FRIDAY POTPOURRI: PARISH HISTORY: 1947

This was the year a young Ellen Martucci began playing the organ.  Mrs. McDonald was the only organist at the time and wanted someone to help so that she could take a vacation.  So she went to the nuns and asked who played the piano.  “Ellen plays well,” she was informed and so she asked Ellen if she would like to play.  She did and Mrs. McDonald was able to get away.

Ellen later joined the choir.  Coming to the practice one day, Fr. Zwisler asked to speak with her.  “Tomorrow there is Mass at 6:00, 7:15 and 8:00.  Be there (at the organ) and then meet me in the rectory for breakfast.”

Ellen worked for her Father at the time at a job she did not particularly enjoy.  When her Father said he expected her at the job the next day she responded, “I can’t!  Father wants me to work for him playing the organ!” much to his delight and hers.

Ellen served as the official parish organist until her retirement in 2011 although she continues to play for daily Masses.  When asked how she was able to work with Fr. Zwisler all those years she said, “I knew what he wanted and how he wanted it done!  If you don’t you quit!”

The organ in the original church was Conrad Prestly Organ and was removed in the late 1970s due to disuse and neglect.  After the original church had been turned into a hall where children ate their school lunches, Fr. McCann reports, the students would try to throw apples up into the pipes.  The organ was then sold.

ST. SEBASTIAN IN THE NEWS

St. Sebastian Parishioners were in the news this past week.  I thought I would share some of the news with you.

Matthew and Elisabeth Akers were interviewed in the Coming Home Network Magazine.  You can read their story of the conversion to the Catholic faith HERE.

IN OTHER NEWS: 

Parishioners have seen (and heard) Master Daniel Colaner any number of times playing the organ and piano at Masses and services at St. Sebastian.  Lynn Steward, our director of music and instructor of organ in the Academy of Culture and Arts at St. Sebastian has been teaching him how to play.  Daniel has soared in his musical abilities to the point of playing at Carnegie Hall and St. Patrick Cathedral this past weekend garnering for himself national attention.  Here are some links to news coverage of the event:

On November 23rd, a front page, above the fold article appeared about him in the Akron Beacon Journal (which, coincidentally, was also written by a St. Sebastian parishioner.)  Read more HERE.

Channel 5 picked up the story and it went national.  HERE is a link to one of the television news segments.  (The video for which was done by parishioner Joe McGee)

HERE is the local channel 5 segment.

Sunday night he was on World News Tonight.  See it HERE.

He appeared on Good Morning America according to THIS article.  

Recently there has been set up at the St. Sebastian Parish Foundation a fund to help young organists defray the cost of organ lessons.  As colleges across the country close their organ departments, we are trying to help make sure that there are organists to handle these beautiful instruments in the future.  If you would like to make a donation, HERE is the website where you may find how to contact the parish Foundation.  Or contact the Foundation development director, Kathy Holaday at 330.836.2233 extension 113 or holadayk@stsebastian.org.

Some of our teachers appeared in the West Side Leader and the Akron Beacon Journal.  Scroll down after going HERE to read the story.

MONDAY DIARY: ALMOST EXCRUCIATINGLY TRUE STORIES: JUST WHEN YOU THINK EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL

Sebastian (my dog) had a play date the other day with Atticus and Monsignor, the dogs of two other pastors.  (Talk about three pretentious names for a pack of dogs.)  We all got together along with a couple of seminarians for an afternoon.

I needed to lock up the church and so invited the seminarians who had not been in the church before to join me for a little tour.  As we were about to enter the secret tunnel from the rectory to the church (which is neither a secret nor a tunnel) the dogs sat at the door with pathetic looks on their faces.  

Sebastian often goes with me to lock up the church.  At least one time he has caught someone hanging out in a hidey hole and assisted me in escorting the person out of the building before the locks were engaged.  One of the many perks of having a rectory dog.  Atticus too has joined us on the final locking up rounds.  But Monsignor, being just a wee pup has never had the opportunity.  All the same, all three were invited to walk with us on our rounds of the doors of the church.

