The Magnificat: The Hymn of Mary, the mother of Jesus

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Olivia Hussey as Mary

The Magnificat is a hymn, a sort of poetic declaration, by Mary the mother of Jesus, on the occasion of visiting a cousin, Elizabeth, who was to be the mother of John the Baptist.  It is interesting to study the words attributed to the womenfolk of Jesus: his mother Mary; Mary and Martha of Magdala, especially Mary, who was according to some accounts actually the wife of Jesus, and an important leader of the early church; the female relatives, according to legend, of Mary the mother of Jesus: her mother Anna, and her cousin Elizabeth.  Very little has come down to us about these last two, but there are a number of references to Mary Magdalene, if not direct quotes, enough to give us a small idea of what she was like.

There seem to be (at least) two sorts of people in America:  Those who call themselves Christians, but who are familiar with little of their holy book, The Bible; and those who are outside established Christianity, atheists and agnostics, who have grown up within Christian culture, and are, in fact, more familiar with the contents of, and the context for, much of the Bible.  I count myself among the latter.  As I was growing up, as I was saying to my wife just this morning, I found it a chore and a nuisance to read the Bible, or to have anything to do with it.  Somewhere along the way I decided that it was misguided in the extreme to believe in any sort of divine intervention in the affairs of humans, and it seems to me that it was at that moment that I found my affection for the Bible gradually growing!  It is impossible to actually hate a book written as a cooperative venture by so many, with such varied experiences, motivations and intentions.  I am no expert, but I understand that large chunks of the so-called Old Testament was written under the supervision of priests, around the time of the Exile in Babylon.  (Evidently a large portion of the Jewish people were taken as slaves to Babylon after a particularly successful conquest by the Babylonians.)  Nevertheless, despite the imposition of a particular political view on large portions of the Old Testament, it is difficult to believe that a single individual was able to make all the various books in the collection conform to his view, which makes for just a little more believability of events in it than would otherwise be the case.  But there are bigger problems with it, namely selection.  Over the course of time, various authorities have enforced which books are included in all the sub-collections of the Bible, and the history we have received is more skewed by the omissions in the collection than in what remains in it.

In the light of the checkered history of the book, it is highly amusing that fundamentalist Christians (or any Christians who believe in the veracity --if that’s the word I want here-- of the Bible) accept it as divinely inspired.  Perhaps they believe it to be so precisely because it is a compendium, and for reasons similar to the ones I offered, feel that it is a valuable document for understanding what Christianity is all about, or at least Theistic Christianity.  There are only apologetic terms for the rest of us who admire the life and the teachings of Jesus, except for the distortions that we believe have been deliberately introduced into the New Testament, to suggest that Jesus considered himself divine in any sense.  Or at least in a literal sense; after all, anyone can be divine in a metaphorical sense, as the Hindus are happy to point out.

Some decades ago, the Magnificat enjoyed greater popularity, since it was read as a sort of anti-establishment oration.  Here it is, according to one translation:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.

He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly!

He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty!

He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever!

In simple English, it goes like this:

1. “Praise god, because he has noticed me, I who am nobody special!

2. “My name will go down in history, because I have been blessed by god.

3. “God has always been good to those who fear and obey him.

4. “He has shown his strength, and confounded the proud!

5. “He has humbled the powerful, and exalted the lowly.

6. “He has fed the hungry, but denied anything to the rich.

7.  “He has come to the rescue of his servant Israel,

         as he promised to Abraham and his descendants for ever!”

Lines 1 and 2 seem in line with hymns by women of Asia, to my knowledge, in the culture of the times when a proud woman was an abomination.  (I don’t know enough of the anthropology of New Testament times to be able to categorically state that this is true of women’s poetry of that era, and I’m sure Biblical scholars will be quick to point this out.)  They do seem to show that Mary was impressed with the importance of her unborn child, or that the writer of this poem, if not Mary herself, was at pains to represent Mary as being so impressed.

Lines 3, 4 and 5 are simple lines of praise in the tradition of the Psalms, but they begin the pattern of the next several lines which praise god for confounding the proud and humiliating the powerful, and supporting and supplying the weak and the meek.

