Greenwood Cemetery 4/10/12

i will grow old 

and grow apart from all that's dear to me

i will grow old

i will grow old

sickness and death will surely come to me
i will go on

i will go on

in the sun

there is nothing that is done

(earth and sun)

 

here, i have made huge mistakes

i haven't been all that i could be

i've fought, hidden, and lied

i haven't seen what's right before me

i am subject to illness, to blind spots

and blind sides

 

i fall heir to all of this — even to forgiveness

i do not know

that there'll be golden gates or glassy sea

if there'll be hands, or face, to welcome me

i'll be alone and will not know

that dawn will break

fearless as the heart — leveled — after an earthquake

It is enough: tintinnabuli

It is a choral piece I've been working on — my first — and so I am listening to and studying the choral works of Arvo Pärt.

This is interesting. After a particular period of self-imposed silence and contemplation, Pärt emerged with a new approach to composition he calls "tintinnabuli" (little bells) and this epiphany:  "I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played."

It is enough, it is enough, it is enough. I do think that one of the hardest things for me when writing music is trusting that simplicity is enough. It is enough to be singing a simple note, possibly repeating it or repeating the phrase, playing a simple chord, a simple melody, with a simple harmonization. It can be hard to sit with just one word or phrase. It takes enormous amounts of patience and confidence to let it have itself, without quickly distracting the listener with the next phrase just in case this one isn't good enough.

The piece I'm working on hasn't figured out what it is yet. On the one hand, it's tugging to be an old-time American call and response hymn — like I'll Fly Away or In the Sweet By and By — yet it's also pulling to be a modern choral piece —through-composed, working in fragments and phrases rather than ABABAB repetition. I feel the tug in these two directions every time I sit down to work on it. I haven't found the answer yet so I'm listening, listening, listening. To Ives, to Pärt, then Bach and Billings.

I already know Fanny Crosby, Isaac Watts, Philip P. Bliss, Lowell Mason, and William Bradbury by heart. I have been singing them all my life. Maybe I should just follow the obvious and see where it leads me.

Here are two samples from each side of the spectrum:

American call and response hymns:



Arvo Pärt's "O Morgenstern" from Sieben Magnificat-Antiphonen:

I Never Met Charles Ives

I've been listening to "alot" of Ives. From his biography via the immensely useful Charles Ives Society, Inc.:

...Charles Ives came to associate everyday music with profound emotions and spiritual aspirations. One of his father's most resonant pieces of wisdom came when he said of a stonemason's off-key hymn singing: "Look into his face and hear the music of the ages. Don't pay too much attention to the sounds--for if you do, you may miss the music. You won't get a wild, heroic ride to heaven on pretty little sounds."

Charles Ives grew up determined to find that wild, heroic ride, that music of the ages--the spiritual power he felt in the singing at outdoor camp meetings and in bands marching during holidays. It would take many years of struggle and experiment, however, before he fully possessed the musical language to transform that spirit into orchestral and chamber music.

A man before my own heart. I hope it takes me fewer years of struggle and experiment to fully possess the musical language to transform that spirit into songwriting. Because Ives started at the age of 13 and I've gotten off to very a late start.

Orchestral Set No. 2 - III - From Hanover Square North, at the End of a Tragic Day, the Voices of the People Again Arose

Thank you, you sweet puffy white sheep

One year ago this week, I posted my original blog entry on Spotsylvania's Marching Knights, stating my intentions as I launched a journey into my own musical voice. Oh! the places we have gone! The adventures!

From dragging my old wooden Holton horn case through Times Square for rehab lessons, to using the Google to find a vocal coach who strips away the lacquer and makes me cry time after time, to the moment when I realized I needed a major lifestyle change, to the flow chart I created in order make the Big Decision, to the announcement that I was leaving my job.

Tracing my origins, I easily uncovered my own musical homeland: marching band, a cappella hymns (in the shape note tradition), and acoustic singer-songwriters from the 70's and 90's.

I got brave and took a baby step by posting some lyrics about Justin Bieber's news cycle in July and about my husband's laundry in November, before admitting that I'd been wholly insincere for months.

Then I put my Courage Tights on and posted my first-ever recorded song (newgrass!) in December. It was enough to make me want to do it again, so I cataloged my existing 30 songs or so, and was in the process of getting a band together (we look like this in stick figures), when a blues tune called My Baby's Gone to Vegas wrote itself at me last week, so I just went ahead and recorded it even though I don't know how to use the recording software or play the ukulele.

In all this, I'd braced myself for the viper's den but instead landed in a barrel full of puffy white sheep. Within two days of posting my first song, I was contacted for a hometown press interview and realized I need to learn how to speak in better sound bytes. Most importantly, however, I got sweet personal notes from all over — friends and friends of friends far and wide — who heard my song and were moved by it, touched by the words I wrote all those years ago. My parents cried, my in-laws cried (!), one of my super tough lady grandmas listens to it every day and cries (!!), my older brothers finally admitted I'm not adopted . . .

And that is all I've ever wanted. So thank you. Super extra thank you. And this is the year that I intend to get a band together to play a real live show, so please stay tuned and hold on to your ******* hat. (Period.)