Quid sit futurum cras

Just a reminder to my readers on campus that the Elizabethans will be performing tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon at 3:00pm in Brooks-Rogers. You are highly encouraged to come if you like any of the following:

Music from the thirteenth century
Music from the twentieth century
Music from after the thirteenth century but before the twentieth century
Costumes from the Renaissance
Bad puns
Worse puns
Other

In other news, just when I thought I had my schedule for next year all figured out, I've decided I'm not going to do a music thesis after all. I've enjoyed taking composition classes here, but I don't have the kind of ambition or aesthetic consciousness (to say nothing of free time!) that would justify to the music faculty- or, for that matter, to myself- undertaking a project of such magnitude. I will likely still take a semester of composition next year, pending discussion, but this will open up space for another class or two, possibly a refresher in Latin or Prof. Porter's highly-recommended "Greek and Roman Drama". An unexpected change, to be sure, but I think a fortunate one.

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Chesterton Quote of the Day

How high the sea of human happiness rose in the Middle Ages, we now only know by the colossal walls that they built to keep it in bounds. How low human happiness sank in the twentieth century, our children will only know by these extraordinary modern books, which tell people to be cheerful and that life is not so bad after all. Humanity never produces optimists till it has ceased to produce happy men. It is strange to be obliged to impose a holiday like a fast, and to drive men to a banquet with spears. (from 'George Bernard Shaw.')

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One Pitch To Tune Them All

The Elizabethans' Spring Concert is coming up in just a week- next Saturday, April 30, at 3:00 PM in Brooks-Rogers. Yours truly was assigned to come up with a poster, and after experimentation with a variety of puns deemed too awful for the broader campus audience, e.g. Sumer is A-Comin' In and La Guerre/A Capellapolypse Now, many hours of quality procrastination yielded the result above. The concert will run the usual musical gamut from the 13th-century round Summer is A-Comin' In to U2's MLK (via a King's Singers arrangement), stopping along the way at the Battle of Marignan (La Guerre), an Italian hunting expedition (Alla Cazza), and in vineyards literal (Margot) and metaphorical (Vinea Mea)- finishing, of course, with the our trademark PDQ Bach My Bonny Lass She Smelleth and this year's surprise ending...

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C is for Conspiracy Theories

-Nihil sanctum estne?
-What does that mean? Oh, it's Latin, isn't it.
-Is nothing sacred? -Rushmore

Apparently not. Case in point, as Jonah Goldberg reports: it seems the folks at PBS have deemed Cookie Monster an inappropriate role model for impressionable kids who might seek to emulate his dietary habits. Lest children grow up thinking that "C is for Cookie" constitutes a mandate for unlimited snacking, his offending trademark song has been replaced with "A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food."

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven," quoth Qoheleth, David's son, king in Jerusalem:

a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Birth, death, love, hate, war, peace; all of these, the Good Book tells us, are Sometimes Things. Each has their appointed time. We might expect then that there is a time for eating cookies, and there is a time for not eating cookies. But the Bible does not say this. In fact, the Bible maintains a reverent silence on the subject of cookies. What then are we to conclude? Are cookies a Sometimes Food? It seems that they are not. How else can we explain their glaring omission from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8?

Logically, we are left with two possible conclusions: cookies are an Anytime Food, or they are a Never Food. The fact that the Bible does not specifically prohibit them speaks tellingly in favor of the former. "The curtness of the Ten Commandments," notes Chesterton, "is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden." In fact, the aforementioned Biblical silence on the matter of cookies, far from connoting disapproval, actually conceals a hidden code, a secret message from God to His Creation:

• 1 c. 1 Samuel 25:11
• 1 c. Genesis 24:11
• 1/2 c. Judges 5:25
• 1 tsp 1 Corinthians 5:6
• 1 c. Jeremiah 6:20
• 1 Isaiah 10:14
• 1 3/4 c. 1 Kings 4:22
• 1/4 tsp Leviticus 2:13
• 1 1 Kings 10:2
• 1/2 c. Numbers 17:8
• 1 tsp Exodus 16:31

Combine first three scriptures then bring to Job 41:31. Remove from the heat. Cool. Add remaining scriptures. Then follow the advice in Proverbs 23:14; first clause. Pour in a greased 15x10x1 pan and Exodus 12:39 with confectioners Jeremiah 6:20 or frost while warm. Enjoy.

