Advent Music

[0:00] Thank you all for being here today. It's always delightful. We talk in the Anglican Church, and as I've just revealed, I am not born a cradle Anglican. But one of the things that I truly treasure about the Anglican Church is the seasons and recognizing the year.

[0:17] And I recognize the seasons through Ed. Ed is my sign that Advent is beginning. Did you know?

[0:29] Shedding my leaves. Ed is one of St. John's best kept hidden secrets, treasures, unhidden, revealed treasures.

[0:43] Revealed treasures. I know that we are so privileged to have him as he unlocks the music of the season.

[0:53] But for me, it's more than the music of the season. It's the sentiment behind, and it's the worship behind, and it's the quieting our hearts at this very special time of year. And I would ask that you give him, wait for it, not only a robust welcome, but encouragement at the end to sign up for the spring session.

[1:12] Thank you, Ed, thank you. Thank you, Ed, so much for being here. That's very generous. Thank you.

[1:25] Well, here we go. Awake, you city of Jerusalem.

[1:45] Now, the watchman on the tower. Now, the watchman on the tower. Awake, you city of Jerusalem. Midnight, the hour is named. They call to us with bright voices. Where are you, wise virgins? The bride room comes. Take your lamps. Alleluia. Make yourselves ready for the wedding. You must go to meet him.

[2:05] It's actually a moment. It's a moment. So Bach, cantata 140, famous piece. This is this kind of creeping, should we wake them, or is it depicting people asleep? We're not quite sure. But Bach phrases this very specifically, more than he does usually. It's a certain kind of effect. And that walking bass.

[2:52] We sing the hymn. I'm sure you recognize it. It's a Lutheran chorale. I don't know how you get men to sing like that. There must be some drug you can buy.

[3:17] Unfortunately, of course, well, unfortunately, we have to face the fact that some of the riches that I hope to show you today are not in the English language. Some are. Obviously, German, and there'll be some Latin. But we'll explain that as they come along.

[3:41] How Bach melds that unique melody with the chorale is quite outstanding, isn't it? Classic of his work.

[3:59] This is John Elliot Gardner and the Monteverdi choir.

[4:14] We follow after.

[4:28] We follow after. We follow after.

[4:39] We follow after.

[5:01] I thought that would be a good start. Beautiful music marked by a kind of modesty of approach. I learned when Susan and I were in America on those two occasions, and I don't mean this in any critical, mean way at all, but I was fascinated to see how Christmas is kind of triggered in the culture by Thanksgiving.

[5:26] In other words, by Macy's and Nordstrom. This is an important kind of point in the year. It's lovely. I love the Thanksgiving celebration and so on. But the concept of Advent, not in the Episcopal or Catholic or the new Anglican churches, but in many others, just tends to be ignored.

[5:52] It's an uncomfortable point. It's an uncomfortable point. They want to get into Christmas ahead of time. And then once Christmas Day is over, you've, of course, got the sales at Nordstrom and Macy's, and that's that. So there go the 12 days of Christmas.

[6:07] This approach, as you know full well, is a different one, and it's preparation touching on these multiple themes of Christ's awaited coming, his birth historically, day of judgment, day of reckoning.

[6:23] And these threads make up Advent and call for a very particular kind of expression, I think. At least it gets a very particular kind of expression through music.

[6:35] I think what I hope to do today is just take us on a little tour through different composers, different times, different periods, offering snippets and sometimes whole pieces that might be enriching.

[6:49] Nearly all of them are accessible on YouTube, so that might be an encouragement too. I think at the very quiet end of the celebration, nothing for me personally beats this glorious statement, he hath filled the hungry with good things, his orientes, from Bach's setting of the Magnificat.

[7:15] Here it is. So for a concerto.

[7:51] This is Bernarda Fink. Nicholas Hanen Court is conducting the ensemble. This is a brutal passage to get through.

[8:24] Oh, przep HP. There I have seen You. Here it is. Thank you. Every year. michael, michael, michael, michael, michael, prettyy, you see.

[8:41] Look. Here I have seen. I. The rich he hath sent empty away.

