Questions about systematic thinking

I’ve been thinking once again about systems of thought.  One of the things that I have always appreciated about animals like the systematic theologian is that they generally acknowledge that their system is founded on some basic assumptions.  Most of the time, the basic assumptions are things that can’t be “proven”.  Historically, every time the architectural firm of Whitehead and Russell attempt to erect the perfect system, the demolition team from Gödel is there to knock it down.  Lately, I’ve pondered the idea of people who are concerned about global warming saying we shouldn’t pollute the planet.  That is a great concern of mine as well, but I have a specific religious basis for my thinking.  Without that, I don’t really understand the basis of the argument.  It’s like the old Love & Rockets song, “You can’t go against nature, because going against nature is nature too.”  Without some grounding outside of ourselves, how do you make the argument that it is a “good” thing for humans to exist and continue as a species?  In aesthetics, I see this manifesting itself in the tendency to approach epistemological problems by breaking things down into their constituent parts and labeling them.  Once that is done, we “know” the art object.  I’m not exactly sure how that is related to what is above.  All this is to say, I’ve been reading and thinking about Buber again.  I need to clarify some of these thoughts for myself, so comment away.

Radiolarians

Radiolarians was originally an orchestral piece and my masters thesis.  Having never heard the orchestral version, I made a piano transcription a few years ago and decided that it worked better as a solo piano piece.  I could write stuff about how it is constructed, but I find that when composers do that, it's really boring.  Also, if the piece needs a theoretical justification to exist, it's probably not worth the listen.  Such issues should only be of interest to composers and theorists.  Radiolarians themselves are pretty cool things and quite beautiful.  Google them!

Thoughts on the rescue of the organ department at UNL

Though I am delighted that the University of Nebraska - Lincoln has decided to retain the organ program and my wonderful teacher and friend Chris Marks, the entire process of budget cuts has left me quite disturbed.  I know that I like to talk about the medieval curriculum and tease my friends that their specific disciplines were not in the trivium or the quadrivium.  I know that Universities have to change as knowledge expands.  What I'm not sure about is whether or not the large State Universities are even really Universities anymore in the old sense of the word.  They are certainly not the monastic institutions where people give up their lives to the study of the Western canon.  The humanities and the arts were the target of many of the budget cuts.  PGA golf management (and, yes, that is a real "major") was not.  Presumably, this is because it can create enough money for itself to justify its existence.  I was reading an alumni magazine earlier today from one of my Alma Maters where a new dean was justifying the humanities by saying how many CEOs had a humanities background.  I guess my point is that, originally the idea of the University was that the arts and the humanities were worth studying in and of themselves.  Knowing about them made life better than if you didn't know about them.  Being educated was something that was a value and a privilege and helped to make life more worth living - no matter what your occupation was after you finished.  For quite a few years now, I have noticed that many students have viewed education as a means to a financial end instead of an intrinsic value.  What disturbed me about the budget cutting process at UNL is that it seems like Chancellor Perlman is doing the same thing.  The University as corporation will always have to ask areas of study to justify themselves financially.  If that is the model, the arts and the humanities will never win the fight.

Deus Noster Refugium

In honor of my friend Dr. Melinda Doyle getting hooded and becoming director of choral studies at the University of Montevallo, I am posting our 2004 collaboration.  Melinda commissioned this piece from me in 2004 for the Florida ACDA Convention.  She's conducting the Howard W. Blake choir with me at the piano.  The picture in the video is Melinda, Jason, and I on the top of the Kennedy Center preparing to defend it from assailants while we were on tour.  The text is from Psalm 46.  Congratulations Dr. Doyle!  I'm so proud to be your friend!  Incidentally, why hasn't this piece had more play?  It's really good.

