I repeatedly hear how lucky I am to have landed on my feet in Paris, how the quality of life must be unimaginably higher, and how my relocation must have significantly improved my access to culture. Such was the case last night as I sat on a couch in Fort Green at a most excellent old-fashioned gay boy birthday party. Deviled eggs, meatballs, and expensive cheese nourished a motley assortment of struggling musicians and actors (including three token heterosexuals, one of whom now lives in my old room in BedStuy).
I heard a host of well-meaning assumptions about what life in France is like. “Free healthcare” came up numerous times (I should note that while healthcare in France is cheap, it’s certainly not free, especially for those making a lower/European income); “kinder to culture” was thrown around (to an extent, this is true, but only for specific varieties and brands of culture as locally defined by the powers that be); better food (French food and pastries, absolutely but I’m afraid the Indian and Mexican restaurants leave me wanting); “political consciousness” came up (even though Europe’s activists all now look to the American BLM movement and institutional commitment to EDI as the gold standard to a certain kind of progress); “anti-American” mentality was a more curious one, as indeed life in France looks very different from life in New York, while every French person I have met has expressed admiration for the typically American nihilism of work addiction and refusal to accept things for what they are (after all, the French are whiners while the Americans are doers, according to conventional wisdom).
One companion on the sofa told me that for all the gratitude I expressed gratitude, I was surprisingly forthcoming in shedding light on what was wrong with the place — or, at the very least, to ensure everyone that it wasn’t perfect. I suppose this is a place where I am still a New Yorker, in that while I find perfection appealing as a classical musician (obsessed with the minutæ of performing), I find it unspeakably dull as a person.
I recently traveled to Switzerland, which is arguably a paradise, as the quality of life and the average GDP are both astronomically high. But the unimaginable thrill I got from attending a political rally in Basel for the election of a public official was fantastic. It was there I heard perhaps one of the most excruciating musical sequences of my life, watching 25 or so frumpy Swiss gauchistes (replete with dreadlocks and terrible clothes) attempt to sing numbers from Paul Simon’s Graceland, led by a woman dressed like Dionne Warwick on a spaceship (singing about a quarter-tone sharp). They concluded their set, at which point a group of about 15 city officials walked on stage with drums and piccolos, playing military tunes with a level of inaccuracy that tickled me in the Summer Heights High region of my lower abdomen. At last, the cleanliness of the streets and the beauty of the architecture betrayed a total lapse in aesthetic awareness, allowing me to bask in 20 minutes of music that can only be described as “you had to be there to understand” level shit.
In Gstaad, the natural beauty was overwhelming, as was waking up every day to step out on the balcony and take a deep breath of Alpine air or heading home in the evening to see the snowy mountains of the Saanen Valley glow in the moonlight. Again, I’m grateful the place is not perfect, as an assortment of 1% inhabitants (and wannabes) make for some of the most bizarre dinner companions imaginable. Like in New York, no conversation can avoid the topic of money, but the commodities sought with vast sums of capital at one’s disposal are notably archaic (chalets, priceless art, old cars, concertos for famous soloists, etc.).
This week, I’ve returned to New York for three months for concerts, and for the first time since the pandemic, I feel at peace with New York’s imperfections. It’s snowing today in Boerum Hill, where the peaceful sight of the powder lining the Brownstones is complemented by the sounds of honking, the presence of yellow snow, and the knowledge that everything is going to take longer and that your clothes are going to be useless by tomorrow.
But, it should be said, I’m also unstressed about the musical engagements I have coming up. In Paris, I’m acutely aware that my practicing routine is sacred and leads to bouts of anxiety and hyper-fixation, cured by the ability to take a walk on the Places des Vosges, grab a pastry from a grotesque and decadent patisserie, and maybe pick up a cheap paperback to see if (1) I can understand what I’m reading and (2) if I wish to continue.
I’m split between two lives in two cities and two modes of being, which (for the moment) serves me fine. I’m presently contented to sit at an infuriatingly anonymous (and overpriced) coffee shop in Brooklyn and procrastinate on practicing while I blog and decide how I’ll structure my afternoon of:
- Practicing.
