Happy Anniversary, Queen Elizabeth

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Jon

I’ve always admired Queen Elizabeth II. Today is the sixtieth anniversary of her accession —her Diamond Jubilee. My mother told me the dramatic story: the Princess was in Africa, and her father was back in England, fighting cancer. When her attendants came to give her the news of his death —and had to begin with “Your Majesty” —she knew.

There is never a moment’s break in the succession. The Catholic Church has an interregnal period called sede vacante; not so the British monarchy. When a sovereign dies, a sovereign instantly accedes. The coronation, naturally, takes place later!

I was in England and Scotland during the Queen’s Golden Jubilee: in fact, aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia, in drydock in Edinburgh, on the day itself. (Followed by haggis-and-chips at a ‘chippie’ nearby!)

The entire country was excited: sitting in a pub that evening back in Edinburgh, I watched the festivities on TV with a friend.

Her twenty-fifth anniversary had made the front page of the New York Daily News. We all talked about it in high school. It was thirty-five years closer to the War, then: the centerfold headline quoted Churchill, “This Is Her Finest Hour.”

The people of the United States are very fond of her, make no mistake. She is a truly admirable person, a living link to the bravery of the Second World War, a faithful and intelligent leader—and a woman of great Christian faith as well, lest that be overlooked. (Her Christmas address last December was really beautiful. Look it up.) She represents a great civilization that is more responsible than any other for our own; the mother country; what we would still be, otherwise… it is well to respect and acknowledge this for the sake of history and culture.

My great-great-great-great grandfather Hall was born a British subject in Massachusetts. Practically last week, as time goes!

The BBC has an excellent page of videos, photos, timelines, and stories.

Bravo to the United Kingdom and her Commonwealth, including our Canadian friends; and to their well-loved and admired sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II. Please count me as a well-wisher.

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Piano Recital

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Jon

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Goetterdaemmerung

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Jon

Last evening I was at the Metropolitan Opera for one of those necessary cultural experiences of a person’s lifetime. I attended a performance of the new production of Götterdämmerung.

(My blog software doesn’t seem to retain diacritical marks in titling: hence the substitution of “oe” for ö in the title. The Met’s in-seat titling system does the same.)

The new Ring has been lauded, for good reason. If there has been any mild criticism, it is of the stage machinery. The sets are managed by means of an immense 45-ton array of planking on the stage. This planking takes on a life of its own—becomes another character in the drama—by rising, turning, moving, swinging, and serving as the screen for video projections.

As a conception, it is brilliant, simply brilliant. In execution, there are a few drawbacks. For one, there’s a bit of creaking every now and then. For another, the machine is occasionally a bit restless; it took forever to settle down last night between the Vorspiel and Act I. It seemed to be changing its mind, as if over a hairdo or outfit. Once or twice it seemed to have alit, only to begin grinding about again. It almost seems, at times, as if Fafner were always onstage.

I would love to figure out how the projections managed to adhere, as it were, to the surface of the machine, even when it was rising, tilting forward, rotating, breaking up into circling spikes, etc. The projections clung as if they were frescoes. Superb engineering!

Perhaps the machine’s weakest moment has been when it had to pretend to be the Valkyries’ horses in Die Walküre, which I attended last fall. The Wunschtöchter sang with electrical delight and deep, joyous camaraderie; one just loved them from the moment they appeared and rang out their first hojotoho. I didn’t want to shout brave (not bravo) as one should do for more than one female; I wanted to shout You Go, Girls! You Go, Girls! with appropriate aisle-dancing.

But it looked a bit like they were dancing on a big bucking wharf.

It’s not a big enough issue to fault the genius of the design, or its undeniable success.

The entire stage became the Rhine, except for the part that became Siegfried and Grane’s boat, for the famous Rhine Journey. It ran as red as blood as Hagen stabbed Siegfried in the back. Here, the Funeral Music was the supreme Brass Moment of my life to date.

The orchestra was equally monumental last night— what a thrill to look down from the Grand Tier and see five harps in the pit!— but unlike the stage machine, called no attention to its own massivity. Throughout the performance, the orchestra was clean as a whistle, immaculately in tune (literally always, except for one fleeting infelicity that these ear-training ears picked up in Act III). It was light on its feet for all of its size, grandly imposing but never brobdingnagian.

