Coming Into Summer with a Whole New View, Part 2 (Schubert, Brahms, Shaw and Minor, Haydn)

On the non-fiction side of the fourth wall, I walk as long as I feel like it when well, and so two hill walks on a single day: no problem, six months out and 90 percent recovered from anemia!

But, the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past is not having it. Not at all. He stays on post as my sedate octogenarian pacing service, and to him ...

"Two hill walks? Two days, Frau Mathews. I am waiting for you to have this much good sense on the non-fiction side of the fourth wall, and you are probably going to make me wait until I am a nonagenarian or even centenarian, but I'm already in eternity. I have time."

"I knew you were going to start fussing!"

"And I dare not disappoint you, meine liebe Dame."

But we were laughing, and he was actually very happy with all the things I had come to learn between the summer of 2023 and the summer of 2025, such that choosing to rest in love and work from that position was no longer something I ran to when in need of refuge, but now my home. I had been climbing in that direction a long time, and now it was time to explore this new territory in our lessons!

I had come up on the eastern approach to Buena Vista Hill, and gone a little way on its northeastern side ...

... and there our favorite ethereal bass had met me, rejoicing for so long and so intensely that the post had gotten a bit too long to get to the rest ... so, onto day 2!

"After all, Frau Mathews, there need be no hurry ... as we learned last summer, in a blessed world -- selige welt -- there is no need ... when we get to wherever we are meant to be, we will be on time ... there is no blessed isle we shall miss in going at the pace we are meant to go."

"Selige Welt" ... Schubert's song that I had learned while resting in the near meadows of Golden Gate Park ... the character, having escaped from a isle shrouded with mists and misery in a boat sent for him with all sail set in "Sehnsucht," now in the sunlight upon the vast ocean is not worried that the boat has no rudder, nor is he worried about thus missing any blessed isle ... the world in light is so blessed that he knows wherever he lands, he will remain in a blessed world.

That had led to the lesson about being blessed and blessed ... so much so that I did not need to worry about missing anything while resting from Covid-19 and taking my time in recovering. I had received this lesson -- and it had saved my life twice in the eleven months since.

"We enjoy ourselves, being blessed and blessed," he said, "but your life is serious business, Frau Mathews. Neither of us were burdened with knowing just how serious the matter would become by this January, but you know, rarely is a basso profondo sent for light work."

"Point taken," I said, "although you certainly sound footloose and fancy free in 'Selige Welt,' which I would be delighted to hear you sing now!"

"I am delighted to provide your delight, Frau Mathews."

Having chosen not to traverse the northern side of the hill because it would be too windy too soon, we retraced my steps to the easternmost entrance where I came onto the hill, and upon doing that, I met a well known path ... this was July, the sun well off to the north ...

... and this was a slightly different view of the same path, the sun visible to the southwest side on January 11, the last day I spent rambling the hill, my doctor frantically trying to figure out where I was and why I wasn't getting her calls. I truly had no idea that I would not walk this path again for six months, and was in such danger of never walking any path on this earth again.

Upon realizing all this, I stopped, and my walking partner looked at me with deep concern. I explained to him what I was thinking, and he nodded.

"Grateful reflection and giving of thanks," he said, "is never out of order."

So we paused there for that purpose before going further up the path, a path blessed with gold ...

... and rubies ...

... worthy of what the character glimpses among the trees in that same "Sehnsucht," under the clear blue skies of his dreams -- these are the scenses that inspire him, when a boat appears at the shore, for him to realize a miracle has been done, but not by the gods of that place, and to lay hold to it and escape!

"For such glories as we enjoy, Frau Mathews -- the glimpses of which you lovingly provide to Q-Inspired to inspire others -- many a person has been inspired to find their courage and change their life!" he said.

"And some people hear it in a voice boldly singing of it," I said, and he smiled and sang boldly.

Upwards again we went, into vistas summer-drunk with light ...

... down upon scenes bolstered with blue, for it was a high traverse of the southern side.