The organist as a social worker

 “What do you need Joseph?” I said to the homeless man who regularly frequented the church looking for food.  I was locking the outside doors of the East entrance to the church when I saw Joseph sitting on the ground.
“I got a serious problem.  I need to talk to Pastor Ros.”
Ros was upstairs just getting ready to leave choir practice. I was feeling generous, so I thought I could handle this one myself and save the clergy the trouble of talking to Joseph that night.
“What do you need Joseph?”
“I got a serious problem,” he repeated.  His voice had the timbre of a garbage disposal with a fork dropped in it.
“What do you need Joseph?”
“I’ve been in jail for the last few days.  I was released from Orient Road Jail today, and I started walking toward downtown hitchhiking.  There was a man who picked me up and gave me a ride.  I got a serious problem.  I need to talk to Pastor Ros.”
“Why don’t you talk to me right now.  We can’t help you with food till tomorrow.”
“Well…the man who picked me up, he started some hanky-panky when we were in his car, and he put something up my butt, and it’s something hard like a marble, and I can still feel it in there, and I keep grunting like UUUUUUUHHHHHHHHH, UUUUUUUUHHHHHHH but it won’t come out, and I think it’s still in there, and I keep going UUUUUUUUUHHHHHH, but it’s stuck, and I got a serious problem.”
Quickly realizing that my training as a church organist had never prepared me for a situation like this, I reversed my previous plan and said, “I’ll go get Ros.  Stay here.”
    When I reached the choir room, I quickly found Pastor Ros and said, “Ros, Joseph is outside.”
“Tell him to come back tomorrow morning.  We can’t help him tonight.  What does he want?”
“You’ve got to hear this.  You’re not going to believe it.” 
I proceeded to recount the whole story including the jail time, the words “hanky-panky”, and my best imitation of the grunting.  When I had completed my impression of Joseph, Ros appeared to be made of carved marble.  She seemed unable to either close her jaw or change the uncanny expression that had spread across her face during the grunting.  The only visible sign of life was the vibration of her brain as she attempted to process the information.  The words struggled out of her open jaw as she made her decision.  “Which entrance is Joseph by?”
“The East entrance.”
“I’m going to go out of the West entrance.  You go tell him to walk across the bridge to the hospital.”
I returned to Joseph and told him that Pastor Ros had already left.  “Walk across the bridge to the hospital.”
“But, I got a serious problem.  There’s something up my butt, and I keep grunting, going UUUUUUUHHHHHH, UUUUUUUUHHHHHHH and it won’t come out.”
“What do you want me to do?!!  I can’t help you with that!  I’m not going to check it out for you!  If you need help with that, then walk across the bridge to the hospital.”
I, unfortunately, had to leave Joseph there on the side of the building.  I always hate to leave homeless people in difficult situations, but this was a special case.  When I arrived for work on the following morning, I went to check my box for mail.  All three pastors at the church had heard the story and had conspired together against me.  In my box was a latex glove, a tube of KY jelly, and a note attached that said, “Can you meet me in the library?  I got a serious problem, Joseph.”

The 10 Plagues for woodwind octet

I'm finally getting around to posting my collaboration with visual artist Brian McMillan and conductor Leonardo Lebas. Campo Aperto is playing. Check out their stuff on youtube. The music was written when I found that my friend Leo, who is a wonderful conductor and composer, was doing new music for winds and horns with his group. I sent some midi files of the sketches off to my friend Brian who offered to do some visual interpretations of the music. The pieces were played twice in Lincoln with the images projected onto a wall at the second performance. They were performed a third time in Morelia, Mexico at a festival of new music. The movements are mostly freely composed without much of a system. I am sometimes inconsistent when I'm committed to a non-systematic approach. The snippet of melody that appears at the very end of "the slaying of the first born" is a dreamy paraphrase of the chant used for haftorah in synagogue services.

1. blood 2. frogs 3. flies



4. noxious creatures 5. pestilence 6. boils breaking out into blisters



7. hail 8. locusts



9. darkness



10. the slaying of the firstborn

Ballad of a Vocal Performance Major

Here is the fabulous Anna DeGraff singing my song cycle the "Ballad of a Vocal Performance Major".