One thing about last night that will resonate in my memory till I lose my memory altogether: the brass work in the orchestra, which was simply the very best I have ever heard in my life. The brass section—nay, battery— were absolutely on fire. They were as good as it gets. As hinted above, Siegfried’s death march was the acme and summit of all the brass playing I have ever heard.

The comparable moment in my mind is the “Wach auf” chorus in Act III of Die Meistersinger, in a performance at Orchestra Hall in Chicago with Sir George Solti, around 1994. That moment remains vivid in my memory; the best moment of choral singing I have ever heard in my life. Even in that wonderful performance, the brass work also stands out; I suppose that good brass players, when they go to heaven, get to play Wagner for all eternity, if they so choose. (Hell could be an intriguing corollary!)

Thus far, major and sincere kudos to Maestro Fabio Luisi and to producer Robert Lepage.

As to the vocalism. There was a bit of a weak link in last night’s Siegfried, Stephen Gould. His higher register I found downright unattractive: a considerably foggier and further-back tone than his middle. Meanwhile, he lacked something in strength. Attempting a heroic outcry in Act III, his voice all but cracked. It’s silly to complain about someone good enough to tread the boards of the Met (Mr. Lepage’s boards in particular); but by Met standards, he’s just barely OK.

Last night’s Brünnhilde, Katarina Dalayman, was by contrast fabulous. She sang the role as if it had been written for her. Her instrument is pure, powerful, and true, and she fully understood the music and every layer of meaning in the drama. The role of Waltraute was sung, eponymously, by Waltraud Meier, whose low register was uncommonly gorgeous, and who also handled her role masterfully. Hans-Peter König was magnificent as Hagen: a true Wagnerian bass-baritone if ever there was one.

As this is a review on my blog, and not in the Times, I’ll add a personal reminiscence. For the Act I intermission, I and my party adjourned to the Grand Tier Restaurant for a delicious, though lamentably speedy, dinner. It was handled with as professional and graceful a touch as a New York restaurant can provide—which is superior and superb— but it was a bit of too bad to be handed one’s chocolate souflé while only making a first acquaintance with the free range chicken and mouthwatering vegetable purée. Plus, one’s Pepsi-Cola never arrived.

That said, the chocolate souflé continues to deserve its legendary status! I said last night, and will write here this morning: it was certainly the most civilized “fast food” I’ve ever eaten. The company was gracious, intelligent, and amiable, as always.

A final comment. If you are unfamiliar with Wagner’s operas, in particular the Ring, I warmly encourage you to jump in and get acquainted. I would be careful about heeding the popular commentary about how long and difficult the operas are. I would just as studiously avoid the semi-informed and ubiquitous commentary about the Leitmotiv system, the Nazi Party, psychology, symbolism, Hegel, Nietzsche, etc. These issues are not absent, but also not necessarily central.

As I learned at the University of Chicago, thanks to its Great Books philosophy, you are always best served by going to the master himself, not the master’s middlemen, mavens, merchants, purveyors, procurers, detractors or competitors.  Engage the music, first of all. Read a synopsis of the story, and then go hear one of the operas live. You’ll survive; even Götterdämmerung takes less time than a transatlantic flight (if only barely, when the wind is against you).  You’ll emerge at the end, perhaps with mixed feelings, but having experienced high culture and serious artistic purpose, executed well. A worthwhile experience, and who knows? It might make a fan out of you.

 

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Ubercapiscopalian

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Jon

Or, Correcting the Episcopal Church…again…

The latest is an unofficial—but virally popular—poster some nitwit has made up to tout the chief merits of Anglicanism in our time:

There have been several excellent takedowns of this offensive and absurd poster. I’ll just summarize its main flaws.

First, the tone is totally negative. Two occurrences of “resisting,” for a start. The negative equation of “fundamentalism” and “pharisees.”

The artiste might not realize how much he or she is trifling with history there. Fundamentalist Christianity stands on five “pillars” or principal tenets. With the exception of the phrase “pre-millennial,” and needing serious nuancing on the “plenary verbal inspiration of scripture,” I believe them without the slightest difficulty.

