its English roots

Opening of the O Maria salvatoris mater, by John Browne, in the Eton Choirbook (c. 1490)

Before I begin today, I wanted to announce that my new web site is up and running: www.complinereflections.com To get on my mailing list to receive notifications of this blog posting, just go to the “Contact me” page and fill in your email address.  Tell your friends!

I’m posting this on Sunday, March 6.  It’s the last Sunday of Epiphany, but also the first Sunday of the month, and the Renaissance Singers of Seattle are singing Compline tonight at 7:00 p.m., via a live video stream (hope you can watch!).  It was partly a concert of the Renaissance Singers that I attended last week, as well as the arrival of a CD that I had ordered, that prompted me to write about the origins of the Seattle Compline service today.

The Renaissance Singers concert featured music of the Eton Choirbook, a manuscript preserving the repertory of large English churches and collegiate chapels from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.  The English had a special musical genre called the “votive antiphon”, a substantial piece of music that was sung in pure devotion, usually dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and sung in the Lady Chapel right after Compline.  Listen to the beginning of a typical composition from the Eton Choirbook, a “Salve Regina” by William Cornysh.  Pieces like this are substantial, lasting between 12 – 14 minutes, and are extremely elaborate, with long “athletic” phrases.  I can imagine the whole community of the collegiate church or chapel going off afterward, observing the “great silence”, with this offering of great beauty resounding in their heads, lulling them to sleep.

The CD that arrived in the mail was by the Boston-based vocal ensemble Blue Heron, and consisted of five pieces from the Peterhouse Partbooks, which preserve the English repertory from a little later, up to 1540, but the votive antiphon was still a large part of the collection.  It’s probable that the partbooks were copied for Canterbury in 1539-40, when it was being converted from a monastery to a Cathedral.  It was during the time of Reformation that the uniquely English service of Evensong was created; this combined Vespers and Compline, and the tradition of singing a beautiful anthem at the end was maintained at Evensong until today.

The founder of the Compline Choir, Peter Hallock, studied in 1949-50 at the Royal School of Church Music, which at the time was housed in Canterbury.  In order to learn plainchant, the students sang Compline from a little booklet published by the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, and they would periodically go down to the resonant crypt of Canterbury Cathedral and sing Compline.  When Peter started the Compline Service in Seattle in 1956, he used the same booklet, and this is what we have been singing from ever since.  And we always do an anthem at the end of the service, out of this English “ethos”.  It is a time when we offer something of great beauty, and something that lingers in my mind as I drive home, go to sleep, and prepare for another work-week.

In 2000, the Compline Choir traveled to Canterbury Cathedral to sing Compline there, and go down to the crypt, where it all started, and sing an anthem.  But that’s another story.

Post-Compline organ music

Program for the dedication of the Flentrop Organ, September, 1965, with Flentrop's autograph.

Last Sunday night after the Compline Service, a young organist gave a solo recital on the “mighty Flentrop”, the big pipe organ at St. Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle.  It’s not too unusual to have a guest organist, but an unusual thing happened at the end that inspired me to write about organ music this week.

Informal organ recitals have taken place immediately after Compline since 1965, when the organ, built by D. A. Flentrop in Zaandam, Holland, was installed.  The Flentrop was one of the first neo-Baroque or mechanical-action instruments installed in Seattle, and one of the largest of its kind in North America.  It made St. Mark’s almost immediately a mecca, a pilgrimage destination, for every organist in the country. Peter Hallock, organist and choirmaster at St. Mark’s from 1951-1991, and founder/director of the Compline Choir, made the organ loft available to anyone who wanted to play after Compline.  A crowd of us would climb the stairs and listen while Bill Giddings, a member of the Compline Choir, would either play the organ himself or facilitate the playing of others.  I’m sure that this after-Compline event brought more people to the service itself, leading to the growth of attendees by 1967 to between 400-600 people, mostly teenagers and young adults.  Bill, now a retired chemistry professor, still takes his place at the organ most Sunday nights, and many people hike up the stairs to get a closer look and listen to the magnificent instrument.  To give you an idea of what it’s like up in the loft, here’s a video of St. Mark’s organist Mel Butler giving an organ demo after church.