At the time of the Roman Occupation, of course, as we learn from this same New Testament (and other Roman historical documents, such as Herodotus), the rich and powerful of Judaea were only as successful as their ability and willingness to collaborate with the Roman conquerors, and the poor had only their hope in god on their side.  The venom of any public utterance a woman would dare to make would have to be aimed not at the Romans, but at their own oppressive religious leaders, and to that extent, line 4 supports the belief that this hymn was composed by a woman, or was very carefully written as to be plausibly in the voice of a woman.

Despite the fact that the content of the hymn might have been entirely for the purpose of underlining that it was by whom it was purported to be, the subversive tone of it resonated with the authority-despising Christian youth of the 1960's, and it was a key text of the social gospel of that era.  It must have resonated even more among Korean, Filipino and Japanese Christians of that time, because of how Asian Christian women identified with the status of women in the time of Jesus.  It does appear that Asian women were more emancipated than their American counterparts of that time, and even today, in certain ways.  Witness that women have emerged as elected national leaders in Asia, while they are yet to do so in the USA.  However, US social anthropologists have been eager to point out reasons other than simple emancipation for this phenomenon.  (One very unfortunate reason must be pointed out: women of the Asian economic elite have been relatively far more emancipated than their poorer Asian cousins, and of course, most women who run for public office are generally economically well off.)

But, having said all that, it most certainly seems to me that this hymn was in fact written by a woman, and I just feel that at least some key phrases of it must have originated with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and must have been made popular by word of mouth in the early community of Jesus’s disciples!

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Allegro: From Brisk to Absolutely Frenzied

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In the Classical Era, and even the Baroque, the important opening and closing movements of most multi-movement works had a tempo (speed) indication of Allegro.  The Italian word means at least two different things: bright and brisk, or cheerful and merry.  In music, as an indication of tempo, it has come to mean fast, though it's understood not to be very fast.  Note that often, in Baroque Suites, the fast opening movement, the Overture, has a few "sentences" that are to be played Largo, that is, slowly and grandly, after which the briskness takes over.  Beethoven's famous Fifth Symphony, too, has such a largo opening, but evidently there is no actual special tempo indication for those opening phrases; there are only pauses after each five-note phrase.

Simply because of their slow pace, slow movements are easier to assimilate and appreciate.  They're often lyrical, that is, more important for their simple beauty than their deep feeling, though just as often, slow movements are full of feeling.  To avoid contradicting myself too much, let me just conjecture that the slow pace gives us more time to unravel the music in our minds, and so we tend to remember them in detail --at least the more interesting parts.  Fast movements, in contrast, have more notes (as someone is famously to have remarked to Mozart), and are more distinguished by their rhythmic energy than by the beauty of their themes.  But, again, many of Mozart's allegros are undeniably beautiful.  In this post, I'm only trying to draw your attention to allegros because I tend to usually talk about slow music almost exclusively.

One of the pieces I have been playing incessantly in recent days (to the annoyance of my family, no doubt) is the Fugue in A minor for the organ (BWV 543, fugue).  Here it is, played by E. Power Biggs.  Warning: there is a commercial before the clip begins.  This is a long movement, and not particularly in the same family of energetic compositions as I'm trying to describe today, so you might want to skip it.  But I do love this piece, because, as I have said before, it gives the feeling of a massive spinning object; it would be ideal to represent a spinning planet, for instance, in my humble opinion, of course.  But then, so would the Blue Danube.

The speed is actually slower than allegro; probably Andante, "At an easy pace."  The large number of short notes makes it appear as if it is being played fast, but measured by the rate at which the harmony changes, it is quite slow.  As many of you must remember, I transcribed this piece into notation, and then had it played by percussion instruments (a marimba and a xylophone, etc).  It seems a little more brisk in that instrumentation, because of the rhythm track I added, with great disrespect.

But the piece that set me off thinking about Allegros in general was the last movement from the Bach violin concerto for two violins, in D minor.  The movement begins with a startlingly syncopated entry by the violin section, and the energy never lets up for a moment.

