Imagine if you will, a meeting room, probably in a church. Folding chairs and a table off to one side holding a large coffee urn and paper cups. Once the assembly has been called to order and the request for statements has been made, a tall white haired, white bearded man stands. “My name is Philip and I am a Baptist. I have been clean and sober for 47 years.”
Somewhere in Altadena, Felix is still shaking his head at a memory. We were at Liz & Tim’s and Philip had just expressed his love of the Mass. “But Philip, you’re an atheist, how can you love the Mass??” And that, my dears, is the whole point. How can one love the form and not believe the words? How can a cradle-Baptist atheist embrace the Anglican Liturgy?
lit·ur·gy (lĭt′ər-jē) n. pl. lit·ur·gies 1. A prescribed form or set of forms for public religious worship.
Ok that’s clear enough and, even better, broad enough to cover all religions. And all religions have liturgies, great services and daily prayers, marking the year and marking the changes in life. Humans not only commune with their gods through liturgy, they celebrate birth, coming to maturity, marriage and death. The Bris is a circumcision ceremony usually done at home (the baby boy is only eight days old) and has its own gentle cycle of prayers. These are usually sung and they make a liturgy. There are many in the Baptist confession who would bristle at their services being called liturgy, but they are. There is an order to their worship and that’s all it takes. It is in this rock-ribbed and foursquare tradition that Philip came up. And which, at the age of 16, renounced.
This West Virginian hard head did not hear the Mass until he sang for the Episcopal Cathedral of the Diocese of San Joaquin, Fresno. By the time I heard him sing the “Libera me” in the Faure Requiem at Pasadena First Christian, he was already a church singer. And slowly the spell of the Roman Liturgy was cast over a non-believer. The spell was made of history and form (you do know that all good musicians are part mathematicians, don’t you) but especially music.
All liturgies have music, all. By accident of history and geography, the Church Temporal (Christianity in history) has the greatest canon of liturgical music because it is so broad. Starting with the Greek services of the early Church, Christianity moved across the face of Europe, west north and east, absorbing music everywhere it went. (Think of the horn nosed monster in “Yellow Submarine.) Forms of service sprang up like dandelions and so did the music to support them. Since at least the 6th century C.E, monks sang the offices of the day.
Matins: 2 am
Lauds: sunrise
Prime: 6 am
Terce: 9 am
Sext: noon
None: 3 pm
Vespers: sunset
Compline: bedtime
Those are a whole lot of prayers to set to music. And that music was different wherever it was made. In what would become Russia, France, Norway and England, music bloomed in the garden of Christian liturgical practice. And England brings us closer to the original point (you did wonder, didn’t you?) There were multiple rites on that island; York was one and so was Sarum. Before the present, beautiful and now really weird Salisbury Cathedral was built, there was the monastery and church of Sarum and they had their own, highly influential liturgical rite. But when you go to that wonderful place and ask about the Sarum Rite, the docents will blink, smile sweetly and say, “Well, there is the historical reproduction, in the close.” That is all they know. Just try to get a copy of the Sarum Rite, just try.
It was this musical and historic spell that fully hooked the lapsed Baptist. The Canon opened itself to the musician and he dove right in. Now it is possible that William Byrd and Thomas Tallis had something to do with the dive, but I couldn’t possibly say.
“If you throw the lucky man into the Nile, he will come up with a fish in his mouth.”
When the Baptist came (professionally and after a stint at St. Dominic’s SF) to St. Paul’s Oakland, he came up with a fish in his mouth.
Someone, it might have been Dr. Mark Bruce, figured out that if you have a small choir (8, maybe 10 on a good day) and don’t have enough money for both a choir director and organist, you throw yourselves on the tender mercies of Tudor choral music. This tradition not only serves the immediate needs of the choir, but it trains the singers and makes them ready to sing Josquin, Monteverdi, Palestrina and the all-father Victoria. No church choir needs a sound system and a band to sing to the Lord. They can simply stand together, listen to each other and follow their director. A Protestant church that is not afraid to hear sung Latin doesn’t hurt. It was in such a choir that the Baptist found his fish.
(Now it is time for a small rant about some of the results of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965.) Just because they said that the Mass should be said in the vernacular didn’t mean that 1700 years of liturgical had to be rejected. But it was. There is nothing wrong with guitars or the vernacular in sacred music. Ramirez’s Misa Criolla and Peña’s Misa Flamenca are only two examples of magnificent, soul-changing music written since the Council. But I don’t have a dog in that fight. Hell folks I’m not even an Episcopalian. I’m just an old Congregationalist who worships and sings at St. Paul’s. Now back to the fish.)
After the retirement of the beloved and sadly late Dr. David Farr, we kind of flailed around looking for a new choir director. During this interregnum the Baptist did a lot of conducting. He also started to write liturgy. That’s right folks, Mr. Clean and Sober for 47 years loves the Anglican Liturgy so much that he is writing it, two full masses, seven motets and several Psalm settings so far. Now that we have Prof. Kula running our choir life, he asked Philip to be his wingman and everybody is really happy.
