Evans’ Rag

Vol 1 Issue 38

Choirs in the Season 

I’ll admit to driving D a little crazy during the Christmas season. There are certain rituals to be observed, mainly about the music. Growing up, we always had Christmas music playing on a radio at home. Not the “I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus” kind, either. As a youth they were the traditional carols–for singing in church. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I would deliberately seek out Bach and Handel.

Mother insisted I attend the local Catholic school in Sumter–she had her reasons. Mostly I felt persecuted, but while serving hard time under the nuns’ tutelage, I did sing in the church choir; being in the choir got me out of class. Besides, I enjoyed the music. I remember when we were introduced to “Oh Holy Night.” Fall on your knees! was pretty dramatic stuff for an eight-year-old. My mother sang. Both my sisters sang. But I sang in the school choir. My sisters got to go to public school, and I got to sing in the choir on Sundays.

We held practice midmorning in the choir loft overlooking the mostly empty church, which made us sound more impressive than in a school classroom. The church volume was large enough that the acoustics were more filling. (full filling perhaps?) And the taint from a past Sunday’s incense lent an aura of solemnity.

Truth, if the nuns in the Catholic Church (which in our family was the Church of Ireland) had paid better attention to the music and lightened up on the doctrine, I might have hung longer in the church. Or at least be one of those once-a-year Catholics so to enjoy the carols. At best the doctrine was just speculation. The whole business of the Virgin Mary and all. Hard to grasp why her being a virgin was necessary–how was that even possible? And what the heck was a virgin? The nuns explained she had not “lain with man,” meaning what? How was I to know? For that matter, how were they? Admittedly, the child in a hay-filled manger for a crib ‘cause they couldn’t phone ahead to Marriott, that was kinda cool.

Later, my mother admitted she was skeptical—celibacy wasn’t all it was cracked up to be–and she certainly thought women could be priests. As a kid, I remember thinking it was just weird, these several men living together in one house and the women in another down the street. Unless you’re batting for the other team, why would you? I didn’t even know there was another team back then.

As a youth, I also served as an altar boy. Can’t say where that came from; I wasn’t the easiest kid to be persuaded of something “good for you,” and doubt I did it on my own. I took it seriously enough, even pouring the wine over the priest’s fingers to wash them ‘cause he didn’t like drinking diluted Mogen David, and why exactly was it necessary to wash them? He didn’t take showers at home? The good father did like his wine. “More! Pour more!” in a harsh whisper at 7 AM daily mass. Was I keeping him from an early taste of New York grapes?

I took it seriously enough to not sample the Mogen David in the sacristy after the priest had gone home to the rectory. Wasn’t that good, anyway.

We sang at high mass midnight on Christmas Eve. High mass was when the altar boys lit the very tall candles in the marble niches behind the altar, not just the two on the altar. The candle-lighter was taller than the altar boys, and you lit the candles just before mass started–in front of the entire congregation–so you had to touch the taper to the candle without snuffing it, or melting the candle. Good fun. And the charcoal in the incense thurible did a nice little fizz and sparked to tell you it was lit. Way cool. But the height of the experience came with ringing the hand chimes.

The church had a deep timbred bell in the tower that wasn’t rung too often on account of they were afraid it would bring down the whole tower.

In the school choir I don’t think we did much more than three-part harmonies. Year to year, we had different voices and the music conductor was a nun. Once in a while an adult with a decently trained voice would join us kids, which greatly improved the overall effect.

The church organ was electric. This was a blue-collar church with insufficient offerings for a pipe organ. But the choir loft was cool because you took a narrow, spiraling staircase up to where you could look down on everyone. Climbing the stair, you passed the dangling end of the bell rope, which was a great temptation to a number of us. The choir loft wasn’t very large, three rows of steps, four max; the church wasn’t either, so that balanced out. One year the choir were driven to Columbia on the other side of Wateree Swamp to sing in the local Channel 10 TV studio. I didn’t think at the time we were that good, but it was fun pretending, and we got red robes for the occasion.

Recently the XM boombox has been malfunctioning, and I only got it fixed in time to listen to this season’s choral music. I’d like to turn it on now, but D’s working upstairs currently and the sound carries. We have this cool loft office–except that the sound carries. So I’ll wait until her official office hours are over before starting with the carols. Instead I’m two floors down listening to Don Henley on Pandora. Train in the Distance is on his Cass County CD. The lyrics start out like an easy reminiscence of childhood, but the dobro’s plaints accompanying the final verse tell another kind of looking back–at mortality.

I’m writing this December 16. Today is Beethoven’s birthday and the classical music station on XM Radio is playing him all day—in between carols. Maybe his Missa Solemnis later tonight? D says most choral music reminds her of church, not in a good way, not like singing in the choir.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at midnight maybe? Like a Beatles marathon ending with Day in the Life. Yesterday, they played Glenn Gould’s recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Handel’s Messiah hasn’t been played yet, but it’s no doubt coming. Meanwhile, a scattering of songs by the Boys’ Choir of Vienna, or the Choir of King's College, Cambridge will make do. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir definitely on Christmas Day. If a Damascus moment ever strikes me off my horse, it will be while listening to the music, not the sermons.

Deaf and still composing, Beethoven composed his thunder strike of a symphony–his Ninth Symphony. He was gone at fifty-six. Me, I did a sorta jig when I made it past my father’s forty-seventh, nodding furiously in his direction.

This old house we make our shelter in has a massive brick chimney running from the basement into the sky, which I like to touch for reassurance climbing the stairs. Our builder wanted to demolish it, but he enjoys knocking stuff down to build new stuff. It does occupy enough room next to the staircase that, if it had been demo’d, we’d have been able to rebuild the stair to less steep proportions. But I like the idea of the chimney still standing–maybe even after the rest of the house is gone.

Possibly the poem, National Cathedral will make more sense with all this as an explanation: www.goposted.com/national-cathedral

We’re all just tourists on this bus, to misquote Firesign Theater.

Say ‘Amen’ and hope for better in the new day.