Tag: Sonya Sutton

Tiny House, Big View

Today’s post is by guest blogger Sophia Vastek.  She last wrote about composer John Cage. This week, a heart-opening summer experience…

I spent four weeks in upstate New York this summer, participating in a month-long, multi-disciplinary workshop with architects, engineers, visual artists, writers, photographers, and filmmakers called Arts, Letters & Numbers. [ALN] I really had no idea what I was getting myself into when my partner and I agreed to help build a music program into this existing workshop.  It was often grueling, collaborative work – intimate but also lonely.  But I ended up learning so much about what it means to create and build.

While we were there, one of the visiting artists – Bart Drost – built a tiny house (see the picture below).  He spent only a couple days building, and once finished, he invited every participant to come into his new space one by one and spend some time inside.  We weren’t told what we were going to do there.  I arrived at my scheduled time, admittedly a little apprehensive.  Some of the participants had been spending whole days inside this house…. He took me inside and sat me down at the desk, which occupied most of the floor space of the house. On the desk was a stack of paper and writing/drawing tools.  He gave me the simple task of drawing something that related to this idea: “A time when your outside was different from your inside.”  And then, with a huge smile, he told me, “everyone can draw!”

I spent about 3 hours inside his house, alone, thinking about that idea. Starting figuratively, moving towards the abstract. I ended up creating a small installation with string and cut paper, and when I was finished, I showed him my work.  He asked me what it meant, and I described the time after my father had died when I felt that I couldn’t grieve in public. My insides were quite different from my outside.  We had a beautiful conversation as I shared this most intimate story.  All in his tiny house.  

He did that with about 25 people. Imagine the stories he must have heard.

Once everyone had finished their time in his house, he put the art on display inside (anonymously) and opened it to the public.  The house was a witness to each of our stories.  And memorialized and celebrated them.  

He taught me so much through that experience.  That we need time alone, to sit quietly and meditate on our stories.  That we need time to manifest those stories. That we need time to create.  And most importantly, he taught me that everyone can create when given the right space.

At its heart, Arts Letters & Numbers is about creating a space where everyone is safe.  We all need spaces like these – places where people aren’t afraid to sing out loud, where people can cry publicly and without shame, where people can hold each other when they need to be held, where people can dance without fear of who’s watching, where people can create art without fear of the “critique”.  I realized as I was leaving that I am beyond privileged to have been a part of such an environment. And ultimately, I learned that I need to work hard to carry this forth – to create these kinds of spaces in my daily life in the “real world” for myself and for others.  

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* * * * *

Where I’ll be:

September 4 through November 20 – organist/choir director at Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church (1 Chevy Chase Circle, Washington, D.C.) while their Music Director is on sabbatical.

Friday, September 9 at 7:30 p.m., Let’s Dance! Music for Two Pianos (no actual dancing is involved). Sophia Vastek and Sonya Sutton play music of Manual Infante, Witold Lutoslawski, Benjamin Britten and Sergei Rachmaninoff.  We are raising money for The House of Ruth, an organization that helps women and children coming out of domestic violence and homelessness.  I will match your gifts to support their good work.Contact me directly if you would like to receive an invitation.

October 5 – Millennium Stage, Kennedy Center, 6:00 p.m., I will playing on a program with Furia Flamenco and Guillermo Christie

Also in October, I will be playing for the High Holy Days (a first for me) of the Bethesda Jewish Congregation.

* * * * *

This blog represents my attempt to put thoughts together on various things that seem to connect – in my mind anyway. More often than not new ideas first involve reaching back to what was and I can only hope that the prehistoric San cave painting at the top of this page inspires all kinds of new connections between old and new.

Feel free to pass this message along to anyone who might be interested. You can simply subscribe (look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the post) to get a reminder of new posts, or you can register with a user name and password in order to comment. If a community conversation comes out of this, all the better. We have so much to share and so much to be grateful for.

 

Living History

This past week gave me the privilege of being in Canterbury, England as the organist for a friend’s choir during their fourth residency at a British cathedral. Christ Church, Glendale (Ohio) is an all-volunteer choir that has flourished for nearly 30 years under their director, Bryan Mock.  They sang traditional English cathedral music, including Finzi’s Lo, the full, final sacrifice, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. And as anyone who has done something like this knows, there is A LOT of music to prepare for a week’s worth of service at an Anglican cathedral. I got to hide out in Canterbury Cathedral’s organ loft, playing the music of Howells and Langlais and Bach, not to mention the anthems of Finzi and Elgar and Sumsion, just a few yards from the very spot where Thomas Becket was murdered in 1170.

Talk about living with history.

Just a year ago I traveled with a different choir to sing in the great churches of France, and where we held an emotional service of remembrance at the American Cemetery, near the landing beaches of Normandy.  This summer I visited the tunnels in the white cliffs of Dover and learned about their role in World War II, particularly the evacuation efforts that rescued more than 300,000 soldiers and refugees from Dunkirk.  So interesting to be on the other side of the English Channel this summer, seeing the countryside where the Battle of Hastings was fought after seeing that story depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry last summer.

As with the Finzi anthem (composed in 1946), the war’s effect on Britain was surely foremost in the mind of Herbert Howells when he wrote the organ piece Master Tallis’s Testament in 1940.  Perhaps writing as the Battle of Dunkirk was waged during May and June of that same year?  Was he trying to recall England’s great Renaissance glory during those darkest days?

