Ever Upward, with Some Careful Window Shopping Along the Way (Charles Koechlin, William Baines, Gounod, Bach, Liszt)

Some time ago, I wrote about my love of Shepard Tones here in Q-Inspired (you probably remember that, @mipiano!) but they can have strange effects on other people in their pure form. Nevertheless, composers for centuries have been using the illusion of infinite ascent, and Charles Koechlin has made perhaps the most lovely adaptation in a piano piece that I have ever heard ... ever upward through worlds looking forward into modernity while still seeing the glories of the classical form...

Ever upward ... there seems to be no end ... I stood in the near meadows of Golden Gate Park on the platform of the statue there, and looked ... my camera's depth of field cannot do it justice, but from there through the lilli pilli trees before me I could look up into the mini redwood grove, and since they are so much taller, there seemed to be no end to how far they reached into the beautiful sky in their feathery green, while looking through their trunks gave me a view of the near meadows that went to the horizon.

So I stood on two thresholds, for a block behind the statue eastward was the end of the park, and a block to either side northward and southward, the city goes right on ... but before me to the west for four miles, this glorious green oasis, beginning with these near meadows, and above those high trees was the sky ... to have this view on a beautiful summer morning is a deep privilege!

To look ever upward in a morning like this ...

"Du bist gesegnet, und du bist selig, Frau Mathews. Guten Morgen!"

The Ghost of Musical Greatness Past materialized in a summer suit of deep azure trimmed with that redwood evergreen, doubtless drawing inspiration from my immediate surroundings.

"Indeed I am blessed and blessed on this good morning," I said as I went to the warmth of his gentle smile and open arms. "Good morning!"

"Since the portal of imagination was wide open -- I mean, you have the tops of those trees almost touching my home like this ascending music by Koechlin in this fine moment -- I thought I might come and tell you how delighted I am that you have kept your mind exploring upward."

"Have we not had enough lessons about the alternative?" I said.

"We have, and you are an attentive student," he said, "but that does not mean it is easy. To be human is to be tempted; to be empowered to resist and walk on is truly the gift from the divine; to do so gratefully and looking forward is the return gift."

"Now that is a thought to start with today!" I said, "but indeed, I am grateful ... it is more what I owe than a return gift, in mind of being so blessed. Last year by August, my whole family could have been dead or much more severely hampered by Covid-19. This year, I would not have seen this August had my anemia not been discovered in time in January. Gratitude is my reasonable service. I also find that it opens my eyes to see and receive more blessing."

"Indeed, Frau Mathews; these are all excellent observations. Now you are looking at gratitude as more from the duty side, which is still accurate, but I wish for you to understand the intense joy that gratitude carries back to one who deeply loves you. Gratitude is indeed a duty; but bears a mighty gift with it! It also allows us to keep looking forward to the next blessing rather than backwards to what have seen and experienced that we may want but cannot have right now. This is not to say, of course, that disappointment and hurt from that are not also real. I have recently said to you that you are exploring liminal spaces between different worlds, and to remain focused on gratitude while fully acknowledging that all is not as you would wish it is a form of exploration that is beautiful."

William Baines's music has been another of those discoveries ... he lived such a short life, yet so full of magnificent music, and this is among his finest piano pieces ... so poignant ... "Tides: The Lone Wreck" as the tides ebb and flow and break, ever shifting the sands without shifting the reality of this great wreck, and yet, one can imagine the most beautiful of seaside days around it, and even beautiful seabirds having made a nesting place. The loss cannot be changed, but there can be a beauty in which it properly sits, and this piece of music evokes it all.

"It is a lovely piece indeed, Frau Mathews, and well fitting," he said.

Off we slowly walked into the beautiful morning through the mini-redwood grove while Mr. Baines through his music set the mood.

"I foresaw, at least two decades ago, my challenges of this time," I said. "One of the things that helped me in 2023 to walk away from so much is that in the back of my mind I have been paring down things for a good while ... there are certain expansions I have never taken, because I knew I was called to care for my people. For almost three decades I have known this, so I was not surprised when literally the next day after the studio and the Bitcoin meet, age caught up with both my parents. I knew that was going to happen, since before I was an adult."

"One can be grateful for 28 years of preparation for a shock like that," he said. "The heights of triumph, followed just that quick by the humbling reality of the need to provide dutiful and difficult service."

"The shocking thing, actually," I said, "was my realization of how little in the world I missed, and how I had to run from so much of what I did encounter."