That's right; the Bible is nothing but an elaborate recipe passed down through the ages. "Heaven and Earth will pass away," Jesus tells us, "but my words will not pass away" (Luke 21:33). Ergo, cookies are an Anytime Food, and PBS is unbiblical. The seat of Cookie Monster is vacant, for the one who now sits in it is an imposter to the throne, an anti-Cookie Monster if you will, for he who is not for cookies is against them. Anathema sit!

In fact, much like the Catholic Church, PBS has relapsed to the pagan beliefs of ancient Egypt. It's obvious, when you consider that PBS stands for "Ptah Bastet Sekhmet", the names of ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses, but perhaps most damning is the incontrovertible evidence below:



Mark my words: the apostasy of Cookie Monster is a sign of the coming apocalypse. Woe unto PBS on that day, when judgment falls upon them like a rolling pin, and condemnation like a cookie cutter! Already the fiery furnace is being preheated for those who will not repent of their iniquity. Woe to PBS when the Food Pyramid is cast down like the Tower of Babel, and the Master Baker comes in all his glory to judge the stewards of his kitchen!

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Quid Novarum

You know it's going to be a good day when you've bought a Greek dictionary before breakfast. Just ordered a used copy of the "Little Liddell", figuring it's about time I stopped relying on the back-of-the-book vocab, particularly since we just started on a book that doesn't have any.

Other recent highlights of the past few days include Tuesday's organ recital, for which I played Telemann, Couperin, and Zachow. Beyond a few unfortunate mishaps in the last piece, such as not realizing that the swell box was closed until I started playing, and a subsequent near-train wreck as I tried to rectify the problem, my set went well. Three more students were slated to perform after me, but only two did, as the last was apparently unable to get out of lab- another reason why I don't take real science courses any more. In other organ news, I'm having a piece published in the Hartford Organ Book this summer, a publication of the Hartford AGO. It's a short little piece that I played for the Family Weekend service last Sunday- a bit awkwardly, since though not particularly difficult it does require a bit more hand-foot coordination than I currently possess. Didn't make any blatantly embarrasing mistakes, fortunately, or those in attendance might have thought that I wrote it that way, which would be even more embarrasing!

Tuesday night was the third and final room draw of my Williams Career. Jono and I picked into Prospect House, which is being renovated this summer and hopefully will be all new and shiny next year. The rooms will be small, but having lived in Mission for the last year, I doubt I'll mind. I've got a corner room facing south, which should mean plenty of sunlight and a nice view of the southern Taconics beyond the rooftops of urban Williamstown. The only drawback is that with the renovations, much like with Mission two years ago, it won't open until a couple of days after the other dorms, so if I have to be back here earlier, as I probably will, I'll have to camp out somewhere. Worst-case scenario is, of course, that the renovations will be delayed and a tent city will spring up on the Odd Quad lawn, but we'll cross that bridge if we come to it.

That's all I can think of for the moment, unless you want to hear about my trip to the Health Center to get vaccinated up for the choir tour to Bolivia this summer- ...No? Very well. I'll be off then to come up with some more interesting exploits with which to amuse you all. Until next time!

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Little did we know...

The 2004 Prince of Liechtenstein Fellows with Pope John Paul II following his General Audience on Wednesday, June 16, 2004...

... and with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, later that same day.

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Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum

Habemus Papam, Benedict XVI, the Pope formerly known as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

``Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me - a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord.

