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| Leading a music workshop in Hamburg |
13 October, from Rome
A cool not-too-noisy Sunday morning above the Circo Massimo in my new room here at San Gregorio al Celio in Rome. I arrived quite bedraggled after the long train ride down from Hamburg. The overnight part was not bad at all actually, squeezed into the little sleeping pod with my guitar and backpack (there was no storage space for either, alas) and I slept remarkably well. My only regret was that I didn’t get to see any of that new countryside, passing through Austria and the Italian Alps, the little-known (at least to me) regions of Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Udine.
We got into Florence an hour late, around 7:15, not too bad since my train to Rome wasn’t until 9:05. I had made one of my typical mistakes: I had bought a ticket for Rome for the day before and it was non-transferable. Luckily, I noticed that before I got on the train. So, 24 Euros poorer we headed south to Rome. But that’s when the troubles really started. Bad travel karma. There was some kind of delay between Florence and Arezzo, and we sat in Santa Maria Novella for a long time before leaving, and then had another delay sitting on the track. And then for some reason, without explanation, we were told that the train would end at Orte, still another 45 minutes outside of Rome. The Italians were taking it in stride, but there were a lot of us foreigners and most were more confused than I was since the announcements were coming only in Italian at that point. We somehow all managed to get on the right train, but it was amazingly crowded and about 15 of us were stuffed into the little area by the exits, I with my backpack and guitar. And then we were told, as we slid into the outskirts of Rome, that the train was not going all the way to Termini but was stopping instead at Tiburtina, and we would have to switch to another local train. My serenity was really getting tested at that point. It was much warmer there in Rome than it had been in Hamburg, and I was feeling pretty uncomfortable and grimy, trying to stuff layers of clothing into my already overstuffed backpack.
By the time we got to Termini I was wiped out, especially after the long walk from the train to the station with the guitar, etc. I always try to keep in mind that traveling like that, carrying bags, walking and so on, is not only work. It can also be considered exercise, so “try to keep a good posture!” I keep thinking I have just taken the necessities with me, but the backpack I carry with my computer and books, etc., is as heavy as my guitar in the hardshell case, plus the one on my back. And by this time my shoulders and back were aching. It got worse yet because Termini was chock full of people. I was debating about whether to take a taxi or the Metro. I went back and forth––the line for the taxi was extremely long––and finally settled on the Metro, which was as crowded as rush hour. It was impossible to board the first train that came by since it was so packed, but I managed to squeeze onto a second one, again uncomfortable with the guitar and backpack. And then the walk from Circo Massimo to San Gregorio and up the steps to the monastery. About as miserable as I have ever been traveling, and as relieved to be home as I have ever felt.
“Home.” A strange word to be saying about Rome, but it is for the time being. One of the reasons I was somewhat relieved that the retreat I was supposed to do in Poppi was cancelled, as much as I love being at Poppi, is because I had found out that I could move into my new room here at San Gregorio, something I was hoping to do when I arrived back on September 1. That feeling of not knowing where I was going to be living and leaving things here and there that I didn’t want to carry with me had left me feeling very unsettled. As tired as I was when I got to San Gregorio Wednesday afternoon, I set myself right away to setting up my room, in a corridor known as Monte della Luna, the very top floor of the façade facing Circo Massimo. I had stayed in this room last time as well, not knowing that it would be my room, and when George told me via text message that that was to be my permanent space, I was trying to remember how big it was. I was pleased to discover it was a little bigger than I had remember. It’s no doubt the smallest space I will have lived in for years (we’re so spoiled with our private hermitages!), but I am as “happy as a bug in a rug,” as my mom used to say. And there is enough space for everything I need, guitar, yoga mat and (thanks be to God) a little private bathroom.