Last Sunday was the night before Presidents’ Day, and we had an extra-heavy attendance of young people at Compline.  The organist, Kyle Kirschenman, was himself only a junior in high school (I’ve written him to find out more about his music studies, and will update this when he writes back).  He reminded me of so many young organists, who over the years have made their pilgrimage to the Flentrop.  One of those prominent in the organ “free-for-alls” back in the late 1960s was the then 16-year-old Roger Sherman, who now heads Gothic Records, a national source of organ and choral music.  In 1993 he started the radio program The Organ Loft, which in Seattle follows the Compline Service on Classic KING-FM; The Organ Loft has both organ and choral music, and it’s the next best thing (and in some ways better!) to being at St. Mark’s in person after Compline.  Another young person I remember was Bruce Neswick, who sang with the Compline Choir while in college, and is now the organist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.

I have always sensed intuitively a link between music and spirituality, but could never until recently articulate the similarity between a concert and a worship experience.  I have come, mainly through being a Benedictine oblate, to see that deep listening is the same as meditation, and that the process of focusing one’s attention on music in either performance or listening is no different than a Zen monk focusing on the qualities of a moss-covered rock.  Many of the young people that come to Compline refer to it as a “concert”, and I don’t have a problem with that.  The divine office is a concert for deep listening – and afterward, organ music provides additional opportunities for mindfulness.

Taking a larger view of musical beauty, all forms of creation, whether they be meant for deep reflection, or simply for enjoyment, have that divine creative spark.  Spirituality has been defined as “a stance toward life [where] more and more everything cries out ‘God’ for us” (John Gorsuch, An Invitation to the Spiritual Journey, 1990).  Spirituality allows us to process the experience of sound as communion with the Divine, through our own individual discrimination-process (called ”taste”), which takes in the qualities of the particular work, the intent of the performance, memories of past hearings, and the special circumstances of the moment.  The qualities of a piece of music can vary from those requiring deep listening to those that are simply entertaining, full of playfulness and joy.

We experienced both kinds of beauty with Kyle’s recital last Sunday.  After his program, which included an arrangement of Barber’s “Adagio for Strings“, the people gave him a round of applause. He then launched into an arrangement of “Be Our Guest”, from the 1991 Disney movie “Beauty and the Beast”.  Many of the young people in the audience knew the lyrics, and sang along – I even saw several young women dancing on the labyrinth in one corner in sheer abandon. I smiled with recognition, at my own youthful excitement during the organ “free-for-alls” of the ’60s.  But I believe that this spontaneous sing-along was a first for these after-Compline concerts!

Not being familiar enough with the lyrics (even though I bought a copy of the film for my kids when it came out) I looked up “Be Our Guest”.  The final chorus really says it all about the kind of Benedictine hospitality that we have been offering at Compline since 1956:

Be our guest! Be our guest!
Our command is your request
It’s been years since we’ve had anybody here
And we’re obsessed
With your meal, with your ease
Yes, indeed, we aim to please
While the candlelight’s still glowing
Let us help you, We’ll keep going
Course by course, one by one
‘Til you shout, “Enough! I’m done!”
Then we’ll sing you off to sleep as you digest
Tonight you’ll prop your feet up
But for now, let’s eat up
Be our guest!
Be our guest!
Be our guest!
Please, be our guest!

Psalm 91 and a movie

Filming "Nothing Against Life" (copyright, NAL Movie/Regan MacStravic - Picture by Regan MacStravic)

I’m going to digress from my usual recounting of recent events, and go back to October 2010, when Compline Choir took part in the filming of a scene from the movie Nothing Against Life.

The film, directed by Julio Ramirez, was shot entirely on location in Seattle   It follows four characters – two men and two women – whose lives intertwine in the final days before each attempts suicide.  Nothing Against Life centers around this taboo subject, and is intended to raise consciousness about suicide, and inspire people to get and/or give help before it’s too late.

One of the four characters, a young woman named “Wave”, comes to the Compline service at St. Mark’s, and finds a few moments’ peace from her troubled relationship with her religious fundamentalist parents.  Since we don’t allow photography during the Compline Service on Sunday evening, the filming took place on a Friday evening, with movie “extras” as Compline attendees.  In the scene, which lasts about three minutes, the camera pans over the Compline Choir chanting, and then picks up Wave and follows her as she enters the cathedral and walks up the center aisle to sit on the stairs beneath the altar with a number of other young people.  She makes eye contact with a young woman who smiles at her.

