Church music

[Raphael Saltwood]

Having sat and stood through a number of Presbyterian services approaching or even attaining 4 digits…which are determinedly Protestant, and not exactly like Church of England which although not Catholic, umm…anyway, so my impressions might not jibe to five 9s, but -

Wikipedia on chromaticism:
Chromaticism is a compositional technique<https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Compositional_technique> interspersing the primary diatonic<https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Diatonic_scale> pitches<https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Pitch_(music)> and chords<https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Chord_(music)> with other pitches of the chromatic scale<https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Chromatic_scale>. Chromaticism<https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Chromatic> is in contrast or addition to tonality<https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Tonality> or diatonicism<https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Diatonic_and_chromatic> and modality<https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Modality_(music)>(the major<https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Major_scale> and minor<https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Minor_scale>, or "white key", scales). Chromatic elements are considered, "elaborations of or substitutions for diatonic scale members".

A pipe organ is a remarkable adjunct to worship. At one point I was tactless enough to suggest in company that included the minister that it would be really neat if the service were only music. Had to back away from that then, and now I’m no longer of that opinion. We have concerts for that.

But musical organ effects are quite remarkable.

There comes a chorus, and the fortitude pumped out (nowadays by the addition of the power company to the efforts of the organist, but in Cyprian’s time it was, according to this passage, kids who mechanically pushed the air - altar boys, or something like that, the thought of whom would be exciting to Cyprian) in a major key, especially when it modulates up, is uplifting and transcendental and makes singing very emotional.

(Missed this during the Epizootic.)

Then there’s the organ solo at various points. Depending on the choice of music, you might get a softly meditative thing going that might actually do more than Milton or minister can do, to justify God’s ways to man…

Or sometimes, and this is probably the chromaticism he’s talking about, you get uprooted from your major chords or even minor chords into weird interval after weird interval replicating the indigestion in that commercial, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!”
Or maybe as if it were commemorating some horrible thing like a massacre or a Khaki election, or a Republican Presidency, or let’s be honest, some Democratic administration’s dubious battles…

It’s tough to maintain reverence during such; it takes practice.

If it goes on and on, like fictional (he is fictional, isn’t he?) Filtham’s, one could see why aesthete Cyprian, although he experienced some success finding grace even - no, because of — contemplating the foibles of England’s church, would find his thoughts turned back from the central mystery into the blasted unsatisfactory nature of the experience.

The narrator ends up elaborating on that, leaving for later in the book Cyprian’s access of blessedness, which at this point had centered around a theme of a different conquest over death than that, mentioned in GR, of the persistence of facial features through generations as “telling Death to fuck off” - Cyprian, as a non-breeder, only approaches this procreational type of victory as an intermediary later with Yashmeen and Reef, and thus - like the celibate priests of the church that Henry VIII rejected for his subjects, if only like them  in this one respect - stakes his claim to immortality not on passing on genes, but in the power of memes, which are indeed powerful.

Or some such ideation! Maybe overly reliant on that gene/meme theme.

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