In The Swamp 5/2/2020

After my first post (1) several other similar memories have bubbled up. It turns out I’ve actually had quite a few episodes in which an experience with music precipitated something in my heart and mind, visions or thoughts unexpected and unpredictable by me and beyond or outside of any specific intent on the part of the composer or performer. I’m interested in delving deeper and sharing these moments. This sounds like an essentially self-absorbed enterprise, and some of the voices in my head are saying a hearty “Peeeyou!”(sp?) However, I’ve also been told that the realm of the personal, explored at adequate depth, opens up into a basement gateway to the universal, as with “individual” trees intertwined through shared fungal networks at intimate depths of soil. That is all to say I wouldn’t write this if I didn’t think hope or imagine that these stories weren’t also in some limited, refracted way possibly yours as well.

In that spirit, here are a pair of related memories. The first is from high school years, I’m probably 16, an early evening in late springtime. I was home all by myself, sprawled on my bed listening to compact discs and daydreaming; It was just now warm enough to keep the windows open most of the day, and I was enjoying a re-introduction to the smell of young leaves and the crackling hum of the streetlights

At this time for me, even more than now, music was a constant companion. A tween pop habit had by this time totally been put asunder by my passionate jazz-nut-hood, and most of my energies and time into pursuing Parker, Coltrane, Morgan, Hubbard, Shorter.. on and on. However, on this day I had raided my parents’ classical music collection, which was largely choral sacred music, with scattered symphonic and chamber works. I had a genuine, if small affection for western classical music, but I also was on a deliberate quest for new “influences” to add to my own linguistic toolbox as a (passionate, novice) jazz improviser and composer. My curiosity was real but with a calculated edge; a fishing trip for something with a hipness-bestowing difference…

On this day I ended up with Paul Hindemith’s Oratorio “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d (subtitled “A Requiem for Those We Love”) recorded by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, under the direction of Robert Shaw, who had originally commissioned this work from Hindemith in 1946 (this recording is from 1986.) “Lilacs” is a setting of the well-known Walt Whitman poem of the same name, an elegy to Abraham Lincoln upon his assassination. Shaw’s commissioning of the piece was in part a response to the death of another beloved American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the score bears a dedication to both men. However, I was more or less an open book to this piece, barely aware at the time of its thematic sources and having likely to that point never read a stanza of Whitman in my life.[2] [3]

The opening ominous bass note of the prelude of “Lilacs” hit a reset button and knocked all mental baggage off my shoulders anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx3hpEyUF80

Over this drone Hindemith spins and blurs an unlikely four-note cell into a texture that seems to simultaneously dissolve and accrue; I’m imagining a time-elapsed sunrise drawing an unknown terrain out of a few disjointed light glosses that turn out in hindsight to have been not-at- all predictive of the complete picture to come. Something about It sounded so thoroughly natural, one in essence with the earthy scents outside my window. The harmony kept downshifting through key centers that all felt inevitable and final, but usually gave way again, eliciting a feeling of broadening and gathering. I envisioned the sight of familiar landscapes from an airplane; places that had previously felt separate and distinct encompassed and made poetic by speed and scope. The intensity built, and I was totally softened up for the exhilarating full-orchestra crescendo to fortissimo (really loud!) This was the kind of musical gesture that at that time usually felt forced and uncalled- for to me, (as in, “c’mon, listen to this orchestra, trying to sound all tough!”) but this time I was all in, down to be overwhelmed.

On to the first movement,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT3U_vlRyl4

which presents a large chunk of the poem. I’m in awe of this writing on so many levels: I love the turbulent motion under the main theme, the way the melodic material is continually folded under and composted into harmony in a way that I know was a challenge to my clean-cut mental categories and understandings of how music was put together. I love the orchestration that expertly integrates voices and strings and the way that Hindemith alternates the baritone and full choir to highlight and elicit the contrasting experiences of mourning intimated in the poem. There is so much to appreciate here, and I suppose if you had to listen to just one movement from the whole work this one would be it. To the extent that I had come looking for fresh ideas about composition, this one was ticking all the boxes.

