movie discussion - Lars and the Real Girl

This Friday, we'll be viewing and discussing Lars and the Real Girl. It will be the first discussion group in a series I'm calling How To Read A Film. here's the blurb from the bulletin:

We will ... discuss different ways to participate actively with movies and engage with the filmmmakers. Our purpose is to explore how the art and the science of filmmaking speaks to the lives and hearts of the viewer.

All are welcome! Bring a friend, too. There's nothing needed for you to prepare for the group, just come ready to discuss the film afterwards. Contact me (music [at] gracepres [dot] com) for more information.

View a trailer for the film below:

art of the month - albrecht dürer

each month, I'm going to attempt (to remember) to highlight either an artist or a work of art.

this month's subject: Albrecht Dürer

Dürer was a German painter during the early 16th century, right at the start of the Reformation. He is both renowned for his painting and his woodcuts, but I believe that it is his work in the latter category that has made the greatest impact on his period and those that followed.

The subject above, "The Four Horsemen," is from his series on the Apocalypse of St. John. These woodcuts were accompanied by the text of the last book of the Bible upon which the series is based. I seem to remember hearing that it was a German translation of the text, which would have been unheard of at the turn of the 16th Century (17 years before Luther and Wittenberg), as all Scripture in the West was in Latin and was only to be handled by leaders of the church. To have created something that put the text into the hands of the people (even if I am mistaken, and it was accompanied by a Latin text) counts Dürer as a Pre-Reformer.

The vision that this single work of 15 woodcuts also influenced for years to come the understanding in the West of the book of Revelation and was a precursor to the Illustrated Bibles that grew in popularity in the 19th and 20th Centuries. (When you hear about door-to-door salesmen selling Bibles, it was multi-volume illustrated Bibles!) Also, the visual style of both this and Dürer's other woodcuts has turned up in the art of Comic Books and Graphic Novels.

I am highlighting Dürer this month as there is an exhibition at the Cantor Arts Center through February 15. The exhibition--"Dürer to Picasso"--is highlighting many of the important painters from the Renaissance through WWII. Though I am not sure how many works by Dürer will be on display, I'm sure it'll be a worthwhile exhibit to visit. I am planning on going to this in the next week, so I will try to report back with my thoughts.

hymn backgrounds - "Take Now Our Minds"

Here's a little window into my process of finding and incorporating new music in our services:

In looking for a communion hymn for this Sunday, my goal was to find something that captured the concept of loving the Lord with all our hearts; I was interested in hymn texts that point to Scriptures like Matthew 22:37 and Romans 12:1-2. In my search, I was struck by a hymn that I came across in the Trinity Hymnal: "Take Thou Our Minds, Dear Lord" #593. Each stanza elaborates on offering what Jesus commands in the great commandment: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."

The great difficulty was that much of the language was fairly archaic (which is surprising since it was written at the end of World War I). I don't mind a few uses of "thee" and "thou" in hymns--especially those that many people know by heart--but I am also of the mind and heart that it is helpful to gently nudge a text into modern vernacular to enable worshipers to enter into singing without the distraction of getting their tongues around Victorian language.

But this posed a dilemma: the first line of every stanza is "Take Thou..." Not only that, but other phrases struggled to come off my lips. It took me several readings to really get it. (Yes, I realize that this is the mark of good poetry, but it's also the mark of outdated modes of phrasing.)

Before I started altering the hymn, I realized I should have my melody picked out, since I may have to work at making the stanzas musically fit the phrasing. Since I was not familiar with the tune that it is paired with in the Trinity, I made a quick visit to the metrical index. This pointed me to the tune EVENTIDE, used with the widely known "Abide With Me." (I would classify any hymn as widely known if it gets sung by Elton John on the telley). This is a beautiful melody in my opinion, one which translates well into a variety of musical idioms. I found a folk rendition of the tune, sung by Tom Kimmel, with guitar, fiddle, and female harmony, and got the arrangement settled on the page before adding the words. (The nice thing about using strong, familiar melodies is that once I've written an arrangement, I can use it again for other texts. Case in point: this Sunday, we're singing the melody ODE TO JOY from Beethoven's 9th to the text "Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee," which we also use for "God All Nature Sings Thy Glory.")

The result is what I now title "Take Now Our Minds," which you'll find presented below. See what you think; I'll allow you to do the work of comparing the original text to the new text. As this is my first shot at really updating a hymn, I will likely find things to change in the future, but I hope that it'll hold up when we sing it this Sunday. Note that I didn't erase every use of "Thee": at the end of the first stanza, I'd have to change the rhyme scheme of the previous line in order to extricate it.

To include a little bit of history for the hymn, at least its writer: William Hiram Foulkes was the son of a Welsh minister in the Presbyterian Church. He grew up in New York State, trained at a seminary in Ohio, and ended up in Salina, KS as a Presbyterian minister. He later founded the Grand View Presbyterian Church in Kansas City, KS, which is a congregation that worship to this today. You can see a more complete biography here.

Take Now Our Minds

Take now our minds, O Father, as we pray,
Give us the mind of Christ each passing day;
Teach us to know the truth that sets us free;
Grant us in all our thoughts to honor Thee.

Take now our hearts, O Christ—they are Your own;
Come in our souls each day and claim Your throne;
Help us to spread abroad Your deathless love;
Use us to make the earth like heaven above.

Take now our wills, O Spirit hold full sway;
Have in our inmost souls Your perfect way;
Guard us each sacred hour from selfish ease;
Guide all our daily lives as You would please.

Take all our lives: our hearts, our minds, our wills;
Through our surrendered souls Your plans fulfill.
We yield ourselves: our time, our talents, all;
We hear, and choose to heed, Your gracious call.

Words: William H. Foulkes, 1918; alt. 2009. Music: EVENTIDE, William H. Monk, 1861. © 2009 Luke W. Brodine.

look! new links!!

I updated the links to the right...... yeah, to the right of this page........ that way----------->

a minor commentary on the updates:

• Bro Chateau - our house blog, where we document family life... trying to keep 'raresunshine' to arts and worship now
• Drew Field - Grace Church's senior pastor... thoughts on ministry in Silicon Valley
• Liturgy Fellowship - group of worship musicians being connectional... lots of great music to be found (at least where links are possible)

(note: if you're viewing on a blog reader, you won't see the links... they're over on the blog itself)

moved by music - Fleet Foxes

I'm a little behind the curve, but I just picked up the Fleet Foxes LP. brilliant vocal harmonies, broad arrangements, tight performance, and all from a bunch of teenagers (or at least they're still pretty young). if you haven't heard them yet, here's one of their songs from last Saturday's episode of Saturday Night Live.

typically, SNL performances stink. I mean, really really stink. to begin with, a TV studio has to be a tough place to play. I give it to the bands that it is hard to pop into the middle of sketch comedy show and play cold to an audience that isn't there just to see them perform. on top of that, the sound mixing is horrendous: typically the lead vocalist, guitarist, and drummer are the only audible musicians. (when I was in college, they released a series of CDs of SNL live performances, and a professor quipped about who would want to listen to recordings that were so poor to begin with!) I can count on one hand the number of good performances that I've seen on SNL (and U2 holds all of those positions). if you want a good example of a good recording artist gone bad on SNL, just check out this recent one from Kanye West.

but I have to say, this performance by Fleet Foxes was great! I could wax on more about this, but I'll let this clip speak for itself.