Found, 2/12/16

The plan is to spend the season of Lent looking for signs of the Divine in the world around me, and to share what I find.

It is a special kind of finding, catching soft strains of Mozart coming from his room late at night. He first heard this music when he was four, on a story CD borrowed from the public library. We listened over and over, and I plan to never forget how long it always took for him to put his socks on in the morning, busy as he was singing "Der Holle Rache." For months now, he has gone to bed with this music playing softly in the background. I imagine how the notes work into head and heart, how rich it is to sleep with these phrases braiding through the body, vining along muscles, nerves, synapses. Bird man and prince, music and silence, the Temple of Ordeals. All of it finding its way in. Something new finding its way out.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Listen (Play It the Way You Would Sing It)

Family Camp a few weeks ago: we were singing, and Youngest crawled into my lap. When she pressed her head against my chest I must have stopped singing, wondering if she was okay.

She sat up slightly. “Keep singing.” Then she pressed her ear against my chest. That’s when I realized she was listening, feeling the vibrations of my voice.

I asked her about it later. “Were you listening to me sing?”

“Yeah. I could kind of hear you differently. Like, ‘Doooooooooooooh’” she held her hands out by either side of her head and shook them slightly to illustrate.

    *     *     *

I remember as a child calling my mom for something; she was upstairs, I was downstairs. And once while I called out, “Mo-ommm!” my lips formed a spit bubble, and the word sounded different. Soon I was trying to make a bubble every time I called “Mom!” and then I tried the word with my hands over my ears, then with my fingers stuck in my ears, then one-eared, then ears rapidly covered and uncovered. I don’t remember when my mom showed up to see what was the matter. By the time she got there I can’t imagine I knew what I’d wanted. I was too busy playing with sound, listening to my voice in all its permutations.

I wonder, now, how many times that happened.

    *     *     *

The summer between my junior and senior year of college I attended a wonderful music festival in the mountains of Colorado. It was a fabulous opportunity—9 weeks of intense orchestra playing, two programs a week of important repertoire, much of which I had never before played. What I kept to myself while I was there was that I was there as an alternate. Second (or maybe 3^rd?) choice, and I didn’t want anybody else to suspect that maybe I didn’t really belong there. I practiced a lot, but there’s only so much cramming you can do in 2 ½-3 days.

What helped me more than anything was learning a new way to listen.

Maybe a deeper way says it better. I don’t know how to describe it, exactly, except to say that I learned to tune in to the other instruments, and to the orchestra as a whole, in a way I never had before. I needed to do more than simply play my part at the same time as everybody else. Really participating meant a kind of listening that followed along with my peers. I had to anticipate, respond, join in.

*     *     *

Playing on automatic is frighteningly easy. Finger here, finger here, note, note, note. This-then-that. When I was a child and teachers were trying to get me to engage with the music, they most often told me to play it the way I would sing it, or to sing along with myself as I played.

It works.

Singing along with yourself in your head makes for playing that is engaged, aware, alive. It creates music that communicates and responds.

That’s something more than playing with the right timing, or being completely in tune.

And I’ve been thinking that this is something that extends into the rest of life. I think about basic interactions, and conversations, and relationships, and it’s true of them as well: hearing is good. Listening and understanding is even better. But listening in a way that is active and engaged, that follows the other person as if you were singing a duet together—anticipating where the other person is going and moving-with, but at the same time always ready, responsive, for the quick 180s and subtle inflections you never expected—that’s the kind of interaction or conversation or relationship you remember and crave and strive for.

What would that be like, living it the way you would sing it?

Some inspiration for you (Leontyne Price and Carlo Bergonzi, Aida, "O terra addio." 5 ½ minutes, but feels longer, in the best of ways.)

 

 

 

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

'Tis the Season

Forgive me if you are tired of this music. I am not. Many Decembers of my childhood meant a chance to see “The Nutcracker,” and if I was lucky, “Hansel and Gretel,” as well. So far in my adult life I’ve had the chance to play in the pit for each of them only once, and I loved every moment. Maybe if I’d played them more I would be bored with them, but maybe not. Like grilled cheese sandwiches and butterscotch malts, I suspect some things are just good forever. In my world, at least.

This still slays me.

As does this.

(I checked.)

Duke Ellington’s version of the Nutcracker Suite was new to me (fun vintage promotional video here), but I enjoyed that immensely, as well. And look—an accompanying picture book with CD:

More Nutcracker resources here and here.



Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Mosaic

I was working on September Birthday Cake No. 4 yesterday (Middle’s, chocolate with cream cheese frosting, decorated with strawberries and hearts) and pondering musical memories when I opened the cupboard over my stove and got showered with pearly cake decorations. Now, I have a habit of thinking that if I can get a door or lid or suitcase closed it means that whatever’s inside fits. I am sometimes wrong. At least this time when something came flying out at me I didn’t have to get stitches. (I also have a habit of using my stovetop as extra counterspace, and then not paying close-enough attention to which burner I turn on. It hasn’t happened for a while, but can you see the partially-melted handle on the scissors in the background? Yeah.)

So I looked at my mess, the pearly cake decorations and scissors with the partially-melted handle, and had a dark moment in which I decided I was looking at clear evidence of what a mess I was in general.

And then I looked at my mess and thought, “Those pearly cake decorations look very pretty spilled all over the black stovetop.”

*       *       *

Before my little mess I had been thinking about how pieces of things lodge themselves in your soul and become part of you, maybe in ways you don’t even realize. How it seems, sometimes, that we are completely made up of fragments.

*       *       *

Take the Mozart Violin Concerto in A Major. Learning it in college was like learning no other piece, ever. I felt like I already knew it, like I was re-learning it. I have felt that way before, especially as a child, with pieces I’d heard older kids play so often that I knew the notes inside-out before I started “working” on them. But this concerto was a much more extreme case. I’ve never learned anything so effortlessly. I actually called my dad, to ask if I’d somehow worked on it before and simply forgotten.

It turns out that when I was an infant my parents played an Oistrakh recording of this concerto for me every day. For months and months. Once, when I was 3 or 4 months old, my mom left the house to run a short errand while I was taking a nap. My dad was practicing Bartok, getting ready for a performance. And I woke up almost immediately, and cried and cried. Hoping to not lose rare practice time, my dad switched to "my" Mozart concerto, and I calmed down and smiled. So he switched back to Bartok. And I started crying. And we went back and forth for quite a while, between Bartok and Mozart, crying and smiling. To this day my dad is certain I knew the difference.

Somehow this piece is part of me—it is my piece—more than any other.

*       *       *

There is other music like this, too, though—fragments that have taken hold.

The Dream Pantomime from “Hänsel and Gretel,” by Engelbert Humperdinck, for example. I’m not sure how many Decembers I accompanied my parents to their performances of this with the Minnesota Opera, but in my head the music melds with Christmastime, and slushy parking lots, and the sound of my boots clunking through backstage hallways, and entering the theater by climbing out of the orchestra pit, and sitting next to my sister trying to figure out which angel surrounding Hänsel and Gretel was the one we knew, the son of one of the horn players in the pit with my parents. By 1:24 in the Pantomime I am ten years old again and there in the darkness with those lost children; danger and hurt and hope are rising up together around them, and around me and my sister, as well. When I finally played this opera as an adult, I suddenly understood where so much of my taste in music comes from.

There is, also, the memory of my grandparents’ house one summer, not being able to sleep because I could not breathe, and how it felt—sitting with my grandma on her porch on a vinyl-cushioned glider, eating butter brickle ice cream and looking at distant city lights while Pachelbel's Canon in D played in the background, still not getting quite enough air but feeling calmer, and safe.

There are symphonies—Dvorak 9 and Tchaikovsky 5 and Bruckner 7—music that when I played it for the first time I thought: “I knew this existed! I’ve always known and now I have proof!”

*       *      *

Sometimes the pieces that make up a life are bits picked up along the way, treasures gleaned and held safe. Sometimes the pieces are really just pieces, what’s left of something shattered—jagged shards—but still they work their way in. Somehow the treasured bits and jagged shards intermingle. At a certain point, who is to say which is which? Maybe you get to step back from them to see better, maybe you don’t. But together they form something new.

Something whole.



Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Amahl and the Night Visitors

A big thank-you to my friend, Joanna, for reminding me about this opera! Amahl and the Night Visitors is a one-act opera written by Gian Carlo Menotti. It was the first opera written for television, and premiered on Christmas Eve, 1951, on NBC.

This is both the Christmas story told from a distance and the story of a poor, disabled shepherd boy and his widowed mother. The pair are at the end of their resources and on the verge of resorting to begging so they will not starve to death. Amahl is a dreamer, and often gets in trouble for telling tales, so when he sees a new star in the sky one night, his mother does not believe him. Besides, she is more concerned with the fact that she cannot feed her son.

Later that night they are visited by three kings who are following the star, bearing rich gifts for the Christ Child. They ask to stay for the night, and while Amahl goes to get the neighbors the kings tell his mother about the Child they are seeking. Amahl’s mother cannot help but think of the child closest to her heart, to whom nobody will bring gifts.

