Elizabeth Adams's Blog, page 90

November 3: Lapis

The Indian shop
the smell of roasting chestnuts
these lapis earrings --
Your delight in the colors
that day on Great Russell Street.

(top photo, with my late mother-in-law, London, 1996)

Stravinsky's Protest

The Evangelist Mark Seated in his Study, Byzantine manuscript from Constantinople, c. 1025, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. (CC)

I'm heading off in a few hours to sing Stravinsky in our choir's annual fundraising concert, and looking forward to it very much. We are performing all the movements of his 1948 Mass, with a wind ensemble, and, a capella, the Three Sacred Choruses (Lord's Prayer, Credo, and Ave Maria), plus the very difficult Anthem, sometimes known as The Dove Descending, set to a text by T.S. Eliot and dedicated to him. The vocal parts of Anthem are so independent that there is really no way to find your note from what others are singing; the best way forward has been for each of us to memorize each interval, and engrave the musical lines of our parts in our heads so that we can sing them confidently and individually.

Yesterday I read the latest essay, "The Strangers," by Teju Cole, in The New Inquiry, in which the author muses about "pre-secular" art: the art from the ages we call Middle, Medieval, and Gothic. Teju has another, apt phrase for it: "God-regarding" art. We tend to think of all art after the Enlightenment as "better", he says, because it is art that reminds us of ourselves. But what if we turn that notion upside down, and consider what we have perhaps lost, or fail to see now, from our "modern" perspective?

In working on these musical pieces, by one of the most iconic modern composers, I've been particularly struck by the Credo in the Three Sacred Choruses, which has insinuated itself into my head and won't let go. Like the Credo in any mass, this creed is very much a chant, and it proceeds without major variation, as "spoken music," with the choir chanting the words on similar notes throughout. But - and this is the testament to Stravinsky's genius - there is an internal rhythmic structure that actually does vary, and a subtle emotional movement that follows the text. As a result, this Credo, while stark and seemingly simple, contains worlds. I have found it more and more moving the longer we've worked on it.

Together with the other two Sacred Choruses, these three rather sombre pieces have felt like a statement to me, quite different from so much of Stravinsky's other work, but I didn't know exactly where they were coming from. Today I found part of an answer (posted with a video performance on the Wikipedia.) In his Chroniques de ma vie, Stravinsky wrote that he had seen a performance of Wagner's Parsifal in 1912, and been outraged at what he saw as the sacreligious presentation of "art as religion, and theatre as a temple." He had been moved to write the Three Sacred Choruses in response, attempting to connect his own present with his memory of the traditional,  chanted Russian liturgical music: stark, modal, plain, and "medieval in their clarity."

I find it fascinating that the composer of the dazzling, audacious Firebird, and such completely atonal and difficult works as "The Dove Descending," which seems like a comment on modern individuality and separation itself, felt compelled to draw a straight line connecting himself back through the centuries to a much earlier, almost forgotten musical expression of faith. While the present-day listener may find it easier to see herself in the ecstatic resurrection dance of The Firebird, these other works are God-regarding in an entirely different way, emerging out of the great silence into the human stillness that reflects it, if we can stop long enough to listen and look.

 

 

November 2: Crimson

Cranberries, a burst

of bog-born acid, explode

on my anxious tongue

 

Nov 1: Mindful Writing Day

Your face in the window
expressionless
the falling yellow leaves

 

This is my small stone for Fiona's "Mindful Writing Day" at Writing Your Way Home. November seems to be the month when we admit summer is finally over, and get serious about writing -- some people commit to writing a novel for NaNoWriMo, some to do a blog post every day this month, or a poem a day. I have occasionally jumped on one of those bandwagons, but this year I dont think it's possible - I'm over-committed already with paying work, Phoenicia projects, lots of singing, and some travel. But Fiona's challenge for today has made me think about what I do want to do, and more specifically, about how important writing is to me.

So I want to toss that thought back to you, and ask what place writing -- or reading -- plays in your life. Do you set goals for yourself? What helps you to keep writing, or keep reading? If you need encouragement to keep going, what form might that take?

Writing has become ingrained for me - a habit, a practice, a way of life. It wasn't always that way, and believe it or not, I still get discouraged, and sometimes I get quite weary with my own voice. Nevertheless, writing is always there, and even if it were simply words in a journal, or letters to special friends (which is how I view this blog, frankly) I know I'd keep at it now, and always will. But we all need new ideas, encouragement, affirmation, and inspiration. I appreciate what Fiona and Kaspa have done, and how many people they've encouraged. Often we just need a gentle push to begin. But while beginning is difficult, it's often harder, further down the line, to keep going.

So please do write a "small stone" today, or a paragraph of prose. Imagine you're writing to a friend who loves you, who would never judge you unkindly, who wants to encourage you to express yourself and to do what you've always wanted to do -- someone, I hope, like me!

 

Watch out for those eyes...

Happy Halloween, everyone! And if your evening isn't ghoulish enough, here's an article from the intrepid BBC food kitchens, on cooking with...blood.

Après.

8:00 am, top of the Plateau Mont-Royal, looking directly south.

The storm went through far to the south of Montreal; all we experienced were high winds last night (I was biking home in swirling leaves, but no crashing limbs), some light rain, and very dramatic skies.