Movement 1


The letter came in early Spring.
My mother beamed with pride.
"You've been accepted into college, dear. They're offering a full ride!"
My father walked into the room,
and sitting by my side,
congratulated me and wept,
his arms help open wide.

It was then I gained the courage,
to speak freely and confide
the dream I'd hidden secretly.
I looked at them and sighed,
"Mom..Dad...
I want to study music.
I want to sing.
I want to study music.
I want to sing.

My mother shook her head in shock,
like I'd committed treason.
My father sat and wept again,
but for a different reason.

I want to study music.
I want to sing.
I want to study music.
I want to sing.

Movement 2

And so,
I spent two years in theory until I was able
to give every root, third, and fifth its own label,
Inversions of sevenths and chords I resented
Like Picardy thirds and French Sixths all augmented.
Part writing, voice leading, form and analysis,
Parallel fifths that can lead to paralysis,
learning to sight sing by singing solfeggio
nearly compelled me to jump of a ledge-io.

(My white notes were fine on Do Sol La Fa Mi Ti.
My black notes, however, were more like some Fi Si.)

In diction I learned all the sounds that were dentals,
and labials, and plosives, and suprasegmentals,
uvulars, palatals, lateral fricatives,
velars, and glottals, and also the ejectives,
all so my accent would be irreproachable
only provided my tongue would be coachable.

(Ich würde auf Deutsch jetzt lernen zum Singen
mit Freuden und Sorgen so gut aus zu klingen.
Italiano piacere, con fuoco e forza.
Français manifique avec je ne sais quoi.)

History taught me the names dates and places
That after the test my mind promptly erases.
Schubert and Schumann both Robert and Clara
and Chopin's girl "George", who wore no mascara.
Schütz, Bach, and Sweelinck, and crazy Carl Orff,
and Ditters von Ditters von Ditters von Dorf,
Ravel, Cimarosa, Duparc, and Bizet,
Gesualdo, (who murdered his wife, by the way),
Guido d'Arrezzo who taught boys to sight sing,
Jean Baptiste Lully who died from conducting.
Schönberg, and Webern, and old man Zemlinsky,
Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, and even Stravinsky.

(I learned all my eras, Medieval, Romantic,
In spite of my teacher, who was quite pedantic.
Composers from Italy, France, and Moldova
were a petulant pain in my great big arse nova.)

I finally finished with somber elation
and promptly began a grand celebration,
my friends at the party came over while sneering,
especially the ones who had studied engineering.
"I'm a Bachelor of Science," one would casually say,
"I'm planning on making five hundred a day.
What did you say your degree's called again?"
"Me...well...
I have a B.M. I have a B.M. I have a B.M., a B.M."

Movement 3


After two years of teaching just to subsist,
(it's expensive to pay for a good therapist.)
I finally decided to chase my ambitions.
I quit all my jobs, and I went on auditions.
It was a chance I was sure I could take.
I would soon be discovered and get my big break.

My break wasn't big but came sooner than later.
I got cast in a part at a dinner theatre.
There aren't any roles that are lesser or greater.
I accepted my lot and became the head waiter.

I would have preferred a role on the stage,
'cause I wanted much more than minimus wage.
In order to get the director's attention,
I used all my training and skills, not to mention,
a modest amount of deservéd pretention.
(I was, after all, a studied musician
despite the contraints of my current position.)

When customers ordered, I'd give a response
by singing my question with great non-chalance.
If somebody orders the rasberry jello,
I sing, "Vi gradiscono le pattate fritte con quello?"
If someone requests the fish al fresca
I sing, "Voudriez vous des pommes frites avec ça?"
Order any meat that was cooked with a flame,
and I sing, "Würden Sie mögen Pommes Frites mit dem?"
In every language it's always the same,
Waiting on tables while waiting for fame.
Finally using my college degree,
and never once singing flat.
I take their orders and respond with a smile,
"Would you like fries with that?"

