jwilzewske: christmas

Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Celebrating Advent & Christmas: Trumpet-Organ Duos

W hile rotary valve trumpets are not strictly speaking historical but rather contemporary brass instruments, trumpet players have in recent years increasingly been using these instruments for all of the Austro-German classical and romantic repertoire from Mozart and Haydn to Bruckner and Mahler... While the use of rotary valve instruments is certainly not historically accurate for the classical and early romantic natural trumpet orchestral literature, many conductors and players seem to feel that the tapered attack and warmer tone quality of these instruments is better suited to the modern performance of natural trumpet parts than the more brilliant and incisive piston valve instrument. There is no question, however, that the rotary valve trumpet is the stylistically appropriate and historically authentic instrument for the late 19th and early 20th century Germanic repertory.”
— David H. Green.

T he Advent program at Annakirche in Vienna last night was excellent.

S tefan Fleißner (trpt) and Reinhard Schobesberger (organ) performed a 1-hour program for a delighted audience that completely filled the pews. The trumpet-organ duo works included arrangements of a number of Marienlieder, plus a variety of contemporary Christmas carols, plus the following:

Clarke – Trumpet Fanfare, Prinz von Dänemark Marsch
Haydn – Andante, Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major
Marcello – Concerto in D minor
Schubert – Ave Maria
Telemann – Trumpet Concerto in D major
Bach – ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’, from Cantata ‘Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben’, BWV 147
Torelli – Sinfonia in D major

I ’ve been in Wien for 7 days, and have attended the Staatsoper, the Wien Philharmoniker, Wien Kammerorchester, Theater an der Wien opera, and various other music events—and I have yet to see a single piston-valved trumpet. Not one. The only thing that anybody uses over here are rotary-valve instruments. Their timbre is very round, full, and capable of a legato sound like nothing else—not as ‘dark’ as a flugelhorn, though, and not as breathy.

T he rotary-valve keys have a shorter ‘throw’ (about 1 cm) than piston-valved instruments, so fingering of rapid passages may, in general, be a bit faster on these instruments, compared to on a conventional piston-valved trumpet. Other biomechanics advantages are mentioned by trumpet players who prefer these rotary-valve designs, including better symmetry between left-hand/arm and right-hand/arm musculature, in terms of holding the instrument… no brass crook for the right-hand “pinky,” and therefore no big forces on that little finger to get transmitted into the lumbricals of the other fingers of that hand; no tension in the left-hand; etc.

T he legato playing of Fleißner was superb throughout. Gorgeous, both in the sacred music and in the secular pieces.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Britten’s ‘St. Nicolas’ Cantata Op. 42 in Aldeburgh: The Importance of ‘Place’

I believe in roots, in associations, in backgrounds, in personal relationships. I want my music to be of use to people, to please them, to enhance their lives. My music has its roots in where I live and work.”
— Benjamin Britten, 1964, remarks upon receiving the Aspen Award.

I want to write for people... There is something very fresh and unrestrained in the quality of the music produced by amateurs. What annoys me more is the ineptitude of some professionals who don’t know their stuff. I have no patience with that.”
— Benjamin Britten.

B etween the two World Wars, composers like Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, and others fostered a kind of pre-WWII musical Renaissance. But in the 1940s, a new generation of artists began to differentiate themselves from the previous generation.

I t is encouraging that you too sense that something in the air that heralds a ‘renaissance’. I feel terrifically conscious of it—so do Peter [Pears], & Clifford [Curzon], & Michael Tippett & so many that I love & admire it—[and it] is good to add you to the list! Whether we are the voices crying in the wilderness or the thing itself, it isn’t for us to know, but anyhow it is so very exciting. It is of course in all of the arts, but in music, particularly, it’s this acceptance of freedom without any arbitrary restrictions, this simplicity, this contact with the audiences of our own time, & of people like ourselves, this seriousness, & above all this professionalism. One mustn’t and can’t deny the many heavenly genius[es] of the last century, but it is also a greater sympathy with the earlier centuries that marks this thing perhaps the most clearly.”
— Benjamin Britten, letter to Imogen Holst, OCT-1943.

T here is little doubt that Britten and his generation were ‘the thing itself’. Their sounds were not only ‘new’ but were emblematic of their nation and their generation. Britten’s Op. 42, the ‘St. Nicolas’ Cantata, represents one important embodiment of that.

