I got introduced to Weston Priory's music in May of 1980 when I went on a personal directed retreat at a retreat house in Connecticut with some women religious. There was a large room which housed a record player with some of the Weston Priory records. I felt in love with them and began collecting their music first as records, then tapes, and finally CDs. I think I have all of their music, but now most of it is on YouTube.
I suspect they have about only a dozen monks left. You will find much of their recent history since 2018 here on their blog
There is not a lot but their most recent five-minute drone view of their monastery with music but no narration gives you a good idea of the setting
I have several posts on one of my blogs which has embedded much of their music according to the liturgical year
Gregory is married to artist Kathryn Carrington. Her gold-leaf icon paintings hang in many churches and may be seen on her website:
See her watercolors, handmade paper, and other paintings, some inspired by the Hubble images on her website:
Gregory Norbet is a respected composer, singer and spiritual leader. His specialty is group spiritual development and renewal, using song, Scripture and the spoken word.
Thanks Jack! I am familiar with some of the music but not all of it. Many of the songs are included in the OCP music edition that our parish uses.
ReplyDeleteThe drone footage is lovely. It appears that they have a beautiful setting.
I enjoyed seeing examples of Kathryn Carrington's art. She is a very talented artist!
This past Saturday evening, I subbed on piano for our music director. The entrance song was Gregory Norbet's Hosea. I learned that song 40+ years ago, the same way we learned a lot of music in that era: by playing off guitar lead sheets, which only had the melody notes, guitar chords and lyrics. A pianist had to use his/her imagination to build a piano accompaniment from those elements. So, 40+ years ago, I came up with a flowing, arpeggiated keyboard accompaniment. And I have played it that way ever since; that's how my mental ear "hears" and "feels" that song.
ReplyDeleteYesterday (Sunday), I heard our music director play it. She "hears" it and plays it quite differently, in a more contemplative, less arpeggiated style. Different than my approach. But it sounds good when she plays it that way.
I wish I had learned to have improvise like that. I have to have the notes in front of me.
DeleteJim, how do your improvisation and your parish’s music director’s version compare with this one? I like the restful quality of this one.
DeleteJack, my iPad lost a lot of bookmarks. Could you provide a link to your main website again? TY
PS I loved the restful beauty of the video also. Nature always brings me closer to,God.
DeleteHi Anne, when you say, "this one", are you referring to this Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1ntir3qgdY&list=RDi1ntir3qgdY&start_radio=1
DeleteOr this is what is at Jack's Weston Lent page: https://youtu.be/FHrcBg4aWmY
(Anne, I understand you have a bit of a hearing challenge, so apologies if these links are not helpful for you.)
The version at Jack's page, which I assume is the Weston Abbey's recording, quite possibly with Gregory Norbet on the recording, is accompanied by guitar (I think a couple of guitars). The song moves forward via guitars picking an eighth-note pattern. The effect is peaceful and flowing, with the melody laid over it. Quite beautiful.
The second link is from the music publisher, OCP, who now publishes or distributes Hosea to parishes. It adds piano and flute to the guitars, but the guitars on that recording are doing the same work as on Jack's recording - eighth-note picking that moves the song forward. The overall effect is the same sort of flowing-water feel as on Jack's recording.
When I play at our parish, typically it is just piano (at this particular mass, I had a bass guitarist as well). So to achieve the same flowing effect, the piano has to sort of do the equivalent of guitar picking. I do that by playing arpeggios on the piano. I'm aiming for the same effect: a flowing accompaniment with the melody laid over it. I think it works well enough. The tempo I play is about the same as on the two recordings.
As a matter of fact, there is a Youtube video of that mass from last Saturday, including me accompanying Hosea, but the recording doesn't pick up the details of what I am playing, so it doesn't give an accurate sense of the overall effect.
Jack’s version. My hearing is quite distorted, so I don’t hear music the same way others do. I still have a fair amount of hearing at lower frequencies, but no hearing at all at the highest, with varying degrees of loss in between. It’s called a “ski- slope” loss. It’s the hardest to fit with hearing aids successfully. In order for me to hear anything at the middle and higher frequencies (although still nothing at the highest) the audiologist has to really push up the amplification. As a result, sounds in lower frequencies are often uncomfortably loud. Music is distorted because I don’t hear all of the notes.