When we were at the rear of the church, the whole pack was escorted up into the choir loft so I could show them the new organ.

I fired her up and told them that I was going to play a little on it for their entertainment and edification.  But first I wanted to demonstrate what the mighty organ could do and nothing is more powerful and shocking as the Festival Trumpets!

Yep.  We scared the p**p out of the dog. 

And they all got to go back to the party and I stayed in the choir loft to undo the redecorating job performed by Monsignor.  So perhaps there are really good reasons for not letting animals in the church and let that be a lesson to you young priests out there.

ONE MAN'S TRASH IS ANOTHER MAN'S TREASURE

St. Sebastian has a nice rectory.  It is largely (though not completely) furnished from the refuse of our civilization - that is, the devil strip (tree lawn for non-Akronites), junk shops, and things from people's basements.  The coffee tables in the guest rooms come from the curbs and yard sales.  Paintings hang on the wall that were scheduled to be burned by the store holding on to them.  Most of the mechanical clocks in the house I adopted from the clock rescue.  (People who didn't want the clocks anymore because they were too much bother.)  Even the altar in the chapel came from a religious house house basement because they didn't want it anymore.

Now these efforts are moving into the church.  Now that I think about it, that is a lie.  We've tons of things over there that I've scarfed from trash bins and from the closets of unused toys at other parishes.  The latest is just the largest example.

Huntingdon College, like the University of Akron, is retiring their organ major.  They had three organs taking up three classrooms and decided that they could put the rooms to better use if they could just get rid of the organs.  And the man in charge of the project had just weeks to do it or the organs would be destroyed.  That is where St. Sebastian enters the picture.

This Gabriel Kney tracker action, neo-baroque pipe organ was offered to the parish.  We had to act quickly.  There was not time to consult councils and musicians as we like to do.  It was impulsive.  But the price was right!  Read: FREE.  (If it doesn't work out, we can always sell it right?)

So it arrived at St. Sebastian just in time for a week that we unexpectedly needed a lot more seating than normal.  The number of events that happened that weekend meant that the assembly of the organ took longer than expected which meant that more pews were unusable because all of the pieces parts were spread out across them.

It is finally together and has been blessed for liturgical use.  It will take a couple of more months before it settles enough that it won't keep going out of tune.  It is like bringing a plant in from out of doors, it takes a while to adjust.  

It may be used (if it is in tune enough) this weekend for Mario Buchanan's organ recital, to which you are invited.  (Sunday at 4:00PM - free and open to the public.)  The next time it is already scheduled for use is at the advent concert.  Keep your eye out for that one.

I KNOW IT DOESN'T MATTER BUT . . .

We’ve all heard it a thousand times so let’s all say it together: “The Church/parish is not a building, it’s the people.”  Yeah, yeah, I got it and intellectually believe it.  But you know what?  At night I still dream about my home parish.  Not the new building but the one in which I grew up in on Hopican Avenue.  Similarly I am mightily attached to West Akron and the building IN

WHICH the parish of St. Sebastian worships.

 

This Sunday we will be celebrating as a Universal Church the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica, the mother Church building of Church buildings.  I will grant you that if some crazed lunatic bombed the place to smithereens (thanks spell check, I don’t know that I ever spelled that word before) the Church will still exist fully intact though perhaps a little ticked off.  But the fact that we have this celebration means we are kind of blushing, shuffling our feet, head hanging a little with a smirk on our faces saying, “Well, yeah, buildings do kinda, sorta mean something to us even though theologically we could completely do without them.”

 

One of my favorite quotes:  “God does not need cathedrals.  But we do.”

