Spring is Here

if you know where to look

       

     I went for my usual snowshoe today. The sun on my face felt warm. The water pooled behind the back shed door was beginning to navigate its daily phase change from solid to liquid. I found more patches of bare ground in the woods than I saw on my last ramble over this forest. 

            

          Some of these patches persisted all winter, even during the snowiest times, in places where liquid water flowed on the warmest of days. Now they are growing. I imagine that the forest creatures are as glad for them as I am--or maybe more glad, since they provide water, I'm sure, for deer and fox and such. 

          

           I am always glad to see the evidence of flowing water. Last month I posted a picture of our spring house nearly buried in snow. The snow is mostly still with us, but there is a clear stream-bed running downhill from the spring-house now. The progress of a month is evident in the percentage of brown and green showing in this photograph. In another month, there will only be little piles of snow and the forest will sport its new green leaves and early forest flowers.

     

     These small signs of spring turn my mind in the direction of windowsill seedlings, garden improvements, and that expansiveness only experienced when the temperature outside stays above freezing for weeks at a time. Even though my field is still covered in snow more than three feet deep, I am planning for summer. 

  

      The trees are planning too. For years I've been enamored of the looks of the Moose Maple as it prepares for a summer's profusion of large soft leaves. That particular shade of red and the smooth arc of diametrically opposed twigs decorated with fecund dagger-shaped buds and precise scribes always makes me stop to look deeply. 

      Then there are the beech trees. Hanging on to the parchment of last summer's leaves, they wrap their new spring green in tight golden spears. The cold spring breeze ruffles their paper-thin old leaves to make the most gentle sound. What better example do we need of enjoying the present while still preparing for the future without worry? I can't imagine the beech trees in their profusion worrying about what is to come at all. I can imagine them looking forward to the color combinations possible when the gold spears open up to the green-laced-with-red wet leaves, giving way to the clearest green of all, followed by the most valuable gold in the forest. Ubiquitous, but lovely, beech trees have much to teach us. 

   

      I am studying their lessons as I prepare for the next month's Music as Meditation. April 7th brings another opportunity to share my music with listeners in the quiet of the sanctuary at Christ Episcopal Church. I'll be playing one of Edvard Grieg's lyric pieces called "To Spring" and showing off a perky little polka-etude for piano. 

     

          Cecile Chaminade gave us an Elegie that I'll play to honor those trees long gone from the realm of the living, but still feeding the forest around them. I'll share some ideas for a new set of etudes in each major key and some themes from a string trio I completed in the past month. 

           

          It has not only been the forest reminding me of my connection to other beings this month. I experienced the fun of sending out one of my recent compositions to violinists I know. Three of these lovely people wrote back to thank me for the trio and to assure me that they would share it. Already 20 people have downloaded it from the International Music Score Library Project. 

    

          That success tapping into the web of us all, along with those trees preparing for the right moment to bring the world their leaves, leave me with a kind of optimism too rooted in reality to shake. I look forward to sharing it with listeners on Sunday, April 7 at 5 PM at Christ Episcopal Church in North Conway, NH. 

       

     

      

Music as Meditation Resumes

Sunday, March 3, 2019

Our spring house looking from downhill. I am grateful for the water security 

all this snow will bring us next summer. 

As  March approaches on the calendar, I'm looking forward to sharing reflections of a very snowy winter at Music as Meditation. That series of contemplative music and words resumes on Sunday, March 3 at 5 PM at Christ Episcopal Church in North Conway, NH. I have new music of my own to share, along with a student-teacher duet, and some images about the arc of life gleaned from my woods on Davis Hill and my experiences over the last few months. 

I've been traversing my little bit of woods on a pair of silly plastic snowshoes. I purchased these snowshoes at the ESSC ski sale in the fall of 2002, when I had yet to experience a New Hampshire winter. They were inexpensive and I thought my kids might use them. It turns out that these toys are my current favorite snow accouterments. They allow me access to my beloved woods despite 5 feet of snow on the ground.

     The first snow of 2002 came on October 25th--a fact I remember because it was my son's 13th birthday. I remember his joy at that first New Hampshire snowfall. I'm not sure he retained that joy in the first snow as he gained a few more years and more experience of North Country winter from the working end of a snow shovel. Now he lives in Colorado where he can enjoy winter without needing to shovel much since snow there usually melts directly after falling.  I say usually because I recently experienced the joy of walking through his snowy Colorado neighborhood with him and his dog Lucy in tow; as we made our way around the lake near his house, I witnessed sparks of that eager child still residing in my grown-up boy. 