"And that is a shock that few ever experience in time, Frau Mathews. Most will have that realization much later in life, and with deep regret. That lone wreck can be an entire life, as the tides of time flow on around those who have shipwrecked themselves chasing this world but can go no further and are abandoned where they lie. It is a blessing to realize what you have realized in time, and while in the act of graciously responding to the call you have always had upon your life. I note with great pleasure that you do not complain, although because you are human it would be understood."

"Indeed it would be understood, but -- well, as Schumann has it said in his most famous song cycle, ich grolle nicht. I do not grumble or growl. There is no point in wasting the energy, and from Schubert's most famous song cycle, we also know where all that complaining about what we can't have and do leads us."

"Oh, Frau Mathews, this is a little tragedy ... my doppelgänger was getting excited today because he was going to be in the role of a travel agent! He has a whole brochure for your very own Winterreise --."

I cracked up laughing!

"-- and he even has gotten into excellent voice to represent the true agent from which all such ungrateful, doomed journeys hail!"

One thing to remember about the devil, well represented by Gounod as Mephistopheles in his Faust: he does come with a beautiful-sounding offer -- deception and seduction, not terror and threatening at first. One thing also to remember about Kurt Möll, a man known to be so kindly and joyful that he struggled to play a villain: he did tend to turn his low-stakes villains to the comic side, but he did not miss on high-stakes villains and the fact that they move most often by deception.

So: he absolutely played up the seductive beauty in his glorious purring voice just to set up revealing the deadly reality behind it all for those paying attention. His King Phillip does this in a single line; here he accomplishes the same with what in his voice are horrors indeed: a few well-timed snarls and a final laugh across three octaves -- including four unbelievable high Gs worthy of several good baritones -- that is nothing short of diabolical.

"Yeah, no," I said. "Definitely not taking any winter travel packages from that agency -- I mean I wasn't going to anyway, but -- no thank you, evil ethereal twin!"

The doppelgänger stamped his feet and disappeared with a most comically displeased expression, his brochures all fluttering around before they too vanished in little puffs of smoke, leaving the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past and I to walk on.

"A master stroke, how you set that up with a laugh first, and then the lesson, and then a laugh," I said.

"It is too beautiful a morning for you to not be laughing in it, Frau Mathews," he purred. "But also we can go about this more pleasantly ... even my doppelgänger is capable of more than a comic villain role, but as you know in opera, it does take a little while to change costumes."

We walked along, and presently, I heard the distant sound of a well-known piece of Bach ... his cello suite in G ...

(Enjoy Yo-Yo Ma in the Great Smoky Mountains, along with coming the pictures to Golden Gate Park!)

... and when we got around the thick trees, there sat a young cellist -- a teenager who looked vaguely familiar, just as close to dancing with his instrument as he could be while still seated, just overwhelmed with the joy of what he was doing.

"Sometimes, Frau Mathews," my companion purred, "what we think is a door in life really turns out to be a window into a world we will enter later, to let us know what lies ahead when the door is actually opened.

"Many years ago -- in the 1950s, actually --there was a young cellist from a little village in Germany. He was good at what he did, and it was clear that he had great talent in music. He could memorize his music like few around him: once he had studied it, he could read it from his mind as though it were in front of him, so he could learn more repertoire than many around him and be ready to play it at any time. This opened the door for him to understood all the music of the low register, and to understand how melodies of that register were written and arranged to set them forth.

"One day, someone noticed something interesting about this young cellist... ."

We had gotten close enough to see and hear -- the young cellist was singing along in his enthusiasm, and was not only audible, but was matching what Bach had written for the cello, all the way up and all the way down, and was skipping around without cracking.

"This young cellist had an immense bass voice in the bud, and had no idea what he had," my companion with the immense bass voice purred. "He did not realize that the cello, and his nascent skill as a musician upon it, was not the door but the window to the world in which he would spend his life."

The young cellist finished playing, and started packing up. He was a dark-haired, dark-eyed bouncing big boy nearly six feet tall already, radiant with joy and still singing his music without it in front of him ... and just danced halfway down the field with his cello, still singing in his joy.

"Why do I feel like I have encountered this young man, somewhere in the field of music, but not playing cello?" I said as it dawned on me what I was seeing.

"Perhaps you have," my companion purred, a twinkle in his dark eyes, "but we are not quite finished with our tale of the 1950s. That young cellist and his family had invested much in his musical education as a cellist; of course there were hearts set upon that, and after all, what were the chances of him making it as a singer? There were many village groups and orchestras, but opera and lieder-singers who made enough to live were rare. He had a better chance at a cellist, at least, on paper.