[9:44] This is in Latin, of course. If that isn't a foretaste of heaven, I'm not sure what it is.

[10:18] Very slender texture, elegantly poised, real beauty, as the Virgin goes through this reflection of what the Lord has done to her, or celebration of what the Lord has done to her.

[10:35] Plus, the prophetic aspect, of course, he has put down the mighty from her seat, and rather, sorry, he filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.

[10:51] Other people took a slightly different musical approach. From the same period, Handel, I think, is perhaps the most extraordinary, Handel's Messiah is the most extraordinary coverage of the seasons, if you will, or the entire Gospel story arched from Genesis through to Revelation.

[11:17] I'm just searching here for the layout of Handel's Messiah. At the very beginning, the first bit, there's a recitative. Comfort ye my people.

[11:28] Then is an aria. Every valley shall be exalted. Then is a chorus, which I'm going to play, and the glory of the Lord. Then the recitative, thus saith the Lord.

[11:40] And then the aria for Alto, but who may abide the day of his coming, can be sung by a soprano. Chorus, and he shall purify. Recitative, behold, a virgin shall conceive.

[11:55] Aria and chorus, O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion. And then a recitative, for behold, darkness shall cover the earth. And then finally, the Advent segment, the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.

[12:09] That seems to sum up Advent perfectly. And I wish there were time just to play all that. There isn't. But here, as you know very well, is the chorus.

[12:23] Except it isn't the chorus. Oops. It's wrong. Ah! So where's that gone? Excuse me a moment while I just think.

[12:37] Where'd that go? Oh dear. It's embarrassing. If this gets up... Oh... Oh... Oh...

[12:47] Well, I seem to have...

[13:03] I've lost it. What a shame. Hmm. Sorry, guys. Just sing us a little bit of it, Ed, because you know...

[13:18] How embarrassing. Something slipped there. I hope everything else is in place. Hmm. Right.

[13:29] Well. The trouble is, if that's out, what else is out? Well. So we can't play... And the Glory of the Lord by Handel.

[13:42] Let's see what happens... Here. Okay. Here we go. Not with every... I'm afraid the Glory of the Lord, which... The Glory of the Lord seems to have got lost.

[13:54] At the same time as Handel was busy, what was...

[14:07] It's all very well talking about concert hall and cathedral, but what was happening in the average church? Well, people like John Wesley...

[14:18] Charles Wesley... John Wesley to some extent, but Charles Wesley mostly was assembling hymns of real vigor and body. Very, very much sensitive to the scriptures throughout.

[14:31] There's very little... There's very little sentimental cloaking. There's care in the imagery. There is care and skill in the language.

[14:42] And I think... I must say the Wesleyan deposit of hymnody is one of our great treasures. And it would have been sung not in the more refined Victorian Anglican way, which we've got used to, but in a fairly rough-edged way, which...

[14:59] Maddie Pryor and her band... can explain. So, lo, he comes with clouds descending.

[15:11] It's looking ahead to Christ's return, of course. Lo, he comes with clouds descending. Once for favoured singers sway.

[15:25] Thousand, thousand saints attending. Swell the triumph for betraying.

[15:36] Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. So this is a little idealised for the sake of the recording, but there would be a group of instrumentalists in the gallery of your 18th century Anglican church.

[15:56] Music was very plain, and it was ordered so by law. Well, really, Anglicans were supposed to use, technically speaking, metrical psalmody.

[16:10] They weren't supposed to start indulging in these hymns that were starting to be heard about. The Baptists started some hymns. They knew that the Lutherans had chorales, but the Calvinist emphasis on the metrical psalm was the order of the day.

[16:30] Until you hit the early 19th century, when partly, mostly, through the high church movement, suddenly hymnody takes off, and you have the first big Victorian hymn book, Hymns Ancient and Modern, from the middle of the century, which I grew up with as a kid.

[16:48] It had been revised a bit, but not much. But at least hymnody had come, and the church had sort of said, these Methodies have these hymns. Wesley had gone and said, Methodism is born in song.