O ne might think that a nationally and generationally emblematic sound would require in each performer a fully developed timbre and musical maturity to pull it off. But that is not so.

I heard a rehearsal yesterday (Saturday, 13-NOV) afternoon in Aldeburgh, and the choirs and the boy singing the part of young Nicolas are mightily motivated from their pure love of music. They simply and obviously love making music happen. Their upcoming performance of ‘St. Nicolas’ next Saturday will not only be really special in regard to the historic setting and all that; it will also be most consonant with Britten’s original intentions and ethos for this piece. This semi-staged production celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of Sir Peter Pears, who sang the part of Saint Nicolas in the work’s première in Aldeburgh Parish Church in 1948, as part of the very first Aldeburgh Festival.

T he Solstice String Quartet will lead the other performers from the front desks (a string quartet at the front, leading the rest, is a feature that Britten himself suggested). Andrew Staples (tenor) will perform the part of the adult Nicolas. The Jubilee Opera Chorus and the Britten-Pears Chamber Choir, along with members of local boys’ and girls’ choirs complete the ensemble, antiphonally positioned in the church sanctuary. The conductor will be Steuart Bedford.

S teuart’s conducting during the rehearsal last evening indicated that, apart from his great renown as a Britten scholar, he has a special talent for teaching youngsters. He communicates every bit of the excitement and humor in this score to the youngest of choristers in a very engaging manner.

T he conductor should be cool-headed...”
— Benjamin Britten, conductor’s notes for Op. 42.

Introduction
The Birth of Nicolas
Nicolas Devotes Himself to God
He Journeys to Palestine
Nicolas Comes to Myra and Is Chosen Bishop
Nicolas from Prison
Nicolas and the Pickled Boys
His Piety and Marvellous Works
The Death of Nicolas

W ithin the second movement are mischievous musical inventions, as when Nicolas swims in the bath, percussion imitating the water’s bubbling and splashing. During ‘He Journeys to Palestine’ all the musical components swirl into the tempest that threatens the voyager, and the melodic line becomes more dissonant as a storm approaches, silencing the male chorus. The children’s chorus, singing from the back gallery, rises like the flickering of lightning: ‘Winds and tempests howl their cry of battle through the raging sky! Ah!’ and the men plead for safety. As the storm subsides, the soloist emerges; his prayer is musically direct: ‘Pity Our Simplicity’ underlined by the hum of the tympani. The stars now visible in the clear sky twinkle in the light fingering of the pianist in the instrument’s upper octaves.”
— Jaime Robles, review of Chora Nova performance, November, 2007.

T he second movement (The Birth of Nicolas) initiates the account of Nicolas’ life, recounting the story of his miraculous birth, when “...from his mother’s womb he sprang and cried, ‘God be glorified!’” The tone of the boy treble singing the part of young Nicolas in this production—tender, flutey, and high, a clarion-call on high-E (E4) without vibrato or other world-wise colorings—is superb. The boy wanders through the sanctuary taking up various stations—from a back pew, to up front by a column, to the pulpit, to the chancel—emitting this high-pitched proclamation.

A ndrew Staples’ tenor voice has substance and a jaunty worldliness but is sweet as well—conveying that this is who the child grew up to become. When well-sung, these two parts are credibly the same person, heard across time. After six ‘stations’ or strophic episodes, the transformation of boy into the man is complete. When at the end of these the boy becomes a man, the movement closes with the full-voiced adult tenor singing the refrain. At the moment that Nicolas becomes a man, the supporting harmonies become dissonant, creating a sizzling semitone frisson symbolically marking the end of childhood.

I n the third movement, which features the tenor soloist exclusively, Nicolas sings of his experiences after his parents’ deaths. In “the wider world of man” he finds hopelessness, faithlessness, and poverty, which made him angry and heartsick.

N icolas is ordained as bishop in the fifth movement, at the conclusion of which the audience joins in singing a familiar hymn, the Old 100th [Psalm]. Using the audience to sing the familiar Nunc dimittis in the ninth movement is likewise very atmospheric and powerfully evokes memories of remote childhood church experiences for adults. Scary engagement of primal, limbic emotions—in the face of which our ‘adult’ reason is quite helpless.