I played this lovely piece as a prelude to Canterbury Cathedral’s Sunday Eucharist this week.  It’s one of several pieces that highlight the draw that the Tudor period had for Howells, and he created in this work his own testament to British culture. Sixteenth century sensibilities combine with twentieth century emotions to take the listener (and player) from the courtly to the anguished, overlaid with the British melancholy that colors so much of the music of Finzi, Britten and Vaughan Williams as well.  In fact, Master Tallis’s Testament surely owes much to Vaughan Williams.  An 18 year old Howells was at the 1910 Three Choirs Festival, sitting next to the composer during the premiere of Vaughan Williams’ orchestral piece Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.

Two of my very favorite pieces are more deeply connected than I had realized:

Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (Vaughan Williams)

Master Tallis’s Testament (Herbert Howells)

So many connections to make. The Battle of Hastings, the murder of an Archbishop of Canterbury, the flowering of English music and literature in the 16th century, the Three Choirs Festival of 1910, World War II, an American women in 2016 (“a lady organist! We don’t see very many of those,” so said a verger at Canterbury Cathedral). A few of the strands that create the tapestry of a life.  Some of the ways to live with history.

Peace,
Sonya

* * * * *

Where I’ll be:
August 14 – organist/choir director for the 10:00 am and 5:00 pm services at St. John’s (Norwood), 6701 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase, Maryland. Maybe you’d like to come and sing with the Summer Choir there? 9:15 a.m. rehearsal.

September 4 through November 20 – organist/choir director at Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church (1 Chevy Chase Circle, Washington, D.C.) while their Music Director is on sabbatical.

Save the Date: Friday, September 9 at 7:30 p.m., Let’s Dance! Music for Two Pianos (no actual dancing is involved). Sophia Vastek and Sonya Sutton play music of Manual Infante, Witold Lutoslawski, Benjamin Britten and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Contact me directly if you would like to receive an invitation.

* * * * *

This blog represents my attempt to put thoughts together on various things that seem to connect – in my mind anyway. More often than not new ideas first involve reaching back to what was and I can only hope that the prehistoric San cave painting at the top of this page inspires all kinds of new connections between old and new.

Feel free to pass this message along to anyone who might be interested. You can simply subscribe (look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the post) to get a reminder of new posts, or you can register with a user name and password in order to comment. If a community conversation comes out of this, all the better. We have so much to share and so much to be grateful for.

 

 

 

No Mud, No Lotus

No mud, no lotus.  This thought from the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh should be the mantra for anyone going through difficult times.  God doesn’t purposely put us in the mud, I don’t think, but if we can observe, or even encourage, the lotus to emerge from it, then we have the possibility of happiness. I don’t really expect you to make the connection, but this is the thought that came to me while practicing the accompaniment for a piece that is new to me, Gerald Finzi’s Lo, the full, final sacrifice.  It’s a substantial and difficult piece for choir and organ, and the accompaniment was feeling muddy indeed.

I am still not quite hearing all of the beauty and power that this work promises, but there is one moment – one beautiful lotus – that emerged from the mud as I practiced.  It comes near the end, a few measures of such poignancy which spoke to me as clearly as any words could about longing for God’s presence. Beginning around 10:40 in this recording by the Truro Cathedral Choir, at the words come away (sweetly reminiscent, incidentally or not, of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night song, “Come away death”):

Lo, the full, final sacrifice – Gerald Finzi

Finzi was avowedly agnostic and a pacifist.  Working in 1946, he set words of St. Thomas Aquinas, as translated by metaphysical poet Richard Crashaw (text is below). With its references to a ransomed Isaac (from the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac) and the mythical assertion that pelicans would wound themselves in order to feed their own blood to their young, it is a text rich with the imagery of sacrifice. You might well imagine the potency of these images of sacrifice in post-war England. Traditional images of Christ as Paschal Lamb and Shepherd and simple references to food, bread and manna are woven together as well in this ode to the mystery of the Eucharist.  Agnostic?  Really?

Two different things came to mind as I was practicing the Finzi this week.  They might be related, but you would have to peek into my brain to help me figure out how. First, I heard a sermon this past Sunday which asked us to more fully embrace the line from The Lord’s Prayer, our daily bread.  The preacher spoke about our daily need for new bread.  Yesterday’s bread may have been good for that time, but might not be nourishing us anymore.  It was a suggestion to live more comfortably with change.  Second, I was reminded how a great ending can fully redeem even a mediocre story. Lo, the full, final sacrifice is a story of goodness coming from pain, of triumph over bleakness (though this is far from being a mediocre work, even if still muddy for me). It is the power of those final few minutes, I think, which redeems the jagged dissonances of the first 10 minutes.

A glorious ending.  Is that the connection?  Living comfortably with change so that we can move towards a glorious ending?  Living in the mud sometimes, so that the beauty of the lotus is all the more eloquent?

Lo, the full, final Sacrifice
On which all figures fix’t their eyes.
The ransomed Isaac, and his ram;
The Manna, and the Paschal Lamb.

Jesu Master, just and true!
Our Food, and faithful Shepherd too!

O let that love which thus makes thee
Mix with our low Mortality,
Lift our lean Souls, and set us up
Convictors of thine own full cup,
Coheirs of Saints. That so all may
Drink the same wine; and the same Way.
Nor change the Pasture, but the Place
To feed of Thee in thine own Face.

O dear Memorial of that Death
Which lives still, and allows us breath!
Rich, Royal food! Bountiful Bread!
Whose use denies us to the dead!