``The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers.

``In the joy of the risen Lord, trusting in his permanent help, we go forward. The Lord will help us and Mary his very holy mother stands by us.''

Viva il Papa!

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"Is Jesus Mainstream Enough?"

Jeff Miller at The Curt Jester has written this parody for Spero News.

JERUSALEM (Canaan News Network CNN) In the last few months there has been increasing speculation on a relatively fast rising Rabbi from Nazareth as to whether he is the one we have been waiting for...

...Many people regardless of their political parties consider that Jesus is just too far out of the mainstream. That his ideas about forgiveness and loving even your enemies are just to radical to be taken seriously as a candidate for being the Messiah. Public opinion polls show this split among the people that while they might admire some aspects about Jesus they are uncomfortable with the whole package. (Full Article)

While you're waiting for that white smoke, you can also check out the Pope-U-Lator to predict who will be the next Pope and what name he will choose. All in good fun, of course. Particularly interesting are the Papal Name Stats. Among the less likely possibilities are John Paul III (JPIII, we love thee?) and Sixtus VI (try saying that ten times fast). Fr. Dave predicts "Karol Mary" though that seems about as likely as "JPIII" and I can just see the uproar when "Carol Mary" is proclaimed as the first woman Pope. Peter, Franciscan that he is, predicts "Maximilian Mary" after St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe. Currently at the top of the Pope-U-Lator's list is Benedict XVI, which would make some monks I know very happy.

I'll leave you for now with Peggy Noonan's lastest column, a fascinating look into the mind of a fictitious Cardinal of the Catholic Church:

"If that is true," said the cardinal from Asia, "It would seem our duty is to choose a great man who is not necessarily a dramatic or endearing figure. The Holy Spirit will give him voice. Our time will need greatness. 'For nowadays the world is lit by lightning.' " Full Article

Veni, sancte Spiritus...

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Wherein I digress

It's high time I burdened you all with details of my personal life, rather than post actual content- not that I've ever made that a priority in the past, so if you don't remember any, don't go on a wild-goose chase through the archives thinking you missed it. So without further ado, allow me to present to you my life a la Livejournal.

It's that time of year again, for more things than one. Finals are beginning to loom (see previous post), and next year's room draw and class preregistration are just around the corner. Concert season is about to get underway, with Chamber Choir this afternoon, Elizabethans in two weeks, and Concert Choir the week after that. Lots of good music all around, particularly the Renaissance pieces in the Chamber Choir repertoire and the Martin Messe fur zwei vierstimmige Chore being split between the Concert and Chamber choirs. Chamber is also doing two of Poulenc's Quatre Motets pour un temps de Penitence, including- you guessed it- "Vinea Mea" which I also happen to be conducting in 'Bethans this semester. Concert Choir, in addition to the Credo and Sanctus of the Martin Mass, is singing Barber's Agnus Dei (Adagio for Strings, transcribed for voices), Psalm 90 by Charles Ives and an Eric Whitacre setting of "i thank you God for most this amazing day" by e.e. cummings.

Perhaps I'm merely becoming jaded in my old age, but I'm beginning to lose patience with this last. I enjoy the poetry of e.e. cummings in small doses; it's sweet and fluffy, but like marshmallows, too much leaves you - or leaves me, I'll leave you out of this (you're welcome)- feeling slightly sick and hungering for a substance that just isn't there. Whitacre, of course, delivers an excellent setting but this only compounds the problem- not to disparage him, as I really like some of the stuff he does (Leonardo Dreams last year was fantastic, and not just insofar as it facilitated some of the greatest bass pranks of all time) but he's not above a bit of saccharine fluffiness either. On the other hand, I'd probably not like the Ives as much were it not so refreshingly stark in comparison, so I suppose it evens out.