Magical Marietta College Concert Choir singing Sero upside down

Last night, the fabulous Marietta College Concert Choir made a tour stop at St. Mark's on the Campus. They are performing my setting of St. Augustine's famous text "Sero te Amavi" on their tour. I had a chance to work with them for a few minutes in the afternoon. Dr. Daniel Monek has developed this ensemble from the ground up over the last 11 years. They were a very responsive bunch and sang very expressively. They were also loads of fun when you talked to them individually. Also, they have the magical ability to sing upside-down from the roof of the church. If you have a chance, you should go see them. It was a very challenging program, and they pulled it off with aplomb. Thanks for a great concert! Here's the vid with English translation below.

Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!

Lo, you were within,
but I outside, seeking there for you,
and upon the shapely things you have made
I rushed headlong – I, misshapen.
You were with me, but I was not with you.
They held me back far from you,
those things which would have no being,
were they not in you.

You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;
you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;
you lavished your fragrance, I gasped; and now I pant for you;
I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst;
you touched me, and I burned for your peace.

The Buddhist and the Brokeback Cat

The statue sentinel standing guard over the entrance of most Chinese restaurants is not who you think he is. According to legend, there really was a rotund, open shirted monk named Hotei that wandered around as a smiling beggar a thousand years ago. In the same way that Saint Nicholas of Myrna was taken from his humble beginnings as a charitable monk in Asia Minor and given a new post with magical elves, flying reindeer, and a red suit, poor Hotei has been translated into something like a Shinto Santa Clause. He has become one of the good luck gods. You can ask him for help with having babies or request good dreams. Hotei can fix what ails you. He even holds the dubious title of “patron saint of restaurants.”
The real Hotei – which translated means “hemp sack” - was a strange rascal who always carried a sack made from hemp, hence the name. (If you check the statue next time you enter your local Chinese restaurant, you will see the sack). Hotei would put all sorts of nonsense into the sack as he meandered from town to town. He stuffed it with his half-eaten egg rolls, bits of candy, rocks, garbage, small children, and anything else that he found along the way. Children loved this fat, old guy and would run up to him when he wandered through their village. He would open up his sack and show them the contents. Holding up an object, he would say, “Look at this!” Then he might give the object to one of the children. The problem with getting a present from Hotei was that you never knew if he was going to give you a sweet piece of candy or a rock. The parents in those towns probably weren’t too sure about him, but he gave them a surprise too. One day, he told them a secret. He was really a bodhisattva in disguise.
No apartment complex is complete without its own disguised bodhisattva, and ours appeared in the person of Bob. “Crazy Bob,” as we liked to call him, lived around the corner in the next building with his girlfriend Terri and their two children. Bob, was also from Florida, and he had just moved to our apartment complex from a jail in Daytona Beach. Bob was like Hotei in that he loved to pick up things at random, walk under my balcony and yell, “Look at this!” The problem with whatever Bob was carrying was that you never knew what sort of live animal it might be. I know deep within myself that Bob was probably just trying to show me that the Buddha was in all things. Imagine an unshaven, good-natured man with a tangled tuft of hair who was an expert at rolling cigarettes from the time he had spent in jail. He might come around the corner of the building carrying a ten pound carp that he had picked up from White Rock Lake saying, “Hey Kurt! Hey Kurt! Look at this! It’s a ten pound carp!”
“What are you doing with that?!”
“I just wanted to show you.”
“How in the world did you catch it?”
“It was swimming around, so I just picked it up with my hands.”
“Well, what are you going to do with it?”
“Nothing. I’ll go throw it in the dumpster. I just wanted to show you.”
“What!?” Derrick interrupted from below my balcony. “Why don’t you eat it?”
“Derrick, you can’t eat that. It’s like a giant goldfish. The meat is bloody and nasty. It’d be like eating a sting ray.”
“I’m eating it.”
True to form, Derrick cooked it up on a little Hibachi. Bob and I stood around in wonder while Derrick ate a full ten pounds of goldfish meat.
Bob and Terri walked over one day saying, “Hey Kurt! Hey Jenn! Look at this! It’s a furry kitten!” This event, incidentally, marked the beginning of our long and troubled history with domestic animals. We accepted the animal as a pet. We asked young Zachariah – who was in the phase of learning to speak commonly called “jabbering” - what he should like to name it, and he responded (phonetically) “Ellafyookinfyoogal.” The name stuck, but was spelled “Ellafuqenfugal” for legal purposes.