Johnny Spong and Katie Schori and Marky Beckwith don’t. I do.

I guess I’m basically a fundamentalist! Raised Irish Catholic in New York City, doctorate, published author, Mensa member, father a high-church Episcopalian, nary a screeching Baptist in my whole family tree: and apparently also a neanderthal, bible-thumpin’ fundamentalist. Mostly, anyhow.

As far as I’m concerned, with those two concerns noted, if you don’t subscribe to the Five Points of Fundamentalism you’re not a Christian. I think my old monsignor would have agreed instantaneously…albeit while blanching at the maligned word “fundamentalist.”

In other words, the poster is really saying that the Episcopal Church has resisted Christianity since 1784. A bit harsh, but a lot closer to reality.

As to “pharisees,” why pick on them? Jesus was also pointedly opposed to key Sadducee doctrines. And Jesus had Pharisee friends. And Pharisaic Judaism is the form of Judaism that survives to this day. Yes— your Jewish neighbors are, in a historic-theological sense, actual Pharisees. At the very least, the religious heirs of Pharisaic Judaism. There is only one other form of Judaism in the world—Karaitic Judaism—and believe me, friend, you have never met a Karaite unless you have done military service in the Middle East, or missionary work, or something similar. (I’ll throw in Samaritan Judaism, though that phrase is controversial. Non- Talmudic Jews form a tiny minority.)

I worked in the Jewish world for nearly eighteen years. I get instantly uncomfortable when I hear an uninformed Church Type going on “learnedly” about Judaism. Just keeping my ears open, and talking with rabbis and cantors (and congregants) I learned more about Judaism than you can learn at General Seminary.

Fundamentalists and Pharisees. In other words, our neighbors.

The poster is invidious. The poster is self-righteous. The poster is holier-than-thou. The poster is saccharine, sanctimonious, and simply rainbow-slick with self-congratulations. I thank Thee, Lord, that I am not as that (Re)publican there!

The poster is pointedly aligned with a secular messianism: you can be a successful “poster child” for the Episcopal Church if you are a female minister (skinny, goofy hairdo); or a gay couple with non-white children; or a Latino bartender. It’s all about inclusion, with nothing left to be included into. Everybody can have a look inside the Empty Cardboard Box. (Not tomb: box.)

These are the folks who “resist” the Pharisees. In reality: they are the pharisees, and they are the fundamentalists. It is they who are locked into a Special Separateness, it is they who have digested the simplistic tenets of a brave new world. They’re too good for Jesus.

Let’s tell a slightly tougher truth while we’re at it.

The Pharisees resisted Jesus, and still do. Not the other way around. I won’t go into Bar-Kochba, Yochanan ben Zakkai, the Council of Jamnia, the redactions of the Masoretes, or the composing of the Talmud—all of them, every one of them, efforts to resist Jesus, to recast the shattered fragments of an integral national religion into a new plausiblility, perhaps a prosthesis. Today, their descendants yet live, and are right to be proud of their heritage—their sheer pluck and courage and determination— but should be honest about it as well.

It’s OK, friends, you can do it: I’ll cop to the Inquisition. What was that about hukkot ha-goyim?

Modern Judaism is a Pharisaic re-invention after the calamities of the First Century anno Domini.

Yesterday, I read the final seven chapters of Acts carefully and with the liveliest interest. The Jewish people were already shattered; Paul knew that and used it to his own defence, pitting Sadducee against Pharisee when haled before the Sanhedrin. Eventually, he was sent off to Rome: you have appealed to Caesar, to Caesar you shall go. And the Catholic Church took form, as Paul joined Peter in a new Jerusalem.

I read Acts as a prelude to a Solemn High Pontifical Mass.

And the Talmud as a postlude to a sad liturgy of unstitching. Seeds and sticks.

In the Talmud, one can read of the ominous signs that marked the years from 30 to 70. The doors swung open of their own; the lot of the Lord came only to the left hand; the thread turned not white…a litany of omens, showing that the favor of the Lord had departed. Ichabod.