 

So I took Sebastian on a walk through my home town the other day.  I wrote about doing this a couple of summers ago.  The point of this particular walk was to see God’s Magic City Church.  This was formally Sts. Cyril and Methodius Roman Catholic Church founded primarily for the Slovak community.  It was absolutely built in the WRONG place -  a flood plain and was regularly flooded.  But the building was a little gem though the renovations after Vatican II were less than stellar.  It is (was) a tiny Romanesque building and would have made some kind of great shrine or some other use if it weren’t built where Wolf Creek enjoys overflowing its banks.

 

Anyway, on our way there we passed the former-former Sacred Heart Church which is now a non-denominational church.  This is the building in which I cut my teeth.  It is mostly in pretty good shape (though they removed the tile roof and replaced it with a shingle roof which robbed it of much of its character.)  So the congregation there must be doing relatively alright.

I just found this video that showcases the organ from my home parish that I tried to obtain but at the time the current owners did not want to sell.  Now some church in Texas will have it.  Tears at my heart . . .

 

Next we passed the old St. Mary, formally the Polish parish in town.  Never a remarkable building it now looks pretty sad.  The non-denominational congregation there could use some paint and other general maintenance to keep the place looking good.  Who knows how long it will be viable without a huge influx of cash.

 

Then there is God’s Magic City Church.  There was a fire there recently.  The area where the sacristy was is completely gutted.  There is no roof or windows left, just a brick shell.  The nave of the main church is burnt through and the cross seems to stand miraculously though precariously on the charred main beam of the roof.  I know it’s just a building but something about it make me feel incredibly sad.  It’s more than it just having been a beautiful building worth keeping around.  It is sad to see a place that roofed so much good so savagely devastated.  Like spilled milk, seeing something that represents such goodness so utterly wasted is somehow disturbing. 

 

Is the “Church” less for having lost a building?  No.  But we have lost a symbol of our mission.  A touchstone that reminds us to keep on track.  Another relic resigned to the memory of the current generation. 

 

No big deal.

 

And huge deal.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: HE WHO SINGS WELL

The detail that went into the documents is astounding.  A slow as the Church is to act at times it is amazing how much they were actually able to accomplish.  It is said that a giraffe is a horse put together by committee.  It is a credit to the Holy Spirit that such large and numerous committees were able to pull off Vatican II.

 

The next chapter of Sacrosanctum Concilium concerns the liturgical year.  After reaffirming Sunday as the Lord’s Day and lauding the holy seasons, mysteries of Christ, and feast days of saints, it makes recommendations to revise the Church calendar, “to suit the conditions of modern times.”  (107)

 

Far more interesting is the section on Sacred Music.  The same provisions for language is given that were previously given for the Mass.  That is, there is place for the vernacular but there should be some talent to sing in Latin by the congregation, particularly the Mass parts.  Sacred Music is to be preserved and “Choirs must be assiduously developed, especially in cathedral churches.”

 

“The Church recognizes Gregorian Chant as being specially suited to the Roman liturgy.  Therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.” (116)  “Bishops and other pastors of souls must take great care to ensure that whenever the sacred action is to be accompanied by chant, the whole body of the faithful may be able to contribute that active participation which is rightly theirs . . .” (114)  This is something we try to do at least in small measure during Lent at St. Sebastian.  All that being said, it does allow and even encourage other suitable, sacred music, especially polyphony, into the Church “so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action as laid down in Article 30.”  (116)

 

“The pipe organ is to be held in high esteem in the Latin Church, for it is the traditional musical instrument, the sound of which can add a wonderful splendor to the Church’s ceremonies and powerfully lifts up men’s mind to God and higher things.”  (120)  Other instruments are allowed to be used if they are approved by the bishops and, “only under the condition that the instruments are suitable, or can be made suitable for sacred use; that they accord with the dignity of the temple and that they truly contribute to the edification of the faithful.”  (120)

 

Composers are then encouraged to keep composing for both large and small choirs and that the words of the music must always be kept in strict line with Catholic doctrine.  It is on this last point, particularly with Eucharistic hymns, that I would like to rip out much of what passes as Catholic Sacred Music in contemporary “Catholic” hymnals.  (Personal note.)