[17:03] We better do something about this. And along with a whole enriching of ritual, if you will, or liturgy, you get a number of outpourings, the Oxford movement, or the Tractarians, or the Anglo-Catholic branch, which is more elaborate, again, with Catholic imagery, and so on.

[17:23] And at any rate, hymns take their place. And, uh... But this would be more typical of what you'd hear in an Anglican church, which is broken away from, uh, or challenging this rigid adherence to Metrical Psalmody, and is now starting to take some of these songs that they're hearing from people around them.

[17:47] So be a group of instrumentalists in the gallery. The organ probably didn't work. They were into extensive neglect in those days.

[18:00] Cont SYM Let's see if this is right.

[18:41] Okay. Back on the continent, what else was going on? Around this time, 1736 to into the 19th century, Michael Haydn was one of many composers setting the Magnificat text to Latin, almost invariably.

[19:02] And you can feel this kind of searching for style going on. It's a beautiful piece. It really is.

[19:18] Again in Latin. When I say searching for style, born in the midst of Bach's life, like Bach's children, desiring now to leave the Baroque language, which is very particular, and moving into this very different language of the classical musical era.

[19:48] There's more emphasis on tune. The inner workings of the music are more supportive than they are linearly collaborative.

[19:59] Not many fugues. San Francisco Girls' Choir. I wish the words were clearer.

[20:11] But... So it could be, if you blank out the words, you could be listening to almost to opera, but not quite.

[20:39] But I love the instrumentation. It's so light. But there's no attempt to do a programmatic job on the text.

[20:57] It could be music you would hear in string quartet, chamber music form, without any word association at all. The music, at this point, is adaptable.

[21:08] You'd almost say neutral. Not quite. But it serves in this extraordinary way. It's when things move into the Romantic period that it becomes much more expressive and much more, frankly, emotionally rooted.

[21:27] So it's now more about how the composer sees Mary, how the composer sees the context of this Luke passage. If, for instance, we move up into the point where Anglican music really gets revived through C.V. Stanford, who founded the Royal College of Music, he was deeply alarmed.

[21:51] His dates are late 1880s into the very early 19th century. Very alarmed at the musical standards in Britain, which had slumped, and so he established the college to try and rectify that.

[22:08] But he wrote a lot of music for the church, which is still frequently sung. But I'll just fade out of this and move into Charles Stanford's setting of the Magnificat.

[22:18] Now, what he's done is, and I'll just double-check that it's sitting here obediently. Excuse me while I do so.

[22:33] Yeah, it is. Good. What we have here is a situation where you... How do I think about... A lot of this was going on in Stanford's time.

[22:45] How do I like to think of Jesus? How do I like to think about this biblical account? Can I get it to fit, like Christmas cards, into a kind of, perhaps, let's say, an English rural scene?

[22:57] So instead of this grim stable in the Middle East, it's a lovely kind of Sussex stable with a polite layer of snow and straw not far away and just well-behaved sheep all round.

[23:12] So given the fact that Stanford had studied in Germany, we see a little bit of the Wagnerian influence here because apparently Mary is spinning in this and it's beautiful.

[23:27] And then he gives to a soprano, a boy soprano, the main text throughout. And then when it comes to putting down the mighty from the seat, the men are brought in.

[23:42] It's wonderful, but it's... It veers dangerously towards a Monty Python interpretation of... Thank you. Next one.

[23:54] St. John's College, Cambridge. So there's a spinning going on.

[24:10] Beautifully crafted.

[24:37] Lovely, lovely music. This is a Magnificat in G.

[24:55] He wrote two or three, but this is perhaps his best-known. So 1852, he's a mid-Victorian, to 1924.

[25:07] This is his dates. Spinning wheels still going. Oh It's a remarkable boy soprano Extra ice bun for him Oh

[26:15] Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh It's a beautiful piece, but very representative of that period, and a very lovely representation.

[27:10] Then you get with post-romanticism a continuation of that 19th century idiom where your personal feelings and your personal emotions are a very powerful influence on the music.

[27:28] You're not subject to a style so much as you would be as a J.S. Bach or a Michael Haydn, where you sort of acknowledge the discipline you're raised in and work within that frame. Now you can sort of go anywhere you like.

