A Moral and Spiritual Forest

When the evenings get dark we think about music, and by the time the notices start to appear in the papers about Bach's Christmas Oratorio, Handel's Messiah, and the Brandenburg Concertos, it's likely our cherry-picked "fall season" is already well underway. Not that there's any real planning or subscription involved. In the course of the last week we heard two outstanding concerts, both of them in St. Paul.

On Sunday afternoon Consortium Carissimi performed selections from Monteverdi's La Salve  Morale et Spirituale, a heterogeneous collection of pieces he put together and published in 1640. The translation would be "a moral and spiritual forest"—great title!

The show was at three in the afternoon in one of the courtrooms on the third floor of the Landmark Center, and the proceedings had a casual atmosphere that almost made you feel like you were part of the group. One woman was taping the event on a tripod using her phone. A baroque trombone (no valves) was sitting on a table right behind my head. Guests and musicians greeted each other warmly. No one was taking tickets. The nineteen members of the ensemble—singers and instrumentalists—gradually settled into their places, but then started to converse again with a colleague or adjust a music stand. Director Garrick Comeaux and bassist Julie Elhard, standing ten feet apart, couldn't seem to agree on when to start the program. We watched all the comings and goings as if it were the introduction to a neo-realist film by Ermanno Olmi. 

Finally Garrick addressed the audience, informing us in an almost inaudible voice that contrary to the information in the program, there would be no intermission. "If you want to stretch your legs, fine. But hurry back to your seats. The concert isn't that long." He also announced that the group had commissioned the construction of a new organ and had found a permanent home for it—and for the group itself—at a nearby church. He introduced three or four new members. They stood up in the back, everyone clapped, and then he gestured unceremoniously for them to sit down again. And off we went into the sweet world of Italian Renaissance music—a world that Hilary and I almost invariably enjoy, but know almost nothing about.

The first half of the program consisted of singers and instrumentalists in various combinations performing relatively brief selections. One of the tenors did a solo number. Two violinists put a lot of energy into a somewhat repetitive piece full of call-and-response figures to piercing effect.

I don't remember precisely which was which, but the performances were invariably fresh and engaging, and the long Mass that concluded the program offered a tremendous blast of rich vocal harmonies. Wow! I say "long" but it wasn't too long. Rich, but also somehow light, unlike so many concert Masses that are titanic to the point of bombast and tediousness.

Two days later we returned to St. Paul to hear an afternoon performance of the Bach solo violin sonatas and partitas performed by the Greek virtuoso Leonidas Kavakos. Unlike the material in the previous concert, which was entirely new to me, I've been listening to these pieces since my college years. I even taught myself one of the partitas on the guitar. 

But they're naked works, full of mournful scraping sounds and double and triple stops that threaten to upset the flow. No one listens to them very often, I think, great though they are. They're deep yet also lively, sometimes harsh, often mournful and intense. How they would sound on a concert stage I had no idea, but Kavakos pulled it off, both by his playing and his serious, untheatrical demeanor. The thought and feeling were ever present, the care and virtuosity merely a means to an end.

It was a recital not to be forgotten.

Back home, we cooked up a pot of leek and squash risotto while listening to a CD of the three sonatas that weren't included on the afternoon program performed by the Venetian virtuoso Guiliano Carmignola. The tone was slightly different, but Carmignola touched on the same array of emotions.  

 

A Bright, Do-Nothing Day

Whenever a Republican wins a presidential election, I cut a branch or two off the dracaena that's been growing in a pot in a corner of our dining room for decades. It was getting sort of tall.

I can't quite explain it, but I found myself taking great pleasure as I held the branches over the yard waste bin out by the garage—glorious sunny morning—and cut the branches into very short lengths, one after the other, with my pruning shears.

The other day we invited a couple of friends over to commiserate about the election, but couldn't quite decide what to call the event: Whine and Wine? or Gnash and Nosh?

I'm through with politics for a while. I glance at the headlines and then look away, as if I've been accosted by the sight of a rotting carcass. No need to scrutinize the autopsy report right now.

The leaves are crisp and dry, and I've been raking them up a sections, but there are still plenty to gather up.  I've noticed that if you rake half the yard, a few days later the leaves will be evenly distributed again over the entire yard. How could this be?

In any case, on a day like today it won't do to simply wander the house, staring out the windows, so I came up with a plan. I was going the do a few of things I should have done a long time ago, such as buying a tube of Henry's rubber roof repair goo to squeeze into the opening above the gutters that the ice dams like to take advantage of. As it happens, the hardware store is right next to the liquor store. Although our recent guests brought plenty of wine with them, it seems we're now out. So I added that stop to the itinerary..

During our little soirée the conversation moved so thick and so fast that we forgot to set out half the food we'd planned to serve, and now we have a fridge full of spanakopita and smoked salmon. My idea is to add the salmon in little strips to some spinach pasta along with cream, maybe a few capers, and fresh dill. A trip to the grocery store is now in order.

And wonder of wonders, just now I even brought a box of books up from the basement and ran it out to the car. Someone had written <Good. Sell These> in bold letters on the side. That was me. I'm getting rid of it, without even looking inside. No second thoughts. No regrets.

But right now it's out into the yard to show those luscious crispy crackly leaves who's boss.