All in all, our apartment complex was a neat little community. Granted it was a community of ex-convicts, ex-welfare, ex-everything else people. But we got along with each other fairly well, and when we didn’t, the cops were there several times a week to serve as mediators. The arrival of Ellafuqenfugal came with another new addition to our little community. A family moved into the apartment next door to our own.
We were introduced to Sammy, a woman as ample horizontally as befit a West Texan. Ervin was a short, kind fellow, who was extremely helpful in spite of the conspicuous lack of a “G” on the end of his name. It was as if his parents had learned gerund forms in West Texas. I was only surprised to learn that they hadn’t actually included the apostrophe on the end of his name. They had a son named Tyler who was born on the same day and year as our son Zachariah. Sammy, Ervin, and Tyler were not disguised bodhisattvas. They were the first people we met who considered themselves citizens of the Republic of Texas (which is a separate entity from the other United States). They were from Lubbock. Ervin’s daddy had worked for the TI plant, and his daddy’s daddy had worked for the TI plant. Thus, Ervin and his family had come to the big city so that he, too, could work at the TI plant. Their big dream was to buy a piece of property in West Texas and live in a “double-wide.”
On the day when our Crown Victory broke down again, Ervin offered to help me fix it. Jenn and I were downstairs looking at the car with Ervin. We had, for the first time, left young Zachariah in the apartment for a mere thirty seconds. When we re-entered the apartment, a sickening sight greeted us. Ellafuqenfugal was on the floor, attempting to stand. Her front legs had managed to raise her head off the ground. Her back legs had managed with less success to raise her other end. In between, was a mid section lying limply on the carpet under a back that contained an extremely sharp bend. The backbone was clearly broken, and the cat was making a noise like a broken klaxon siren. Lying prostrate, nose to nose with the cat, was our young son repeating, “I’m sorry kitty. I’m sorry kitty. I’m sorry kitty.”
“Oh my God! Zachariah! What happened! What did you do to the cat!” screamed Jenn.
“I’m sorry. I stepped on kitty’s back. I’m sorry kitty. I’m sorry kitty.”
“We have to get her to the vet!”
“Buddha is a dead dog on the road,” I thought.
We scooped her up in a towel and carried her to the vet that was located on the corner, a block away from the apartment complex. The vet was closed for lunch. Being without transportation, there was nothing we could do but carry the animal back and try to comfort her while the vet fed himself. We arrived back at the office an hour later, filled out plenty of paper work, and were eventually admitted to a large room with a steel island in the center. We recounted the awful tale and included a few “I’m sorry kitty’s” for effect. The vet removed the cat from the towel and placed her on the steel island. The cat still stood awkwardly with its mid-section low to the ground beneath the nauseating bend in her backbone. A series of movements followed with the polished ease of a professional doing routine work. He first grabbed the cat by the neck, jammed his bare, non-gloved finger into the cat’s posterior far enough to hide the second knuckle. He removed the hidden digit swiftly and flung something small from his finger onto the steel of the island. He looked up at us, and said in the most matter of fact tone, “Tapeworm.” While we attempted to refrain from flinging our lunches onto the island to join the worm, he grabbed a jar, removed a pill, forced it down the cat’s throat, and handed us a bill of $45.00. He must have noticed our dumbfounded looks because he asked, “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“What about the bend in her back and the horrible noise she’s making?” I asked.
“Oh. Well, this cat is in heat. Haven’t you ever had a cat before?” he queried.
“No.”
“If you want her to stop doing that, you have to get her spayed. It costs $80.00.”
“Oh. Well, thanks.”
We re-entered our apartment with many things to contemplate. It was certainly within the realm of possibility that Ellafuqenfugal contracted her case of parasitic infection by eating a piece of partially cooked carp. If that was the case, then Bob might have been trying to teach us that cats eat fish, worms eat cats, fish eat worms, and the ten thousand things are all one. That is a difficult concept to grasp when you have recently taken a sexually aroused cat to a vet and suggested that its back was broken. Perhaps, if a Hotei had reached into a sack and pulled out a gift, we would have been enlightened. Instead, we had just watched a man reach into a cat and pull out a tapeworm with his bare hand. With that sight permanently burned into our memories, only one koan formed in our minds: What is the sound of one hand clapping with a tapeworm?