I arrived in Colorado from my hometown of Salina, Kansas, chauffered by that really-rather-mature young man who is my son. He picked me up from my parent's house where I'd been trying to help my very competent mother recover from knee surgery. I say trying to help, because she had made such preparations, and there were so many solicitous relatives around that nobody could help much, but we all enjoyed the family fellowship and rehearsing our shared heritage through stories, knitting, cooking, and music. 

After that refreshing time with family, I found myself home and sitting at my beloved Chickering. I almost didn't know how to begin, but I reached out and played a resonant E flat chord. What came next can only be described as a gift; in one sitting, this etude fell out of the sky and into my hands. I'll be playing it at Music as Meditation.  

My friend Ann Strachan will join me for Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel. This piece never fails to smooth over any ruffled feathers I have and make me aware of the essential peace subtending our temporal existence. Ann and I, who are age-mates, have spent some time talking about this peace as we've prepared this music and enjoyed sharing life stories. 

    

Though it is true that we cannot transcend our time of life, we do have the ability to experience something of the eternal through our reflections. This season, I've been contemplating trees and how those beings exist in the eternal cycle of growth and decay. You can read a photo poem called Amid The Forest by clicking on the page by that title on the right-hand side of this blog. 

     

     

Salina Meditations

    Tomorrow is the first Sunday of February. I had planned to return to my Music as Meditation Schedule, but priorities I often forget to pay attention to caused me to change my mind. I am spending some time in my hometown--Salina, Kansas, instead. Don't come to Christ Church tomorrow. I do hope to be back at the Steinway in beautiful North Conway on the first Sunday in March. In the meantime, I'm engaging in some Salina Meditations.

    Today is a beautiful spring day; I know the calendar does not indicate spring on this groundhog day, but the temperature and the humidity do. If I lived here, I would be tempted to plant some peas today in the hopes that I would get a very early crop. The air is rich with moisture, the sidewalks are wet, and the ground smells like Kansas. 

     This morning I played Mary Had a Little Lamb on the piano in my childhood living room with grand-niece who is seven years old. She just had her first piano recital, shepherded into this experience by my sister who is also a piano teacher. Later today, my sister and I will likely make some family music. 

     Every time I visit my family and this town I am grateful for the strong heritage the "accident" of my birth gave me. I drew my first breath in a musical family living in a musical town. I began piano lessons even before I could really read words, making music a language as natural to me as the brand of English people speak out here, giving extra vowels to many syllables and making a breathy sound at the beginnings of WH words. I even heard my mother say "strip-ed" (two syllables!) yesterday. 

    So instead of a Musical Meditation this month, I offer you a photo meditation of my hometown. I just wish you could hear the accent embedded in the photo captions. 

Yes, Grain elevators really do look like that. 

You can't really see the mural painted on the glass windows that top this Art-Deco warehouse in the North end, but they always remind me of the art classes I attended in those warehouse buildings.

I'm fascinated with this old warehouse building which belonged to the Lee company. I've taken many artsy pictures of it over the years. This is the latest.

This is the bike bike rack stationed at the City's new "Field House."I love its self-referential nature. 

And this is home.

I'll see you all in March. Several people are planning to play with me. We'll have some violin and piano music, and some flute and piano music. Who knows what else the Kansas light and landscape will inspire. 

Indra's Net Revisited

Indra's Net

"Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering "like" stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring."

This quote comes from a well-documented Wikipedia articles on Indra's Net. It is cited as coming from this book: Cook, Francis H. (1977) Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra, Penn State Press, ISBN 0-271-02190-X. 

I'm inspired to post here my musical reflection on this scripture. I chose to write a fugue on this text a few years ago. Here is a recording made by my friends--each of whom is a pearl of great price who reflects the light of all, to be sure. In case you have a group of friends who sing and you want the sheet music, here is the SSAB version and here is the SATB version of the piece. 

A fugue seemed appropriate since each voice reflects the other voices--like the jewels in the net. This conception of the universe as filled with being capable of reflrecting and re-reflecting light from the source is a comfort to me. If I am one of the jewels all I have to do is faithfully let the light that comes from others, and from the pervasive and unnameable source shine through me. It is a beautiful vision. 