YOU'RE INVITED

The Parish of Saint Sebastian

requests the honour of your presence

at the

Blessing Ceremony

of its new

Pipe Organ

to be celebrated by

His Excellency

The Most Reverend Richard G. Lennon

and the

Dedicatory Concert

to be presented by

Mrs. Lynn Frey-Steward

on

Sunday, the eighteenth of November

two thousand and twelve

at half past three in the afternoon

at

St. Sebastian Parish Church

Akron, OH

 

Pipe organs in some form have been around since well before the time of Christ and had been a favorite instrument of emperors and kings.  For centuries, in one form another, the pipe organ has been married (as it were) to the Church and her worship.  According to the Second Vatican Council document “Musicam Sacrum” paragraph 62, “The pipe organ is to be held in high esteem in the Latin Church, since it is its traditional instrument, the sound of which can add a wonderful splendor to the Church's ceremonies and powerfully lift up men's minds to God and higher things.”

 

Until the advent of the computer, the pipe organ was the most complicated and advanced piece of technology in the world.  With this one instrument, a single musician can replace a whole orchestra and fill a space with sound that just is not possible with a piano (unless a microphone is used.)  It can speak softly to accompany soloist or it can take on the force of mighty orchestra and full tilt.  It can produce different sounds from flutes to strings to trumpets.  It is a marvel of ingenuity, beauty, artistry, and history.

 

The St. Sebastian organ made by the Schantz Organ Company will consist of 2,683 pipes.  There are 44 ranks of pipes.  (A rank is a set of pipes usually consisting of 61 pipes.)  There will be four divisions, the Great organ, the Swell organ, Positiv organ, the Choir organ, as well as the pedal division.  The new organ will have two division exposed to the congregation, which is new.  Previously the entire organ was contained behind a screen.

 

I hope that you are able to join the parish for thisimportant event.  It is free and open tothe public.  The address of the parish is476 Mull Avenue.

FRIDAY POTPURRI: SEEKING ADVICE

This week Monsignor Manners is stumped.  Mrs. Fenner is of no help, I cannot find anything in my books, and I've even written to Miss Manners who no longer personally responds to letters because of the high volume of requests she receives and so suggests that we keep an eye out in the paper should she be able to respond.  So I though I would turn to you and see if you have any idea on this fine point of invitations.

 

When it comes to invitations it seems that no matter how much my resources may vary on details, they all agree on one thing: Someone must do the inviting.  But what if that person is a juridical person such as a parish?  For example, "we" will soon be having the dedicatory blessing and concert of our organ and wish to specifically invite certain persons who have given to the project.  So who invites them?  Does, "The Parish of Saint Sebastian" invite the persons who make up the Parish of Saint Sebastian to St. Sebastian Parish?  (This is why I do not like people standing up at the beginning of Mass and saying "Welcome to St. Sebastian" or "Please join us for . . ." who is welcoming whom?  Is this not their home just as much as it is yours?  Who is saying "Please join us?"  Who is the "us"?  A privileged inner circle?)

 

Perhaps I am too sensitive on this matter.  Perhaps it is de rigueur for a juridical person to invite the people it represents to an affair that the juridical person is hosting.  Anyway, I am waisting too much time on this.  What is your thoughts on the matter?  You input would be helpful.

 

Sincerely,

 

Monsignor Manners

FULL OF A LOT OF HOT AIR, BUT MOST WELCOME

 The trucks are back again at St. Sebastian in Akron.  For the past couple of weeks, after a few months of an empty choir loft, a new organ is beginning to make it's appearance. 

The picture below is actually an old picture of the original console being removed.  The new one was put back in much the same way.  But the part I wanted to share with you is the back screen.  The original organ fit entirely behind the screen and there was little evidence (until it was played) that there was an actual pipe organ in the church.

