Berkeley Farm Girl

At the organ recital at St. Mark's last night, I briefly cornered the artist (as I was feeding him Snacky Bits) and burbled about how much I had really loved dropping in at Solemn Vespers at the Shrine of St. Francis in North Beach, where he had directed the schola, because the music was out-of-this-world.

His face fell because ... the church fired the choir.

I tried to back out of this as best I could, but I was really peeved about it. I went into the kitchen to vent. The director of music was in there, enjoying some of the Snacky Bits we reserved for him, and I said (after the "Boy, did I put my foot in it), "My nephew is Roman Catholic. I wanted to take him there and say "THIS is your musical heritage as a Roman Catholic." G. nodded, and I continued "But now it will just have to be "We're keeping it warm for you"".

Got a "you said it, sister" sort of affirmative noise from the peanut gallery.

I think it's my Meffodist upbringing that gets me kind of exercised about it. I learned to sing my theology in Sunday school. If "lex credendi, lex orandi" is a Very Anglican Keyphrase (figurative translation, "If you want to know what we believe, observe how we worship"), my upbringing would substitute whatever the Latin of the correct tense is for "to sing" for "orandi" as a Reasonable Methodist Alternative.

(Da Sheepy and Da Wabbit are welcome, of course, to kick my ass. I will say that I was only ten when I left, so we weren't doing heavy-duty stuff.)

As a side note, for locals interested in fine music, the SF Schola Cantorum will be performing Tallis' "Spem in alium" (with additional bodies to get the forty voices) at St. Mark's on Saturday evening. I'm on call this week, but I think I'll risk it.