Live ever Bread of loves and be
My life, my soul, my surer self to me.

Help Lord, my Faith, my Hope increase;
And fill my portion in thy peace.
Give love for life; nor let my days
Grow, but in new powers to thy name and praise.

Rise, Royal Sion! rise and sing
Thy soul’s kind shepherd, thy heart’s King.
Stretch all thy powers; call if you can
Harps of heaven to hands of man.
This sovereign subject sits above
The best ambition of thy love.

Lo the Bread of Life, this day’s
Triumphant Text provokes thy praise.
The living and life-giving bread,
To the great Twelve distributed
When Life, himself, at point to die
Of love, was his own Legacy.

O soft self-wounding Pelican!
Whose breast weeps Balm for wounded man.
All this way bend thy benign flood
To a bleeding Heart that gasps for blood.
That blood, whose least drops sovereign be
To wash my worlds of sins from me.
Come love! Come Lord! and that long day
For which I languish, come away.
When this dry soul those eyes shall see,
And drink the unseal’d source of thee.
When Glory’s sun faith’s shades shall chase,
And for thy veil give me thy Face. Amen.

Peace,
Sonya

* * * * *

Where I’ll be:
July 31 and August 14 – organist/choir director for the 10:00 am and 5:00 pm services at St. John’s (Norwood), 6701 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase, Maryland. Maybe you’d like to come and sing with the Summer Choir there? 9:15 a.m. rehearsal.

July 31-August 12 – organist for Christ Church, Glendale (Ohio) during their residency at Canterbury Cathedral (U.K.)

September 4 through November 20 – organist/choir director at Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church (1 Chevy Chase Circle, Washington, D.C.) while their Music Director is on sabbatical.

Save the Date: Friday, September 9 at 7:30 p.m., Let’s Dance! Music for Two Pianos (no actual dancing is involved). Sophia Vastek and Sonya Sutton play music of Manual Infante, Witold Lutoslawski, Benjamin Britten and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Contact me directly if you would like to receive an invitation.

* * * * *

This blog represents my attempt to put thoughts together on various things that seem to connect – in my mind anyway. More often than not new ideas first involve reaching back to what was and I can only hope that the prehistoric San cave painting at the top of this page inspires all kinds of new connections between old and new.

Feel free to pass this message along to anyone who might be interested. You can simply subscribe (look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the post) to get a reminder of new posts, or you can register with a user name and password in order to comment. If a community conversation comes out of this, all the better. We have so much to share and so much to be grateful for.

Sheer Silence

I love that idea…the sound of sheer silence.  These are words found in the Bible’s  1 Kings 19 which I was asked to read during a service at a conference a few years ago.  I enjoyed lingering over those words as I read them to a large group of musicians, who by and large appreciate silence more than most people.  There is the irony of silence having any sound of course.  And I like the word “sheer”, which could be synonymous with “utter” or “complete”, but could also have a hint of the word’s other meaning as something transparent, allowing light to come through.

I’ve written before about the potential for understanding that comes with silence – during a pause at the asterisk in psalms or during meditation.  We hear so much in the silence. Musically, it is the rests that give power and shape to the notes.  Musicians know that a musical rest is anything but restful.  Something is happening during that time – the music gathers force  from, or empties into, a rest.

It’s a phrase that also calls up for anyone of a certain age the 1966 Simon and Garfunkle hit song The Sounds of Silence.  The silence of those lyrics becomes something ominous, a sign of complicity, and that’s the silence that Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and author, wrote about.  His obituary in The Washington Post on July 5 began by saying that no one was better able to grasp “the terrible power of silence…He understood that the failure to speak out, about both the horrors of the past and the evils of the present, is one of the most effective ways there is to perpetuate suffering and empower those who inflict it.”

But he saw the possibilities for silence to be useful too.  In a 1996 interview Wiesel said: You can be a silent witness, which means silence itself can become a way of communication. There is so much in silence. There is an archeology of silence. There is a geography of silence. There is a theology of silence. There is a history of silence. Silence is universal and you can work within it, within its own parameters and its own context, and make that silence into a testimony. Job was silent after he lost his children and everything, his fortune and his health. Job, for seven days and seven nights he was silent, and his three friends who came to visit him were also silent. That must have been a powerful silence, a brilliant silence. You see, silence itself can be testimony and I was waiting for ten years [to speak out about his experiences in the Holocaust], really, but it wasn’t the intention. My intention simply was to be sure that the words I would use are the proper words. I was afraid of language. 

Wiesel made the case for silence, and more specifically, people’s despair at God’s silence in the face of suffering, as proof of God’s existence. In our protests against that silence he found the potential for redemption. With all of the chatter that surrounds us now, competing for our attention and sometimes confusing us with inaccurate or twisted information, living with some silence might be welcome.

How do we move then towards the sheer silence that allows the light of understanding to come through the powerful, brilliant silence Weisel wrote about?  And move us away from the silence of fear or disbelief or complicity?  Are we brave enough to seek the silence that creates the space we need to actually hear what has been said? A silence that just might help us find the courageous words we need to say?

Peace.
Sonya

* * * * *

Where I’ll be:
June 12 through August 14 – organist/choir director for the 10:00 am and 5:00 pm services at St. John’s (Norwood), 6701 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase, Maryland. Maybe you’d like to come and sing with the Summer Choir there? 9:15 a.m. rehearsal.

