Halloween Wedding

October 31, 2009

I should stop writing “dark of morning,” for the sake of variety, though it almost always is.

Eventful Friday behind me, eventful Saturday looming on the horizon. I met composer Nathan Shirley; we rehearsed briefly, then went down to WCQS to perform live on the radio. When I signed on to this project I assumed Nathan was somebody’s kid brother (he in fact is) and the project was a bit of a vanity. Shirley turns out to be, so far as I can judge, an important modern composer, a piano virtuoso the likes of which–with all quirks and excellences–I had never met before, though one reads of them in the New Yorker. He and DK were finding flaws in the studio piano I would not have noticed given fifty tries. The music he has written for Poe’s “Annabelle Lee” and “The Black Cat” seems to me a cross between Prokofiev and silent matinee piano, with Liszt looking over everybody’s shoulder, and I mean that in the very best way: dramatic, often meltingly lovely, the themes intelligent, passionate, and clear enough for me to recognize untutored, and build my understand of. Were I to criticize, I’d say the compositions are too momentous for the pieces they are meant to accompany. They should stand alone. It could be that Shirley is simply not good at choosing texts. It could be that the rest he has written is so majestic that the tone he took with Poe’s bonbons is really just right. It was fun to read the pieces on stage with his music. Poe’s first person narratives make for a good read. The gods worked things out so that the searing pain in my foot distracted my body from its urge to cough. When the light turned from me to him, I stood on one foot and coughed as gently as I could upstage. There is a DVD which I did not see; I hope all of that escaped notice. The soprano, who had voice problems and flubbed twice before getting in the groove, will not be going unnoticed. I though he would allow her to start over, as she clearly wished to do, but Shirley went plunging forward. I don’t know what the etiquette of such things is. But I will remember this event. Shirley is the real deal, completely contemporary music that rewards the listener fully.

When I came home from reading that horrible story, I fondled the cats with extra gentleness, to make it up to them. Poe’s reputation does confuse me. He’s like an actor who substitutes panting and flinging his arms about for real emotion. Inventive, I’ll give him that.

Gigantic rehearsal for the Mozart Requiem. Orchestra, soloists sound great. Perhaps we do too, but who can tell from the midst of it? It’s hard to sell the notion that the reflexive, grimly determined correction of mistakes is not the way to greatness, yet that the case. It’s also hard to sell the notion that over-rehearsing is not the cure for imperfection, but, once again, it is the truth. The Buddha says “do nothing.” Imperfections fall away when not too hard beleaguered. Understanding comes the moment it is unbidden.

Joe and Tiff’s wedding was sweet. I felt so comfortable with their families that I stayed through the reception to the point that people were rising and going away. I am usually the first to go. Got along especially well with the bride’s furniture-moving dad, who, with two daughters, was dewy-eyed with joy at getting a son. The bride and groom wore black for Halloween. The little ring-bearer, maybe three years old, was a lesson in correct behavior, for the natural is always correct. He sensed the occasion was extraordinary, so adopted a strange little walk as he approached the stage. When he got on stage, he passed the rings off to the best man to hug the knees of the groom, whom he loved.