"Not only that, Frau Mathews: he did not aspire to the great stages of music. His ambition in the world was to become a great industrialist, to rebuild Cologne and his stricken nation. But through the window of musical instruction through playing cello, he had seen his actual life, and the greatness with which he would be honored for singing healing to the heart of his nation. It was just a matter of time, and his continuing to walk in the way of a musician in which he was called."

"It always comes back to staying on the walk," I said.

"Always," he said. "Ever onward, ever upward."

We were silent for quite some time ... the morning was beautiful, and the long time before he spoke again was to purpose.

"One of the things about delay, which is what happens when you realize that somehow there is no doorknob on a window --."

He did want me to be laughing in this beautiful morning!

"-- One of the things about looking through a window before going through a door is that you can deeply consider what you are seeing before making a total commitment. You need not and cannot go into every world you see, so there is an element of choice."

"I do feel as if I was held back from my plans in order to give me that time to rest and consider before choosing," I said. "I thought again of the one piece by Liszt that I truly love..."

"Gottesegen in der Einsamkeit," he reverently intoned in German, and then continued, "The German tells us a little more than the English, and even the French, although the French is close because it is from the Latin -- it is the diction, the speaking of good, and the German is more specific because of the compounded word: blessed in the sense of by decree, by God -- segen is blessing while gesegnet is blessed. We might take from the music that someone who is gesegnet just might also be blessed to bliss: gesegnet bis zur seligkeit -- oder Glückseligkeit!"

"The word for blessed -- selig -- is hidden in plain sight there!" I said, "along with the word for both happiness and luck -- but we throw luck out because we know where this blessing comes from! Happiness upon happiness, blessedness upon blessedness!"

"Very good, Frau Mathews! You still are going to have to get those lessons in to master the grammar of German, but you do know the words you know and so can figure out a compound word or two!"

Then he started laughing.

"You talk about me glowing up!" he said. "You are dazzling in the morning sunlight in your joy! We have gotten slightly off track, but we have time to do that and enjoy this day and this music!"

So, the music played and time went by and not until its last note had sounded did he utter another word ... and even then he did not speak right away, but offered me his ethereal handkerchief and then pulled out another for himself.

"Liszt was not much in my repertoire," he said, "but if there had been a cello arrangement, or if someone had thought of that as scenes for a little chamber opera ... there is so much there ... and if one hears it as one who truly has heard so much in solitude ... ."

He stopped and threw his arms around me as I was overwhelmed with emotion. I had looked back over the climb of the previous three years -- I had made it not really knowing where I was going, to find myself a year later in the full Germanic-language level intensity of being blessed in the company of only the One Who loved me best and most. From there, my life had changed forever, for in a sense, I had found where I was going forever, and all that blessing poured down through all the levels of my life. I had indeed heard so much ... and had another moment of being blessed to bliss.

I do not know how long it was before I regained my composure, but ...

"I have all the time in eternity, Frau Mathews," he said gently, "and glad to see you experiencing here a little bit of the joy you will have hereafter, not limited then by your physical strength to endure."

"How long was I out?"

He did not answer, but let the bells at the University of San Francisco answer me -- twelve bells, for it was noon.

"Guten Tag, Frau Mathews. You now are going to be treated to lunch!"

"Oh,well, you are always glad for an excuse to do that!"

"Guilty as charged, Frau Mathews, and completely without and incapable of remorse!"

So we laughed as we went on, and it was a little while before he began toward his final point of the day ... the timing was part of the lesson, but also, he was doing what he often had done in performance: pacing the lesson, and thus himself.

"I am glad that we have had this beautiful morning," he said, "and I am glad that you have encountered such a moment of joy, for there is clarity at such a height that you cannot have at other times.

"I could have been a very good industrialist, Frau Mathews. I would have gone about it with the same iron will with which I honored the gift of being a singer, and I would have done all the good I could and made a great deal of money. But I was kept from that, kept for a life in which I would be able to experience and share the height of my capacity for joy. This was a gift to me from the One Who made me, and knew what He had made me for!"

His voice had gotten up a little, but he pulled back ... not yet ... a glimpse of the deep feeling behind this lesson, but no more.

"So: you have gone forth and sought new horizons, and then found yourself pulled back by a major change in circumstance before going further ... this is a gift to you, Frau Mathews, for you have been given time in the middle of your responsibilities to not only enjoy more time in solitude in these mornings, but to consider what you have seen and experienced before going forward."