To be honest, I can't say I haven't been guilty of sentimentality in my own writing, though I find I can't keep up a musical straight face on it for very long- for instance my piece A Medicine for Melancholy, performed two years ago by Student Symphony, in which a rather schmaltzy and melancholic first half turns out to be a parody of the jig tune which follows it- somewhat paradoxically, of course, since you hear them in the opposite order from how they were written. At any rate, I'll save further discussion of my own music for the 15-page paper on the subject that I'll have to write next year in addition to my composition thesis- not something I'm looking forward to (the paper, that is.) The thesis should be fun, and in fact I'm optimistic about my classes next year in general, since it looks like everything will fit together nicely- always a relief for a double major like me. Two more classes each for Music and Classics, plus the thesis, and I'll still have space for something fun and non-major.

I had been thinking of taking an intro modern language like German or Italian, but the prospect of early morning classes five days a week is less than appealing (not to mention that it would make it difficult to get to daily Mass). So you can imagine my delight when, browsing the course catalogue online, I stumbled purely by chance upon "Reading German for Beginners", which looks like it could actually be one of the more useful classes I take here at Williams, especially if I end up doing further work in music or classics. Beyond that, I hear it's a great class from a friend who, as it turns out, has been taking it all year and never saw fit to mention it to me before. (Just kidding, Emily!) In all seriousness, I've been so fortunate with class scheduling in the past that I was bracing myself for the inevitable conflicts next year- I must be due for them- but it looks like things will actually work out quite nicely, which is a pleasant surprise. That just leaves the question of where I will live, which will be resolved between 8:30 and 9:00pm next Tuesday evening- hopefully in favor of a nice cozy room in the Odd Quad with south-facing windows.

I'm off now to practice the organ for tomorrow morning's Family Weekend service (one of those "interfaith" shindigs), tomorrow afternoon's Newman Mass, and Tuesday afternoon's studio recital.

Current mood: Sabbatarian
Current music: Respighi- The Pines of Rome

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Solvitur acris hiems

Spring comes to Williamstown. Spring, that delightful time of year when a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of- well, love, but I was thinking more about the transience of human existence, to tell you the truth. You can't believe everything you read in Tennyson.

Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas; quid habet amplius homo de universo labore suo quod laborat sub sole? A mere five weeks remain before the semester comes crashing down, and the days of judgement fall upon the children of Ephraim. Then will there be much cramming and hashing of ideas. But lo, their deliverance shall come upon the tenth day, as it is written in the book of the Registrar.

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A Parable

Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something -- let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached on the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, 'Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good -- -- -- ' At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamppost is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmedieval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp we must now discuss in the dark.

from 'Heretics' via Chesterton Day by Day

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Fun with Limericks

I am sick unto death of obscure English towns that exist seemingly for the sole accommodation of these so-called limerick writers -- and even sicker of their residents, all of whom suffer from physical deformities and spend their time dismembering relatives at fancy dress balls.

Editor of the Limerick Times (Limerick, Ireland)

Those who are unmoved by the above may enjoy the following.

The Omnificient English Dictionary in Limerick Form

Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine...

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Chicken Soup for the doppelganger

It's mildly disturbing how often we pass over menu items in the Dining Hall without pausing to take in their implications. For instance, how many of us stop to think about what makes "Double Chicken Soup" double? Whence derives its duplex- dare I say duplicitous- nature? Does it simply refer to an increased chicken content relative to normal chicken soup- analagous to Raisin Bran's "Two Scoops"? Perhaps it means that the soup contains both dark and white meat, in which case it would be more properly described as "dualist"- light and darkness, equal and opposite, locked in a microcosmic struggle; Zoroastrianism in a bowl... in which case, renouncing the heresy of the Manichees, we ought of course to demand Triple or Trinitarian Soup- one broth, three chickens. This may put us on firmer theological ground, though it might ignite an arms race of sorts among the dining halls as they compete to offer more chicken than their rivals. Already, we have a scenario in which one dining hall can offer twice as much chicken in their soup as another- and you can bet that no student in their right mind is going to settle for the lesser of the two. But it won't stop at double or triple or even quadruple chicken soup. No, unless an upper limit of chicken content can be fixed, there's no telling where this will end. And so we are faced with a terrible choice: we must renounce double chicken soup, or face culinary Armageddon.

