One more on Commencement, and I’ll be done, I think

I thought I was finished grousing about Commencement, but there’s more.

I do love Commencement, honestly. I love the ceremony. I love the intimacy of the School of Music holding its own ceremony on its own stage, using its own organ and organist. But I have blogged in this little set of posts about some elements of it that gnaw at my patience. When the very nature of ceremony begins to be threatened, I begin to pace like a caged tiger. My displeasure at all that is identical to my displeasure with the ongoing bastardization of liturgy at every turn in every denomination for the past few decades. Hey, it's my job; it's what I do. So here's one more component of our Commencement exercises that has begun to drive me crazy:

This University holds seven separate Commencements, divided by college unit. About four years ago, upper Administration decided that Commencement proper should begin at the advertised hour and that, therefore, the procession should commence at fifteen minutes before the hour. This has necessitated wordier advertisements of procedure and start times, and it has wrought a bit of havoc with the ceremony for the smaller processions that don’t take fifteen minutes (such as the School of Music and some other smaller units – ours takes about 7).

Perhaps the more liturgically-minded reader can appreciate the liturgical incorrectness of this decision. To advertise a ‘service’ for a certain hour but then to say that there will be fifteen minutes of ‘pre-game’ attractions sends the clearest message that those fifteen minutes are not part of the service. But would my Episcopal and Lutheran friends want to concede that the opening voluntary and opening processional hymn are not part of the ceremony? Would anyone want to concede that if the procession is not part of the ceremony, then the network cameras don’t need to be turned on until the princess bride has arrived at the altar? Heavens, no, folks. The procession is half the show. It’s the pretty part. All those pretty colors processing into place. It IS the show, and the rest of the ceremony feeds out of that pageantry. Well, that’s all I have to say about that.

The truth is that none of this will change, I'm sure. I'm howling at the wind to think that Administration will listen to a lowly music professor. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be nice if a music professor were listened to on musical matters, especially if the present matter is also of a [secular] liturgical nature, one of this professor’s specialties. Well, this is why it’s all being blogged about here, rather than being sent to Administration in a memo.