Jason Anderson, the director of the Compline Choir, had picked out several things for us to chant in simple plainsong while the action was taking place: “Jesus, thou Joy of loving hearts” and Psalm 91.  It was actually my writing last week about Psalms 4 and 134 that got me thinking about Psalm 91, because the three of them, taken together, are the psalms that St. Benedict selected to be sung every night at Compline.

We spent from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. filming the scene.  Most of the time was spent waiting back in the choir room, or in our places.  The cathedral was teeming with activity – sound crew setting up mikes, camera crew practicing their run on a noiseless cart, wranglers wrangling the “extras”, and lighting people rigging up reflectors so our white surplices (as the director said afterward), “glowed like angels”.  I saw one person walking around, carrying a can of Red Bull, as if the energy of all this were not enough.  Finally came the moment to film the first take.  A ritual of things came in succession: the command for silence — the cry “rolling!” — the obligatory blackboard with the clattering arm — then an almost deafening silence — then the shocking cry from the director — “ACTION!”

Then it was up to me to begin — I was the cantor — to intone the first notes of “Jesus, thou Joy of loving hearts” — to break open the incredible silence.  The words came out of my mouth almost as in slow motion.  There was something about the fact that this was going to go on celluloid, and perhaps live on much longer than I would, that made this moment so significant.  And this was October, my 46th anniversary of singing Compline – this film suddenly seemed to me to sum up, in three minutes, the very thing I had dedicated most of my adult life to do.  And now, singing to this imaginary young person who was contemplating suicide, came the reassuring words of Psalm 91 (to which you can listen here – press the “Play” button; it begins at about 3:45 on the podcast):

1  He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, *
abides under the shadow of the Almighty.
2  He shall say to the LORD,”You are my refuge and my stronghold, *
my God in whom I put my trust.”
3  He shall deliver you from the snare of the hunter *
and from the deadly pestilence.
4  He shall cover you with his pinions, and you shall find refuge under his wings; *
his faithfulness shall be a shield and buckler.
5  You shall not be afraid of any terror by night, *
nor of the arrow that flies by day;
6  Of the plague that stalks in the darkness, *
nor of the sickness that lays waste at mid-day.
7  A thousand shall fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, *
but it shall not come near you.
8  Your eyes have only to behold *
to see the reward of the wicked.
9  Because you have made the LORD your refuge, *
and the Most High your habitation,
10 There shall no evil happen to you, *
neither shall any plague come near your dwelling.
11  For he shall give his angels charge over you, *
to keep you in all your ways.
12  They shall bear you in their hands, *
lest you dash your foot against a stone.
13  You shall tread upon the lion and the adder; *
you shall trample the young lion and the serpent under your feet.
14  Because he is bound to me in love,
therefore will I deliver him; *
I will protect him, because he knows my Name.
15  He shall call upon me, and I will answer him; *
I am with him in trouble; I will rescue him and bring him to honor.
16  With long life will I satisfy him, *
and show him my salvation.

Among the many things I could say about this psalm, I will select two for now.  First, if we are bound to God in love (verse 14), then we are at one with the power, the force that animates us, and is there available to us as our “true self” (Thomas Merton) — therefore, to quote Julian of Norwich, “all will be well”.  This is not delusional thinking, but simply that come what may, we are in the hands of God.  I often think of images like the buildings coming down on 9/11 when I sing such verses as “There shall no evil happen to you”.  Do we trust in God enough to always say the Compline “mantra” (from Psalm 31)  - “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit”?

The other thing to consider is “how does God take care of us?”  Are we not the creatures of God?  As we are in the hands of God, are we not also the hands, the eyes, the ears of God for our fellow creatures?  I think this is the message that Julio Ramirez is getting at in his movie: listen to others — be aware of their needs, and help them to choose life.

I’ll be letting you know when the movie comes out.

Compline Psalms 4 and 134

Psalm 4 from the Liber Usualis

At Compline at St. Mark’s in Seattle, we often select the psalm according to the liturgical theme of the day, but occasionally we sing psalms that were prescribed by St. Benedict in his Rule for monasteries to be sung only and always at Compline.  Last Sunday we sang two of these – Psalms 4 and 134 (I’m using the Jewish numbering, which is widely used in bibles today, as opposed to the Latin Vulgate numbering, prevalent in scholarly discussions and  Catholic liturgy until the 1970s — here’s a decoder for the two numbering systems).  Peter Hallock composed for us a lovely setting of these two psalms, in which the very short Psalm 134 is used as a refrain (or antiphon) before and after Psalm 4.  Here is the text, taken from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (BCP) that you can read while listening to it on our podcast (click on the “Play” button — the Psalms begin at about 3:40):

Psalm 134
Behold now, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, you that stand by night in the house of the Lord.
Lift up your hands in the holy place and bless the Lord; the Lord who made heaven and earth bless you out of Zion.