The biggest surprise for me was that when I opened the blinds this morning, literally all the leaves were down, overnight. Bare branches against a huge grey cloud, rimmed with sun, and a brilliant yellow glow beneath it, against deep blue.

 

Looking northwest.

Once we got to the studio, where I was able to climb up high and take these photos, I could see the storm clouds heading west, and the division between the pressure systems was obvious. J. said there was a beautiful rainbow when he rode up, but I missed it.

And southwest, toward the city center.

Around noon I took a walk across Parc Lafontaine, and the light from this sky was so intense on the remaining colored leaves that I coud hardly stand it. Very beautiful, and eerie too.

I hope all the readers who were in the direct path fo the storm are all right, and that your power gets restored quickly. Please tell us your stories!

 

Listen Live: Stravinsky Evensong

 

We'll be singing selections from our upcoming annual concert ( an homage to Igor Stravinsky) at Evensong today -- all the anthems will be by Stravinsky, and there will be modern works by other composers for the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, and the Preces and Responses. You can hear it streamed live on Radio Ville Marie at 4:00 p.m. (Click on the link in the upper right where it says "'Nous ecouter en direct.")

And if you're anywhere near Montreal next Friday evening, we'd love to see you at the concert!

Poster above by yours truly.

' 

Biting My Nails

Life these days feels very busy, so much so that I haven't been able to write much of anything, either here or on any of my ongoing projects. But I think there is another factor, besides work deadlines, choir rehearsals, email correspondence, meals to cook and cats to feed, and all the other aspects of daily life.

It's the damned election.

Since moving up here, across that strange and rather arbitrary border, I've tried keep emotionally away from the ugly morass of American politics. It took us a couple of years just to de-toxify so that our reactions weren't automatically, knee-jerkedly, affected by the fact of being Americans who had been steeped in that particular soup since birth. And if that's who you are, still, I doubt that you can really know what I'm talking about unless you've lived elsewhere for a significant period of time.

Staying out of it is, of course, impossible, because U.S. politics affects almost everyone: it's the stuff of news, almost everywhere, and it matters. And I'm an American citizen, and always will be, even after receiving dual citizenship in Canada. I've followed Obama's presidency, at some distance, to be sure, but with interest -- four years ago, my husband and I drove all the way to Washington to attend the inauguration. Like many progressively-minded people on the planet, we had high hopes, but we also had big doubts about his own plans for bipartisan cooperation, and for what he would be able to accomplish in such a polarized, hostile, and money/special-interest-influenced atmosphere.

I'm afraid it has played out just that way. I've been gravely disappointed in this presidency, and particularly in the foreign policy as led by Hilary Clinton, who has turned out to be both hawkish and, I feel, completely wrong in her ideas of how to deal with tensions in the Middle East -- a subject I care about a great deal.

But the alternative - a Romney presidency - would be so much worse. Why anyone -- but particularly any woman -- would vote for him is completely beyond me.

I voted by absentee ballot, and was glad to cast my ballot for Obama as the better of the two choices. I hope, if he manages to win, that he'll have a somewhat easier time in a second term. I'll be in the U.S. on election night, and will be watching the returns. But I'm worried about what may happen, and dismayed that no matter who wins, I won't really feel my deepest desires -- for a world where peace is truly sought, where the natural environment is treasured, where the poor and disenfranchised are cared for, where every human being matters, where money no longer calls the shots -- will be represented. How many of us do?

I was fortunate to live in Vermont for 30 years, and I'm fortunate to live now in Quebec, the most liberal place in Canada, and in North America. My values are close to those of my fellow Quebecois. But I also know that the border is just a line on a map, and that what happens in the U.S. election will affect me, and all of us.

Please vote.

Evening Walk

From the archives: October 19, 2005.

Lemon-yellow,
white almond-eyes: pointed leaves slick the dark sidewalks and pattern
the windshields of the parked cars. We walk up the street, my arm in
yours, past the lace-curtained doorways, the night glow of late suppers,
readers, bedtime stories. The car wash is buttoned up, the grey
concrete rinsed and swept, hoses hung in wide arcs on the wall. A
doorway; hunched knees of a long-haired girl smoking a joint, and here,
past the seminary-now-condos, a grey kitten interrupts our stride with
sharp cries for affection. Autumn vines twist on wrought iron; a mother
descends, the child stops, coughs.

After
the dark, tree-lined side-streets, lights glare on Mont-Royal. In the
Jean-Coutu, the smocked cosmetic-girls head for the back exit, leaving a
window of plastic pumpkins leering beneath oversize, flying masks. A
blonde girl in pink sateen walks a black dog. Lunettes sleep in their glass cases; rattan baskets hang empty beneath white-lettered chalkboards: “asperges”, “champignons”. In a café, a final patron cradles his coffee, the stools already on their backs for the evening, legs in the air.

Back
onto a side street: the dull red of overgrown begonias cascading from a
windowbox, a tree encircled by a knee-high forest of nasturtiums. On a
third floor, a girl bends forward, straightens up against warm beige
walls, making a bed. We look down the empty alley, past the chainlink
fence and its sign: terrain privé.

Your hip sways against mine, our walk a familiar dance, a little slower tonight. No need to speak; we see the same things.

The Cat that Roared!

( It was actually a yawn.)




The furry catnip mouse was new today, a present from V., and was immediately dragged into her favorite lair, under the wooden chair.




"OK, you can take a picture, but the mouse is mine."