July 31-August 12 – organist for Christ Church, Glendale (Ohio) during their residency at Canterbury Cathedral (U.K.)

September 4 through November 20 – organist/choir director at Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church (1 Chevy Chase Circle, Washington, D.C.) while their Music Director is on sabbatical.

Save the Date: Friday, September 9 at 7:30 p.m., Let’s Dance! Music for Two Pianos (no actual dancing is involved). Sophia Vastek and Sonya Sutton play music of Manual Infante, Witold Lutoslawski, Benjamin Britten and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Contact me directly if you would like to receive an invitation.

* * * * *

This blog represents my attempt to put thoughts together on various things that seem to connect – in my mind anyway. More often than not new ideas first involve reaching back to what was and I can only hope that the prehistoric San cave painting at the top of this page inspires all kinds of new connections between old and new.

Feel free to pass this message along to anyone who might be interested. You can simply subscribe (look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the post) to get a reminder of new posts, or you can register with a user name and password in order to comment. If a community conversation comes out of this, all the better. We have so much to share and so much to be grateful for.

 

Living Fruitfully

 

(updated from a post that first appeared in 2012)

Fruitful:  1a: yielding or producing fruit  b: conducive to an abundant yield                                   2:abundantly productive, e.g. a fruitful discussion

Those who went to a church that follows the lectionary last Sunday heard a reading about the fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) – fruits known as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Characteristics that any of us, whether we go to church or not, would want to build into our lives I hope.  To look back and see a life of fruitfulness as defined in Galatians would be a life well lived in my opinion.  Culturally, however, we’re given many more reasons to crave success over fruitfulness, and a multitude of ways to measure that success.  Money, and all that it can buy.  Power, and all that it can influence.  Perfection, and all the envy it can inspire in others.

Fruitfulness doesn’t require any of those things.  It is lasting  and produces yet more fruit.  It requires a cooperative effort – i.e. it will occur within the context of some kind of community –  because something or someone else has to be changed by those fruitful efforts. Fruitfulness is surprising.  It happens when the results of our life and vocation touch others deeply, creating opportunities and allowing the unexpected to happen.

Success, on the other hand is competitive, requiring clear goals with clear results. There is less room for surprise, except perhaps the unpleasant one of goals not being met.  Your quest for success can change things, but when does a single-minded goal of being successful ever actually help anyone else?

You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you…to bear much fruit, so Jesus told his disciples.

I am currently re-reading Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire for perhaps the third or fourth time. It is one of the most fascinating, mind-bending books I have ever encountered.  Pollen studies four different plant forms – the apple, the tulip, marijuana and the potato – and looks at their evolution from the plant’s point of view.  He makes the case that plants, in the choices that evolution has given them to feed needs and desires of other life forms, have chosen to both succeed and be fruitful.

Plants, as far as we know, don’t make conscious decisions about helping or hurting other parts of their environment.  They simply want to live.  Is that enough for you – to simply live, at any cost to your environment?  Goats just want to live, but they destroyed the once verdant Greek countryside.  Salmonella and ticks and viruses just want to live, too often at human expense.  Do your daily choices help others to flourish – like the apple and potato?  Or does your success sometimes hurt others – as with marijuana and salmonella? Perhaps your efforts simply create a beauty that has unmeasurable healing properties – like the tulip or music.

I don’t ever pretend to know what God actually wants, but I’m pretty sure that when our lives help others to flourish, then God is well served.  And I do believe that choosing fruitfulness is a welcome idea in a world that could benefit from some new ways of measuring success.

Peace.
Sonya

(Perhaps some of you saw the 2009 PBS documentary based on Pollan’s book.  I had not even heard of it until this week.  Here is a preview: PBS “Botany of Desire”)

* * * * *

Where I’ll be:

June 12 through August 14 – organist/choir director for the 10:00 am and 5:00 pm services at St. John’s (Norwood), 6701 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase, Maryland. Maybe you’d like to come and sing with the Summer Choir there? 9:15 a.m. rehearsal.

July 31-August 12 – organist for Christ Church, Glendale (Ohio) during their residency at Canterbury Cathedral (U.K.)

September 4 through November 20 – organist/choir director at Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church (1 Chevy Chase Circle, Washington, D.C.) while their Music Director is on sabbatical.

Save the Date: Friday, September 9 at 7:30 p.m., Let’s Dance! Music for Two Pianos (no actual dancing is involved).  Sophia Vastek and Sonya Sutton play music of Manual Infante, Witold Lutoslawski, Benjamin Britten and Sergei Rachmaninoff.  Contact me directly if you would like to receive an invitation.

* * * * *

This blog represents my attempt to put thoughts together on various things that seem to connect – in my mind anyway. More often than not new ideas first involve reaching back to what was and I can only hope that the prehistoric San cave painting at the top of this page inspires all kinds of new connections between old and new.

Feel free to pass this message along to anyone who might be interested. You can simply subscribe (look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the post) to get a reminder of new posts, or you can register with a user name and password in order to comment. If a community conversation comes out of this, all the better. We have so much to share and so much to be grateful for.

Found in Translation

Somewhere the original harmony must exist,
hidden somewhere in the vast wilds.
In Earth’s mighty firmament,
in the far reaches of swirling galaxies,
in sunshine,
in a little flower, in the song of a forest,
in the music of a mother’s voice,
or in teardrops – 
somewhere, immortality endures, 
and the original harmony will be found.
How else could it have formed
in human hearts –
music?  