The new organ is quite expanded and two division will now be visible to the congregation.  Below you can see one of the "flower pots" installed in front of the screen.  They did a fabulous job of matching the woodwork.  Below you can see the beginning of the installation of the pipes in this division.

Below is the installation of more visible pipes.

 

 

 

 Above you can see almost all of the visible pipes installed.  There will be a few more ranks on the right side yet.  Below is evidence that space is much more at a premium behind the screen than it once was.  This is a shot above looking down at the pedal division.  The solid plank is a narrow cat walk for used for those tending to the organ.  All of the empty white circles you see next to it will have more pipes set in them.

 Below you can see where pipe have yet to be set.  E, F, and F# are the names of notes that each pipe will produce.

Few parishioners realize that behind the screen is three stories of space.  Here I was standing on the top story looking down to the floor of the choir loft.  It would be quite a fall!  To the left and top of the picture you can see spaces for many more pipes.  The ones to the left will be pretty small, perhaps the size of you fingers, the ones at the top will be so large that the half circles that you see are there to help hold them in place much like racks at the ski area hold your skis in place when you go in to have a hot cocoa

 Just one last early shot of the bass division going in. 

Today in the afternoon they will start the initial tuning of the instrument but they did fire it up so we could hear the first sounds that it would make.  My Mother always told me that the first music I should play on any new (to me) pipe organ is a hymn to Our Lady.  To that end, I asked our organist, Mrs. Lynn Frey-Steward to play "Lepa Si Lepa" as the first notes played.  This is a Slovenian song and the words roughly mean, "Beautiful, you are beautiful as a rose Mary."

 

Yesterday would have been Mom's birthday and it was Lynn's birthday.  What a happy convergence of events.

 

For anybody out there who might be interested in supporting this artistic endeavor, there is a matching grand for up to $100,000 for all donations to toward this project.  You may also purchase pipes.  You will recieve a certificate with the pipe's name (so you can hear it if you wish) and with the name of the person to whom it is dedicated.  For information please go to our parish website here.

THE DAY AFTER A CIVIL HOLIDAY POST

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

And few people read this blog after a holiday so I thought I write about the latest on our organ project since the interested audiences is rather limited.

This project has been going on for quite some months and we are still five months from the dedication date.  It seems to be taking forever.  The Schantz Organ Company, the oldest organ company in the northern Americas, invited a group of about 20 St. Sebastianites down to see the progress.

 The wooden pipes below will not be part of our organ but another organ that is going through the process just ahead of ours.  If you ever wondered what the inside of a wooden pipe might look like, this is one of those very rare peeks inside.  The covering for the pipe laying on the horses next to the pipe soon to hide its interior for ever.

 According to our tour guide, post WWII era was a good one for the builders of pipe organs.  It was pretty much a given that if one were to build a church, "there would be a steeple, a cross, a Bible, and a pipe organ," reported our guide.  That being the case, the majority of work these days is repairing organs. 

If you think of it, a pipe organ is a mechanical device in constant use.  If you are in a Catholic parish such as ours, it is in use every day.  365 days 60 years is a lot of work to be done by a mechanical device.  My wind up alarm clock only lasted 7 years.  In any case, all of these organs are now being rejuvenated and ours is among those old organs receiving new life.

Below is part of the super structure of one section of our organ.  The boxes that you see are wind chests and pipes sit on top of those.  As you can see, some of the chests are pretty high yet pipes will sit yet on top of them!  Since our organ has always been behind a screen, few people realize it is about 2 and half stories high.  The rejuvenated and expanded organ will have about 1,300 exposed pipes.

This is a view from the top of the organ structure down.  That is our music director on top of a very high ladder looking up!