DeleteWe went to a concert at the Washington National Cathedral few months before my husband’s fall. It was Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. In one season the lead violinist (I believe the term is concertmaster) stood in front of the rest of the violinists bowing away furiously. But the only violin sounds I heard were those of the other violinists - I couldn’t hear the first violin at all. I could tell by just watching her that I didn’t hear her. As my hearing worsened over the years I slowly realized that favorite pop music from the 60s and early 70’s often sounded “off”. I was no longer hearing all the notes. I have read that good musicians can follow the progression of Beethoven’s hearing loss through his music. As it worsened he stopped writing music in the higher ranges - when he could still physically hear orchestras practice it. But once he was totally deaf, and only hearing the music in his mind, he returned to composing with the full range.
So - I preferred the Weston version that Jack linked to in Lent in the comment. The guitar sounds were more gentle. The piano in the other sounded a bit too loud and harsh. (I plug in earbuds to my iPad to listen to music or to watch tv or movies.). I could hear the flute but it sounded a bit distorted. I wasn’t sure if the choir in that version was coed - it sounded like both male and female voices, but I’m not sure. The all male Weston version was nicer for my hearing - lower frequency male voices. But although I could hear voices in both recordings I couldn’t understand words.
I’m not sure how arpeggios would sound to me. Do you have a link to the mass at your parish? Also the link to Jack’s website.
On my website, I try to choose YouTube links that have words. For example, a lot of Anglican chant is difficult to understand without the words unless one is very familiar with the psalm texts.
DeleteIn the case of Weston, I have links to the text which opens in another tab so that the audio is not cut off. However recently I discovered that all those links to the Weston site no longer work. I think that Weston was forced to remove them not that they are no longer the copyright owners.
Here is a YouTube performance of Hosea with lyrics using a different arrangements
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ20I-UhTec
This is a John Michael Talbot performance with lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ20I-UhTec
Anne,
DeleteIf you want lyrics just google search the various titles in my list. Sometimes the lyrics have performances by other artists and sometimes they are just videos containing the original sound tracts.
Jack, can you give me the link to your website again?
DeleteI have two websites
DeleteThe Saint Gabriel Hours site where I make two blog posts each day one for Morning Prayer and one for Evening Prayer
https://saintgabrielhours.blogspot.com/
My original blog to which I no longer post each day contains the Weston music posts
https://virtualdivineoffice.blogspot.com/
more specifically
https://virtualdivineoffice.blogspot.com/2021/12/weston-lent.html
Anne, thank you for sharing those details about your hearing. It sounds awful. I am sure it is a pain in many ways, and perhaps especially painful that music no longer sounds right?
Delete"I preferred the Weston version that Jack linked to in Lent in the comment. The guitar sounds were more gentle. The piano in the other sounded a bit too loud and harsh. (I plug in earbuds to my iPad to listen to music or to watch tv or movies.). I could hear the flute but it sounded a bit distorted. "
DeleteThat is interesting, and good to know. It reminds me of something that I've known but had never considered in that light: for a six string guitar with standard tuning, five of the six strings are tuned to a pitch which is lower than middle C. As the guitarist works her/his way up the neck/fret board, the pitches get higher. But for basic guitar strumming and picking as in those Hosea recordings, the guitar strings' pitches are relatively low. It's good to know that some people hear the lower pitches more clearly (or perhaps truly) than the higher pitches.
Jim- “ am sure it is a pain in many ways, and perhaps especially painful that music no longer sounds right?”
DeleteYes, it’s one of the worst things about my type of hearing loss. Musical sounds are often distorted and makes listening to music less pleasurable. I used to listen to music a lot.Now I seldom do.
Thanks, Jim for your explanation of how the music works. I am a music lover but not a musician. I usually learn music by ear, and only with great difficulty can figure out how that relates to the score. I tell my choir director that he should train the choir how to sing any SATB song and then send me a CD recording preferably one in which the Tenor part is louder than the others, and I will learn it. Why go to choir practice where I am simply hearing a bunch or wrong versions until they learn it.
ReplyDeleteBetty is also good at explaining to me how music works, especially about why I like the music. But often she has bad news like it is difficult music to a choir or the people to learn to sing.