[27:42] Not quite, but almost. Of course, in modernism, which often was a bit like romanticism in some respects, you can go really wild. This composer was born in, we might hear a bit of wildness in a minute, but this composer is interesting to me.

[28:00] I've only just discovered him. And then, you know, a Norwegian composer born in 1980. But it's interesting to see now that there's, for me, another social influence is creeping into this setting of the Magnificat done by Nidros Cathedral Girls Choir.

[28:18] And it's a kind of filmic, very, I would say, sensual kind of setting. There's a very beautiful soprano, a woman soprano, not a girl.

[28:30] And then this choir of 30 girls, small professional orchestra with two cellos prominent at the front. You can see the photograph of the recording. And it comes up with the...

[28:49] You've heard that, yes, thank you. Where's it gone? Five. Sorry about... Piano as well.

[29:03] Strong hints of John Rutter in this. I believe this is being sung in Norwegian.

[29:33] Big autour of the surrounded world. But it's being sung a sp! Final way it's long to be sung in��겠습니다.

[29:52] I love this. In I've mentioned that whenever you're on the 편 hac is coming out, hm! It has had soundsélose that I hope listen to someone as a member of theinson。 Thank you.

[30:32] Thank you.

[31:02] Thank you.

[31:32] Thank you. I wish I could guide you through the text, but Norwegian is not a language I'm familiar with.

[31:53] Thank you. Thank you.

[32:25] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[32:37] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[33:11] Thank you.

[33:41] Thank you. All the canticle settings are on a canvas of substantial width.

[34:19] The listener is expected to get drawn in and concentrate for these long periods of time. But just to give you a taste... This is in Latin.

[34:38] I think it's hard to hear the words, I admit, of these acoustics. I think there's a sense in which we're supposed to know what they're singing about and enjoy the sounds.

[34:50] Just the soundscaping and the colour is just, seems to me personally, what we need to bring to our Lord musically.

[35:13] And if we can do it, if circumstances commit, they don't always. Whether it's the Wesley hymn we heard or... It's just this excellence.

[35:27] Not perfection, excellence. So the music kind of, or composer, says, look, this is an important text.

[35:41] I don't suppose you want to take this home and play it over lunch, but this is what we need now for this text to come alive. I think that's the benefit of the question to do with the fellow lordullah?

[35:59] Why are you trying to understand the facts? What is this? Which means the fact is that...

[36:12] For whom roomberg is, that seems to me, Thank you.

[36:45] Thank you.

[37:15] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[37:27] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[37:39] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[37:51] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[38:05] Thank you. Thank you.

[38:17] Very much linked in our hearts, I think, and memories with Advent, is the Veni Veni Emmanuel, Come, O Come, Emmanuel theme. Here it is sung by the Jesualdo Six and a Cambridge University-based group.

[38:41] How these guys make so much volume out of six voices, I don't know. This is a very recent recording.

[39:06] The high voices are these guys singing falsetto. So a contemporary arrangement by them, and yet clearly with a very strong backward glance to medieval.

[39:40] A parallel motion. Rejoice, rejoice.

[39:53] Rejoice. Rejoice. Rejoice. Rejoice. Rejoice. Rejoice.

[40:03] Rejoice. Ro коли. So n Tu komo.

[40:17] This is the mejor sollen. An incredible dynamic range.

[40:43] It would be wonderful if we could all congregationally sing like that. There's no reason why we can't.

[40:58] It's all the political plot. It's kind of organum humming underneath.

[41:13] Lauri dans le That's very beautiful singing.

[41:56] And a simple, not complicated for the sake of being complicated, not trying to be cute for the sake of cute setting and arrangement. This is James Macmillan's take on Veni Veni Immanuel.

[42:13] And this is tricky because there are no words. It's orchestral with a percussion solo. It's a long work and I've only got the final extract. But what he clearly is trying to, this Christian composer from Scotland, whose works are all the rage in Europe, and there's rumour of trying to get him out here to give some lectures, he's a lovely guy and he writes these complex pieces or simple pieces for his Catholic diocese church in Glasgow.

