Easter Mass

Last Sunday, J. and I went to the National Basilica for Easter mass. Me going to mass? What's next – pigs that fly? Yet, that's exactly what I did. Second year in a row. It was J.'s idea, originally – though a supremely rational person and a passionate advocate of the scientific method (a bit too passionate sometimes if you ask me – she has been known to demand hard numbers where none were to be had), she is occasionally unable to resist the pull of ritual, especially if it reminds her of the sadly infrequent moments of joy she had had with her family when she was a child, so she goes to mass on Easter and Christmas. Both this year and last, we went to the noon mass, officially called the Solemn Mass. I am the worst person to ask about the specific differences between it and other kinds, and J. was not helpful either. The important thing is that it was the one with the great music.

For those of us who treat church as a spectacle, Vatican II has many sins to answer for (pun fully intended), chief among them is a complete evisceration of the musical content of the traditional mass in a lame-arsed attempt to embrace the sixties' counterculture that was thinning out the ranks of the faithful at an alarming rate. What they ended up with was the dreaded “folk” mass -- “Puff the Magic Dragon” with religious lyrics. Thankfully, they retained enough sense to make it optional, and the National Basilica, to its great credit, stuck with the works – massive organ played by a virtuoso organist, an excellent choir and, for the noon Easter mass, a sizable brass ensemble. Yes, I treat the Easter mass as a concert. As such, it was quite enjoyable, though our seats this year were not quite as good as a year ago. As we were walking in and finding seats, the organist was already playing something amazing; it could have been one of Bach's countless organ chorales. He played something along similar lines at the end, as we were walking out, and improvised on it with abandon.

Other highlights included a haunting choral work by Palestrina and a piece for choir and brass by Richard Wayne Dirksen, a composer with whom I was not familiar. Turns out he was a local DC composer, associated for many years with the National Cathedral. The piece we heard on Sunday, the title of which I neglected to note, was surprisingly dark, with an unsettling recurring trumpet motif uneasily coexisting with a jagged, if not quite atonal, choral line. If I must use extra-musical religious imagery, it made me think more of the mess the supposedly benevolent God continues to tolerate in this life than any joy we can hope to experience in the next. Good time was had by all.