The holes in the wood that you see are where pipes sit.  These particular pipes will be rather small ones.  The can range from about the size of our pinkie to 16 feet.  (Can you see how small the man on the floor looks from the top of the organ?)

If you are interested in helping with this project, you can purchase a pipe by clicking here.  You will receive a certificate that indicates the pipe that you helped restore or make.  If you bring the certificate in the pipe that you purchased can be played for you!

MONDAY DIARY: FATHER BUS DRIVER

When I was in kindergarten we had a project in which we had to draw a picture of what work we wanted to do when we grew up and then tell the class why we chose it.  I did not choose priesthood at that time (though I used to play Mass all the time with all my Protestant friends in our basement - they were all for it because we used Oreo cookies for hosts.)  I drew a picture of a bus.  I thought handling a big piece of equipment like that would be great.  But I had a stipulation.  Meeting people and helping them get around sounded like fun but I did not want to go down the same streets every day as that sounded boring.  Rather, I would drive around and if people wanted to go where I was going they could ride with me.

I would not have made a good bus driver.

In high school when they gave us much the same project with a bit more seriousness I still wanted a job in which I would not do the exact same thing every day.  I think that was the reason for my choice studying theater.  If there is anything that would be unpredictable and exciting there it was.

It was priesthood that won out however.  And whereas there are some things that are fixed pegs such as Mass and prayer and such, other things vary wildly.  Take last Tuesday.  As you may be aware we are hosting a production of "Late Night Catechism" at the parish (see here on the rotating banner) as a fundraiser for our organ project.  Those running the evening wanted a short informative video to let people know about the project.  So they brought in a crew to shoot a three minute video staring Sebastian.  It took about three hours to shoot a three minute video but it was fun.  All my training in theater, music, and priesthood paid off for this one, brief, shining moment.  Here are some pictures of the event:

This is Sebastian in makeup before his close-up.

Some of the cast and crew in the "greenroom" waiting for their cue.

The director and one of the tech guys setting up the office for the shoot.

Time for my line done with passion, drama, and genius.

The final project was to get more "dog noises" from Sebastian and so the sound guy followed him around for about 20 minutes.  Notice the headphones.  It was all fun and games until the doorbell rang and Sebastian barked into the microphone.

CHECKING ON PROGRESS

It's been a long but good day.  After Mass there was a field trip out to see the progress if the organ.  Unfortunately when we got back there were several emergencies not the least of which one of our great long standing parishioners seems to have taken a turn for the worse and I needed to go out an anoint her.  That means a lot stuff and this blog put on the back burner today. 

Just the same - here are some pictures from my field trip.  Below is Mr. Dexter from the organ company and Mr. Kastelic our business manager inspecting the progress on our organ.  Below are some of our pipes that are starting their journey through the company.

The wooden pipes in front will be reinstalled at St. Sebastian.  They are being tested here before they are refurbished.  I got to play them to see what they sounded like.  That was pretty cool.

We will be having a couple of pipes make from scratch.  Here is what is cool about this picture: To the man's left are a bunch of flat pieces of metal.  This is what pipes such as the ones in the first picture start out as.  These will soon be a rank of pipes.

This is not one of ours but one part of the process that ours will be going though.  This is where the pipes are cleaned.  As you can imagine a half a century of not being washed can mean for dirty pipes. 

Here is a small sampling of some of the inner workings of our organ.  Everywhere you look there are stacks of things with cards taped to them that read, "Akron."

If you look closely you will notice that the side of these boards read, "Canton."  That is because they belong to the original Schantz organ that was in Trinity Lutheran in Canton, Ohio (now closed.)  Now that they are being incorporated into the new organ at St. Sebastian, "Akron" is now stamped next to the "Canton" Stamps of 50 years ago.

This is our counsel completely gutted and getting ready to be rebuilt.

On the wall of the shop are drawings of our organ.

If you find this the least bit interesting there will be a trip for donors and would-donors (and very interested others) at the end of June.  Keep an eye out.