[42:47] There are no airs about the man. He is very down to earth. But this piece is complex in texture and very dissonant. And you get the feeling, as you listen to this cacophony, you can just hear little intervallic traces and references to I can hear those coming in.

[43:08] But they are difficult to trace, but they're there. And there's this cacophony and it begins to break down until eventually, with sort of honking noises from the trombone, this distraught world.

[43:22] And then it breaks down, breaks down, breaks down, breaks down, into this tinkling, tinkling, tinkling, tinkling, tinkling, tinkling, tinkling. And again, even in the tinkling high bells, you can hear traces of a little common manual.

[43:34] I find it very effective. But it's not a terribly easy piece. But again, is it an easy piece? So... Here we go.

[44:11] Here we go.

[44:41] Here we go.

[45:11] Here we go.

[45:41] Here we go.

[46:11] Here we go.

[46:41] Here we go. Here we go. Here we go.

[46:53] Here we go.

[47:06] Thank you.

[47:36] Thank you.

[48:06] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[48:18] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[48:30] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. choir when they won the adult non-professional choir of the year 2012 in England the Surrey Hills choir it's a choir of I would actually say it's a middle aged choir of perhaps 15 people and they sing a piece O Radiant Dawn by James McMillan this is one of the O anthem texts associated with Advent and it's theme you'll hear it is essentially come light of the world and shine on those who are in darkness and just like that text that Handel uses and again very fine work this is a life of honour O Radiant Dawn O Radiant Dawn

[49:31] O Radiant Dawn very different in style plain so this is a Surrey Hills choir in I'm trying to sing the name of the town I can't remember in come come come come come come come come come come share His reiteration of O'Kam, O'Kam, is a very direct and phonic kind of treatment of the text.

[50:53] A perfect love for the moon and the night before the moon.

[51:09] A radiant dawn! A radiant dawn!

[51:21] For rain is gone, and splendor of eternal life.

[51:35] Star of justice. Guildford, that's where it is. Guildford, song. Star of justice. Star of justice.

[51:51] So same composer, radically different style, much more tonal, and accessible to singers and listeners, a congregation alike. Come, come, come, come, come, come, come.

[52:10] Shine on the train of death. Shine on the water. Amen. Amen.

[52:26] Amen. Amen. Amen. So they just, this group just stands mixed, no conductor. There is a conductor, but she joins them to sing and faces outwards.

[52:39] Amen. Amen. So I'm really, in many ways, at the end of the journey, in the sense that I've covered a stretch of time in terms of composers' responses to this vital, critical, wonderful period in the church calendar.

[53:12] Vital and critical because it embodies so many things. Christ's birth, of course, celebrated. Christ's return, imminent. Expectation, and always at the back cloth an accountability day, a judgment day.

[53:30] His return in glory. I don't know if that's helpful, but I'm sorry that the glory of the Lord of Handel's setting vanished, but perhaps it'll be made up for the person who I think, for me, at the end of the day, catches it best. Good old Bach.

[54:00] So we've got dance, celebration.

[54:11] This is a different approach. Presumably celebration on the part of Mary, as well as us. This is John Elliot Gardner again.

[54:35] The choir sounds as though it's laughing.

[54:57] And Bach is so good at bringing in a kind of crowd feel to the chorus. one voice, another voice, other voices saying, yeah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

[55:08] He does that in his passion music wonderfully. Here we go. Thank you.

[55:41] Thank you.

[56:11] Thank you.

[56:41] But I'm reminded of an interview recently Ken Myers did with, oh dear, I can't remember his name, you wouldn't know him, Wilson, London University, young musicologist, saying that music, Jeremy Begbie reflects on this a lot, that music, modernity can be expressed, is expressed through music, and music expresses what's going on in society.

[57:08] And we can see the different approaches here, which do reflect to some extent the way we have been either trained, coerced, or want to think about things.

[57:21] It's a gift of God of the most importance. It's going to be taught to the children in the schools as it was.

[58:26] In the church, you have to make room for performance and congregational, much like we have. So the chorale, but then the settings of the chorales in the cantatas, the passion music, and things like the magnificat.