(later)
Back to Hamburg. I stayed with my host and her husband, the indefatigable German sociologist Petra Ahrwelier and Achim (short for Joachim), a semi-retired orthopedic doctor in a big old house in a quiet residential neighborhood, chock full of art and books and remnants of children and grandchildren, and a kitchen overflowing with yummies, including loose leaf tea and and lots of honey. I have been working with Petra on a project called AI-Fora for some years now, since just before Covid, using monasteries as “safe spaces” for conversations about the use of artificial intelligence for those who come up with algorithms that make major decisions about social issues (if I can possibly summarize the project with those few words!). Honestly, I have not had to do much for it; besides volunteering New Camaldoli to be a host, I have mainly been the so-called expert on the thought of Bede Griffiths, since Petra has based a lot of her thinking about inter-culturality on him. The AI-Fora project has been taking place in Ireland, China, Nigeria, India, Spain, and Germany as well as in America, and it will conclude with a final meeting in Kerala in December, which will be my last stop for the year.
But she did not bring me to Hamburg for that; she brought me there for music.
The first night was a concert. I have decided to use the same program (with few modifications) for Poland, Hamburg, and Oxford. As in Poland so here I was also relying on translation. Crowds in Germany are more used to listening to music and even attending programs in English, which has been taught here in schools since the post-World War II era, but the explanations of the pieces in this program, drawn from various traditions, are as important as the pieces themselves. And, as we suspected might be the case, the folks who came got something different from what they were expecting. Actually, I am not sure what they were expecting. Petra just used the word “Gospel” for the concert which she says covers a lot of area in religious music. I had of course warned her that the program would be including what I always refer to us “sacred World music,” the stuff I think is my specialty. And of course with the new job I feel even more impelled and mandated to spread the word whenever I can.
There was another motive behind the choice to do it that way too, a musical one. The next day I was giving a music workshop on “essentially vocal music,” (more on that in a bit). I have only been able to articulate it clearly recently, how in my early years, I would say the 1980s mostly, the “experimental music” I was writing for liturgy was influenced by let’s say “world music.” I’m thinking of what I listening to: certainly gospel, reggae, lots of African pop music, especially Johnny Clegg and his groups Savuka and Jaluka, besides all the influences of rock and soul. I was remembering my idea for the album “The Message Goes Forth,” when I stepped out a little more in presenting reggae, gospel, and jazz (I actually backed off a little for various professional and personal reasons though I still got pilloried by at least one well-known liturgist in WORSHIP, God rest his soul). I had read an article in… what was the name of that revue, Pastoral Something or other… by then-Cardinal Ratzinger in which he mentioned musicians needing to listen to the music going on in the “antechambers of the liturgy.” I was enamored of that phrase, and had forgotten how much that inspired me, though my thinking was all over the map at the time. My original idea for the album cover was a photo of me sitting on the steps of Holy Name Cathedral on North Wabash in Chicago, a church which I just love for some reason, with my guitar case, the doors of the church wide open, listening to the sound of the people and the traffic and the boomboxes.
But then, after some years of devoting myself to “pure” sacred music––writing most of the plainsong chant for the Hermitage liturgy–– and really studying liturgy deeply, partially in order to teach it to the guys in formation, it was my immersion in liturgy that formed me in how to approach texts of other traditions, starting with “Lead Me From Death Into Life,” then the poems of Stonehouse and the Metta Sutta, Sanskrit chants woven into Gregorian ones, all the way up to the Qur’an and “Bismillah.”
My image of an island being the tip of a mountain abides here: how can you possibly convey to people all the depth of experience and knowledge behind the few notes and chords and rhythms? I guess we just hope they “catch” it.
It was a great acoustic in the church where I performed, and Petra and I found a good rhythm between speaking and translation. (We didn’t have as much time to practice as I did with Andrzej.) It seemed to me right to ask the folks not to applaud (in case they wanted to), but to listen to the whole thing as a program. In the few pieces that they sang along on they did pretty well, Petra helping from the front with me. The only problem was that it was so cold in that church! The only time I remember being that cold for a concert was the one John and I did with our friend the harpist Giuseppina in Florence just after Christmas 2003. The church of San Miniato al Monte was packed, all wrapped up in furs and scarfs and gloves, while I could actually see the steam coming out of my mouth as I sang, and John’s drums were going out of tune. But it went over fine––und alle warden satt.
