Will be rather tiresome; it is hot enough now, probably in the upper 80s as I walked back from the bus after hearing Holy Mass at 0900. Sweating through my t-shirt-- the buttoned shirt came off at Eugene Station-- and the last time I wore trousers was on the 6th (the last time I went downtown for Mass), so I'm finding them uncomfortable too.
Will omit to whine about the music etc at Holy Mass at St Mary's. Et cetera. I had to remind myself that, even given the circumstances, being at Mass is qualitatively superior to and of immeasureably greater spiritual value than following even the most beautiful celebration of the Holy Sacrifice via the fluctuations of the ether-- well, I didn't have to remind myself of this, since in spite of all my sins I am well-catechized but it was a helpful word recalled to my attention once or twice during the course of the liturgical actio downtown. I didn't receive Holy Communion because I will no longer receive except in os and yet didn't want to fuss with their carefully devised procedures etc etc.
Mass from Saint-Eugène at 0200 was quite lovely; as is the normal way of things when non-professional singers are concerned there will be the occasional less than perfect moment, and it is also true that some elements of the proprium are much more complex, more challenging, than others. The 'technical team' seem not to have uploaded the video yet, which might have to do with the fact that the parish managed to obtain new cameras (images are in focus! the sound is perfect!): there will be glitches as the new system is learned and adjustments made etc etc.
Post Missam. But they have now.
The Schola sang a (new for them and for me) Pange lingua at Communion, from a 1761 edition of Jean Baptiste Scheepen, a Dutch pastor who died at some point before 1769. My quick version of a sentence from the text of M. de Villiers:
It's difficult to know in this collection which parts were composed by Fr Scheepen and which ones reflect more ancient tunes from the milieu of the German-speaking Rhineland....
The Pange lingua has certainly something of the popular idiom about it-- I thought it was a lovely tune and was humming it for a while after Mass although it has gone out of my head at this point.
And Vespers, too.
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The Belcea Quartet, at the Warsaw International Chopin Festival, performs two of Beethoven's String Quartets, the op 18 no 2 in G major and the op 132 in A minor, in forty minutes.
Am vaguely listening to Strauss's Elektra from Salzburg while I attend to housekeeping etc and wait for Beethoven. The heat and dryness leave my nose and throat itchy-- every fifteen minutes I feel like I need to cough but nothing comes of it; it's possible that this is 'allergies' aggravated by the heat etc. Ausrine Stundyte is singing the role of Elektra and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner Klytämnestra.
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The Belcea Quartet are about to begin the third movement, molto adagio, andante, of the opus 132; "Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart", Beethoven wrote at the head of the manuscript page: 'hymn of thanksgiving to the Divinity of a convalescent, in the Lydian mode'; always brings tears to my eyes.
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