The students of 

Davis Hill Studio

present

       Eaton Village will be the scene for a program of autumn-oriented piano music On Friday, November 9^th at The Little White Church. Students from the Davis Hill Studio will play a recital of piano music on the beautiful Steinway piano at the Little White Church. The venue's high windows, old-fashioned lights, and picturesque setting will be perfect for listening to autumnal pieces. The selections range from the creepy to the transcendent. The program includes music about a haunted house, music by Dmitri Kabelevsky, a march by Dmitri Shostakovich, Edvard Grieg's “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” and the slow movement from Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata. Some of the students are as young as 7 and some have been playing piano for more than 50 years.

       The concert takes place at 6:30 PM. The recital is presented by Ellen Schwindt, teacher at the Davis Hill Studio. Call 603-447-2898 for more information or e-mail ellenmschwindt@gmail.com

Music as Meditation: Mourning for Strangers

     In 1936 Paul Hindemith performed his composition TrauerMusik (Music for Mourning) to mark the death of King George V of England. Hindemith was in London to play another concert, but the King's death caused the authorities to cancel the concert planned. Hindemith spent the better part of a work day—from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM crafting an 8-minute piece for the funeral. The piece ends with a Chorale Hindemith knew from Bach—what is often called Bach's “deathbed chorale.”

     It is safe to say that Paul Hindemith, an up-and-coming composer of the time, never met King George V personally. That remove did not stop him from writing lachrymose funeral music. The composer himself played solo viola in the piece's first performance. He wrote at length about the experience in a letter dated 23 January 1936, saying he "did some pretty hefty mourning." and that in the end the performance was "very moving.” 

     

     In our world full of violence and injustice on one hand and ubiquitous news on the other, I find frequent reasons to feel something like grief for strangers. November's Music as Meditation includes some music that comes from such feelings and some music that embraces the light that is always waiting for us on the other side of grief. Chris Nourse and I will play TrauerMusik and another piece from the repertoire of Paul Hindemith for viola and piano. Amy Berrier joins us to play a Vivaldi concerto for two violas. Amy and Chris will present a duo by Telemann. A piece by J.S. Bach, the final movement of my second piano sonata, and a poem complete the program. The poem arrived almost whole in my mind this morning, after an evening of practice and preparation. I print it here: 

Mourning for Strangers

If

we are all connected,

truly one,

simply imperfectly and temporarily differentiated inalienable motes of spirit and matter.

Then

It is nigh logical

this grief I feel for the world,

for the children forced to perform and conform,

for the grown-ups trapped by wanting,

for those who die a violent death

the news of which violence travels through the rest of us left

in shock-waves through ether.

It is right that in this time

as I watch myself and my fellows spin through days denying our very nature

that I find myself

mourning for strangers.

The End of Summer—The Beginning of the New Year

The Celts reckoned time differently than we do. They began counting the days of the year in the fall, when days are short and the nights long. This timing makes intuitive sense to me. The end of the summer—of the growing season—is the end of one cycle and the beginning of the earth's rest. Inevitably, this time of year induces reflection in me; I retrace steps, think about the possibilities of time to come, and evaluate where I am now. A lot of this reflection happens as I bring in the harvest—either while I'm standing still soaking up the last rays of warm sunshine or as I'm scurrying to and from from garden to root cellar ahead of an impending frost.

This year, when the warmth of the September sun turned to chill October rain, plans for the Music as Meditation program tracked the shift from light to dark in accordance with the season; light and dark music from regions of stillness and motion found its way onto the program at the impetus of some talented musicians who will share their gifts on Sunday. Doris Henney and Nancy Farris have been playing together to prepare a performance of Poulenc's flute sonata. This work is light and dark and still and moving; few musical pieces are lighter—but few are deeper.

The rest of the program continues the contrast of light and dark. Small pieces by Edvard Grieg, Béla Bartók, and J.S. Bach and Ellen Schwindt's improvisations weave through images and ideas for encouraging us to treasure the waning days of warmth left before the snow comes. One part of the program invites listeners to look as well as listen. I will be gathering some tokens of the changing season for our contemplation during one particular improvisation. I've been thinking of this kind of thing as participatory listening and I hope to hear from listeners how this practice plays for them. At the close of our time together, Nancy Farris will send us into the autumn evening with a virtuosic performance of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in d minor—that most famous of gifts J. S. Bach left for us all.

This Music as Meditation takes place at 5 PM at Christ Episcopal Church on the corner of Pine and Main Streets in North Conway. Admission is free. I hope to share this program with many of you.