The next day was the music workshop. Petra is also a cantor at her parish and her mandate to me was to demonstrate new ways to get people to sing. I of course centered in on my old favorite theme––essentially vocal music, i.e., music that is not dependent on accompaniment, harmony or rhythm, though it could have all three, but stands on its own two feet. There is a long story about a musical enlightenment experience I had with John Foley in St. Paul, Minnesota in the basement of the Jesuit novitiate sitting at a piano, no doubt both of us smoking, him drinking a bottle of beer me with a cup of coffee, leafing through some old hymnal and him demonstrating to me melodies that were sturdy. Basically, he was trying to ween me off of writing songs by coming up with chord changes and adding a melody on top. It was like scales falling off my ears. (He, by the way, remembers none of this. Just to show you what an impact we can have without ever knowing it.) When I got back to Phoenix that summer I began writing without the guitar or piano, and have pretty much never stopped.
That led to all my experiments with chant, and I would say culminated in the work I did with Paul Ford, Paul Inwood, Catherine Christmas, Carol Browning and, later, Anna Betancourt, on the ten-year project known as Psallitè for Liturgical Press: three essentially vocal pieces of music for every Sunday and feast in the liturgical year, literally hundreds of pieces of music which we composed as a group, sitting around tables, pacing hallways. It was a grand enterprise, and I am sorry that it never took root as we had hoped, and sorry that Lit Press has decided to drop their music division now. I still stand by it as the best stuff I ever did for liturgical music.
Anyway, for the most part the music that I brought to use with them for the workshop was Psallitè pieces, though I did use a few other things as ice-breakers––including a little dance with the old Shaker song “I Will Bow and Be Simple”––and some pieces from India. I had written out a detailed outline of what I wanted to teach theoretically as well––never pass by a chance for some liturgical formation!––which Petra had translated into German and sent to all the participants beforehand. Alas, few of them had read it or brought it with them, so that got a little tedious, but we made do with PowerPoint slides and translation and lots of singing between teaching.
For one thing I had forgotten how much work it is to do those kinds of things, given that I have not done a music workshop for years now. Even harder than leading a retreat, I think. Made especially so because among the 30 participants, which was a great turnout, there was quite a range of liturgical musical literacy. So some of the theory and history, of the liturgical reform of Vatican II, was lost on a few. I kept telling them that it did not matter if they got all the theory; just try to catch my enthusiasm. And then of course teaching the music itself in a language not their own (they did great and were very hard-working and patient) with various levels of talent.
I was pleased to realize there were some really good formative spiritual lessons in the teaching too––meno male, as the Italians say; thank goodness! Such as respecting the native genius in mission lands and the positive anthropology that goes with that––Thomas Aquinas’ gratiam non tollit sed perfecit naturam: “grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.” As well as the hope that, as one document states, “a popular chant may emerge.” Emerge, that is, rather than be imposed as much of our liturgy was for centuries.
I think by any standard the day went really well. I almost wish I had a parallel life and could take that show on the road or could have taken that show on the road to promote Psallitè more. But as I always remind myself, there are only so many hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a year, years in a life, and so we always have to choose the summum bonum.
We also did the music for the Mass both Saturday night, just Petra and I, and Sunday, with the whole workshop choir. All in all, a good day’s work three days in a row there!
Monday Petra and Achim have me a super tour of Hamburg, both of them very well educated and cultured, so lots of stories about local history ancient and modern. (I won’t go into that here. You can see the pics on Facebook.) And then the overnight train to Rome on Tuesday, and here I am.
Just as I was somewhat surprised at how settled I have felt almost immediately here in my room at San Gregorio, so I am a little surprised to find that I am a little sad that I have another two and a half months of travel and ministry ahead of me yet. Of course, when I planned this year I had no idea that this new position was going to come up, and I am sure I will love the work once I get to it. But it is interesting to note that I love being home as much as, if not more than, being on the road doing the marvelous work that I get to do. And I suppose that’s a good sign. And of course, I’m singing with the brothers each morning at the Synod these days, which now feels very comfortable and is very much appreciated. The Holy Father was there yesterday and it’s amazing to realize how that is not such a big deal anymore. I can tell some stories about that later, but for now, off to Vespers.
