So let me get this right? Old ladies... Fr Stephen... a Piano... and you want me to pay £12 for the pleasure? Get thee thou out of here. If Fr Stephen has anything useful to say he can bally well say it for free. It's blatantly just him showing off on the piano while old ladies coo over him and tell him how lovely he is. I want to throw up. So sayeth the James. It didn't help much that when Ella asked Fr Stephen about it he said "You'll have to come to find out". When Ella told him I thought it would be just him playing the piano he told her "James hasn't been to one, that's the trouble with blogging, people don't invite you to things for fear of being blogged about".

Ella wanted to go, so we went. £24 between us. That's more than the cinema that is!

It were right good.

Fans of GK Chesterton will know what I am on about when I say that Chesterton was very fond of stories as a means to convey the truth. Chesterton points out that the good stories are those that, in some way or another, tell the story. A short summary of Fr. Stephen's musical retreat might be to say that what GK Chesterton did with fairy tales, Fr. Stephen Maughan did with music. If anything, it works better with Music - you cannot tell a story at the same time as you talk about the story, but you can play music as you talk about music.

He began by talking about themes, he played the hovis theme and then asked us what we were thinking about. Even those of us not born in the 70's were thinking of bread. He then described how Dvorak was in south america in the middle of nowhere when he wrote the piece, trying to describe the most beautiful sunset he had ever seen. Words failed him, so he wrote music instead. Fr Stephen then played the music at it's proper speed (much slower) and we dreampt of sunsets. He played some themes from films such as ET, Star Wars and Superman and talked about Nessun Dorma and his frustration that this theme is so often played and ends with a single chord when it should seque in to the rest of the story. Of course, nobody knows the story (they don't speak Italian for a start), they just like the nice music.

Fr. Stephen pointed out that Nessun Dorma alone makes little sense without the rest of the story and suggested that the same is happening today with Advent. People know the Christmas songs but they make no sense on their own. They end like Nessun Dorma with a single chord on Christmas day an make no sense because they do not continue in to Easter. He showed us Madonna of the Meadow by Giovanni Bellini and Michaelangelo's Pieta. Pointing out that when the Angel comes to Mary and she says "Yes" and we say "Isn't it lovely" we really need to think about what she is saying "Yes" too.

Next he talked about variations. Focussing on Elgar's Variations. Elgar started with a theme and then wrote variations based around people he knew. The point is this, the variations were totally different and reflected the different people's lives and personalities. However, the theme is the same. In the Christian life, the theme is Christ and our lives should be variations on his life. Fr. Stephen suggested that as an examination of conciense we think about how our own variation on the theme might sound if Elgar were to write a variation based on our lives. Would there be any part of the music we would want to change?

Finally, he talked about the Church as Fugue. Having overheard a man describe the Church as a Fugue he explored the idea. This was particularly interesting for me as I got to learn not only Fr. Stephen's point but also what a fugue actually is. The shortest description I can think of is that it's a bit like if Elgar's variations all happened at the same time... no, that's a rubbish description. How about if I just say that this is one. Once again, Fr. Stephen talked about Jesus Christ as the central theme and our lives as variations upon it. Lest this sound like religious pluralism (we're all different and nobody is wrong) Fr. Stephen was very clear on the point that the original theme had to be the same and suggested John 3:16 as the central theme.

My description only skims the surface really, if Fr. Stephen does another one of these (and I hope he does) then you should all go. It's well worth £12 and very good.