The big propelling force of the movement is a series of very emphatic three-note phrases in bass that seem to go on forever.  This particular performance dates, I believe from the 1970s, though in order to get past the rigorous recording identifying routine of YouTube, the person who posted it has not revealed any details of the performance.  Performances of a few years later are likely to be faster, and even more energetic.

Aha, I found one.  This video quality is poor, but it's nevertheless very enjoyable.  (I love Ms Podger's dimples, and they're two very charming performers, all told.  The announcer goes into rhapsodies at the end of the piece, so keep watching.)

Another universal favorite among Bach's Allegros is the opening movement of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto for Flute, Violin, Harpsichord and orchestra (BWV 1050), which was enormously popular even among classical music non-lovers some decades ago.  In an earlier post I linked to a performance by Richter and his troops, but here is a performance by Diego Fasolis, with Il Barrochisti.  Equally good, from an earlier era, is the performance by Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert, possibly the best all-round performance of all six Brandenburg Concertos.

From the Symphonic repertoire, an allegro that comes to mind is the opening movement of the Eroica Symphony by Beethoven.  There are two crashing opening chords, followed by a crazy whirlwind of sheer energy.  When I was a kid, I loved the Fifth Symphony, but if I had to do it all over again, I would probably be persuaded to "favorite" the Eroica (Symphony No. 3 in E Flat).

Symphonies, as you will probably agree, get their fame because of the drama contained in them, and for this reason even a movement marked Allegro is likely to have its stops and starts, which detracts from the continuous sort of momentum that I'm trying to bring to your attention here.  The last movements of symphonies are typically marked presto, which means very fast, and of course these are more likely to be good choices for playing loud on a bright sunny day, to knock the socks off your neighbors.  (Or listen to with your headphones, and perforate your eardrums.)  But, you know, both Mozart and Bach managed to write Prestos that were quite sedate and well-behaved.  This is absolutely not what I'm looking for, but it is true nevertheless.

Come to think of it, the last movement of Mozart's Concerto No. 23 in A major is marked Allegro Assai (very fast, but obviously not as fast as presto), and is just the sort of Allegro that I'm trying to bring to your attention!  Can you imagine being a fantastic pianist, playing this piece with a smile at the audience?  How does he do it, everyone is thinking, while you're thinking, they have no idea how long it took.

The only clip of this movement I could find free of advertisements is this one.  The playing is great, and it illustrates what I was trying to describe very well.  A good piece played moderately competently is all I ask for.  (There is a possibility that the actual performance is by Chick Corea, or the performer may have borrowed them from Chick Correa's performance on CD.  The video is so bad that I can't tell.)

A well-known Presto is the overture to The Marriage of Figaro.  (I inserted the first page from the score at right, just for fun.)  The recording featured by Steve Smalin is among the best out there: fast and incisive playing by some anonymous orchestra.  The unison introduction is now legendary, and widely copied; not very successfully, in my opinion.  I have to admit that this movement almost defines what Presto is in my mind, though other Mozart Prestos (or is it presti?) come very close.

The last movement of Beethoven's delightful Sonata Pathetique is one of my favorites, and anyone who has kept reading this blog knows this well!  I'm a dog of few tricks, and keep putting those few tricks before my readers repeatedly, hoping that they will connect with them eventually!

Well, that's all I have for the moment; I have to go administer a test to a bunch of reluctant undergraduates.  (When I tell them that I loved tests as a kid, they look at me as though I've got a hole in my head.  Once I had come to terms with the fact that I just didn't do brilliantly on tests, I began to enjoy them, especially since I realized that I could actually figure some of the material out in real time, as they say.  Figuring something out in real time, of course, is something my students would almost never try to do, except for a few reckless souls, who don't really have a prayer.)

I try to explain to everyone that education is about trying to understand the world, and understand people, even if you start out despising them.  As a youth I could never quite get why some of the adults I so admired just looked at the world with rose-tinted glasses.  Their glasses were so utterly and invariably half-full (as opposed to being half empty, that is) that I just wanted to strangle them.  But here I am, doing the same thing.  Make no mistake: I know precisely how the world falls short of where and what it should be, but I still mostly love it.  And loving music and art and theatre, of course, is part of embracing the whole crazy pile of junk our planet and its inhabitants has become!  YouTube and Facebook, and all the things we love to hate are all part of the fascinating kaleidoscope of maniacal foolishness that is the world in which we live.