[58:40] But the other thing this interview brought up was that when we sing together, and he talked of some research into this, there's a sense in which we resonate with each other.

[58:53] And people who have sung, people who have sung in some of these choirs, where the tuning is so perfect, there is actually a kind of vibrational awareness of wow.

[59:04] If a choir tunes on a chord over time, perhaps, you know, a minute or two, and it suddenly clicks, you can see the eyes going like that.

[59:17] When your piano is tuned perfectly, suddenly going, wow, that's different. And I think those are hints of heaven, where we will actually have perfect voices, and we will sing together, and we will resonate.

[59:32] Enough said. Any questions? Thank you. Yes?

[59:46] Yes? You, maybe I'm referencing this to your previous talk, where you kind of, you talked about current music and the move away from a deep spirituality.

[59:58] Are you encouraged by this talk? Is this a lone cry in Scotland of someone who's making music, or are there more people, more modern people, are you hopeful about?

[60:09] I think James Macmillan is a point of great hope, because he does write simply for the church. What's wrong with, I'm not, nobody's complaining, I hope, about simple.

[60:20] It's when it becomes simplistic that we've got trouble. And that usually means you've moved into a very predictable, therefore probably commodified idiom of expression.

[60:31] But James Macmillan, everything is kind of home-baked, if you will. Home-grown, home-baked, home-cooked. With you in mind, or that would be the congregation of that particular church. Not some out-there market that you hope to engulf, and has been engulfed.

[60:50] So I think that, and his willingness to work, do workshops. And then at the same time, he's addressing this new notion, which has come about, I've read about this in several spots, that for many people who've abandoned church, for whatever reasons, but including aesthetic reasons, whatever you may think of, whatever we may think of that, now are turning to the concert hall as their church, in a way, or their worship, in a way.

[61:19] So, someone perhaps growing up in an environment where some of the music we've been hearing today is simply not possible, or perhaps not allowed, or certainly, almost certainly, not encouraged, then they're going to sign up for the Vancouver Chamber Choir series.

[61:42] And that's where they will get, and I've heard language like this, I go there for my spiritual recharging. Go to these concerts. I go to the Messiah once a year at the Orpheum, for a spiritual recharging.

[61:59] So I think Macmillan addresses that too. So, okay, if you're going to come to the concert hall, or the promenade concerts in London, we're going to hear one of my works. I've been commissioned to write it, and I'm going to make sure it centers on Christ in some thematic way.

[62:14] And I think it's vital, because it stops this notion that the arts at their finest are somehow over there, and to be treated with great caution, which I'm afraid has been a tendency in the evangelical way.

[62:32] Yes? I'm fascinated by what I think of the landscape. Yes.

[62:49] James Macmillan, yeah. Yes. Yes, wasn't it powerful?

[63:00] Yes, it was powerful. But then I think of Bach. He's just like, oh, the world, whatever. You know? His landscape is all sky. Yes.

[63:11] You know, it's just, there's a little earth there. Yes. But not much. Yes. You know? And I'm just thinking about the different focal points of music, in terms of the focus of the composer.

[63:22] Where is the composer going to create the piece that will link us to that? Yes. You know, in what, where we started out from, and where we are now. Yes.

[63:33] It's fascinating. It's different. The picture of the music changed from history. Yes. That we are looking back to old reforms in some cases in quite contemporary music.

[63:43] It is. And I think the key, perhaps, to the successful composers in all ages has been, am I serving? Offering, am I a suffering servant?

[63:56] But am I serving? Yeah. Um, now that can get corrupted into a craven supplying whatever people want. But these guys resist that. They may touch on it, but they resist that.

[64:09] Or they may take a folk melody or a plain old plain chart melody and elevate it. Not that there's anything wrong with it in its original form. But they elevate it in a way that will connect with their contemporary listeners.

[64:21] Yeah. I think that's such a vital part. But it's not always a feature of the romantic composers. I have an idea. And you're going to hear it.

[64:32] You know, Wagner-like. And I've built my own theatre for you to listen to it in with lockable doors. And you've got my scenery, my libretto, my music, my orchestra, to a large extent, redesigned.