He was still pacing himself and his voice was still calm, but his eyes were beginning to burn from the intense emotion within him, and his vocal range was slowly contracting, more and more weighted toward the awesome gravity of his double-deep range ...

"Now, you are intelligent and talented enough to make your mark in anything that you are interested in, and in all things you would of course seek to do all the good you could. But do not miss the gift to you to consider what actually aligns with who you are in your joy, for why would you seek a door to another world in which you would not have that if you knew? It is given to you to know, this time."

"What I share with you now, Frau Mathews, would be useless to share with one still enamored with the world's many glittering distractions, and would seem cruel to one that knows only the choice of do or die for one's self and others to whom one is committed. I did not bring you this lesson in the previous weeks for the latter reason. To have done what you had to do, and have the joy of being present to do it, and to return to the comfort of solitude brimming with the strength of the One Who calls you -- no more dare any mortal ask of you. You made the choice you needed to make.

"But since that is the case, it is from that reality that you have looked through the windows to other worlds, and it is from there that you must discern what doors are for you."

He paused, and then the top dropped out of his voice, leaving only that awesome, commanding bottom in its utmost, undeniable gravity.

"Your responsibilities and sorrows are heavy enough, Frau Mathews. If therefore there is a door to a new world before you, you will do well to determine if your authentic joy in the way you have been called can live there, and if not, avoid that place like the plague it will become to you if you do not!"

Now that put perspective on my life that I had not had before. I now could look forward with clearer view -- I knew what my authentic joys were, and although I was interested in many things, there was no point in doing more than window shopping for anything that did not align with my calling and all the joys that came from it. The rest I would have to let go.

"What is for you is ever yours, Frau Mathews -- but nothing else. You will give what is not yours up, one way or another. All those circles and people of 2022 and 2023, and even in trying to let some of them circle back this winter -- they were not yours, no matter how much you sincerely loved and cared, and you were made to give them up. Thus it shall ever be. Do not let your great tenderness of heart deceive you: -- do not pick up those things and people that are not yours."

"Also do not be confused as an intellectually curious and confident human being, Frau Mathews, moving through the world. The interest and excitement of exploration and newness will always be there, but although you may be in wonder at a window, that wonder by itself is not enough of a reason to commit to finding a door."

"Also, because of your background, there will also be the triumph of proving in some circles that bigotry is a lie. You can waste your time and life on such pursuits, slowly, but also, all at once! For those committed to bigotry, truth's own proof is an unforgivable abomination for which the preferred punishment is death. I therefore most solemnly warn you, Frau Mathews, as a German born in 1938: unless explicitly called into the conflict, leave fools of that sort to their folly, and stay clear of the path of their violence -- both what they will do, and what in the end will be done to them."

And even this was not the point -- he still was pacing himself, going gravely and carefully through this part of the approach to it. Again he paused ... and then reached out his hand and gently touched my shoulder as if he did not dare to hurt it with his so much greater size and strength, and then dropped all the hardness out of his voice ... the same awesome gravity, all gentleness.

"I do not dare, Frau Mathews," he said. "It is not given to me to pull you back, but merely to convey as best I can the complete motivation the Blessed Hand has in pulling you back for a time: utter, all-knowing love. Do not underestimate how much this pullback was a gift of love to you, in a world in which so many would not only through ignorance and indifference harm you, but willfully and eagerly do so. Yet you need not walk in fear, meine liebe Dame, when you may choose where to walk, guided by loving wisdom."

He did not need to pull me, after all ... the extension of his other arm was enough for me to walk into his embrace, and like that we walked along from there, an arm of his around me, his eyes seeing farther ahead because of his greater height ... and that was the point.

"You are indeed on a protected walk, Frau Mathews. You have done well to not run ahead in your frustration, and to focus your energy on humbly and successfully carrying out your duties to your parents. I commend you, and I encourage you to continue to do well as opportunity to venture further soon will open again to you. Window shopping in life's opportunities will always be available. If suddenly you are made to pause after doing so, know you are being given the time to carefully consider matters and choose to be gently guided to the right door, the entrance through which will add no unnecessary difficulty to your life."

I considered this a long time as we walked on, and stopped and turned to him and put both arms around him.

"You said well that bigotry finds truth abominable," I said, "but, as it is written, 'love rejoices in the truth.' Thank you for this good and necessary lesson."

He returned my embrace, his deep gravity now turned into deep joy.

"My duty, my honor, my pleasure, *mein geliebtes Blumenkind," he said. "Yes, love rejoices in the truth ... given, and received, as they walk forward together, ever onward, ever upward."