DeleteJack, you are welcome. I hope this isn't too nerdy a rabbit hole for us to go down.
DeleteJack your comment about how you learn music in the choir is very interesting! I joined our choir a few years ago, so am quite familiar with everyone singing a wrong version until we learn it :-). Your comment made me think a bit about so-called learning styles, that some people may learn a song or a part differently than others. In the choir, some learn the parts very easily, and some don't. That may not just be a matter of aptitude - perhaps some people learn differently.
DeleteThis encourages me to look for my old music theory book and experiment a little with improvisation. My piano and organ teachers were old school and didn't encourage "messing around". One of my piano teachers was an elderly nun who used to doze off sometimes when she would listen to me practice. But she would wake up in a hurry if I went off script! (we could schedule practice times during a study hall and use the practice rooms at school, this would have been middle school years).
DeleteJack, can you give me the link to your website again? -Anne
ReplyDeletehttps://saintgabrielhours.blogspot.com/
Anne, if you go to the website, you will see the latest posts. Right now that is Evening Prayer for Wednesday of the first week of Lent and below it is Morning Prayer for Wednesday. Sometime later this evening or early tomorrow I will post Morning Prayer for Thursday of the first week of Lent.
In each post, the first YouTube Link is to Divine Office.org which has the complete English text of Morning or Evening Prayer. In other words, you do not need a book or booklet. Sometimes the Hours is sung but most of the time it is recited by a small community.
Be sure to play the video in my website rather than in YouTube; otherwise, you will get their advertisements.
Mute the sound. The first thing you will notice is that you can pray the text mentally twice as fast as you can speak it. So you have to wait for the slide to switch.
Sometimes, what I do is to mentally repeat each line twice, first hearing a solo voice, then a group. Or sometimes mentally sing it that way. Sometimes I compose a kind of polyphony with many voices coming it.
Other times I will take a phrase from the psalm and repeat it like a responsory or mantra. Or one could use a responsory like phrase to pray for people, places, issues, etc. Whatever it takes to make the psalm fit your time and place.
I pause the whole video any time I need to take a break for any reason. I usually do this in the great room in front of a large computer screen where I have a comfortable chair with coffee and breakfast and paper and pen to make notes on anything that I may be thinking about.
The computer also has a tab open to one of the morning sunrise videos. In the Edge browser, you can put this into a picture in a picture. So, any time I want I can switch to it, then resume celebrating the text.
Of course, I can also do this with the computer screen in front of my treadmill downstairs. Or at my desk downstairs at laptop which has two screens which give me more visual options of things to do.
Each post of either Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer gives about an hour of videos (three of complete services) plus videos of individual hymns, psalms, canticles. This is enough for fifteen, or thirty or forty minutes or a full hour walk or treadmill session. At the same time because of the limited choices, it can create a sense of community among of group who regularly use it, who can then discuss their experiences.
I recommend that people try using each video or post in small sessions. For example, one could spread the whole first video not only over breakfast but over the whole morning! I can go out on my porch for the opening hymn (maybe even replaying it or playing several opening hymns) then do the psalms while I am walking, go to my desk where a link lets me substitute the Lectionary readings for the day for the short reading given in the video, and then perhaps using the Gospel Canticle litany and Lord's Prayer as grace for breakfast.
The object is to integrate the liturgy with personal prayer, and reflection and daily life. The subtitle of each post is praying with Christ anytime, anywhere with anyone.
DeleteThe monks who lived in communities in the desert mainly prayed the psalms. They did twelve psalms for Morning Prayer and twelve for Evening Prayer (one for each of the 24 hrs of the day) but they did them during the cool of the morning and the cool of the evening, which were also their work periods. They made and sold baskets. They had a monk who chanted the text while everyone listened and wove. At the end of the psalm there was a period of silence for personal prayer and reflection, then they all arose for a prayer by their leader.
Like the early Egyptian monks, the virtual Hours are not limited to the experiences of the solitary cleric with his breviary or choir monks chanting together as specific times each day. My website encourages full active participation in choreographing the Hours for one's own life and on some occasions for households and other small communities.