It must be somewhere, the original harmony,
somewhere in great nature, hidden.
Is it in the furious infinite,
in distant stars’ orbits,
is it in the sun’s scorn,
in a tiny flower, in treegossip,
in heartmusic’s mothersong
or in tears?
It must be somewhere, immortality,
somewhere the original harmony must be found:
how else could it infuse
the human soul,
that music?

These are two translations of the poem titled Muusika by Juhan Liiv (1864-1913). Though I think both versions are startlingly beautiful, one of the translators wondered if in fact the poetry has somehow been lost in translation, hoping that the reader would be able to intuit what the translations had lost.  The Estonian language it seems, like all languages, has unique and barely translatable ways of saying things, and I found the comparison of these two translations fascinating. Look at how much is found in Liiv’s words.

The poem came to my attention because of a setting by Estonian composer Pärt Uusberg (b. 1986), which I urge you to listen to here:

Muusika by Part Uusberg

Juhan Liiv was born into the extreme poverty of 19th century serfdom in Estonia. Physically weak and mentally ill, he died from pneumonia after a conductor pushed the ticketless poet off a train, causing him to walk home in freezing weather for two weeks.  Liiv’s hardships, as with so many artists, translated into insightful understandings of the world around him, and his poetry, though often gloomy, expresses great love for his country.

Music – Muusika – is a vital part of Estonian identity, as movingly told in a 2008 film called The Singing Revolution.  As the documentary shows, music played an important role in the largely peaceful protests in 20th century Estonia. Before and after World War II Estonians used a tradition of communal singing to see them through the darkest days of oppression by the Nazis and then the USSR.  Not just as a comfort, but as a subversive way of maintaining their culture and of uniting their people.  The film showed the people of Estonia coming together to sing in ways that ended up thwarting the Soviets’ attempts to force the Estonians to submit to their authority.  I don’t know if the film is available on Netflix, but I recommend trying to find it.

Yet another reminder of the ways that music and poetry connect us across time and space, capturing in sound and words our capacity for wonder and our innate yearning for freedom.

Peace.
Sonya

  *   *   *   *   *

Where I’ll be:

June 12 through August 14 – organist/choir director for the 10:00 am and 5:00 pm services at St. John’s (Norwood), 6701 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase, Maryland. Maybe you’d like to come and sing with the Summer Choir there? 9:15 am rehearsal.

June 13 through 17 – The annual conference of The Association of Anglican Musicians, an organization that has been a source of some of my closest friends, supportive colleagues, and an inspirational reminder of all that is good about The Episcopal Church. We meet this year in Stamford, Connecicut.

* * * * *

This blog represents my attempt to put thoughts together on various things that seem to connect – in my mind anyway. More often than not new ideas first involve reaching back to what was and I can only hope that the prehistoric San cave painting at the top of this page inspires all kinds of new connections between old and new.

Feel free to pass this message along to anyone who might be interested. You can simply subscribe (look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the post) to get a reminder of new posts, or you can register with a user name and password in order to comment. If a community conversation comes out of this, all the better. We have so much to share and so much to be grateful for.

Hello Summer. Hello Death.

In an excellent sermon I heard this past Sunday, preached by The Rev. Sari Ateek, we were reminded that God doesn’t need us to be worthy, just open to the ways that God will work with, and in, our lives.  Let’s face it, we’ll never actually be worthy of anyone’s unconditional love, but as Christians we are asked again and again in the New Testament to die to self and be born again as we attempt to become worthy.   Not once in a while or just during Lent, but every day.  As one Lenten hymn reminds us, So daily dying to the way of self, so daily living to your way of love.  (The Hymnal 1982, No. 149, v.2).  Every day we have the chance to be new, to be better, to let our old selves die and find new life.

Perhaps this in part explains why I am feeling so fortunate to be conducting performances of Brahms’ Requiem this week.  You might have noticed that requiem settings are most often performed as part of November’s season of remembrance or during the Lenten time of tombs and yearnings for Easter’s resurrection.  But as summer beckons?  New life has already come.  The evidence is in every garden and graduation ceremony and requiems don’t fit. Unless, perhaps,  as a reminder that resurrection of our souls happens whenever we open ourselves up to the possibility of change, even in the heat of summer.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), proud German, avowed humanist and ambivalent Christian, wrote his largest work based on the Catholic Requiem mass for the dead, but with the hope that it would be music that brought solace to the living.  The title of “German” comes from its language – a German text, rather than the traditional Latin, but  Brahms wished that it could have been called Ein menschliches Requiem (A Human Requiem).  He would be pleased to find that this work has been described as a meditation on mortality from a humanist point of view.

Brahms very likely began composing this music as a response to his sorrow at the death of his dearest friend, fellow composer Robert Schumann, and he continued working on it between the years 1857 and 1868, during which time his beloved mother also died. He not only eschewed the traditional Latin of requiem settings, but also the traditional liturgical texts, compiling his own from the Bible.  He notably failed to ever mention Jesus.  Perhaps he hoped that his Requiem would transcend any particular religion.

Though known to be a gruff misanthrope, Brahms concentrated on themes of everlasting joy in this music.  The word Selig (blessed) begins and ends this Requiem, and the choir frequently sings about Freude (joy).  There is no fire and brimstone in Brahms’ views on mortality, only hope. As if Brahms is giving the listener permission to live in hope, without the rigors of belief.