We stopped and rested at need, and that gave him time to lead into the lesson he had for me that day.

"So, as you know, I do keep a little apartment here in the city which is really my bank, and I have procured a little computer to go with the furnishings there. I do look around on YouTube from time to time before going back up on high. The amount of music on it is shocking to consider, but I also find computing fascinating, as you know."

"Back there in 1988, predicting me and other composers writing music on a personal computer -- I remember," I said.

"I lived in this world long enough to have heard of Bitcoin, and Hive's predecessor had made the scene just before I departed, and so I have followed that a little more because it is to your interest -- but also I have noted the culture of your African American sisters who are as well-learned and past living for the corporate world. I notice there is a trend toward ease and luxury among your peers. Given that your trajectory has carried you to rest, why not that path? You would have had more companionship."

"I have wondered about that myself," I said, "and it is not easy to articulate why not. Let's climb a little more, and I'll think about it."

Up some more as I gathered my thoughts, into a bright place ...

... and there we stopped, being able there to improvise a seat for both of us.

"I did not have any of the language that I have now to speak of these things then, but I had put in so many years in deep happiness out in the parks, most often with my grand old soldier, that luxury meant nothing to me -- I don't have a need for that," I said.

"As for ease ... there are certainly times when I have wished that things in my life would have been easier, but a life of ease would frankly bore me. Not enough challenge. I am massively gifted, so I need to invest that in good work, and to that I am actually called. I am not called to ease -- I do not think anyone, called as I am, is called to a life of ease. But what I have more and more learned is that I am called to rest as much as I am to work ... as deeply as I engage in the one, I can engage in the other."

He smiled and glowed up intensely.

"As deeply as you engage in one, you can engage in the other, because both are a gift to you," he said. "From the beginning of your being willing to learn from me in Brahms, I have actually sung this to you, and not long after you were willing to give Haydn another chance as well, I sung this to you in the Creation. It is a subtle lesson that most people miss, but now you are ready -- in both common and special grace, this is indeed given."

I cast my mind back -- there had been so much grief and anguish in my life in 2021 and 2022 -- back then, the beauty of his voice and earnestness of his singing accounted for so much -- but even then, because I had an ear to hear, the clues that he left to point up the deeper matters of which he sang were found by me over time. I had gone back into German to pick up some of the clues -- but Brahms's Four Serious Songs and Haydn's Creation had things hidden in plain sight, because I knew the passages of Scripture referenced in English and so knew what was going on.

"I will sing both pieces in a little while, Frau Mathews; you need not go back in mind to those times of pain for you, not on this day of joy," he said gently.

"Danke," I said. "That is not an easy for me to do ... although now I am coming to the point in which of course I remember the anguish, but there is so much gratitude for the way I was led and kept through there to reach here."

"As it should be, mein goldenes Blumenkind," he said. "I am glad to know that is becoming your experience. To be able to turn back and view from whence you have come and know the difficulty but also see the beauty of the way is one of the blessings of life's journey, particularly if you have been granted the kind of longevity that you have -- self-aware and with memories going back more than 40 years of your life."

We went up a little further and found that the Blessed Hand had refreshments for us ... still very early in blackberry season...

... but my companion put out his hiking pole before me to stop me in the path.

"Sei vorsichtig, mein Liebling!" he cried, and then I noticed: there was a huge dropoff hidden by the vines themselves.

"Well," I said, "this is set up so that the greedy will only make this mistake once!" I said.

"Be careful, my darling," he said in English. "You are not greedy, but still: permit me to hold you even for the few you may safely reach."

The few were more than sufficient, and we moved onward and upward...

... to a major path I recognized.

"I've come down by this path from the top to avoid the route that has all the stairs I climbed the one time I have walked up the eastern approach to the top. We are not far ... but I am not yet in condition yet to top the hill and come back safely from where we started ... not yet -- that last part is too steep and still has too many stairs."