A new and important element in Saint Nicolas was the inclusion of the congregation in the musical action. These hymn tunes were familiar to a generation educated in English public schools, where chapel and hymn singing were daily events. It drew them back to their own childhood, at the same time demanded a level of participation beyond passive listening. This remarkable layering of musical elements . . . provides no small part of the pleasure we have in listening to this work. And the humility of a great composer writing serious music within the capabilities of ordinary people explains the continuing favor this music finds half a century after its composition. Britten was always a very practical composer who was equally at home whether writing for modest amateur performances or for international occasions with virtuoso professional soloists… Saint Nicolas was Britten’s first large-scale work written with mainly amateur performers in mind, and is a wonderful example of his outstanding ability to capture the essence of his subject-matter with a series of dramatic yet essentially simple ideas to which performers and audiences can immediately relate.”
— John Bawden, Musical Director (1994 - 2006), Fareham Philharmonic Choir.

T he seventh movement has tremendous drama and pathos. Here we have Nicolas as patron saint of children in the story of an innkeeper/butcher who robs and murders three young students, preserving and hiding their remains in a pickling tub. ‘Pickled Boys’: what a perfect gnarly image for all 9 year-old boys! Nicolas miraculously resuscitates the pickled kids, who then proceed to sing an enthusiastic Alleluia!

N o question: there’s something unmistakably ‘fresh and unrestrained’ about Britten’s score, something that comes directly from the pleasure he took in writing for these performers. From the dizzy waltz that underscores ‘The Birth of Nicolas’, through the powerfully dramatic tenor numbers to the resounding final chorus, Saint Nicolas unerringly hits its mark. Understandably enough, Crozier’s libretto glosses quickly over Nicolas’s role as protector of prostitutes and pawnbrokers – but the extended, deliciously macabre episode of ‘Nicolas and the Pickled Boys’ (added at Britten’s own suggestion) shows a gleefully Roald Dahl-like understanding of the less-than-wholesome tastes of the young ‘little blighters’.”
— Richard Bratby, program notes, Barbican 2008.

T he eighth movement is sung by the choirs alone, as they recall the kindness of Nicolas, keeping “his memory alive in legends that our children and their children’s children treasure still.”

T he ending, including the audience, singing “God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform” is staggeringly moving, even for non-Christians, whipping up a transgenerational cosmic universality of the human condition and commending the moral necessity of our behaving civilly and charitably toward each other—toward our children and grandchildren, and toward our parents and grandparents. Heard in its original setting here in Aldeburgh Parish Church, the piece evokes a powerful sense of the importance of ‘place’—of how important our local culture and situatedness are, to the project of creating and conserving deep meaning in our lives.

I n all, it is ‘so very exciting’, just as Britten once wrote! Consider yourself very lucky to be able to attend next Saturday afternoon’s performance of ‘St. Nicolas’ in its ur-venue, the ancient and atmospheric church in Aldeburgh, and performed by local artists with audience participation. Tickets are nearly sold-out and, judging from the rehearsal, this performance will be fully up to the historic, ‘jubilee’ anniversary billing.

N icolas was born in answer to prayer,
in answer to prayer, in answer to prayer,
And leaping from his mother's womb he cried-
GOD BE GLORIFIED!

Swaddling bands and crib awaited him there,
awaited him there, awaited him there,
But Nicolas clapped both his hands and cried-
GOD BE GLORIFIED!

Innocent and joyful, naked and fair,
naked and fair, naked and fair,
He came in pride on earth to abide-
GOD BE GLORIFIED!

Water rippled Welcome! in the bathtub by his side,
bathtub by his side, bathtub by his side.
He dived in open-eyed, he swam, he cried-
GOD BE GLORIFIED!

When he went to Church at Christmastide,
at Christmastide, at Christmastide,
He climbed up to the font to be baptized.
GOD BE GLORIFIED!

Pilgrims came to kneel and pray by his side,
to pray by his side, to pray by his side.
He grew in grace, his name was sanctified.
GOD BE GLORIFIED!