There is an expansiveness to his thinking, and it is expressed in the music through the large ranges for the singers, luxurious sounds from the orchestra, and sweeping musical lines.  As a young musician said to me in a recent conversation about Brahms’ music in general, even the briefest of his pieces seems to encompass the entirety of life.  Its richness and complexities and confusions.  Its joys and sorrows.

Walking into summer, limbs bared to the sun, arms outstretched as we slough off old ways and open ourselves to new life. I’m well aware that mourning the death of one we have loved is not the same as dying to self and being born again. But thinking about Brahms’ Requiem made me intrigued by a possible connection.  Some part of ourselves dies when a beloved one has died, and we slowly learn to find new life in some way for that relationship. When I planned last fall to perform Brahms’ Requiem with a choir made up of those working at The World Bank and IMF I could not have guessed how right it would feel now, on the brink of summer, to let parts of me die as I welcome the changes of new life.

Brahms’ Requiem, Movement 7

Peace,

Sonya

Where I’ll be:
May 22, May 29 and June 5 – organist/choir director for the 9:00 am, 11:15 am and 5:00 pm service at St. John’s, Norwood, 6701 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase, Maryland. Experienced choral singers who would like sing with the choir there, come at 10:30 for rehearsal before the service.

May 31, June 2 and June 6 – performances of Brahms’ Requiem with the World Bank/IMF Chorus and orchestra, 1:00 pm each of these dates. United Church (G and 20th) on May 31. For performances at the World Bank (June 2) and IMF (June 6) visitors will need to get free passes by contacting worldbankimfchorus@gmail.com and allow a few extra minutes to get through the security checks at these institutions.

June 12 through August 14 – organist/choir director for the 10:00 am and 5:00 pm services at St. John’s, Norwood. Come and sing with the Summer Choir there. 9:15 am rehearsal.

June 13 through 17 – The annual conference of The Association of Anglican Musicians, an organization that has been a source of some of my closest friends, supportive colleagues, and an inspirational reminder of all that is good about The Episcopal Church.  We meet this year in Stamford, Connecicut.

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This blog represents my attempt to put thoughts together on various things that seem to connect – in my mind anyway. More often than not new ideas first involve reaching back to what was and I can only hope that the prehistoric San cave painting at the top of this page inspires all kinds of new connections between old and new.

Feel free to pass this message along to anyone who might be interested. You can simply subscribe (look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the post) to get a reminder of new posts, or you can register with a user name and password in order to comment. If a community conversation comes out of this, all the better. We have so much to share and so much to be grateful for.

Evensong

During a recent time of transition, as I questioned so much about my vocation, I realized that I was attending the Anglican service of Evensong quite often. Christ Church (Georgetown), St. Francis (Potomac), St. Thomas (Fifth Avenue, NYC), Washington National Cathedral and Christ Church Christiana Hundred (Delaware) became scenes of gentle healing, much needed and quietly strengthening.  For the uninitiated, Evensong is that afternoon offering to our ears, hearts and minds of prayers sung by a choir on the listener’s behalf.

I recalled that during a sabbatical in 2013 I had attended Evensong twelve times in seven different churches or cathedrals over a 3 month period. I was inspired by the most glorious music, written for God, sung beautifully by well-rehearsed choirs as part of a liturgy.  Not a performance, but performed well. While I simply listened, I worshiped. I was able to absorb the beauty of the architecture around me, admire the composers’ craft, and appreciate the shape that liturgy takes in the hands of musicians who have practiced many long hours. On a good day liturgy can come together to create flow – a psychological term that describes a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of an activity. In this case, the activity for me was participating in liturgy as a listener.

Recently, I pulled Gail Godwin’s 1999 novel, Evensong, off the shelf to re-read. I’ve always loved her writing with its artful descriptions of simple joys and complex emotions. She intimately knows the Episcopal church, and writes perceptively about the broken people who are all around us. Who are us.  In Evensong she writes about those living in and passing through a small North Carolina town. Each character in some way has been abandoned, mostly by a parent or spouse, but also by their friends, schools, and yes, even their churches. I hadn’t noticed this theme the first time I read the book, but it was quietly apparent this time around.  God hadn’t abandoned any of Godwin’s characters, of course, but each sometimes felt alone in their earthly abandoned states.  And it would be unrealistic to think you might not question whatever grains of faith you had during those times.

“I’m beginning to think that the times when you lose your faith are the times of your deepest blessing. . . . It is the dark night of the soul. The mystics have written about it. You’re at your very lowest, you have no further to fall, everything is dark and then you can kind of be quiet and see what is speaking to you out of the darkness. . . . I would be more worried about the person who never lost her faith.” — Gail Godwin, from an interview in 1999.

I don’t think anyone feels particularly blessed in their aloneness, but perhaps that is the gift of Evensong. Finding an understanding of the difference between loneliness and aloneness, you can be quiet…experience what is speaking to you out of the darkness, and actively listen for wisdom, reminding you that you are not alone after.

The traditional canticles sung during Evensong are Mary’s Magnificat and Simeon’s Nunc dimittis. The link below is to one of my favorite settings, by Tudor court composer Orlando Gibbons.  Both Mary and Simeon are alone in their prayers, speaking to God in the darkness…and listening.

Peace,

Sonya

Where I’ll be:

May 22, May 29 and June 5 – organist/choir director for the 9:00 am, 11:15 am and 5:00 pm service at St. John’s, Norwood, 6701 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase, Maryland.  Experienced choral singers who would like sing with the choir there, come at 10:30 for rehearsal before the service.