However, the moment that really stuck with and in me, that in my memory recasts all that precedes it to anticipatory context, is the 2nd movement, “Arioso-in the swamp” with mezzo soprano soloist Jan DeGaetani.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTPE8BeDrD4

At the outset, “Arioso” feels like the first genuine “landing” after a switchback descent from the prelude’s height. An English horn ushers in DeGaetani as other woodwinds gather at a distance, voicing a now-familiar “bird call” motive but now lower, plaintive…

“In the swamp… In secluded recesses….”

The richest imaginable (A) major chord knocked me out of flight dreams right back into my bedroom…( I vividly remember noticing that the sun seemed to have set all of a sudden!) and as that first warm sonority gave way to others, gradually climbing in pairs, the music seemed to inhabit the words uncannily…

“A shy, and hidden bird….is warbling a song

Solitary, the thrush,

The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,

Sings by himself a song

Song of the bleeding throat,

Death’s outlet song of life (for well dear brother, I know,

If thou wast not gifted to sing, thou woulds’t surely die)”

I felt a strange, rich, peace. To be sure, it’s a sad song, but from the viewpoint of deep acceptance and even triumph? This moment for me is so powerful and so distinctly lonely in my memory, but not in any way that you’d want to escape or heal from, just a delicious patience. There was also a feeling of wonder and possibility; to bounce off of the title, maybe akin to the revelation that the swamp has at least as much beauty and way more life than any peak.

I’m sure that I identified with this portrait of the thrush- “That’s me! I’m just like that bird!” Lol.

Believe me, I’m rolling my eyes with you at the thought of teenage me marinating in these particular words, with their clear potential to romanticize garden-variety adolescent angst. I was certainly not a happy camper, (although I also don’t think it’s possible for me now to report on my emotional state from this time with too much accuracy; all my memories from this far back are at best a reduction, long-simmered in stories told to myself and others.) However, there was clearly a withdrawn, depressive edge to me that I wasn’t all that in touch with. I was confident and secure in and around music but basically nowhere else, and I exuded enough of an alone-in-a-crowd vibe for several kind teachers to approach me with concern. In some way, this music and moment made me feel more aware of myself and what I was experiencing inside, but also more accepting and even a flavor of…joyful?...

To be clear, this was no epiphany that substantially changed my life or personality then and there, but somehow this music was communicating something vital to me, something good, true and powerful.

And then…he (Hindemith) got me again!

Two years later, I was a college freshman and newly inspired by a terrific music history class, I had purchased a CD of one of Hindemith’s more well- known works, Mathis Der Mahler (the symphony, there’s also an opera). This work is inspired by a piece of religious art, The Isenheim Altarpiece, painted by Mathais Grunewald. [4]

But once again when I first heard this piece I knew nothing at all of this. I was alone in my (dorm) room, near twilight, and about as sick as I’d ever been, having just woken up from a mononucleosis-induced 20 -hour nap! I put on “Mathis.” Here’s the second movement, “Grablegung” which I had no idea meant “burial” (but I think that I would have found that fitting to the moment.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CRm_meLskc

I don’t remember consciously thinking this at the time, but there are so many similarities here to “Arioso.” Now listening to them back to back, it feels as if Hindemith is reaching for the same sound-dream world in each. [5]! I’m only now in writing this realizing the degree to which I was probably emotionally called back to that first intense experience by the similarities of these two pieces.

There is the same sense of hopeful, regal gravity in the way the opening theme rolls out and over the listener,but as with “Lilacs” it was the pauses, the interruptions to the procession, that really spoke to me.

Listen from :49 to 1:27, this episode… and then again at 2:55 (and it especially reminds me of the Arioso at 3:27 with those sighing pairs of chords!)

In the context of the staid forward momentum of the rest of the piece, these window-like moments felt like a journey inward, to somewhere unbothered by events and circumstances, a place of essential “ok-ness.” I can remember having a specific vision of very old person (who was in some sense me?) contemplating their life, seeing hazy memories of loved ones and places. It felt good, not just “above it all,” but more like “around it all.” Describing this particular vision feels like frantically telling aloud the details of a dream upon waking and feeling hopeless to gather all the images before they lose all coherence!

Both of these specific sound-tracked interior scenes have lingered with me for decades now, the music, the thoughts and images, even the placement of furniture and the sun’s place in the sky, and I can still access something of this space through listening today.

I’d like to share one other favorite piece of music; one that I’ve listened to so many times that it’s unmoored to any particular moment or memory, but serves for me as a constant reminder of this same feeling, this glad-to-be-unhappy[6]solace that seems inclusive and transcendent of momentary difficulties. I return to this one all the time, as one does with a cherished poem or scripture verse.

