Wonder and Yearning

Hello, Music Lover,
I guess it's been a contemplative week. The first square I finished was of "Fare Thee Well, Love" by the Rankin Family. What is it about an octave jump that makes the nerves in one's spine go "twang"? Sometimes it is just achingly nostalgic and the Rankins do a superb job of it in their gentle and unaffected way.

This is for Thelma, who used to often visit a friend for a drink before he passed away in 2004. The first line of the chorus is "So I'll drink today, love", but sorry, Thelma, somehow I just couldn't put a glass of wine in the hand of the man waving goodbye. It was just a little like he was then going to turn and get back to the party on the dock, when from the song you don't get the impression that he has anything to celebrate, and he is also much too nice to go and drown his miseries either. But I put in the mountains that are referred to in the text!

The other piece I have just finished also has a kind of nostalgia - the second movement from Gerald Finizi's "Dies Natalis". A bit of whiplash, I guess, from the Maritimes to England, and from a family-based folk song to a "classical" tenor solo. But they have a lot in common too.

This was requested by our son Will, who is a tenor and sings professionally, although does not do solo work. What really grabs Will about this piece is the text, from 17th century poet Thomas Traherne, which he told me makes him wonder at the greatness of the universe and its innocence, the innocence that we all have on our "day of birth". Here is some of the text from the last movement, the Salutation:

These little limbs, these eyes and hands which here I find, This panting heart wherewith my life begins; Where have ye been? Behind what curtain were ye from me hid so long? Where was, in what abyss, my new-made tongue? ........  A gift from God I take, the earth, the seas, the light, the lofty skies, The sun and stars are mine: if these I prize.

I was reminded of two things when I was designing this square. Do you remember 2001: A Space Odyssey? I am sure that somewhere in that there was an image of an unborn foetus displayed again an image of space, and I vaguely remember it was near the end somewhere and I recall it was supposed to have some deep meaning although I couldn't quite grasp it.

The second thing it reminded me of was the supposedly true story of a 4 year old who wanted to spend some private, unsupervised time with his newborn sibling. The parents were nervous about this, but decided to allow the boy into the nursery on his own. They stayed to peek through the slightly open door as the boy approached the crib, and introduced himself. The he whispered to the baby: “Please could you remind me what God is like – I forget!” Holding my first grandchild Max for the first time (that's his ultrasound photo you are looking at) also brought that story to mind. New babies are indeed a miracle - to paraphrase Traherne, "the infancy of a sublime and celestial greatness".

Talk to you later,
Susan