May 31, June 2 and June 6 – performances of Brahms’ Requiem with the World Bank/IMF Chorus and orchestra, 1:00 pm each of these dates.  United Church (G and 20th) on May 31.  For performances at the World Bank (June 2) and IMF (June 6) visitors will need to get free passes by contacting worldbankimfchorus@gmail.com and allow a few extra minutes to get through the security checks at these institutions.

June 12 through August 14 – organist/choir director for the 10:00 am and 5:00 pm services at St. John’s, Norwood.  Come and sing with the Summer Choir there.  9:15 am rehearsal.

* * * * *

This blog represents my attempt to put thoughts together on various things that seem to connect – in my mind anyway. More often than not new ideas first involve reaching back to what was and I can only hope that the prehistoric San cave painting at the top of this page inspires all kinds of new connections between old and new.

Feel free to pass this message along to anyone who might be interested. You can simply subscribe (look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the post) to get a reminder of new posts, or you can register with a user name and password in order to comment. If a community conversation comes out of this, all the better. We have so much to share and so much to be grateful for.

Communion

Today’s posting is by guest blogger Sophia Vastek.  She is a pianist, based in New York City, who just happens to be my daughter.  I think you will enjoy her insights into a composer whom you have likely not given much serious thought to before.

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“The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.”

This quote is by American composer John Cage, from a book of his writings (linked below) that sits permanently on my nightstand.  I started learning about John Cage several years ago, but I became increasingly drawn to him soon after my father had died.  I realized I was asking, and struggling with, many of the same kinds of questions that Cage did back in the middle of the last century. Why do I make music?  What purpose does it serve ultimately?  At a time when my own musicality felt like an empty shell, John Cage was an important part of the inspiration that kept me going.  

Whether you have some knowledge of John Cage or not, you’ve most likely come across references to him.  In particular, his “silent” piece, 4’33”– in which a pianist sits silently at the piano for 4 minutes and 33 seconds – has echoes in all reaches of our popular culture.  If you didn’t notice before, you will now!  It’s a trope that gets parodied and used again and again.  It’s also a profound work of art, and profoundly misunderstood, much like the man who created it.

“Everything we do is Music.”

Imagine this scene: An audience has gathered just south of Woodstock, New York on August 29, 1954 at Maverick Concert Hall, a barn-like, open air venue.  David Tudor, a soon-to-be well-known pianist of his day, is about to perform an exciting program of music by current, leading composers.  John Cage’s 4’33” is on the program (listed incorrectly as a work of 4 movements).  When it comes time, Tudor sits down at the piano, closes the piano lid, and takes out a stopwatch. After 30 seconds he stops the stopwatch and opens the lid, then closes the lid and restarts it.  2 minutes and 23 seconds later he stops it again.  Then restarts. And after the final minute and 40 seconds, the original three movements of 4’33’’ were given their first performance. During this “silent” stretch of time, the leaves were rustling, audience members grew restless, some started whispering and talking to each other, some walked out.  

It started to rain lightly.  

This is one of those moments in cultural history… the reverberations are still being felt.  John Cage lost friends and colleagues following that concert.  In fact, more than 60 years later, one can still find conversations, and arguments, being had about what this piece means and what in the world John Cage was trying to say.

Like all brilliant pieces of art, there are infinite ways to think about and experience 4’33’’.  Truly.  But contrary to what may have initially popped into your head, it was not a publicity stunt.  The more one learns about John Cage the more impossible that idea seems.  He had come up with the idea for a silent piece years before the actual premiere, but it had taken him that time to muster the courage to present it for fear of not being taken seriously as a composer.

john-cage
John Cage and his memorable smile

On a side note, it’s important to know that John Cage didn’t pull the length of 4’33’’ from thin air.  He arrived at the 3 movements – totalling 4 minutes and 33 seconds – by piecing together a series of smaller lengths of time.  Those smaller increments were arrived at by chance operations – a method he developed through the I Ching (an ancient Chinese text, also known as the Book of Changes).

An important theme throughout John Cage’s life was that silence doesn’t exist. This idea stemmed from a profound experience he had in an anechoic chamber (a room in which all sound is completely absorbed, leaving it “silent”), in which he was initially confounded that he was hearing sounds!  – only to realize it was his heart beating and blood pumping.  That day of the concert in 1954, the outdoor scene at Maverick Concert Hall became the music.  The rustling of people’s bodies in their seats became the music.  The rain became the music.  The murmuring became the music.  

When we stop to think about it, what actually is music?  When you start defining it, you quickly realize that the parameters you’re using are, in a sense, expendable.  Of course, we could argue for days about this.  But in my mind, what truly defines music, and indeed all art, is communion – a shared moment. A moment that sheds light on some small piece of humanity, which, ultimately, is people gathering in shared beauty.  And before you argue that 4’33’’ isn’t beautiful, or that a piano with a bunch of screws stuck in between its strings isn’t beautiful (Cage was a pioneer of the prepared piano), consider the first quote at the top of this post.  When you believe in beauty, you see it, even in unexpected places.