"No more summit fever for you, eh?" he teased, with a laugh in his voice.

"That's such a 2023 and 2024 behavior," I said, and that laugh came right out of him.

"I'm sure before the end of the summer I'm going to be reminding you of that," he said.

"See, now I gotta get summit fever later so you won't be disappointed," I said. "A singer of your acting ability cannot hate anything worse than a good buildup leading to an anti-climax."

He very nearly rolled laughing, aided and abetted by me adding, "Sei vorsichtig, mein Liebling -- about three-quarters of the hill is a quite considerable dropoff!"

But I also held him until he could lean against the wall there. He, being so much taller than me, could actually sit down...

... and then he reached out and used his immense strength to pick me up to sit beside him.

"The fog is coming in, but San Francisco Bay is still over there," he said. "This is a rare view, and having come this far, you should not miss it."

"Love lifts us up where we belong, as we discussed yesterday," I said, and he glowed up so much with that dazzling smile...

"Oh, how you have grown -- that took a day, not a week, not a month, not a year. You understand!"

"Ich verstehe Sie sehr gut," I said, and just leaned my head on his shoulder.

He shivered, and so did that hill as delight rolled over him like a wave.

"Long have I waited for you to meet me here, at this new view, meine liebe Dame," he said. "Love is infinite and eternal, and has no limits -- we are limited by our humanity, but the upper side is very high ... as you gain understanding, and release doubt, fear, and pride, you will climb and be lifted more and more into it ... in eternal terms I am just a little ahead of you in exploring that upper side, but the glory of the path you have chosen is that you have done so while still so very young ... why should you need to be old before you explore highly?"

"I rather think, from what you were singing and leaving for me to learn when you were 44," I said, "that early exploration is the move to make, and I already know where the babies are I will help when I am 87, even from on high if I am there: they are the children and grandchildren of my students and grand-students, both those that I am walking with now, and those added to me as I was added to you."

He had been attempting the gravity of age a little that day owing to the depth of the lesson he meant to present -- and there was depth enough -- but the waves of joy that came over him washed apparent age from him until he was again my peer, robustly in his mid-forties like he was when he was singing all that music that helped to open my eyes.

Then suddenly, he became very still ... gathering all of his emotions to sing ... he stood up, and then smiled and shook his head.

"I have to start with Brahms," he said, "and while my mood is in the fourth of the Serious Songs, your lesson is in the last line of the first song."

"You know," I said, "you can sing them all ... we have time and I don't mind ... I just love the way you sing toward No. 4 all the way ... as dark as the futility of life is, as darker still the cruelty done to those most in need, as darker still and bitter as the reality of our mortality ... and the tender way you turn on the light at the end of No. 3 because death is not the end, and not to all is it a curse ... and then No. 4, in which you sing of having love, and being at last where we shall know as we are known, and of the three things that will remain, faith, hope, and love, love is the greatest ... by all means, sing it all!"

He lit up even more.

"I will!" he said, "oh, I will!"

But then he stopped short.

"The point I intend to make in common grace is that you are right about the balance of work and rest ... for as it is written and I sang to you in the first of those songs at the end, the one joy given to our lives is to rejoice in the work we have been given, for who shall bring anyone to see what comes after us?

Now, I understand that the work that many of your peers are seeking ease from stems from patterns borne out of oppression of African Americans, but neither Brahms, who wrote these songs near the end of his life, nor King Solomon, who wrote Ecclesiastes near the end of his life, contemplated that. They knew what work they had been given in the way they were created. That is why, Frau Mathews, you do not seek ease ... you are working primarily in what you have been given to do, and it is given to you for your joy, even in all the difficulties that you must endure in the world.

"You know this full well not least because Hive does not provide for you the rewards an author of your caliber might think they deserve ... but you enjoy writing and blessing your readers without resentment ... you take joy in your work because it blesses you and others. So much of your life's work is the same ... and your joy is increasing in it. If we consider life's natural griefs as given exposition by Brahms, you too, in taking such joy in loving others, are walking through them toward No. 4 ... all that good seed you have sown, even going forth and weeping ...