MEDIA VITA Premiere

1. Si bona suscepimus
Shall we receive good at the hands of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil?
The Lord gives, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
The Lord gives, and the Lord has taken away.



2. Credo quod redemptor meus
I know that my redeemer lives, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth;
and in my flesh shall I see God. Whom I shall see for myself. And mine eyes shall behold, and not another. And in my flesh shall I see God



3. Si credimus
If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. Wherefore sorrow not even as others which have no hope. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Wherefore sorrow not even as others which have no hope.



4. Ecce, quomodo moritur justus
Behold, how the righteous dieth, and no man layeth it to heart. And the just are taken away, and none considereth. From the evil to come is he taken away, and his memory shall be in peace. In peace he rests, he rests in the earth. And in Zion is his habitation. His memory shall be in peace.



5. In pace in id ipsum dormiam
I will lay me down in peace and sleep. None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. Whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord's.

MEDIA VITA

It is an amazing experience to have a big premiere. It takes so many musicians, so many hours of practice, and a heaping helping of nerves. You have to worry about whether all the parts are correct and whether or not what you imagined in your head will sound anything like reality. If that all lines up pretty well, you have to worry about singers singing the right notes and instrumentalist not getting lost. Most of all, you have to worry about whether the players and the audience will like the music. When it all comes together like it did last night, it is an indescribable delight. Little children of my imagination that have been gestating for months finally emerge from the womb to look around at the world. It definitely felt like we were giving birth to something because the AC broke earlier in the morning. It was about 90ºF in the building. I am very grateful to my friend Josh Norris for conducting and doing the leg work on getting the commissioning money together. Thanks to the wonderful singers of the Lincoln Lutheran Choir. Thanks to all the wonderful musicians who played. A beautiful performance!

Maintaining artistic integrity in the face of panderers

It is a hard thing to be faithful to your calling. I had a classmate in high school that sometimes gets national media attention for his musical accomplishments. Now, he is somewhat of a chameleon. He was for a time a member of the Back Street Boys. He made a solo pop album. He has reemerged this time as a country singer. Interestingly, every time I read about him, his bio changes a little and always seems to include some new fact that I know isn’t true. His latest "song" is the sort of thing that I hate most in this world. It’s essentially a pastiche of musical clichés in which the lack of musical substance is hidden by an equally pandering attempt to assemble trite patriotic phrases into some semblance of coherence. He has also managed to develop a country accent that he never had before.

It is quite easy to despair over the fact that in all likelihood, he will continue to be more well known and well regarded as a musician than I will ever be in my life. He will probably make more money than I ever will even though I have dedicated my life to becoming the best musician that I can be. However, there is one place of comfort. My friend Tom Trenney puts it like this. “It is the ones who love being a musician more than they love making music who struggle to embrace the wholeness of what we do.” Ultimately, I’m responsible for developing my own craft. I always come to the place where I realize that my calling is to faithfully nurture the gifts that I have been given instead of comparing those gifts to someone else. That's a good place to be, and it always allows me much more freedom to celebrate the gifts of others more fully.