There are those “pharisees,” with a small p, who have resisted Jesus since the First Century as well. Fundamentalists of an alternate creed, whether Manichaean, Gnostic, Arian, Albigensian, Lutheran, Calvinist, Marxist (-liberationist, -feminist, -environmentalist, -liturgist!), Modernist, Americanist. The list of isms goes on and on.

In the present age, a toxic hatred of Western, Christian civilization runs in the veins of many people who really feel that they are good Christians. Nothing pisses them off quite so easily as the neighbor they see every day. They dream of Africans. They dream of Araby. They feel that, surely, somewhere, there are Cool Young People drawn to a Really Relevant Church Experience.

There aren’t.

This stuff is true, or it isn’t.

Heaven isn’t grad school. (And grad school isn’t heaven!!)

Christianity has bred an incredibly high culture. Will we really overthrow it now, and make a Tehran of Chicago?

To the pitiful creator of the above poster; to those who have admired it and passed it round on Facebook; to those who are confused about what they should believe, how they should act—turn to the First Epistle of John, Chapter 4, Verse 20:

Whoever says, “I love God,” but hates his brother is a liar. The one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love the God whom he has not seen.

Confused or put off by the word “brother”? Perhaps you have some thinking—some studying—some praying to do.

Posted in Alma Maters, Americana, Clergy, cycles and epicycles, Famous Bastards, Graphic Arts, Religion and Theology, Ubuntu | Leave a comment

Lupercapiscopalian

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Jon

Or, Correcting the Episcopal Church, Part the Umpteenth.

Today’s topic concerns the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, celebrated almost from the founding of the city of Rome until the year 496 AD, when it was finally abolished by Pope Gelasius.

Here’s a picture of the offending article, taken from the newsletter of an Episcopal church in the Diocese of New York. I will comment on it below, paragraph by paragraph and line by line if need be.

Now, notice the attribution at the very end. The article is “sourced” from http://www.infoplease.com/spot/valentinesdayhistory.html. A quick check of that source shows that the article was lifted whole cloth—entirely reprinted, verbatim—from that website.

Does the website have any scholarly pretensions to accuracy? Of course not. Then why choose it? I think the answer is revelatory of the depths to which the Protestant Reformation has sunk in the twenty-first century. No self-respecting church that has a stake in the Gospel would buy into this unhistorical rubbish. Here we go.

Roman Roots
The history of Valentine’s Day is obscure, and further clouded by various fanciful legends. The holiday’s roots are in the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, a fertility celebration commemorated annually on February 15. Pope Gelasius I recast this pagan festival as a Christian feast day circa 496, declaring February 14 to be St. Valentine’s Day.

—Note the set-up the Christian holiday gets in the first sentence: obscure, clouded, fanciful legends. That alone should be a red flag. You’re talking about your own people. Christians seem to have absolutely no issue belittling their own people, with alacrity, all the time.

—Second, there is positively no historical connection between Lupercalia and St. Valentine’s Day whatsoever, at least not that any reputable scholar has ever been able to find. Pope Saint Gelasius I abolished the Lupercalia, because it was too disorderly. The Roman Senate wanted to keep it; he finally got his way. One early writer speculated that Gelasius substituted Candlemas on February 2, perhaps because of the idea that a candlelight procession had been substituted for general rowdiness in the streets. The sole connection is the date, Feb. 13-15, which appears to be a complete coincidence; except in the twentieth-century mind, which is desperate to excuse itself from Christian faith.
No serious scholar, ever, has said that Gelasius “established” St. Valentine’s Day to “recast” a pagan festival. This is Protestant mythopoeia.

—Gelasius didn’t “proclaim” Saint Valentine or bung him into the 14th just to have an alternative. That’s not how Gelasius conducted his extraordinarily fruitful and important pontificate. And Valentine (the Roman priest) was already being honored from the time of his death, on February 14, 270 AD (hey, whaddaya know!), at the latest from the days of Pope Julius I, who built a church in his memory. Further, if other Valentines were mentioned, the priest martyred in 270 was the one universally honored. On February Fourteen.

—The Lupercalia were not abolished circa 496, but in the year of the Lord 496; for which assertion there is clear epistolary evidence.