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Laughter and Love

The equal and eternal human being... sees no real antagonism between laughter and respect, the human being, the common man, whom mere geniuses like you and me can only worship like a god. When dark and dreary days come, you and I are necessary, the pure fanatic, the pure satirist. We have between us remedied a great wrong. We have lifted the modern cities into that poetry which every one who knows mankind to be immeasurably more common than the commonplace. But in healthy people there is no war between us. We are but the two lobes in the brain of a ploughman. Laughter and love are everywhere. The cathedrals, built in the ages that loved God, are full of blasphemous grotesques. The mother laughs continually at the child, the lover laughs continually at the lover, the wife at the husband, the friend at the friend... We have been too long separated; let us go out together... Let us start our wanderings over the world. For we are its two essentials. Come, it is already day.

'The Napoleon of Notting Hill.'

Via Chesterton Day by Day

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John Paul II, We Love You

Sto lat! Sto lat! they chanted. May you live a hundred years!
It's easier to sing than to do, he said...

They call us the John Paul II generation. Teenagers and twenty-somethings, we are too young to have known or remembered any man but this man in the chair of Peter. And what a man. Our elders are at a loss to understand the incredible appeal that John Paul II held for us. That an aged, celibate old man in Rome should command such respect and devotion among the inheritors of the sexual revolution, among other things, is baffling and indeed disturbing to those who expected our generation to follow in their own footsteps. They cite his charismatic presence, his vibrant personality, his energetic spirit. But to conclude that we loved him for his character and merely tolerated or smiled indulgently at his quaint orthodoxy would be a mistake. We loved him for his orthodoxy, for his passionate witness to the Gospel. We loved him because he spoke to us, and his words rang true in our hearts. Dear young people! he said. Be not afraid! Open wide the doors to Christ! In a world where love and sexuality and human dignity were being cheapened all around us, he told us that these things were greater than we imagined. He told us not to fear the culture of death or our own weakness, but to take courage in the victory of Christ over the world: This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel! It is the time to preach it from the rooftops!

The world did not understand this man because he was a contradiction to them. They praise him for his humanitarianism, his instrumental role in the downfall of Communism, his steadfast opposition to war and capital punishment. At the same time, he is criticized for his unflinching fidelity to tradition, for refusing to capitulate to abortion, contraception, or euthansia. The world forgets that Christ was also a contradiction. They are fond of the Sermon on the Mount, but conveniently pass over the Crucifixion. In fact, it is not John Paul II or Christ or the Catholic Church which is contradictory, but the world. It is the world which has strayed from the truth and no longer recognizes it for what it is. Especially in America, we live in a world of cafeteria Catholicism, a world that sees nothing absurd in picking and choosing those elements of the truth that please us and ignoring the rest. Is it any wonder that the Church contradicts their own contradictions?

John Paul II knew what is was to surrender oneself to the Gospel. His life was not his own; or rather, he found the truth that one must give up his life in order to find it. His motto, totus tuus, bespoke his total dedication to Jesus through Mary, a dedication that was evident throughout his life, but never more than in the final years when physical infirmity began to take its toll. He accepted the cross of the papacy with joy in spite of the immense suffering he bore as a result, and was under no illusions that his life was anything but a Via Crucis in union with the suffering Christ. Nor, at the end, did he cling vainly to life when the Lord called His faithful servant home. Those around him were choked up with emotion when, on Friday morning, he asked that the biblical narrative of the Passion be read to him, and as the body of Christ was being taken down for burial, he made the sign of the Cross. Do not weep, he said. Let us pray together with joy.

Ora pro nobis.

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