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ReplyDeleteOff - topic - interesting for all, but especially for Jean, the knitter. . A brief history of a protest knitting red hats. Now a commemoration on Feb 26, red hat day- the story of a protest against the Nazis,
ReplyDeletehttps://open.substack.com/pub/joycevance/p/the-other-red-hat?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Yes, the red hat story has been making the rounds for a month or two on knitting sites. Subversive knitting has a long history.
DeleteOne of my Dutch correspondents says that her great-grandmother, who was an ethnic German, was asked to sit in her window on certain days and times knitting with a certain color yarn by someone moving Jews around during WW2. She was not told what the message was so no one could accuse her of anything.
https://www.ocls.org/womens-history-month-knitting-espionage-grandmas-knitting-a-scarf-or-she/
Jean, that link took me to the home page of the library. Subversive knitting - I would love to read the story.
DeleteYou might have to put "espionage knitting" in the search box on the home page. All sorts of ingenious ways to hide messages in the knitting itself (Morse code), in yarn when unraveled, within balls of yarn, or just by knitting in certain places. Supposedly some knitters forced to make socks for enemies added knots or padding at the heels that would purposely cause blisters. Really no end to the skullduggery you can think up if you're an old lady with yarn and a grudge ...
DeleteI will try that. We watched a TV series a few years ago that we really enjoyed about a Spanish seamstress who was couturier quality and had a German clientele. Spain was technically neutral during WWII but leaned fascist and pro- Hitler. It takes place in the lead up to the war. Her task was to listen to conversations of her Nazi wives clientele both in Morocco and Madrid after she returned to,Spain, and transmit intelligence to the Brits in the seams of her clothes.
Delete“The Time in Between (or The Time Between Seams) is a highly acclaimed 2013-2014 Spanish period drama television series. It follows Sira Quiroga, a young seamstress who moves to Morocco, becomes a spy, and creates haute couture for Nazi wives during the Spanish Civil War.” Wikipedia
It’s currently on AppleTV. We use our son’s account. We watched it on Netflix but it’s not there now. At one time it was on our local PBS station. It was filmed in Morocco and Madrid. Spanish with sub- titles. We were hoping for a season 2, after the war started but apparently they never made another season.
I understand Coco Chanel did something similar for the Nazis.
DeletePBS had a documentary on Chanel a year or two ago. I had not known before watching it that she was a Nazi supporter.
DeleteI am on to play the accompaniment for Stations and Benediction this Friday. The organ has been down since Christmas, so I will have to do it on the electronic keyboard. I am more comfortable with the organ so I hope they will repair it soon.
ReplyDeleteI get the discomfort with electronic keyboards. They take getting used to.
DeleteMy wife bought me a keyboard as an ordination gift. I pull it out 1-2 times a year when I have to travel with an instrument to play somewhere. (That was the original purpose of the gift.) If you're into all the electronic capabilities, I guess it's pretty cool. It can do about 10 different organ sounds, anything from cathedral pipe organs to the Hammond organs that some folks have in their living rooms. And it has a similar number of piano settings, synthesizer settings, harpsichord - all the keyboard instruments. It can also imitate pretty much any instrument in an orchestra, including the percussion instruments. And it makes many other sounds, too (e.g. birds tweeting, helicopters) - there are hundreds of sounds that are pre-programmed. And for the really techie folks, there are ways to record and mix other sounds. In the normal course of things, I just use two settings: piano and organ :-).
The touch on it is pretty mushy compared to a real piano, though.
We also have two acoustic pianos in the house - one of a size called studio upright which my grandmother bought for me (used) when I was a young adult living in a roach-infested studio apartment on the north side of Chicago; and another which I (unwillingly) inherited from my grandfather some years later. The latter is a player piano, and came with a hundred or so piano rolls, most of popular songs from my grandfather's day (e.g. You're the cream in my coffee...). The pianos are white elephants: I'd like to get rid of at least one, but nobody wants a piano anymore, except as a decorative piece of furniture. (These ones look pretty okay but are less than pristine.) It would cost a couple of hundred bucks (at least) just to hire movers to pick one up to junk it. And it sort of offends my moral sensibility to junk a good working instrument.
