by Fred Moleck
Mark of an Expert
Two weeks ago I introduced you to Michael Ruhlman’s Elements of Cooking,which carries a lot more than a glossary of cooking terms.
On pages 48–49 is the brief, but profound, definition of finesse by Lulu Peyraud, the owner of the Provençal vineyard Domaine Tempier.
The definition included the element of “spiritual,” which should not go unnoticed by anyone in our business.
At this point, I want to interject the element of “expertise,” or the mark of an expert when she or he is plying his or her skill, craft, and art. It is so obvious that it is sometimes hidden.
Let’s say the expert person is a chef who rarely measures the ingredients or times how long to stir the roux, but when he or she is stirring or tasting or assembling the food on a plate, it comes off as if it were very easy and not labored.
Let’s say the expert person is a classical guitarist who is performing Rodrigo’s Concerto, which is loaded with demanding displays of agile technique. The agility is key. The expert simply whips it off without batting an eye.
Expertise is not limited to the four-star restaurant kitchen or the concert hall. Expertise is observable in a preschool classroom or even, dare I say it, at the Sunday Eucharist at a Catholic church.
The church I have in mind is not far from the Great Lakes, a small building—not a cathedral—and an expert guitarist and equally expert cantor who invites sung prayer with finesse and ease. I see them as experts.
After about forty-five seconds of silence, the guitarist moved with the cantor/psalmist/singer of the psalm to the ambo. Both moved gracefully. Both reverenced the altar on their way to the ambo.
Gracefully, the cantor stepped up to the ambo. She already had placed her “cantor book” on the shelf below the desk part, which means she had no need to remove the lectionary to make room for her book.
In fact, the cantor book was a three-ring binder that had everything she needed for the liturgy. She was spared juggling a hymnal, the octavo for the Gloria, a psalm book, the alleluia octavo, and her grocery list.
(Are we sensing some serious preparation here on the part of the music director?)
It took both of them all of ten seconds to begin the psalm without the tapping of the microphone just to see if it still was on and nodding to each other just to make sure both still wanted to sing and play the psalm.
She sang the verses with perfect diction. She did not sing the antiphon into the microphone. She simply gestured for the assembly at the first time for the antiphon. She did not gesture again, but simply looked up from her score at the assembly.
When the psalm was completed, she and the guitarist moved gracefully back to the music ministry area. They did not run.
Simple. Elegant. Musical. Prayerful. Stress-free . . . and all executed with ease.
That’s what happens when the musicians know what they are doing and they are doing it as experts with high finesse. Ease—the mark of an expert.
As I quoted in the previous discussion of this topic:
Finesse is the opposite of coarseness or crudeness. It is a light touch as opposed to heavy-handedness. It is spirituality, subtlety, and intelligence, from which comes an aptitude for knowledge and deeper understanding. It is also a matter of sensibility, of perceptiveness combined with a great deal of delicacy in regard to emotions and feelings. (Lulu Peyraud, quoted by Michael Ruhlman, The Elements of Cooking [New York: Scribner, 2007], 48)
You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@comcast.net