So the moral of this story is simple. There is no single door to the life of music and all of them are open. If a cradle-Baptist atheist can find fulfillment and inspiration in the Anglican Liturgy, then anything is possible. Now I just wish they would stop baptizing babies.
Somewhere in Altadena, Felix is still shaking his head at a memory. We were at Liz & Tim’s and Philip had just expressed his love of the Mass. “But Philip, you’re an atheist, how can you love the Mass??” And that, my dears, is the whole point. How can one love the form and not believe the words? How can a cradle-Baptist atheist embrace the Anglican Liturgy?
lit·ur·gy (lĭt′ər-jē) n. pl. lit·ur·gies 1. A prescribed form or set of forms for public religious worship.
Ok that’s clear enough and, even better, broad enough to cover all religions. And all religions have liturgies, great services and daily prayers, marking the year and marking the changes in life. Humans not only commune with their gods through liturgy, they celebrate birth, coming to maturity, marriage and death. The Bris is a circumcision ceremony usually done at home (the baby boy is only eight days old) and has its own gentle cycle of prayers. These are usually sung and they make a liturgy. There are many in the Baptist confession who would bristle at their services being called liturgy, but they are. There is an order to their worship and that’s all it takes. It is in this rock-ribbed and foursquare tradition that Philip came up. And which, at the age of 16, renounced.
This West Virginian hard head did not hear the Mass until he sang for the Episcopal Cathedral of the Diocese of San Joaquin, Fresno. By the time I heard him sing the “Libera me” in the Faure Requiem at Pasadena First Christian, he was already a church singer. And slowly the spell of the Roman Liturgy was cast over a non-believer. The spell was made of history and form (you do know that all good musicians are part mathematicians, don’t you) but especially music.
All liturgies have music, all. By accident of history and geography, the Church Temporal (Christianity in history) has the greatest canon of liturgical music because it is so broad. Starting with the Greek services of the early Church, Christianity moved across the face of Europe, west north and east, absorbing music everywhere it went. (Think of the horn nosed monster in “Yellow Submarine.) Forms of service sprang up like dandelions and so did the music to support them. Since at least the 6th century C.E, monks sang the offices of the day.
Matins: 2 am
Lauds: sunrise
Prime: 6 am
Terce: 9 am
Sext: noon
None: 3 pm
Vespers: sunset
Compline: bedtime
Those are a whole lot of prayers to set to music. And that music was different wherever it was made. In what would become Russia, France, Norway and England, music bloomed in the garden of Christian liturgical practice. And England brings us closer to the original point (you did wonder, didn’t you?) There were multiple rites on that island; York was one and so was Sarum. Before the present, beautiful and now really weird Salisbury Cathedral was built, there was the monastery and church of Sarum and they had their own, highly influential liturgical rite. But when you go to that wonderful place and ask about the Sarum Rite, the docents will blink, smile sweetly and say, “Well, there is the historical reproduction, in the close.” That is all they know. Just try to get a copy of the Sarum Rite, just try.
It was this musical and historic spell that fully hooked the lapsed Baptist. The Canon opened itself to the musician and he dove right in. Now it is possible that William Byrd and Thomas Tallis had something to do with the dive, but I couldn’t possibly say.
“If you throw the lucky man into the Nile, he will come up with a fish in his mouth.”
When the Baptist came (professionally and after a stint at St. Dominic’s SF) to St. Paul’s Oakland, he came up with a fish in his mouth.
Someone, it might have been Dr. Mark Bruce, figured out that if you have a small choir (8, maybe 10 on a good day) and don’t have enough money for both a choir director and organist, you throw yourselves on the tender mercies of Tudor choral music. This tradition not only serves the immediate needs of the choir, but it trains the singers and makes them ready to sing Josquin, Monteverdi, Palestrina and the all-father Victoria. No church choir needs a sound system and a band to sing to the Lord. They can simply stand together, listen to each other and follow their director. A Protestant church that is not afraid to hear sung Latin doesn’t hurt. It was in such a choir that the Baptist found his fish.
(Now it is time for a small rant about some of the results of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965.) Just because they said that the Mass should be said in the vernacular didn’t mean that 1700 years of liturgical had to be rejected. But it was. There is nothing wrong with guitars or the vernacular in sacred music. Ramirez’s Misa Criolla and Peña’s Misa Flamenca are only two examples of magnificent, soul-changing music written since the Council. But I don’t have a dog in that fight. Hell folks I’m not even an Episcopalian. I’m just an old Congregationalist who worships and sings at St. Paul’s. Now back to the fish.)
After the retirement of the beloved and sadly late Dr. David Farr, we kind of flailed around looking for a new choir director. During this interregnum the Baptist did a lot of conducting. He also started to write liturgy. That’s right folks, Mr. Clean and Sober for 47 years loves the Anglican Liturgy so much that he is writing it, two full masses, seven motets and several Psalm settings so far. Now that we have Prof. Kula running our choir life, he asked Philip to be his wingman and everybody is really happy.
So the moral of this story is simple. There is no single door to the life of music and all of them are open. If a cradle-Baptist atheist can find fulfillment and inspiration in the Anglican Liturgy, then anything is possible. Now I just wish they would stop baptizing babies.
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