“Chance” By Kenny Kirkland off of his eponymous GRP album, (in a trio with Jeff “Tain” Watts and a very young Christian Mcbride.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4sqRzvsgfk.

I’m not alone in my reverence for this particular tune (or album, or artist!) I’ve heard so many other jazz musicians claim this piece as especially moving, and spiritually potent. In my mind it is emotionally bookmarked with suffering and hope. Kirklands solo opening melody statement of “Chance” gives me the same initial melancholic feels as the Hindemith excerpts, and as Mcbride and Watts enter for the second pass, there is a familiar broadening, a view splaying outward, that for me tends to bring to mind folks from within my life or imagined representatives of painful struggle. The resolute dance of Kirkland’s solo seems to question, protest and “get to work” on an unnamed trial. What do you hear?

I do hear some musical connections between “Chance” and “Arioso” in particular, especially in the shape of the melody and in the palette of chord shapes being used (although just at the level of individual sonorities, not necessarily the progressions into which they are engaged)[7]

but I don’t necessarily think there’s any theoretical code to be cracked here, and if I speculate further about the content, I’d most likely just be twisting observations to further bind together things that I’ve already connected at a heart-level narrative.

I hope that you listen to this music, and that it speaks to you in some way, (or that you simply take pleasure in it!) but even as of course I hope that these descriptions resonate with you on some level, I am quite certain that none of the reactions to the music I retell here will be precisely duplicated in you or anyone else! I also am sure that the same feelings and messages I find in this music are abundantly available in a practical infinity of other music and art. Unlike the teenage me who wasn’t too sure, I’m now steadfast in the belief that we are each completely unique and wonder-filled in a specific way, and this can’t help but be reflected in that which we create. (and I include the listener as an important participant in the creative process; I believe that the reception of and reactions to a work also get a say in any questions of “meaning”.) This uniqueness need not be managed, curated or defended, it just asks for discovery, nurturing and acceptance. I hope the music and art (be it newly discovered or long-loved) that helps you feel connected and hopeful is speaking clearly to you in this frightening time.

Notes!!!

[1] “Time Feel” just a quick click away..

 [2] I may or may not have been aware that months before his untimely death (in 1955) the greatest of all saxophonists Charlie Parker had name-checked Hindemith in an interview, saying that he would like to study with the celebrated composer, who at the time held a position at Yale University, and that could have had something to do with my interest

[3] Some other fantastic musical settings of Whitman that I recommend:

“Leaves of Grass” by the Fred Hersch ensemble- this is my favorite part, featuring the amazing Kate McGarry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2ewUvdgVJ4

And this one, “Spire and Shadow” composed by my friend and Williams College colleague Zachary Wadsworth, (who has used several Whitman poems in his work including “Lilacs”)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7BiAc7Km9w&feature=youtu.be&t=3064

[4] “Mathis der Mahler” translates as “Matthais the Painter.”  https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/early-europe-and-colonial-americas/renaissance-art-europe-ap/a/grnewald-isenheim-altarpiece

This genre and style of visual art has not to this point ever “done it” for me, and I get a kick out of observing that a piece “about” a work that I don’t particularly feel drawn to is itself so moving to me

[5] I have had this sense in my own compositional work, completing one piece and having the apprehension that it is unintentionally the cousin of one of my previous pieces and that they are both incomplete attempts to capture something specific in my imagination. I think I also perceive this in the work of other folks, and here I’m running the risk of irresponsibly reading this idea onto Hindemith!

[6] Sounds like a good name for a tune, no? Here’s my favorite version, by Nancy Wilson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltoHzij7mV4

[7] If I was to walk down that theoretical path just a step…there is some quality about these rich major chords, especially Major 7th #11, and even more so when modulating directly and often, that seems to carry some kind of signature emotion. I’m thinking about jazz compositions like

  “Inner Urge” by Joe Henderson

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYxgci2uPno

 “Inner Space” by Chick Corea

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF0wbcxLK6M

and “Tomorrow’s Destiny” by Woody Shaw,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLgd3bQvBeE

  check them out if you’ve a minute (I think those titles are no accident, there’s a connection between a certain type of chord and emotional hue here.)