Psalm 4
1  Answer me when I call, O God, defender of my cause; *
you set me free when I am hard-pressed;
have mercy on me and hear my prayer.
2  “You mortals, how long will you dishonor my glory; *
how long will you worship dumb idols
and run after false gods?”
3  Know that the LORD does wonders for the faithful; *
when I call upon the LORD, he will hear me.
4  Tremble, then, and do not sin; *
speak to your heart in silence upon your bed.
5  Offer the appointed sacrifices *
and put your trust in the LORD.
6  Many are saying,
“Oh, that we might see better times!” *
Lift up the light of your countenance upon us, O LORD.
7  You have put gladness in my heart, *
more than when grain and wine and oil increase,
8  I lie down in peace; at once I fall asleep; *
for only you, LORD, make me dwell in safety.

Behold now, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, you that stand by night in the house of the Lord.
Lift up your hands in the holy place and bless the Lord; the Lord who made heaven and earth bless you out of Zion.

Psalm 134 is the next-shortest psalm in the Bible – Psalm 117 has about half as many words.  Although the portion “you that stand by night in the house of the Lord” evokes the priestly class worshipping in the temple, Robert Alter, in his translation of The Book of Psalms (2007), comments (p. 464) that “the acts of the sacrificial cult were completed by sundown, but the reference here could be either to the tending of the fires and the temple lamps through the night or to those who stayed to pray, or perhaps to partake of the sacrificial feast, through the hours of the night”.  It seems like an excellent way to describe all who pray before retiring for the night.  Alter translates the psalm as three verses, beginning the third where the BCP has a semicolon.  His second verse begins “Lift up your hands toward the holy place and bless the Lord”, implying that the Hebrew qodesh (“holiness”) can not only designate the sanctuary, but might be “an epithet for the heavens”.  The psalm is wonderfully recripocal — we take the time at night to bless the Lord, and the Lord will bless us.  The fact that this psalm comes at the end of a cycle of fifteen “psalms of ascent” along with the night imagery makes it a natural end-of-the-day prayer.

A portion of Psalm 4 occurs as part of the Jewish Bedtime Shema, and I refer you to an excellent blog posting on this ritual by Paul Kent Oakley in his blog Night Prayers.  I knew that the Christian offices were built on the foundation of Jewish fixed-hour prayer, but I have only just begun to explore that history.  The “Shema Yisrael” (“Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is One”) is the most important prayer in Judaism; the whole passage, Deuteronomy 6:4-9, is worth quoting:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.  Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.  Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (NRSV)

The command to recite the Shema “when you lie down” is at the heart of Jewish prayer at the end of the day.  In the Bedtime Shema, after the psalmody, which includes Psalm 91 (the other psalm prescribed for Compline by St. Benedict), comes a threefold repetition of verse 4: “Quake, and do not offend.  Speak in your hearts on your beds, and be still.” (Alter translation, p. 11).  Another part of the Bedtime Shema could almost be a paraphrase of Psalm 4:

If you will only heed his every commandment—that I am commanding you today—loving the Lord your God, and serving him with all your heart and with all your soul— then he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, and you will gather in your grain, your wine, and your oil; and he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you will eat your fill. Take care, or you will be seduced into turning away, serving other gods and worshipping them, for then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain and the land will yield no fruit; then you will perish quickly from the good land that the Lord is giving you. (Deuteronomy 11:13-21, NRSV)

I find it interesting that although Psalm 4:7 only mentions grain and wine (Alter translation: “You put joy in my heart, from the time their grain and their drink did abound”), the writers of the Latin Vulgate (or perhaps the Greek Septuagint from which it was translated) must have had the passage from Deuteronomy in mind when they formed the more poetic “more than when grain and wine and oil increase” (see the Latin in vs. 8 of the chant pictured).

And for our last thought before we close our eyes tonight, we could hardly choose better than this:

I lie down in peace; at once I fall asleep; for only you, LORD, make me dwell in safety.

Related Articles

• Short Reflection on Psalm 4:1 (simuliustusetpeccator.com)
• 12 Praise thoughts from Psalm 4 (panasianbiz.com)