Nicolas grew in innocence and pride,
in innocence and pride, in innocence and pride, in pride....
His glory spread a rainbow round the countryside, round the countryside.
‘Nicolas will be a Saint! Nicolas will be a Saint! Nicolas will be a Saint!’ the neighbors cried.
GOD BE GLORIFIED!”
— Op. 42, ii.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Six-Mallet Marimba Technique, Sparkling Transcriptions

M ore suggestions from readers of the previous CMT post about transcriptions… thank you! The Bach pieces transcribed for marimba, especially. Bach himself transcribed one of his cello suites for the lute, so we guess that gives encouragement to everyone to try her/his hand at it. Without doubt, Bach’s music transcribes well to marimba, although works by Pleyel and Albeníz and other composers do nicely, too.

Like harpsichord, the intimacy and timbre of marimba are in some ways more conducive to the ‘confessional’ Bach—more congenial to a posture of reverence or genuflection than piano is. Modern marimba has five full octaves, but I suppose you might wish that the high register of a marimba had more sparkle. Maybe the origin of such a wish is undervaluing the skill of the transcription and the artistry of the percussionist. Following the advice of an emailer, I listen to Kai Stensgaard. His six-mallet technique accommodates more complex contrapuntal writing than four-mallet could do. Kai’s work is wonderful. Speed is not a limiting factor per se, but it’s extremely difficult to play with 6-mallet polyphony completely relaxed, without fatigue. The tiny, highly personal deviations from perfect synchrony lend a shimmering, human aspect—revealing an aspect of our humanness as we ‘hit a wall’ in our attempts to synchronize events with a time resolution much below about 100 - 120 msec (mm = 400 - 600) [see Bruno Repp's paper here (500KB pdf) ]. It is still computationally difficult for virtual instrument software to emulate this biomechanics with believable realism… Kai’s technic is virtuosic—and the relaxed, earthly, biomechanics-constrained humanity of it is part of the beauty we hear in his performances. There are many other beautiful transcriptions and performances/performers, too.

[ Kai Stensgaard, marimba; Ramirez, ‘Missa Criolla—Gloria’, video 2008 ]

[ Kai Stensgaard, marimba; Albeniz, ‘Asturias Leyenda’, video 2008 ]

For sacred and classical compositions for marimba, you may also like to try Cambridge, Massachusetts based Thomas Oboe Lee’s pieces. For example, his ‘Prelúdios’:

[50-sec clip, Thomas Oboe Lee, ‘Prelúdios’, Mvt. 1, 1.2MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Thomas Oboe Lee, ‘Prelúdios’, Mvt. 2, 1.2MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Thomas Oboe Lee, ‘Prelúdios’, Mvt. 3, 1.2MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Thomas Oboe Lee, ‘Prelúdios’, Mvt. 4, 1.2MB MP3]

Bach at Christmas. Warm fire in fireplace. Mulled cider. Friends and family visiting. Cheers!

[50-sec clip, Ed Hartman, Bach, ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’, 1.2MB MP3]

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Matthusen: Biblical Imagination, Deep Play, and Theology in Chamber Music

A nd in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, ‘Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.’ And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, ‘Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.’ Then said Mary unto the angel, ‘How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?’ ”
— Luke 1:26-34, KJV.

I t is a rather firmly patriarchal and relatively transcendental notion of Deity that sets the grisly logic of sacrifice in motion in the first place.”
— Ivan Strenski, Professor of Religion, Univ California Riverside.

A s I was talking to a software engineer friend at work, he mentioned that the minister in his church had given an Advent sermon/homily about ‘emergence’. I confided that I was (am) skeptical about ‘innovation’ in the context of organized religious practice and theology. I averred that innovations/neologisms seem to me often to be a sign of predatory marketing, a pastor’s ego needs rampant, or even a sign of cultish heterodoxy and obfuscation. But, given that he and I both write code, I did recommend to him a couple of recent books on emergent architectures for software game design, especially massively multi-player online games. I suggested that he might read those and use them as comparators, to gauge the soundness and completeness of the ideas that his pastor had been putting forward. After all, if you are writing game software, the game gets played; the software either works or it doesn’t. You get to find out pretty quickly whether the features and behaviors that are supposed to be supported are real or vapor.

Other parts of our experience and belief-states are also amenable to good-hearted experimentation.

In that regard, I recently had the opportunity to hear some of Paula Matthusen’s electroacoustic compositions. Her works typically explore multi-vocality—multiple conflictual types of evidence; discrepancies in perceptions of space and timbre; the vagaries of imperfect memory; reconciliations between corroborating and discorroborating views; the evolution of who we understand ourselves to be; the real, imagined, and remembered changes that happen to us over the course of our lives; the impossibility of ever really controlling anything, even our own bodies.

