Trois Pèlerinages (Three Pilgrimages) - Part 3

Music has been both a path in my life, and a destination. I can’t remember learning to read music, so in some sense it feels like a land I arrived in before I was born. There have been years of lessons and learning, years of performing with others and of making music on my own, and a few periods when I was doing neither in a concerted way – periods that have always ended with a call and a new journey.

Two of the biggest changes for me in this latest transition between homes have been being without my piano, and without the choir I sang in for many years. I had stopped taking voice and piano lessons a few years before we started coming to Montreal, and the friend with whom I often played four-hand piano was teaching on the west coast. So there had already been a gradual, natural change in focus and intention; because of the lessons I’d been practicing a lot for four or five years, and I was tired of it and a little bored. But it was very hard leaving the choir: when you see the same people twice a week for years and years, and work together on something you all care about, you end up knowing and caring a great deal about each other. We were a family, as well as people who loved singing.

I don’t have a solo voice, and I’ve never had aspirations to be a professional. I’m simply a pretty good lifelong musician, in the category, I guess, of “skilled amateurs.” At its core, for me, music has always been about joy and solace, and since I was very small it’s been my refuge, along with the natural world. It has been an inexhaustible well, always providing something new to learn, opportunities to improve, things to discover. But the journey into music goes two ways; as you go deeper into it, it teaches you more about yourself.

Sometimes, I suppose, we need a break even from that. In my sadness over my mother’s death, and the difficulty of adjusting to an unsettled life in a new place, maybe that intensely emotional place from which music comes was just too much. It seems odd to think of it that way, since making music has always functioned for me as a way of dealing with my emotions. I’ve thought this period had more to do with practicalities: no piano, no way to be a responsible member of a musical group because of my unpredictable schedule. But perhaps it was more than that. Instead, the city opened up a world of musical performance I’ve never been able to enjoy before, and for four years I’ve been a grateful consumer.

During early October this year, Montreal hosted an international organ competition, with sixteen competitors, most in their thirties, from eleven nations, and a high-powered international jury. Quebec has a long tradition of European-style organ-building, and some very fine instruments, so it’s a natural place for such a competition, and the quality of playing was very high. A large video screen was set up at the front of the churches used for the three rounds, so you could both see and hear the performances. Although the contest was eventually won by a crowd-pleasing young Frenchman -- a flashy, virtuoso player who had committed his entire contest repertoire to memory -- I became interested in a young woman from Belgium, Els Biesemans, who won the Bach prize in the first round. During the second round, where the competitors were required to play two imposed works by Olivier Messiaen and other works of their choice from the 19^th and 20^th centuries, she played with such musicality and depth that I was completely captivated. She was like a cat ranging over the manuals, sometimes with a soft caress, sometimes with arching power; she was inside the music. In the final round of five finalists, she drew the first slot - never a good place to be - and perhaps there was a question of nerves, or difficulties with the registration of the huge Casavant organ at Notre Dame Basilica – but after playing works by Messiaen and Bach and seeming somewhat “off”, she took an admirable risk, playing an exciting,  recently-composed experimental work  -- and then reached deep inside for an excellent performance of a tremendously difficult fantasy and fugue by Franz Liszt. She didn’t win, but overall I found so much more to admire in her playing and her inherent musicality than in the choppy, unemotional virtuosity of the man the jury chose. Weeks later, I’m still thinking about it.

(Video and audio from the contest is available here.)

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I had spoken to Patrick about the choir already. With the death of my father-in-law, our schedule has changed and we are here more: enough, I thought, that I might be able to do it. “Come anytime,” he told me, as he’s been saying almost since we met four years ago. “We’d love to have you with us.” The next Thursday evening, feeling nervous, I rode my bike downtown and walked into the rehearsal room already filling with other singers. I was handed a sheaf of music, nearly all new to me. It was, as I’d expected, quite a different experience from any choral group I’ve sung with. This is a choir of 25 to 30 singers, made up of eight paid professionals and experienced amateurs. Everyone is a good sight-reader -- and you have to be, because most of the music doesn’t stay in your folder for more than a week. We get a look at it on Thursday night, and then there’s an hour rehearsal before the Sunday Mass at 10:00 am and Evensong, which is broadcast and streamed live, at 4:00 pm. That’s it. There’s little “teaching” of vocal parts; the choir starts out already singing the notes, rhythms, tempos and dynamics with remarkable accuracy, and instinctively adapts to the various styles of music. They’re used to singing together and listening to each other; no voice sticks out, and even with so many high-caliber soloists, everyone stays within what a former director liked to call “the sleeve of sound.” The rehearsal time is spent going over details that will create a polished, smooth performance: pronunciation of the various languages, the breathing and lifts that give space, slight modifications in tempo to anticipate, and the all-important shaping of phrases to create music that’s always coming from somewhere and moving toward someplace else: the kind of musicality I appreciated so much in Els Bieseman’s organ playing.

I began to relax after the first services and a couple of weeks of rehearsals; the routines of practices, tea breaks, dressing, running up and down between church and undercroft are becoming more familiar; I now have a robe, a music cubbyhole, a locker with my name on the door, and some nascent friendships. The challenge of keeping up with many singers who are better than I am is going to be good for me. I like the intense concentration required, and know I’ll learn and improve. It feels wonderful to feel my body singing again, and know I'm becoming part of the organism that a choir is. Once again, I realize I’ve arrived back at home.

Our fundraising concert, titled Symphony of Psalms after the Stravinsky piece that will conclude it, is in a week. At the last rehearsal, we worked for fifteen minutes on a complicated double-choir setting of Psalm 150 by Jan Sweelinck, ironing out the tricky rhythms, making sure each of the eight parts had all its notes. Satisfied, Patrick got up from the keyboard and came around to the front, holding his score: it would be a capella from now on. “Ok!” he said, with a big smile. “Now let’s make some music!”

Comments

[dale]

Thank you for giving me a glimpse. I've always regretted not having learned anything about music: perhaps as I get better at being bad at things I might do so, sometime :-)

[kaycie]

That sounds like a wonderful experience, Beth. I'm so glad you're enjoying singing again. I remember exactly that feeling of kinship with others when you make music with a group. Music for me has become more about solitude, though the joy and solace you wrote of are still present. With three children at home, I sometimes am overwhelmed by noise. When I need to feel calm, I find time to be alone with my music, whether it's playing or listening. By the time I am finished, the noise in my head has flown.

[Lucy]

This speaks about something I find quite difficult to understand in terms I can understand. I too wish I was more able to understand music; I enjoy it without ever really knowing what I'm enjoying, and it's not for want of trying, lessons, opportunities, there's just something missing in my make-up! But it truly is an ineffably wondrous thing.

I've heard people who have been through deep bereavement say they couldn't listen to any music at all for quite long periods.

I'm sure the choir will become better and better for you.