I also have an acoustic upright piano, it was Kelly's grandmother's, circa 1910. Those old pianos had a cast iron sound board, and they weigh a ton. I have practiced on it for more than 50 years, and had it moved 5 times (you'd think by now I'd be an expert, but no. I don't have the neural connection). We both said we can't afford to move it again. No one wants it. It will probably have to be junked when we downsize. Which makes me sad, it has a lovely tone. And missing and chipped ivories. But electronics rule the music world. I was to a funeral yesterday and someone played one of those electronic wonders. It was okay I guess.
DeleteI got to play a pipe organ in college. But I wasn't a music major. It was one hour of credit per semester and I spent as much time to get a decent grade as I did for a 4 hour class in my actual major. Only did it for four semesters. Why did I do it? Because there is nothing like playing Bach and Buxtehude on a pipe organ, even if you don't do it very well. Unfortunately if you don't practice doing pedals every day you lose the skill. Which I did, having had other responsibilities and no instrument to practice on. Now I just play the manuals. I do enjoy singing in my choir group which is mostly guitar but I play the traditional hymns when those are needed.
But having dissed electronic keyboards, I do plan to get one when we don't have the old piano anymore. They are very versatile and much, much more portable. And you can wear bluetooth head phones so other people don't have to put up with your practicing mistakes.
DeleteJim, we are slowly, slowly getting rid of stuff in our 53 years accumulation. One of our sons has put ads with photos on Facebook market to give away and I have been shocked at what people will come and pick up if it’s free. We recently got rid of 2 broken (!) sleds from the 1940s. We had a very cheap, low quality, but heavy pool table in the basement that would have cost a lot to have someone haul away. Two guys with a pickup truck came and got it. Somebody came and picked up our not in great shape 1940s ping pong table. A very faded backyard chaise lounge was picked up last week. In February! We tell people with big stuff like the pool table that they have to carry it to the street and their car or truck themselves. Try putting the pianos on FB market. If they are free, somebody will probably come and get them.
DeleteAnne, thanks, that is a great idea! I have to admit, I'm not familiar with Facebook Market, but will check it out. Now that you mention it, I'm also a member of a Facebook group for our local suburb. The content isn't nearly as great as our little forum here, but their email clickbait ads get me logging 3-4 times a week - for me, that's a Facebook record by magnitudes. So maybe I'll put a message out for that, too.
DeleteThe one I'd really like to get rid of is the player piano; but my wife bought me a tuning as a gift so now I feel obligated to keep it until it starts to go out of tune again :-). So I guess I'll start by making the other one go away.
There is a Facebook group in our town where people have stuff to give away. I need to give it a try, there is a lot of stuff we need to get rid of besides the piano. I threw some old college textbooks in the dumpster last week. There's nothing more out of date than a textbook that some professor wrote half a century ago! The only use I found for them was that one was thick enough to boost a kid up to sit in a big people chair.
DeleteAll here have different ways of praying. Jack integrates prayer into his daily life in a very structured, formal manner. For others, Sunday mass is the most important form of prayer. We’ve talked about the Office, and Jim’s requirement as a Deacon to pray it each day,. For Jack, it’s a voluntary, all encompassing form of prayer. We’ve mentioned Brother Lawrence, Practicing the Presence of God, which, along with Centering Prayer, is a form I prefer to liturgical prayer. But, thanks to Jack, I am adapting listening to the Weston monks chants to a personal variation of CP - meditate to the quiet chants, not worrying about words, which I can’t hear anyway. I have worried that my unbelief and my informal approach to prayer may undermine my attempts to pray. Today in one of my books of short reflections toons for meditation (Words to Live By, Eknath Easwaren) I was comforted to read this quote from Augustine
ReplyDelete“Thy desire is thy prayer; and if thy desire is without ceasing, thy prayer will also be without ceasing…The continuance of the longing is the continuance of thy prayer…”
Please pray for the repose of the soul of my friend Larry who died this morning at the VA hospital. As a community news reporter 45 yrs ago, I covered the support group he formed for Vietnam War veterans. He kept the group strictly non-partisan, reminding the guys who met every week that they were there to put their lives back together, not rehash the pros and cons of the war. To show their solidarity after the first year of meetings, they put on the remnants of their military fatigues and marched in the local Memorial Day parade carrying a black MIA flag. Older vets from the VFW were disgusted that they didn't look snappier, but there were many other vets watching the parade who popped them salutes. The group eventually went on to sponsor several biracial children in Vietnamese orphanages and eventually visited Vietnam. I became friends with Larry's wife and sister-in-law and was able to keep in touch. I learned Larry's exposure to napalm and Agent Orange caused a rare chronic blood cancer later in life. This happened to several other guys in the group. Complications from the cancer formed a clot in his spine two years ago, paralyzing his legs. A few months ago, he was diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer. Larry was quiet, a good listener. He had no particular religious faith, but he was a godsend to the dozens of vets in his support group and with whom he made friends in his final years at the VA hospital. He told the docs it would be nice if he could go home for awhile. But when it was clear that he couldn't, he didn't complain. Last week, the VA auxiliary brought him a homemade American flag quilt and a "thank you for your service" citation. He couldn't talk, but he was smiling in the photo his sister-in-law sent. I hope he is at peace.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to hear that, Jean. May perpetual light shine upon him.