- Conducting an interview for a magazine.
- Pay surge pricing for my harp to be moved in an Uber from the West Village to Boerum Hill and eventually practice.
I’m also supposed to put the final edits on some program notes for a concert I’m performing in a few weeks. Purcell’s music is the meat of the program, and I’ve been thinking of ways to contextualize his music without creating a program that is either essentially a musicology thesis or themeless/amounting to a random assortment of songs for a colleague to sing. I spent the bulk of the notes talking about what exactly Purcell does in The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation, a song I have vivid memories of hearing the first time when Elin Manahan Thomas gave a recital at my boarding school in the UK as I turned pages for the pianist.
Purcell has a fantastic talent for soliloquy and intertextual allusion. Songs like Music for a While feature an ominous and chromatic ground bass to show how music doesn’t have to make us feel good but satiate and stupefy feelings of unease and jealousy. In it, the fury Alecto lays in waiting to take vengeance, though not too soon.
More comedic songs like Mad Bess of Bedlam use comedy and slapstick to illustrate the ravings of an inmate in an asylum. Triple meter dances and rapid pattering of text are sung by poor Bess, who thinks of herself as a contented Eurydice (though not by name) left behind in the fields of Elysium after her lover fails to rescue her.
But in the Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation, a persistence of recitative reveals the chronically worried mind of Mary, whose son has been missing for three days. Like in Mad Bess, she never mentions herself by name or that of her son. But again, context offers clues: she fears the wrath of Herod again (which forced her flight into the Egyptian desert, a place “safer than a tyrant’s court”); she recalls how the Angel Gabriel informed her of her pregnancy and was heralded as a mother of God. And yet, it is not enough. Her sense of doom is summed up in the final sentence:
I trust the God, but oh! I fear the child.
The song ends without direct reference to its actual conclusion. After three days, she and her husband Joseph find him teaching in the Temple:
… sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers. So when they saw Him, they were amazed; and His mother said to Him, “Son, why have You done this to us? Look, Your father and I have sought You anxiously.” And He said to them, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?”
Mary and Joseph find their son, only to be rejected by him, being informed that he has another true parent. The story continues
But they did not understand the statement which He spoke to them. Then He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them, but His mother kept all these things in her heart.
Hence, Mary’s soliloquy not only details her distress at losing Jesus but hints at the perpetual sense of isolation she will feel for the rest of her life: that of being barred from passing further into the realm of motherhood.
The song is heartbreakingly beautiful, but perhaps more so if one knows the story – or, indeed, any of the stories that constituted the cultural knowledge bank of Purcell’s day. I am generally underwhelmed with most program notes, as they usually only provide biographical information about the composer or how the piece was published. Similarly, I struggle to engage with programs that only seek to situate music in a particular context as it relates to other musical artifacts that smell like one another but bear little in common regarding thematic or textual material. I much prefer to find ways to liberate music from a certain set of assumptions, and instead relate the stories and set up a common framework between the listener and composer as much as possible, not to show how the same stories turn up repeatedly, but to display how differently a poet or composer might interpret them over time, and how emotions themselves can be subject to historicization. Sure, that means more talk about books, classicism, the Bible, etc. – artifacts of culture from which art music cannot be isolated. When I take this approach, I generally find out that context is messy and uncomfortable and ultimately more interesting as it doesn’t fit the musicologist’s addiction to citing names, dates, and places. Is it a perfect historical account? No. But it stands a greater chance of getting a listener to engage with the content of the music rather than the simple phenomenon of the fact that it’s old.
**I suppose this is where I offer a shameless plug for a concert or two. If you’re interested in hearing a bunch of Purcell and some music of his forbears and colleagues, come to Manhattan on Feb 8.**
https://www.aspectmusic.net/loves-sickness
I gave myself a 1500-word goal for today’s blog post, with no pretensions of composing anything worthy of publishing anywhere other than where my friends come and read about what’s on my mind (even if that means spewing a stream of consciousness).
À demain.