Nobody expects a choir to break into a hymn on the side of a hill, BUT ...

My companion worked out the bass line and unobtrusively played oktavist, humming the bass line down an octave as I sang along in alto and the climbing choir smiled as we got down off the wall there and walked up a little ways with them as they were going to the top of the hill...

... and parted at the fork, with them going to complete their ascent and we at the high point of our traverse and from there going gradually down.

From there, there were two paths possible, but one was more exposed to the wind, so we chose the boardwalk path that would take us all the way to Buena Vista West where I often rode to walk up to the top from the last quarter of the hill, a path upon which the turning of the hill and the thick trees above would shield us from most of the wind.

This was pleasant walking indeed, with many surprises along the way ...

... and I noticed that as we picked up a slightly more brisk pace that his step was bouncing ... in his mortal years, when asked, he would go sing with die Volk in local neighborhood groups happily ... so intense was his love of music and blessing the people with it that he never stood on size of stage or size of check ... he was in the work given to him that he loved, and in it he took intense joy.

"I would be singing out even now," he said, "but our new friends are recording at the top of the hill, and the overtones from my low notes in my immortal strength of voice, even approximated for my mortal range, will make that hard for them. We must give them time!"

"I hear them still," I said, "and by the time they finish, we should be nearly around to Buena Vista West, so it will be right on time."

But in the end, there being no hurry, we just stopped and enjoyed ... he was not as familiar with English-language hymnody so this was new music for him, and he was pleased both to learn and to hear me softly altoing on many of them ... generally by verse 2 he had worked out the bass line ... so he embraced me, and hummed those lines very softly as I sang with the words softly ... and in that shade when I opened my eyes, I saw how intense the glow of his happiness was.

"To be here, with you so happy and well ... no more could I have asked of this world, when I remember how brokenhearted you were, and how steadily yet you climbed to here ... you must have all of this joy, meine liebe Dame, for already beyond the joy of your work, you are arriving where I live now. I will clarify the statement later, in Haydn ... but first we have Brahms...

We came out again in a bright place as the singing above us was done...

... and there my companion opened his mouth and sang toward the greatness of love through Brahms's Four Serious Songs ... and indeed, if one does not take the reality that death can be for some the needed comfort from the miseries of the world as a source of joy, there is none until song 4 except that one can take joy in the good work one is given to do in the world, right there at the end of song 1. It is a bleak landscape that Brahms created as he considered the approaching end of his own life and the loss of his dear friend Clara Schumann ... but as the darkness before the breaking of dawn past death, in song 4 ... and of course, nobody sings all the way to the light like my favorite bass!

By this time, the choir above us was looking for us, recognizing the bass voice that had sung with them humbly an hour earlier but stunned to hear it in full! But the stunning had just begun -- that high F was a shock, but every baritone can do that ... the three-octave Ds in Haydn, though, with both ends equally mighty and lovely? Not so much, though he was not in a state of mind to even notice the frantic steps above us, trying to find the path down to where we were.

"Now then -- you were right that I should sing it all, Frau Mathews, because from love being the greatest of all, we can reconsider the Creation by Haydn, and the world as it is described there in the first two chapters ... still perfect, made by Love Himself in joyful peace."

In Haydn's oratorio, he had once sung an absolutely overjoyed Raphael ... even in his mortal years, it seemed that he knew that "the morning stars sang together" for joy at the beauty of Creation as it is said in Job, and completely got into the role ... there are places where he was smiling and glowing up so hard in full mortality while his voice was ringing out his intense joy that my heart felt as though it would burst!

All this to say that I had survived Covid-19 and anemia from summer to summer, and it was a good thing that he was thinking of one of his calmer arias from the Creation, because the glow-up both in sight and sound was frankly ridiculous, now that on occasion he got to moonlight with a few seraphim in worship! His voice sat right at the edge of his approximation of his mortal voice even as he spoke.