Valentines Galore

Which St. Valentine this early pope intended to honor remains a mystery: according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, there were at least three early Christian saints by that name. One was a priest in Rome, another a bishop in Terni, and of a third St. Valentine almost nothing is known except that he met his end in Africa. Rather astonishingly, all three Valentines were said to have been martyred on Feb. 14.

Most scholars believe that the St. Valentine of the holiday was a priest who attracted the disfavor of Roman emperor Claudius II around 270. At this stage, the factual ends and the mythic begins. According to one legend, Claudius II had prohibited marriage for young men, claiming that bachelors made better soldiers. Valentine continued to secretly perform marriage ceremonies but was eventually apprehended by the Romans and put to death. Another legend has it that Valentine, imprisoned by Claudius, fell in love with the daughter of his jailer. Before he was executed, he allegedly sent her a letter signed “from your Valentine.” Probably the most plausible story surrounding St. Valentine is one not focused on Eros (passionate love) but on agape (Christian love): he was martyred for refusing to renounce his religion.

In 1969, the Catholic Church revised its liturgical calendar, removing the feast days of saints whose historical origins were questionable. St. Valentine was one of the casualties.

—We begin with more snideness. Three does not constitute “galore.” Yes, there are three Valentines mentioned in the early (pre-Gelasian) martyrologies, all on the same date. There is no call for a parish to reprint a slur like “Rather astonishingly…” which clearly calls the historic church into disrepute.

—The above quotation is, however, inaccurate regarding the third Valentine from Africa. We know something further about him: that he was martyred with companions.

—The Catholic Encyclopedia straightforwardly announces that the ancient acta (the account of Valentine’s martyrdom) is from a later date and “historically worthless.” Alban Butler makes the same acknowledgement in the middle of the eighteenth century! The passage quoted above makes a point of dredging these discredited stories up just to discredit the Church. And an Episcopal parish is only to happy to give further circulation to the effort.

—Yes, the Catholic Church acted on its doubts and removed Valentine from the Roman Calendar upon its renewal in the late 1960s. Is that of interest to Protestants, except to imply that Rome has always made everything up? If Rome has done this, how much more has Canterbury? There is very little truth in Canterbury’s vision of the church; very little truth indeed.

—We end with further mythopoeia, this time of the linguistic sort: the distinction between eros and agapé is largely fictitious, a lovely spiritual idea but not really supported by the Greek language itself. If you’re going to “go there,” you should admit that Valentine’s Day is about philia even more than the other two. For Pete sake!

Chaucer’s Love Birds

It was not until the 14th century that this Christian feast day became definitively associated with love. According to UCLA medieval scholar Henry Ansgar Kelly, author of Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine, it was Chaucer who first linked St. Valentine’s Day with romance.

In 1381, Chaucer composed a poem in honor of the engagement between England’s Richard II and Anne of Bohemia. As was the poetic tradition, Chaucer associated the occasion with a feast day. In “The Parliament of Fowls,” the royal engagement, the mating season of birds, and St. Valentine’s Day are linked:

For this was on St. Valentine’s Day,
When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate.

—There is no proof whatsoever that Chaucer made this association. I haven’t tracked down Professor Kelly’s book, but I doubt he would make such a broad assertion. “Information Please” has already demonstrated its inaccuracy, so I shall lay this error at its doorstep.

—The medieval belief (which was widespread and not due to one poet’s single poem) was that birds chose their mates on the 14th of February.

—I won’t comment on the bowdlerized, “updated” translation of Chaucer from English into English.

—Post hoc, ergo propter hoc: there are no causal connections to be found in this history. Personally I chalk up Lupercalia and Valentines to the same phenomenon: the first stirrings of springtime also stir up the hormones. Simple as that.

—Gelasius didn’t invent St. Valentine’s Day by any reputable account.

—Henry VIII invented a dynastic solution we still call “Anglicanism.” It appears to have less and less of a raison d’etre except to belittle Catholicism; and in so doing, hasten its own inevitable undoing.

The above-quoted article is taken verbatim from Infoplease Dot Com, which is welcome to have it back.

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