Once again I’ll share the week without talking about classes, even though I’m itching to tell you about all the fun stuff I get to study. It was another great week for adventures outside school, though I am in danger of overbooking myself. What am I saying? I passed the point long ago.
Monday I worked hard, refreshed from the lovely day of rest. I had my first vielle lesson with Baptiste, which was a good help as before. After I met a friend to do our notation homework at the last minute. I said I wouldn’t talk about school, but I’ll just say we are working on reading manuscripts from of Notre Dame church music and it is quite a challenge for me. What note is that? Where does the tenor line fit? This doesn’t fit my mathematical brain! It was good to have a more knowledgeable friend helping me and we managed to get a transcription done of part of a 12th century Gradual. It turns out we were the only ones prepared to perform in class, so it’s a good thing managed it. Most people disagreed with our placement of the tenor notes, but so it goes. (Don’t know what a tenor is? It’s okay, a better explanation will follow when I talk about school.)
Due to a serious of mishaps I didn’t go to women’s Bible study that night but I didn’t panic because I knew I was going to the Bible study associated with Cresendo the next day. That would be Tuesday (30th) and it’s my full day (and I added a class). After school I rushed home long enough to dump my instruments and grab my Bible and head to the most wonderful evening.
Every week a group of musicians and their spouses (if applicable) gather to share a meal, worship, and study the Word. It’s hosted by a young German couple with a one-year-old girl. They have a studio where they practice and host Bible study a floor underneath their apartment. About 14 of us ate a delicious vegetable soup and engaged in casual conversation (in German, of course). I was the only American in a crowd from Germany, Switzerland, Rumania, Latvia, France, and more I’m forgetting. Everyone welcomed me warmly and I had a great conversation with my neighbor, who happened to have studied a bit in the states (Peabody and elsewhere). He was kind enough to keep the conversation going in German, and he’s Swiss! I answered the phone the other day and couldn’t understand more than a word. I asked in German if the lady would please speak High German and she said “nein” and hung up! I don’t know quite how to deal with the fact that many Swiss are uncomfortable with their German even though it’s light years better than mine and I’m so sorry I don’t understand Swiss German so well yet, I just don’t have much opportunity to hear it! Anyway, I suppose a few bad experiences tend to sour things. It is true that I find the Swiss, in general, very kind and helpful and willing to speak what’s necessary to communicate.
Anyway, back to the dinner. Before we ate we sang some songs out of a hand-copied book of various songs. If there were praise songs in it, I didn’t see any. I don’t begrudge anyone the kind of music he likes. I love singing in church, especially BCF where people actually sing, and I don’t judge music when I am worshiping with the body of believers. I enjoy singing in little choirs, like Messiah, where the people are dear and we love the Lord. I don’t often find various types of music distracting beyond control either (that is a blessing from God that took some painful learning to receive). Yet, how much more glorious will the music we make in heaven be? I don’t think having tasted the superb it spoils the less than divine. Okay, it did with sushi, but things of the spirit are not like sushi.
That’s a long preface to say it was simply one of the most delightful few minutes I’ve had in a long while to sing gorgeous classical music with a group of believing musicians who not only mean what they are singing but sing in beautiful four part harmony complete with dynamics. We sang a rather complicated Lord’s Prayer in German (I had a hard time even sight reading the melody) and a simple and elegant song by Brahms. I had a hard time reading the old German script, but it didn’t matter. What a wonderful way to bless the food!
Usually they have a Bible study but this time a gal had just returned from a year and a half long mission trip to Argentina and she shared her experiences and pictures with us. I had to leave before it was all over because of an early morning commitment, but I am surely going back whenever I can! I hate reducing something into its various parts, but with time so limited it is nice to have activities that combine the various things I want to get done. With this Bible study covering dinner, German practice, worship, fellowship and Bible study with those who have similar struggles as musicians, involvement in the community and other departments of the Musik-Akademie, it’s hard to think of a better way to spend a Tuesday night. I forgot to mention that though it is mostly musicians, people came to know of it in various different ways. Some went to the Musik Akademie (including the Schola), some still go, some did their studies elsewhere, some are married and some are not. It’s a mix of rather young people, but people are in various stages in life.
Enough blabber about that. I am sad that I can’t go to BCF ‘young’ Bible study this year, but God does provide! I’ve only been to women’s Bible study twice and already it’s hard to think about backing out, but I can’t be out every night!!!!
Wednesday I added another thing to my list of random things I’ve done for fun. Some people come to Switzerland and pay crazy amounts of money so they can say “I’ve skied the Swiss Alps.” I got up at ridiculous hour so I could say “I’ve done water aerobics with a bunch of elderly Swiss.” Hey. It was free, minus the cost of a few hours less sleep. At 5:15am Veronika and I biked to the Binningen pool for 6:30 swim class. We wore these floats around our wastes and ‘ran’ around in circles in the pool and did stationary resistance work. Water is surprisingly strong when you try to move quickly in it. I think one reason why older people like it is because nobody can really see what you’re doing in the water anyway. I did my best to follow the instructions (high German) and with the stretching at the end I came out feeling quite good. It was a nice way to try to recover from my ‘male cat muscles’ (or so the German goes for sore muscles) from playing soccer. It also gave time for a nice breakfast before heading off to class.
