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AND THE MELODY LINGERS ON
Like particular odors certain music triggers memory, marking special moments and their moods, conjuring vivid familiarity, making the past instantly present, reassuring us that this unique memory would always be there, something permanent to rely upon as long as we are alive.
Like the first time I heard a professionally recorded version of the second song that I ever wrote at age 65, never imagining before that I could do this, certain that the second song would sound as bad as the first one.
It wasn’t. At least to my ears it was beautiful…very sad and stark in its lyrics, but perfectly reflecting the mood they express, capturing for me the grief, loneliness and fear of my life. I was amazed that such lyrical music was in me, and had waited for so many years before it came out to play.
For anyone interested in the song, Next to Nothing can be heard via ‘streaming audio’ at donfenn.com if they press the “more” button, and then the “songs” button.
Another of my special music moments is triggered by Gustav Mahler’s 1st ‘Titan’ Symphony. Mahler in general is my favorite composer…I think the greatest of all time who creates a music fabric of immense emotional and dramatic complexity far beyond any other composer I’ve known. Weaving together three or four distinct melodies, each beautiful in their own right, he moves us from a proud military march, migrating to an ominously terrifying potential that drops into horrendous chaos, melting into a deeply sad funeral dirge, miraculously merging into the gay, innocent happy laughter of children playing peacefully—all within the same movement.
I’ve tried for years to get friends to hear what I feel in this man’s remarkable music…with very limited success. But my wife, a relative newcomer to classical music grasped it completely when first she heard the 8th & 9th movements of the Titan. Mahler turns the “carefree children’s song, Frere Jacques, into a dark Eastern European funeral march, alternating with the sadness and irony of Jewish dance music expressing life’s tragic nature that love makes beautiful.” It was her vivid recognition (my wife is Jewish) of what Mahler was doing that prompted her to render this perfect description that I’ve quoted—which in turn gave me great joy that someone had finally been able to share my deep admiration and understanding of this man’s music.
My third moment of memory occurred at Davies Symphony Hall when I heard Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem for the first time, which is far more dramatically operatic than it is standard requiem. In this music instead of predominantly expressing awe, admiration and gratitude toward God, Verdi expresses the human emotional experience of life’s joy and death’s grief. I was profoundly moved in ways that I didn’t understand until the Agnus Dei, when I broke out in tears—something that hadn’t happened since I was a little boy. I was suddenly aware of a profound sadness within myself of which I had no previous idea, which took me years fully to understand.
The Agnus begins in the sadness of a minor key. But it wasn’t until midway through when the repeated theme morphs into a major key expressing the reassurance of the words (my translation) “that takest away the pain of the world grant us rest”, that tears uncontrollably ran down my face. I had a sudden realization of a great sadness in the early years of my life about which I had no conscious memory. Though I am now a happy man, every time I hear the Agnus Dei tears come back to me.
copyright© 2007, 2008 Don Fenn. All rights reserved.
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