For solo performer, live-electronics, quadraphonic sound, and eight mini-speakers, here is an MP3 clip from Matthusen’s ‘and believing in…’ meditation on Mary, on the occasion of the angel Gabriel visiting her, to tell her that she is to bear the baby Jesus:

[50-sec clip, Paula Matthusen, ‘and believing in…’, 1.2MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Paula Matthusen, ‘rosenthaler’, 1.2MB MP3]

M atthusen’s ‘and believing in…’ composition was commissioned as part of the ‘Re-thinking Mary’ project led by Eve Beglarian and in collaboration with Corey Dargel, Joseph Hallman, & Joshua Palay at the Atlantic Center of the Arts.

Paula Matthusen, who currently resides in Brooklyn, is noted for her electroacoustic and acoustic music and multimedia sound-art installation pieces. She’s collaborated with choreographers and theater companies and has written for widely-imaginative and eclectic orchestrations … “run-on sentences of the pavement” for piano, ping-pong balls, and electronics, for examle. Her music has been performed by Alarm Will Sound, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), orchest de ereprijs, Ballett Frankfurt, noranewdanceco, Kathryn Woodard, Diesel Lounge Boys, and Jody Redhage. Her work has been performed at Merkin Concert Hall, WAX, Judson Dance, Joyce SoHo, the Construction Company, Das TAT, the Aspen Music Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Institute of Music at MassMoCA, Aural Tick Festival, the Gaudeamus New Music Week, SEAMUS, NWEAMO, and the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, among others. She performs frequently with the electroacoustic duo ouisaudei, Groundwave New Music Collective, Object Collection, and recently winter company. Paula is the recipient of a Fulbright Grant, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers’ Award, First Prize in the Young Composers’ Meeting Composition Competition, and a MacCracken and Langley Ryan Fellowship. Matthusen has also held residencies at create@iEar at Rensselaer Polytechnic, STEIM, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. Matthusen did her doctoral studies at NYU and has recently joined the faculty of Florida International University in Miami, as Asst Prof of Music Technology and Composition.

Revelation 12 talks of the ‘sign of the woman’ ??

A nd there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.”
— Revelation 12:1-2, KJV.

Pope Benedict (Ratzinger) in his recent book describes the Church’s biblical positioning of women (Gen 3:15), the so-called ‘Protoevangelium’ where, even as early as the Fall in the Garden of Eden, there is the promise of Christ “in chiaroscuro ... a promise to and through Woman” (p. 52). “Revelation is a way, [but] it does not speak its message until the whole is present.”

M atthusen begins with the proposition that there are experiences, both ones that are intentional and conscious as well as ‘revelatory’ ones that are happenstantial, unbidden and undeliberated. She projects herself into imagining Mary as a woman— as a woman who has a stream of experiences, experiences having ordinary intentional content; as a woman who has coherent notions of what those experiences are about. The content of Mary’s experiences is distinct from the experiences themselves: the content could exist or not, or could be true or not, regardless of whether her experiences occurred to her, regardless of whether or not she were alive to experience them.

And then the angel Gabriel appears, radically altering the fabric of reality, the coherence of it, the ‘aboutness’ of it. The musical gestures that Matthusen’s composition puts forward amount to an electroacoustic chamber music essay on the necessity of Mary’s experiences, both at the Annunciation and subsequently. It is a radical sort of ‘deep play’ that Matthusen engages in. ‘Deep play’ is a phrase coined more than 30 years ago by anthropologist Clifford Geertz—referring to a complex topography of perception and decision-making and belief; cultural loci where multiple levels of structure, explanation, and meaning interact and establish the regimes in which will, reason, and language operate. In objection to Brentano’s assertion that intentionality is the hallmark of human personhood and identity, Matthusen argues (in the music) that there are without doubt conscious, mental experiences which are not intentional. Zen-like transcendental receptiveness—this seems to be the state that Matthusen implies as characterizing Mary’s disposition toward the angel Gabriel and, later, toward Jesus after he is born.

A nd I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
— Genesis 3:15-6, KJV.