Harp class is only every other week so I’ll mention it here. Heidi wasn’t there but someone came to explain how to read lute tablature to us so we can go steal lute music. It was quite interesting and was perhaps the first time my conservatory training directly helped me in my new pursuits. After two plus years of singing in movable do in aural skills class (three times a week every semester – man that’s crazy!) we started studying atonal music and since the lovely functional system of movable do is rather useless for atonal music (by definition, really) we had to learn to sing on numbers. 0=unison, 1=minor second, 2=major second, 3=minor third, etc. Hence Three Blind Mice would be 0, 2, 2, -, 4, 2, 2, -, 7, 2, 1 etc. rather than mi, re, do, -, me, re, do, -, sol, fa, mi etc. It drove me crazy at first, but I soon learned to think of a 5th when I saw a 7 and minor third when I saw a 3. What does this have to do with lute tablature? In the 16th century lute players represented the strings of the lute as horizontal lines gave numbers (or letters, if you’re French) to the frets. Each fret is a semitone above the last one so the numbers correspond directly to the number system I learned in college. Make sense? All I have to know is the pitch of the open string and I’m off to the races. Good to know atonal music is good for something (apologies to Andy F. and Moira, and other atonal music fans who don’t read this blog often).
After my evening class (over at 9:45) I zipped over to Toby’s birthday party and enjoyed an hour there before heading exhausted to bed after the long day. I saw some kids dressed up for Halloween, but it’s not a big deal here.
Thursday, November 1st, I was not ready for class and hoped that I could cram in the morning hours, but thanks to having easy internet I checked my email where I was notified that two of my classes were canceled due to that teaching being sick. I was sad to hear he was sick, but thrilled to bits that I’d have the morning to work. The afternoon dance class was canceled from before because the teacher is out of town, so to my great delight I didn’t have any classes that day. I zipped around and had a very efficient day and was able to go to Lee’s for dinner without any guilt at all. Four of us (and later five) had a tasty dinner and the best kind of conversation. The plan was to eat and watch a movie, but the conversation kept going so the movie never happened. Oh yeah. We weaved in and out of light and gut busting topics to serious spiritual matters like it was the most natural thing in the world. That to me is so wonderful. Deep and eternal matters are not alienated from the absurd things of life, but both go hand in hand. I think C.S. Lewis said something about that in “The Four Loves.” If we take ourselves too seriously then we’re in grave dangers of making idols out of the changeable and finite. I think he was talking about not taking sex as all serious and keeping in mind the absurdity of sex and that each gender needs to be able to laugh at themselves. I’m not sure I got his point, but obviously it somehow stuck in my mind. Anyway, as serious as I am, five hours of grave conversation is exhausting, and five hours of the silly is revolting, but naturally weaving in and out of both is delightful. I wasn’t always the one turning to more serious topics. In fact, when the topic of sermons came up I lightened the mood by preaching an impromptu sermon from the book “How to Pull Girls.” I had great help from the ‘congregation’ and for me, it illustrated well one of my frustrations with sermons. What is really different about the Bible from any other book? The power of the living God! What about the power of God in our everyday lives? What about his relationship with us and how he speaks to us through the Word and to our spirits? I suppose everyone goes too far in one direction trying to counteract for the imbalance of others, but too often this point is only in the background and I feel we are a thousand miles from the heart of God. Lucky for me BCF doesn’t let women stand at the pulpit or I’d learn for myself how difficult it is to preach.
Firday (2nd) morning I paid 10 Francs for a sheet of paper that says I live in Binningen. Duh, isn’t that what my ausweis is for? Well, the secretary needed it for the application to get money from Baselland for my education. Why? Why would they pay anything for me? Well, if that’s the way it works, I might as well take advantage of it. It turns out, I’m not eligible – duh, but they’re sending the application in anyway. Three Europeans I spoke too had this attitude. “Might as well try.” That’s like saying to someone on vacation to America “You might as well try to vote in the presidential elections.” Oh wait, bad example. Florida gets the bad publicity, but when I voted in New York they didn’t even check my ID.
That evening I went to a concert of English and French country dances Baroque music. It was an evening of Swiss German and I was rather impressed that I could follow the introductions and dancing instructions. I heard hurdy-gurdies and doodle sacks and pipes and I . . . want . . . to . . . play . . . !!!!! Is there an instrumentaholics anonymous out there?!
Today (Saturday, Nov. 3rd) soccer was hardly painful at all, though my bruised shin got a bit of a knocking. Valda joined us this time, which was grand. I’m branching out the ingrown circle of the Schola community. Bwahaha!
I did laundry, cleaned, wrote emails, updates, and worked on finances. Somehow I’m missing 100 Euros from last year . . .
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Hope you all are having a lovely weekend.
As a little girl I used to wonder at the line in There is a Balm in Gilead that said “If you cannot preach like Peter, if you cannot pray like Paul, you can tell the love of Jesus and say he died for all.” Peter preached, but Paul prayed? I’m reading Ephesians and I’m loving Paul’s prayers. He just bursts out in prayer and ends in a flurry of praise. It’s great! Check out Ephesians 3:14-21. What power! What faith! What a difference from the prayers we normally pray!
“For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
20Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”
I particularly like the KJV for these verses - I think it shows a more majestic God in the words that are used there.
"exceeding abundantly above all"