[64:46] It's all about me. And it's going to be a week full of it before we get through the ring cycle. That, to me, invites comment. It's not, it's, it's not modesty epitomized, is it?

[65:06] There must be other questions. Yes. We are so wedded to organs in some Christian churches, as I've included.

[65:17] And so much of the gorgeous music that I personally enjoy, and you have played some of it, is associated with an organ. But Maddie Pryor represents an age when Methodist creatures went out into a field.

[65:33] No organ. Let's take portable instruments. So they did fife and drum and whatever. And it's gorgeous, too. And I love her stuff. But we're in an age that's getting farther away from the organ, except some diehard people.

[65:49] And I think I might even put myself in that group now and then. What are we going to do about that? How can we preserve some of the beauty of the music that we enjoy when we've got combos and other things relating to music that is often very meaningful?

[66:10] And a lot of it is a rejoicing kind of stuff, you know. But we can't preserve what we like about Bach that way.

[66:22] So could you just comment on that? I could at length, and it would not do well for me to do it. Yes, I will. Yes.

[66:34] First of all, the organ gets a bad rap here on the west coast of Canada. As you travel west from Halifax, the organ, which you can... Halifax has 20 good organs.

[66:45] Halifax Dartmouth, at least 20. Including some modern instruments. Beautifully built. And a lot of cast events from the mid-20th and early 20th century and back into the 19th.

[66:56] And then you come to Quebec. The trouble is many of those churches are now empty. And then you hit Toronto. Some of the big Edwardian, late Victorian churches have big Edwardian, late Victorian organs like Timothy Memorial, St. James Cathedral and so on.

[67:18] And then it starts to taper rapidly to travel west. And you hit Vancouver, and you have a city which had a few nice organs put in in the early 20th century.

[67:32] The Cathedral, Sanders Wesley, one or two others. The suburbs had not yet developed. When they did, it was after the Second World War. They put things up quickly, like St. Philip's Dunbar, where I served briefly when Susan and I were first married.

[67:46] And what did they do for an organ? Oh, a theatre organ. They're getting rid of their theatre organ. So they put in a theatre organ. You know, wholly unsuitable in every way.

[67:59] But in it went. It was a very sort of make-do, pioneer kind of approach. And then, in the mid-60s, some decent instruments went in, including at St. Philip's, which has a beautiful little castle and organ.

[68:15] St. Mary's Carersdale, the Presbyterian Church in Carersdale, all went in around the same time. UBC's organ. And then, but still, you were left with lots and lots and lots of small churches representing multitudinous denominations and split-offs and so on.

[68:35] And as you move out into the suburbs, there actually are no pipe organs worth mentioning. One or two, but not many.

[68:46] And it's really a famine. You hit Victoria, a little more hope there, and then you go up island and it's... So it's a bit of a wasteland here, but in the States, it's a wholly different story.

[68:59] Yes, that's true. Much bigger country, I know. But then there are these magnificent instruments to be found in Pittsburgh. I was just asked to help advise on the Evangelical Criven de Vos Church of the Ascension.

[69:13] They're going to renovate at some cost this beautiful 1960s or 50s Austin pipe organ. They're going to do that. They've renovated the big church organ.

[69:25] Huge church. Huge organ at East Liberty Presbyterian. There are seven castle band organs in Pittsburgh, American city. There are scads of other instruments.

[69:37] There's a brand new Italian organ gone into a Lutheran church. There are two Reuter organs, fairly recent installations in the chapel at the university. Ha! Chapel at a university. And at the big Presbyterian, another big Presbyterian church.

[69:51] I had a huge castle band organ to play put in in 1984. It's just off the radar here. It isn't off the radar there. It's what I've really seen. We have... Organ is not dead.

[70:03] It really is not. And then... So that's the first thing I would say. And then the trouble then is you're up against a brick wall, which is rather complex to go into.

[70:17] I don't... It is possible, as we heard, Susan and I heard at the cathedral last week, to have a lovely mix of instrumental and organ. I forget what it was.

[70:29] It was viola, I think. A viola and organ doing these bridges between verses. So the organ is serving, and then there's this other sound. I...