After food and entertainment provided by neighboring shepherds, everybody turns in for the night. Amahl’s mother, however, is unable to sleep, haunted by the wealth surrounding her in her poverty. She tries to steal some of the kings’ gold, but is caught by their page, who awakens everybody. Amahl tries to defend her and collapses in her arms. The kings tell her she may keep the gold, that the Child they seek doesn’t need it, and they go on to describe the kind of king he will be. When the mother hears their description she breaks down, saying that she’s waited for a king like that all her life, and she wants to send Him a gift of her own. Amahl agrees, and offers the thing most precious to him—the crutch that helps him walk. He holds it out to the kings, and finds that he has miraculously taken a step without it. He has been healed. After much dancing and celebrating, he and his mother agree that he should offer his thanks to the Christ Child in person, and he joins their caravan as they leave to follow the star.

I’ve enjoyed a variety of TV Christmas specials in my life, but this one is entirely in a league of its own. You can watch it on DVD if you aren’t lucky enough to have a live production in your area, and maybe your local library has this book—adapted by Frances Frost and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin, containing all the dialogue of the opera in story form—tucked away somewhere.

 

An Introduction to Gilbert & Sullivan

The Fabulous Feud of Gilbert & Sullivan by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Richard Egilski, Arthur A. Levine Books, 2009

Arthur Sullivan wanted to write serious music, but his friend W.S. Gilbert kept writing the same silly opera plot over and over again. It looked like their friendship and opera-writing partnership were finished until Mr. Gilbert came up with something entirely new--“The Mikado”, and it was a huge hit.




It’s my understanding that these two had more than one feud of this sort, but this was a great introduction to who these men were and what their relationship and their music were like. I discovered this book at our local library a few weeks ago, and it inspired me to dig a little deeper. So we borrowed The Pirates of Penzance from the library and had a middle-of-the-week movie night. Definitely time for something light around here. It was lots of fun. Kevin Kline makes a great pirate king—I’ve been watching this number over and over all week.

I’m not aware of many other children’s books that deal with Gilbert & Sullivan operas, but I did find these vintage goodies:

The Gondoliers

The Pirates of Penzance

The Yeomen of the Guard

Iolanthe

H.M.S. Pinafore

The Mikado

These Curtain-Raiser Books (Franlin Watts, Inc.) are from 1965 and 1966, and are retellings of six G & S operas. The illustrations are by Anne and Janet Grahame Johnstone.  A great follow-up to Jonah Winter’s book to see just how similar some of Gilbert's plots are.

I just had to throw this in, too: Anna Russell on “How to Write Your Own Gilbert & Sullivan Opera”

Enjoy!

Resources for Children: Opera

"I adore art...when I am alone with my notes, my heart pounds and the tears stream from my eyes, and my emotion and my joys are too much to bear." -Giuseppe Verdi

I love opera--the beauty, the emotion, the blending of words and music, the set and costumes.  I wish it didn't seem so unapproachable, or stuffy, or whatever it is that people think about opera.  Get to know it a little bit and you'll find stories and beautiful melodies--how can you go wrong with that?  True, there's often a lot of death, and realism is not always high priority.  You can end up with a diva singing an amazingly beautiful and difficult aria while she is supposedly drawing her last tuberculosis-wracked breaths.  But honestly, how many times have you found yourself watching an action movie and wishing everybody would just die so the car chase/fight with the alien/gun battle would end?  (Or maybe that's just me.)  Opera is definitely its own thing.  But it's worth looking into and introducing your children to (just preview the stories, because they're not all rated "G").  Here are a few books to get you started:

Aïda told by Leontyne Price, illustrated by Leo & Diane Dillon









The Barefoot Book of Opera Storiesby Sharukh Husain, illustrated by James Mayhew









Bravo! Brava! A Night at the Opera: Behind the Scenes with Composers, Cast and Crew by Anne Siberell, introduction by Frederica von Stade

Brundibar retold by Tony Kushner after the opera by Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister, pictures by Maurice Sendak






The Dog Who Sang at the Opera by Jim West & Marshall Izen, illustrated by Erika Oller








The Great Poochini by Gary Clement









The Magic Flute adapted by Anne Gatti, illustrated by Peter Malone








Opera Cat by Tess Weaver, illustrated by Andrea Wesson









 Encore, Opera Cat! by Tess Weaver, illustrated by Andrea Wesson









The Random House Book of Opera Stories retold by Adèle Geras










Sing Me a Story: The Metropolitan Opera’s Book of Opera Stories for Children by Jane Rosenberg, introduction by Luciano Pavarotti







A Soup Opera by Jim Gill, illustrated by David Moose
When Marian Sang: The True Recital of Marian Anderson, The Voice of a Century by Pam Munoz Ryan, illustrated by Brian