Requiem for Compassion

A Translation from a beautiful Brahms Motet entitled  

Warum ist Licht gegeben (Why Is Light Given):

Why has light been given to the weary of soul,
And life to the troubled hearts? Why?
They who wait for death, and it doesn’t come;
They who dig for it even out of secret places;
Those who almost rejoice and are happy
That they achieve the grave. Why?
And to the man whose way is hidden,
And from whom God himself has been concealed?
Why?

Let us lift up our hearts, together with our hands, to God in heaven.

Behold, we value them as blessed who have endured.
You have heard of the patience of Job,
And the Lord’s conclusion you have seen:
For the Lord is merciful and has compassion!

About two months ago I went to San Francisco. During the visit, I got to see my mom, which was an enormously cathartic experience. I also got to hear an incredible concert put on by the San Francisco Symphony. The program began with some of Brahms' organ preludes and concluded with his requiem. In the middle of the preludes and requiem was his Motet Op. 74, No. 1. I sat there in Davies Symphony Hall feeling instantly alone as the choir first uttered the German word for Why (Warum). I felt cold and held back tears obsessing over the sound of that one word.

Why?

It has been more than a year since my last blog entry. In that time, I have finished grad school, returned to Michigan, begun teaching music and performing it. I'm living the dream that I set into action many years ago. My everyday life, I'm grateful to say, is one where I wake up with freedom to do what I please, enlighten young minds, and make beautiful music. I live.

While I live with the most clarity I've ever had in my life, the world surrounding me devolves into a blurrier place each day.

Warum?

When I hear the first line of Brahm's motet, I think of this country. Our country. It's the iteration of why over and over again that really grips me. At first, and deceptively, Warum sounds bright and promising and wonderful and of great dreams to come. I think of the American Dream. My dream. I think of the life I live everyday. All that is good and possible. But always, the chords that sound afterwords fill me with a deep grief, as Brahms asks, Why again. Perhaps it's the bad that I choose to see where it concerns our country.

Still, I cannot stop asking why to the things I see happening.

Where it concerns race, many Americans are at odds with one another. No doubt it is because of our shared difficulties to navigate our differences. Yet what I continue to wonder is why we rush to judgment and point fingers rather than asking productive questions and extending understanding. If everyone is standing on moral high grounds, are we not again staring each other in the face as equals?

No one is listening.

Why?

There are severe problems in moving forward as a country when laypeople and political pundits alike respond to black deaths by police officers with "what about black on black crime?" I've been asked this questions by countless friends and peers initially wanting to respond, "What about it?" Usually I am more constructive and today I'll stick with that avenue of responding.

Most murders of White Americans (83% of them in 2013) are committed by other White Americans. Black on Black murders surpass our White counterparts' crimes by 7%. To me, I see that murder is an issue, and narrowly a racial one. Equating the deaths committed amongst a category of civilians to deaths between law enforcements and civilians is wrong and disingenuous. Police officers are charged with the responsibility of making split second decisions in order to protect people. It is a hard responsibility, yes. But it is not a handicap. It is simple: for those who have the honor of upholding the law, the standard is higher, as it should be.

I want to be completely open. Mistrust, in my experience, is a legitimate feeling; myself, my family members, friends, and mentors have all experienced varying degrees of foolishness that have caused us to mistrust agents of the law.

Still, us Black Americans are no less responsible for removing productive element of understanding from what could otherwise be a meaningful dialogue. 

There are severe problems in moving forward as a country when Black communities rely on their own versions of rules and regulations to govern themselves. The silence on crime that is rampant in Black communities across this nation is a deafening one. Where has our blindness, deafness, and willful ignorance gotten us? Our children's bodies lie still in premature graves. We fear the places we should feel the safest as we live in the de facto prisons of our homes and neighborhoods. Our silence, and in many cases misplaced priorities, have afforded us nothing but destruction. And moreover, we have been insulated at times from the compassion and protection that the law is meant to show us, as a result of what our culture typifies to others, whether fairly or not.

Let us lift up our hearts together...

 

Can we all acknowledge our ignorance (willful or unintended) and release our collective pride? Let us lift up our hearts together, rather not to ask why but to ask how. How can we heal together and understand one another? We do not have to be seduced into extreme narratives concerning each other and our differences in vocation, in class, nor in race.

For we have here no continuing city,
but we seek the future.

I don't speak German. Were it not for the translations, the text in Brahms' motet were words I would not have otherwise truly understood. It was the sound and spirit of those words, however, to which I was initially listening. That human utterance gave meaning to a word that apart from that performance would have been vague and possibly meaningless. But I listened. I listened first even though I did not understand.

Are you listening?

Disconnect

Just about everyone in the Free World interacts with the internet in some way. It's a normal condition to be available to a slew of acquaintances, friends, and even strangers at the touch of your cell phone. I watched Disconnect (2012), thinking this would be a mediocre survey of the situations our connections with one another brings us. The surprise was not pleasant. Rather, it was a deeply relevant and honest side of the truth about our relationships, both in real life and in cyber space.

The three story lines weave in and out of each other to highlight the dealings with social media, grief, identity theft, marital and familial relationships, and lots of secrets. Paula Patton and Alexander Skarsgard play a troubled married couple trying to cope with death. Jason Bateman is a lawyer, husband, and father of two high school children; a family living the 21st century American Dream. The other story line takes place between a newswoman and a young guy in the internet sex industry.

Visually, I found the movie very interesting because of the muted colors used in the wardrobes and camera filters. It showed how often we can physically be somewhere but not really be present. The soundtrack was always brooding with angst, anxiety, and loneliness. At the start of the movie, I felt like I was falling and that feeling never went away.

This isn't one of those thrillers where you're trying to string dots together. Instead, you see inevitable misfortunes coming that cut deep, in spite of the foresight. It is a powerful movie.

Gender Roles in Art Music

I just read an article today that made me want to comment on it. My response to the article is below and so is the link to the article.

http://www.symphonynow.org/2013/03/harpist-in-the-lions-den/


The opportunity for women has definitely increased in the art music community. Unfortunately, I believe these increased opportunities to be lacking still. The first reason I say this is because of the extreme male dominance in "positions of musical power" (e.g. concert masters(mistresses), principal flutists, timpanists, trumpeters etc.).  But this is pretty obvious. Something concerns me more, however.

There seems to be constraint on how a woman can express herself depending on what sort of position she holds. For instance, successful female soloists seem to take on a more sexualized or traditionally feminine image (e.g. Amy Porter, Hilary Hahn). The same goes for high positions in orchestras (who often serve a soloist function) such as concert masters. Famous female conductors, on the other hand, insinuate a more androgynous, and at times traditionally masculine, image or persona.  What is interesting and unfortunate is that these two expressions of feminine energies are virtually mutually exclusive. It is irregular to see a "traditionally feminine" conductor or more masculine concert mistress. Shouldn't be that way.

Males, on the other hand, have been afforded the privilege to express themselves however they want in any art music arena. Whether you talk of the brilliance (and flamboyance) of the late Leonard Bernstein or the stolid demeanor of some principal male woodwind players, the fact remains that there has always been freedom in all art music arenas for a man to express himself in anyway he felt. It would be great if women openly had this freedom too.