[70:40] That is possible, but I'm afraid it actually boils down to money. Who's going to pay for the violinist to come in, especially to play for that service? Is your church willing to put aside a budget for that sort of thing?

[70:54] So one Venni, Venni, which I nearly played, decided against, was from some kind of... I don't know where. Mega church in America. Massive organ at the front. Church plunged into darkness.

[71:05] Pinpoint lights everywhere. Huge orchestra. Massive choir. Children's choir. I think big percussion section, all for one piece. And I thought, how on earth do they afford that?

[71:18] This is their big Christmas presentation. Thousands of dollars. You can't hire musicians outside of union rates, or you'll be in trouble. Professionals. So I think that's part of the problem.

[71:31] It's vision. I'm not sure that I thought it was worth it, doing what they did in this clip. Nevertheless, they did it. And that's a vision. We want to do things this way, but it costs...

[71:44] You need feet on the ground, and you need money. It's as blunt as that, I think. And we need... But many churches have money. Mega. Yes, they do. This one obviously did.

[71:55] Yeah. And you need the quality organs to offset what you were just saying. Because bad organ sound is... You know. I'm the grim creeper.

[72:06] One more question. Oh, one more question. Yes. Thank you so much for your presentation. I'm curious about the interest of this genre of music, this type of music, for people under the age of 50.

[72:24] Yes. My assumption is that it could be a dying genre, that the appreciation of the beauty of this music could be dying with age.

[72:35] And I'm just... I'm very curious about your comment that some people will go to a concert hall to get their spiritual... Yes. Yes. And one of the things that I'm probably interested in is the hunger for spirituality in our postmodern age.

[72:49] Yes. Yes. Yes. And so this really does nourish my soul. This type of music, even if I'm not even listening in English, it still nourishes my soul. So I'm just curious about that hunger for spirituality in our postmodern age among 20s and 30s and 40s.

[73:05] People who didn't grow up with this being forced to listen to it perhaps in our home, but maybe are just intrigued with the beauty of it. And I'm just wondering, what is your read of our Western culture and people's interest?

[73:18] I'll try to hear you really quick. I think, first of all, I'd like to say that if we could have seen video clips of all these choirs, you'd be astounded at the number of young people.

[73:29] Obviously, the girls' choirs. And you can say, well, they're just forced into... No, no, no. I don't think so. The guy is singing the... What's it called? Jejo Aldo Six Group.

[73:40] I mean, they're graduate age because they're university students. And stuff I went through time and time and time, especially in England. You see young choirs.

[73:52] Music and intimate give young singers. I don't know how young now, but when they started out, you know, significantly young. The vast number of people in the Bach Choir network of children's choirs.

[74:03] What I see in Pow River, what I got quite often, where a whole town, mill town, has been impacted by Don James and his choral program for the young. To the point where when they celebrated his 65th year or something, people were flying in from all over the globe to thank him for this.

[74:23] I've just started a choir at Regent. And there's a young guy in there singing in the bass, good voice. He said, hey, I've never encountered this before. I've just been used to praise and worship.

[74:36] I don't think it's as closed down as we think. But I'm sorry to sound like a Marxist. I think the vested interest in the praise and worship industry, the pop culture, has this quality of black hole.

[74:52] It's not only we have this to offer and listen. It's we have this to offer and you are not going to listen to anything else. We're not going to let you find out about this beautiful stuff.

[75:04] Bottom line, we want it all to ourselves. I do feel that that's a quality of the, well, commerce, but it's a quality of the commodification of music, especially worship music.

[75:17] So you have students in the choir at Regent who just simply didn't know there was anything else. That, I think, is almost an educational crime, crime of omission.

[75:29] But I think the encouraging thing is that most of the faces in there will be very young from what we've been hearing. Thank you. So it's a battle and we have to be on guard and we have to keep at it.

[75:41] Thank you, Ed. I can't thank you enough for an hour of just introducing beauty into our lives and reiterating, I think, if you were at Book Club, how we are not just heads on sticks that need to be fed intellectually, but it's our hearts as well.

[75:53] Yes. Thank you so much, Ed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.