For Matthusen, if Mary becomes a symbol of whatever is deemed to be the ‘highest’ or ‘best’ or ‘most commendable’ or ‘most womanly’ in a given culture, then she can become a symbol of almost anything. A symbol points to something other than itself; otherwise, it would be the thing signified rather than the symbol of it. The social ‘constructedness’ of the concept of Mary that the Church has transmitted to us is what Matthusen’s work tells us of; that and the necessity of our individually reaching our own understanding—informed by the Church, yes, but also influenced by our other happenstantial (and emergent), non-intentional experiences. Matthusen challenges us to consider critically the views we have received—challenges us to question whether Mary is a symbol of a facile determinism, legitimization of a monarchy, libertarianism, nonconformity, socialism, a force for civilizing humankind, repudiation of one’s own body, renouncing violence, etc.—or something else entirely. For Matthusen, not a ‘waiting for the immanent whole’ as Pope Benedict, anyhow.

True christianity vs. a politicized, relevance-chasing, charisma-obsessed ‘Christendom’ of secular convenience and instant dominion. True christianity vs. instrumental-Mary: the scary cooptation of Mary as an emblem, by a politicized socially-conservative faction that wishes to roll back liberal/progressive trends involving feminism, LGBT rights, women’s ordination, birth control, etc. The conservatives are pugnaciously confident that their Mary, the Mary that is so pwned by them, loathes all of that, so the more prominent this instrumental-Mary’s role in the Church, the better. Conservatives will not like Matthusen’s ‘and believing in…’ very much, I think. Not if they grasp what how it’s constructed and how it works…

A nd it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, ‘Blessèd is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked’. But he said, ‘Yea, rather, blessèd are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.’ ”
— Luke 11:27-8, KJV.

Ever since I was a kid it amazed me that the gospel of Luke doesn’t allow for the possibility of Mary’s refusing the angel Gabriel’s ‘request’. Luke doesn’t seem to consider that Mary is to be commended for choosing the ‘right’ decision. Cynthia Rigby has a nice essay on this in her recent book (link below). Rigby argues that considering Mary’s free will (or Luke’s lack of attention to it) amounts to regarding the relation between Mary and God as a merely instrumental or contractual one. She recommends that it is more productive to consider Mary’s cooperation in giving birth to Jesus as ‘kenotic’ [spontaneous, Zen-like ‘self-emptying’]. ‘Kenotic’: at least Rigby’s use of that fancy word has a few hundred years’ endorsement of theologians and scholars to recommend it, in contrast to this sketchy ‘emergence’.

So Paula Matthusen’s ‘and believing in…’ amounts to a reading of the biblical Mary from the perspective of literary and cultural criticism. It moves away from historical methods of exegesis—the traditional methods that aim at finding the one true meaning of the original actors in their original context. Paula’s contributions are a sort of literary and composerly criticism that engages with the texts as they have been handed down to us—concerned with cultural exegesis of social settings that have influenced the formation of ideas through history.

Joel Green, writing in the book edited by Cynthia Rigby and Beverly Gaventa, holds that Mary’s role—at least in the gospel of Luke and in the writings of Paul—is mostly that of an ‘accessible exemplar’, not just an exemplar of holiness but also an exemplar of discovering and maintaining good ways of thinking. Mary, according to Green, is an exemplar for ways of seeing the world and seeing “beyond the world, whose rhythms and patterns we take for granted; beyond to fresh ways of making sense of our lives, including especially our relation to God and our relationships with one another.”

W hat we have in Matthusen’s ‘and believing in…’ meditation is ‘Mary-as-emblem-of-narrative-theory’—discovering her story; a story that necessarily exhibits strange, surreal ways of the Divine: creatively, responsibly, defensibly generating her own (and, as we follow Paula Matthusen, generating our own) inner disposition towards reality and the Divine, whatever we conceive the Divine to be.

The woman offering the blessing in Luke 11:27-8 is disposed to ‘re-up’ with the patriarchal regime defining the place of woman in society in terms of relatedness to men and children. Jesus’s reply is often read as a rebuke or ‘correction’, but to some it’s more an addendum or poetic decoration than a stern corrective. I think Paul Matthusen would favor the latter interpretation...

A nd all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”
— Luke 2:18-9, KJV.

I am sure my friend’s faith can stand up to a few MMRPG ‘emergent programming’ books and some hard-core electroacoustic music by Matthusen. Indeed, it could be said that it must hold up against those.