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Education in America Part II: College

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Dear Abby:

Last week I waxed poetic on the theme that American Education is in trouble, following up on several earlier posts that concluded pretty much the same thing.  Trying to improvise a fee-for-service version of the world’s most important activity: educating the young, the US has found, to its dismay that, businessmen on up, everyone wants to make a buck from the woes of the Education disaster, but no one really knows how to fix it.  The party that has to gain is The American People itself.  But The American People has no voice, and does not have the expertise, and last of all, does not have the political power or the will to change the game.

Turning to College education, our friend Rebecca Schuman writing in Slate magazine has a scathing indictment of tertiary education in the Greatest Nation On Earth.  She says that it is overpriced, and often deceitful.  The deceit comes in certain colleges that have been set up to provide what they consider a utilitarian college education for those who cannot afford the inflated price tags of typical institutions.  But these schools only deliver a mockery of education.  She calculates that, on the average, the college degree cost has increased 500% from what it was 19 years ago.  Compounded annually—I’m delighted that I can do this—it works out to an annual rate of increase of —just a second, please— 8.84%.  This is a lot more than the overall annual rate of inflation.

She knows what she’s talking about.  Where does the money go?  Not to professors.  To (1) Presidents and administrators, who demand wages comparable to CEO’s of big businesses, (2) expensive cosmetic touches —landscaping and pretty buildings, and (3) comfortable housing and expensive facilities for the students, who, she says, are more than likely to trash them anyway!  Read the (very short) Slate feature, for the full impact of Rebecca Schuman’s wit.

Colleges are well practiced at explaining these expenditures.  Presidents and administrators are hired in order to generate funds for the school.  In fact the only function of many college presidents is to give an occasional speech, and make the rounds, collecting money from alumni and well-wishers.  The grounds and buildings, and the fancy facilities (including football fields) are to attract rich parents to enroll their offspring at the institutions concerned.

It is easy to believe that this sort of thinking presumes a very low estimate of the intelligence of parents of prospective students, but the strategy seems to work at many schools.  Parents often judge the quality of a school by the attractiveness of the buildings.  Rebecca S suggests that schools should go on a revenue diet, because kids are happy to get away from home anyway, and will be perfectly happy to camp out practically anywhere.  On the other hand, she probably underestimates just how much of an attraction the opportunity to play varsity sports is, certainly among some of the muscleheads who provide most of the dollars of typical colleges.  Yes; kids will actually pay to play football in college, and yes, girls will actually pay to attend a school with football players.  I wish it were not so.

It was just today over supper that I was deploring the situation in which I found myself in Calculus 3.  I was trying to explain to my class why something was so.  But a significant number of students gave me the distinct impression that all they wanted to know was what to do.  (They were impatiently waiting for me to tell them what the next step is, rather than to guide them towards arriving at the next step themselves.)  Now, knowing what to do is just a small part of the whole task set before a student.  In a technical school, all you need to know is: what to do.  Just turn the wrench three turns, or whatever.  But in college, the faculty wants to tell you what the situation is, or what makes the setup be the way it is, which in turn requires doing whatever needs to be done.  But the mindset of some of my students tells me that they belong not even in technical school, but in a factory, with an instruction book, preferably one with pictures.  I can’t deal with this “Just the answers, man,” attitude.  Education is not just a collection of recipes.  Only amateur cooks are interested merely in recipes.  Is it surprising that education is in such a sorry state, if all the teachers were, in their youth, just interested in recipes?  Why, it is like learning everything from amateur cooks!  Or worse, like a medical school where the students are taught:

Step one: give them an Aspirin, and ask them to call you in the morning.  (If they don’t call, they’re better, or maybe dead.  If they do call, go to step 2.)
Step two: order a whole lot of tests, and have them come back when the results are in.  (If they don’t come back, they’re either dead, or better, or they can’t afford the tests.  If they do come back, go to step 3.)
You get the idea.  Medical practice by recipe!  Thank goodness doctors don’t do this.  Hopefully.

“Disgusted in Pennsylvania”