Getting Loose

Adagio

This is from Khachaturian's Gayne Ballet Suite.  It is some good stuff if you feel blue or depressed and just want to have some music to parallel what you feel.

 

 

Aase's Death

Well, since this is my blog, here is another piece that moves my soul.

The Cherubim

In the Bible study I have been teaching on Wednesday mornings at the village church, we recently were looking at chapter 6 of the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.  That led to a discussion about the 9 ranks of angels with the seraphim being next to God himself, and the cherubim just below them. 

I had remembered that P. I. Tschaikovsky, one of my absolute favorite composers, had composed some piece of work about that rank of angels, and here it is.

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I remember how it blew me away the first time I heard it by chance at night on my car radio years ago.  I was alone.  I tell you, the composer was a genius . . .  or very, very sensitive . . . like Mozart.  As I listen, I shake my head in amazement and wonder.

If you want to get blown away, turn up the sound and listen to it at night with the lights off, or with just a few candles lit.  You will be within aural proximity to the antechamber of paradise.

192?

Sluggard that I am, I am still chipping away at Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.  One of the things that astonished me was a very long, convoluted sentence.  Without even trying to look for it, I found a sentence that Dickens wrote that had (I think) 192 words in it.  And here I thought German sentences were so long and convoluted!

The Psalter and Altar Calls

In the last three Protestant Episcopal Church services that I have attended (two of them being amongst the largest in the country) neither one of them used the Psalter during the eucharistic services.  That did not dawn on me until I had finished going to the third church.

It's hard for me to go and worship and just be a participant.  I keep looking at my watch trying to sense the pacing.  Are they going to have enough time to get all of the liturgy in without feeling rushed?  And shockingly, with more liturgy and more people than I have got, they get it all in, with the eucharist every Sunday.

The tradition that I come from uses far more of a call-response type of rhythm than what they use, though clearly that is there in their services.  My tradition virtually begs for an altar call each service, and that is foreign to theirs, so some time is used up there.

Yet interestingly, the very service where I have received the most people into membership, I never do an altar call in it.  And the service where I rarely receive members, I virtually always do an altar call there.  Go figure.  I know I still am.

Andrea Ristorante Italiano

Last night we met the Rowley's at Andrea's.  It was fun catching up with them.  But as far as the venue, honestly, I wasn't that impressed.  It was OK.  But I doubt I'll be back.