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The radiant love of Merce Cunningham and John Cage

As a shared singular moment, the beauty of music isn’t found just in those fleeting sounds, but in each and every experience that leads up to the performance of those sounds, in both the creator and the listener.  As a young man, John Cage had deeply questioned his art, sexuality, and whole being.  He was married to a woman for ten years, and by all accounts it was a fairly happy and friendly relationship.  But ultimately it wasn’t who he was, and when he met dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, that became abundantly clear.  After divorcing his wife, Cage and Cunningham spent the rest of their lives together in a wonderfully happy, romantic and creative partnership. 4’33’’ is a shared moment of inward realizations, of our need to express the inexpressible.  And it is the culmination of Cage’s entire life until that moment. Each and every performance of 4’33’’ is an invitation to quiet our minds and truly listen, both inwardly to ourselves and outwardly to the world.  And what could be more beautiful than that?

In my mind, John Cage essentially gave us the truest definition of art through a piece that’s a blank canvas.  Isn’t that remarkable?

Through Cage’s deeply-felt spirituality and exploration of zen Buddhism he realized that when we truly listen, we arrive at something profound.  I urge you to take a moment today and listen quietly – maybe even for 4 minutes and 33 seconds – and see what you discover.  There is an infinite amount of beauty around you, as well as within you, yet to be discovered.

“Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.”

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I just finished an incredible 3 days recording my first solo album with Grammy-winning engineer and producer Adam Abeshouse.  On the album are 3 gorgeous John Cage pieces, along with raga-based works by Michael Harrison with tabla and tambura, and a fabulous work by Donnacha Dennehy!  If you’d like to stay in touch and find out when it’s being released, fill out the form on my contact page. I send out email updates very infrequently, so it will certainly not be a strain on your inbox!  

http://www.sophiavastek.com/contact/   

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One of the pieces that will be included on my recording:

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I can’t recommend this book enough.  It’s a slow journey, but there is so much wisdom and heart within its pages.  This is the one I keep on my nightstand and which I find myself returning to again and again.

http://www.amazon.com/Silence-Lectures-Writings-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0819571768

This book is also an amazing and beautiful read, and a perspective on John Cage that hadn’t been fully explored in book form prior.  Highly recommended! http://www.amazon.com/Where-Heart-Beats-Buddhism-Artists/dp/0143123475/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460754312&sr=1-1&keywords=where+the+heart+beats

 

Going Home

I know something about immigration.  My father immigrated from India, my first husband came to the U.S. from Poland, my brother immigrated to Sweden, my in-laws were part of the Great Migration that so many African-Americans made from south to north in the 1940’s and 50’s, and the German and Scottish immigrants that make up my maternal half are well documented by a genealogically-minded uncle.  Immigration represents the most radical form of leaving home, and I saw, as these family members got older, how much childhood homes tugged on them.  Some part of them longed for a home they hadn’t been part of for a long time.

Going home is a theme that inspires a lot of literature, including St. Luke’s tale of the prodigal son.  A carefree young man leaves home, making his father sad and his brother angry, living a wastrel’s life, and then warmly welcomed back home when he tired of his dissipated life.  It was  story used in 1884 by a 22 year student named Claude Debussy, who entered the prestigious competition for the Prix de Rome with a brief work, L’enfant prodigue.  It was a challenge for him to compose a piece of music that was conservative enough to please an academic committee and yet still expressed his growing interest in a new musical language that incorporated the exoticism and folk sounds he had encountered in his travels.  An artistic language that came to be known as impressionism.  I’ve long wanted to do Debussy’s little one-act opera, which might more properly be categorized as a cantata, or more evocatively as a scene lyrique, and I will be joined by a wonderful cast of singers (Mary Shaffran, Andrew Brown, and James Shaffran) in a performance this coming Sunday at 7:30 p.m. at Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church.L'Enfant Flyer

What I love about Debussy’s work, besides the shimmering hints of a musical style that would soon mature in works such as Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and Clair de lune, is the prominence of a missing figure in St. Luke’s account…the boy’s mother.  Surely she anguished over her son’s absence as well. This is a rare chance to hear this beautiful little gem and I hope you’ll join us on Sunday at 7:30 if you’re able.

The prodigal son does go home, celebrated and fussed over with great joy and feasting.  After all of his travels and experiences, I wonder if he really is able to be at home though.  The longing for a childhood home I have seen in my own family members was always accompanied by a realization that they couldn’t actually ever really go home. Either because places and people changed, and what they remember as home didn’t exist anymore, or just as surely because they themselves had changed and weren’t the same person who once lived in that home.

We might feel sad at this inability to go back, or we might find peace when we look more deeply inside ourselves to find home within.  After all, at birth we are given a home of flesh and blood and mind.  We are told then that at death we are welcomed into an eternal home with God.  In between, our earthly homes are really shaped more by the people we love rather than the places we’ve lived.  So the prodigal son may have found home, upon his return, in the warmth of his parents’ embrace, but he will soon take his prodigal experiences with him to new homes.

 

Peace,

Sonya

Where I’ll be:

April 24 – performing L’enfant prodigue, Debussy’s one-act opera, with Mary Shaffran, James Shaffran and Andrew Brown, at Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church, Bethesda, 7:30 p.m. ($15 suggested donation)

May 22-August 14 I will be serving as a sabbatical replacement for the Music Director at St. John’s Norwood, 6701 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase, MD

* * * * *

This blog represents my attempt to put thoughts together on various things that seem to connect – in my mind anyway. More often than not new ideas first involve reaching back to what was and I can only hope that the prehistoric San cave painting at the top of this page inspires all kinds of new connections between old and new.

Feel free to pass this message along to anyone who might be interested. You can simply subscribe (look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the post) to get a reminder of new posts, or you can register with a user name and password in order to comment. If a community conversation comes out of this, all the better. We have so much to share and so much to be grateful for.