DeleteOne time on facebook, a guy I knew from grammar school contacted me. He was a Vietnam vet and was suffering the effects of Agent Orange. He managed to set up a profitable trucking company. At least, the effects were delayed until his 60’s and he was able to establish a family.
DeleteMany vets in Larry's group had some pretty bad skin and breathing problems from exposure to AO and other stuff, and they petitioned the VA for benefits. The cancers showed up later. Despite the many health problems they developed over the years, Larry said that their vet group never lost a guy to suicide.
DeleteThe greatest suffering from AO of course goes to the Vietnamese with sickness and birth defects. As anti-communist as I was back then, I thought the war was a big mistake, tactically and morally but mostly tactically. I didn’t get the logic of attacking poor people in Vietnam while not defending Czech and Hungarian uprisings against the Soviets.
DeleteYou mean like why are we hammering Iran for repressing citizens (or building nukes, or not negotiating in good faith, or the 1970s hostage crisis, depending in what time it is) when we've unleashed ICE thugs on protesters in blue cities? Don't look to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for moral consistency in politics ...
DeleteOne of my spiritual companions in CP was a vet -Viet Nam veteran - and a veterinarian. He is exactly my age and graduated from U of Michigan. A work colleague was also a Viet Nam vet, my age. Both had Agent Orange disease, The crippling effects didn’t come until they were older - 60’s or later. New friends from my husband’s rehab institute adopted a daughter from Viet Nam. She died of Agent Orange in her 20’s. It’s still there, still making people sick. The wife is crippled now from Lyme disease. A biological daughter died at age 18, from leukemia just before she was supposed to start college. Some people have more than their share of bad luck and tragedy.
DeleteJean, your friend sounds like an amazing person. It’s so sad that that Agent Orange finally got him. Like so many other veterans of that war.
DeleteAO left dioxin, a long term pollutant, causing birth defects in Vietnam until today. War eventually justifies anything even if it has a remote chance of working. Nuclear weapons were justified because who wants to live under communism, thus "better dead than red". In the 80's, I decided that it would be better to be red or under the reds than extinct, that even retaliation against a Soviet Union first strike should not be done. I told myself that working on more conventional weapons would be a buffer against the use of nukes until the Soviet Union collapsed which it surprisingly did. So a communist system COULD collapse and one could be red and still eventually be free. Of course, Reagan took credit for everything and the US went on a hubris high, attacking countries that were no real threat to us mostly for the benefit of Israel and the fossil fuel companies. In retrospect, I guess I was full of it.
DeleteLotta dioxin around the chemical plant in my hometown where they made AO and napalm. As late as 10 years ago they were warning people in our old neighborhood about it. When I worked at the hospital in the 1970s, the new oncologist from Montreal said he'd never seen such a large cluster of blood cancers in kids. Better living thru chemicals ...
DeleteJean, what kind of work did you do at the hospital? I ask because I've been wondering if it would be more fulfilling to find something to do at our local hospital.
DeleteI was a ward clerk and, later, a pharmacy tech. I worked part time for about 6 years while I put myself thru school, and I enjoyed both. You certainly go to work every day knowing you've made a difference to people. I also spoke Spanish and some German, which I used surprisingly often.
DeleteAs someone with biz/management background, you would want to work admin side? Lots of staffing shortages and labor union contracts to sort out. The jobs I did are largely computerized, and dealing with those systems and trying to update them is a big part of admin now.