"In this I describe the making of the great fish of the sea and the fowls of the air, and the blessing of their Creator upon them ... but I need to give us a moment ... I will back up here to say that in perfection, you know the story of the creation very well ...*in perfection, the only One working worked, said His work was good and very good, and then did what?"

The light came on at last!

"He rested!" I said, and cracked up laughing. "So, of course I am gravitating toward a life of work and also rest, that balance ... as it was in the beginning, it now and ever shall be!"

"World without end, a-a-men, a-a-a-aaaaaamen!" he playfully carolled. "You learned that as a very little girl too, Frau Mathews ... you have known for forty years that these things are so. But I take the liberty of adding the little detail at the end of 'Seid fruchtbar Alle' for your consideration ... after the fishes and the birds are blessed to get their assignment to be fruitful and multiply, they also are assigned rest ... is your German up to that last line?"

I thought hard, and then it came to me ...

"I probably don't have all the words quite right in German," I said, "but I know it comes out to something like, "be fruitful, grow, multiply, and joy in your God!"

"That's it," he said. "But bear in mind that Genesis 1 and 2, and the oratorio also, were not actually written to the fishes and birds, though blessed they were, and blessed they still are, having never rebelled, leaping in joy from the depths, and singing from every tree. No ... that was all written to those who would hear the joyful sound, and be redeemed to all they were made for -- and that includes you, meine Liebe!"

His voice nearly broke from his passion -- but with a masterful effort, he composed himself, opened his mouth, and sang out that blessing from his whole heart, from the heights of joy in that last line on that high D, and down to the Fundamental upon which all that joy rested for the last word, on the low D:

There was great silence afterward ... by that time, the choir we had met had found the great staircase that led down to the southside walk, but they had stopped at every place along it -- some in mid-step -- in awe as that low D rolled in its immense power across that hill. It was not that he had those low notes: most basses and quite a few baritones can get down there like I can get below tenor in the morning. But projecting it with power, without a mic? Whole different ballgame.

Whole different ethereal basso profondo ballgame: pulling that off without shaking that hill down to utter dust! He had tightened up his approximation to his mortal voice to probably the 99th percentile, and in addition, he had stayed in gravity, and visible, and not excessively glowed up -- this was an extraordinary effort, for again, the blessing was not actually for the fishes and birds. He was singing to me, and afterward I could see the cost: there was a rather violent tremor in him to keep from splitting that hill.

"Ich höre dich," I said at last, gliding the formal to informal for the moment, knowing he would not take it as an act of disrespect. "Von deinem Herz zu meinem Herz, höre ich dich."

I hear you. From your heart to my heart, I hear you.

That gave him additional strength, and my embrace gave him more.

"Weisst du ... ich liebe dich auch," I said into his chest, since I could not reach his ear.

You know ... I love you also.

The choir members were not sure what to do at first. None of them spoke German, but they knew they were seeing a deep moment in love ... but one was brave and came and wrapped her arms around us both, and then the others joined when we did not flinch away ... and so there we were, sharing the moment of blessing his effort had given us all, and he recovered his strength in all that love.

Some time later, we at last made it through the traverse, having gone from the easternmost entrance all the way across to the westernmost entrance.

By that time the fog was coming in and the wind was quite brisk ...

... but our arms were still around the other, and I knew nothing of cold. He said no more, nor sung, having poured out all his heart, and knowing that I had heard him. He was overjoyed at the knowledge -- singing did not calm him down -- but also, deep peace and contentment balanced that out.

The next day I got to work, and the boardroom had been done up again ... every type of golden bloom imaginable ... but on my desk, there was a small basket of freshly picked plums with blackberries on top. There was a card beneath it written in English, the handwriting a little inflected with German cursive: "Now that you understand ... ."

We were going to need a bigger boardroom, for I knew the rest of the quote.

Now that you understand, I can love you even more.