Offertory

May 21, 2007 at 11:25 AM

Yesterday morning I went to hear a friend play Rebecca Clarke's Lullaby on viola for the offertory at our church. The offertory was being collected for a group called "Bikes not Bombs". Before she played, an official from the organization spoke for a few minutes. He said that it had started in 1984, sending containers of bicycles to Nicaragua. Now they send bikes all over the world, their latest container went to South Africa.

My church has been around since 1630; it has gone through its ups and downs in membership and redefined itself many times. It wasn't always a UU church, it started out as a Puritan congregation, became Unitarian in 1819, and added the Universalist tradition in 1961 when the two denominations merged. Social justice has long been important to UU's, and most recently, in the past 6-12 months, we as a congregation have actively taken up the cause of environmentalism. Individual members have always supported it in a general way, but now we are taking more group action: working it into the Religious Education program, making the building a "Green Sanctuary," watching "An Inconvenient Truth," making individual pledges to do more in our own lives, discussing political action, supporting groups like this.

Admittedly, I came to hear my friend play, not this guy talk, and I was thinking that maybe he was going on a bit too long, and then she started. I knew nothing about the piece before, I hadn't even heard of Clarke until my friend introduced me to her. Here is a review of a new CD of some of her music, including the Lullaby.

I don't have anything that intelligent to add about the music itself: I thought it was quite beautiful and elegant, and my friend did a great job. She claimed to have been very nervous beforehand, even said to me "don't laugh if I miss the high note," which I thought was a bit odd--it wouldn't occur to me to laugh at someone playing in church, and certainly never at her. Her nerves didn't show.

Somehow, though, even as she was playing, I still kept thinking about "Bikes not Bombs." When she finished, I was inspired. I imagined kids riding around Nicaragua and South Africa and cities in the USA on their bikes. I felt as if this was the type of lullaby we needed, and it was in our reach. It struck me then that the Offertory as the musician experiences it is a weird beast: not a performance only, not merely background Muzak, not solely a plea for money.

It struck me that now that we are involved as a congregation in something many of us are passionate about in this way, the stakes are higher. It'll matter more if the music is badly played, or if it is the wrong choice. Those of us who play music as a service have a higher responsibility, not just to the composer, or to ourselves, or to the audience listening right there at the time. At least that's how it seems to me. Yet when I prepare, when I practice, it's usually been all about me--my technique, my improvement, my sound, my time, my effort. How to balance both concerns has been a tension for as long as I can remember studying music.

From Yixi Zhang
Posted on May 21, 2007 at 11:11 PM

Karen, isn't it paradoxical that one can be less stressed out when performing for a greater cause than playing in her practice room. Practice can be harder than non-competitive performance and I got this confirmed from my new teacher yesterday. I think one reason for this is that, while the stake of music-making is higher during the performance than during private practice, the externalized reason for performance help us to feel less stressed out because we let go of the ego. When this happens, we are more capable of quieting the internal “gossip” and be completely focused on music. We get into the “zone” more readily, so to speak. The book called “The Inner Game of Music” by Barry Green with Timothy Gallwey discussed at length on the similar issue.

From Pauline Lerner
Posted on May 22, 2007 at 6:16 AM

I see it differently. It's not about balancing "me" and "my listening audience." It's about the music. If you can lose yourself in the music, the music will reign supreme, and the experience will be better for everyone.

From Karen Allendoerfer
Posted on May 22, 2007 at 10:51 AM

I'm not sure I agree, Pauline, because to be honest, I usually don't have that much trouble losing myself in the music, whether I'm playing or listening. In fact, it's easier for me to do that than not. However, losing myself doesn't necessarily result in a transcendent experience--sometimes for me, but not necessarily for my listeners, if I'm playing. And if I'm the listener, when I lose myself, often where I end up is sort of wordless and tongue-tied, with nothing to say or write about, no opinion at all to be able to express when someone asks me "how did you like the concert?" I'd love to be able to write concert reviews the way Buri and others on this site do, but I can't. I don't *think* enough . . . I sort of emerge at the end with a feeling and nothing more. I think I do have to work on that aspect of things, and balance it somehow, with the feeling of losing myself.

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Offertory

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