The Tightened String

December 12, 2011

The big bookstore in Madison Square Garden is gone, and it was one of my designated destinations.

Shopping. . . and a go at MOMA for the Diego Rivera exhibit. What did I learn? Rivera’s social consciousness is impeccable, but he was not, really, a painter of the first rank. Innumerable black suits in the lobby. They didn’t look like museum guards all assembled like that, but I assume they were. More like a cartoon about fascism. My first stop at FAO Schwartz afterwards. It truly is magical. The towering guy in the wooden soldier costume at the door was greeting and joking. In answer to a question I didn’t hear he said, “Naw, I have the greatest job in he world.” He did look sublimely happy. The kids stared at him and smiled. A street kid inside was demonstrating some toy that catches a ball midair, happy as Santa’s elf. Glad I stopped in now. Would have exploded when I was a kid. On to Columbus Circle, where there was a kind of bazaar, and the bored, cold artisans were eager to smile at you. Lunch at Huey’s diner, where my waiter was an opera singer and an angry Chinese girl at the next table never left off scolding her brother.

It’s starling to see women walking down the street in full length furs.

Made my way to 87th Street, a little later than my usual wont, to find the line for the concert already wound around the corner onto West End Avenue. This made me happy. There was my name on the poster, along with Jon’s and Samuel Barber’s and Johannes Brahms’. That made me happy. Eventually the crowd overflowed little St. Ignatius of Antioch, and more chairs had to be brought, backsides had to be compacted on the pews, and still a mob stood around the back and sides. Owen and Thomas appeared. They were both looking handsome, and having friendly faces in the crowd was icing on an ample cake. Met Jon’s father, who turns out to be the producer of Jersey Boys. Jon warned me that Central City Chorus is a “mid-level community chorus” and that there had been problems with our piece at dress rehearsal. The first piece, Barber’s “adagio for strings” set to the words of the Agnus Dei, was iffy in pitch all the way through. I expected the worst. Jon kept murmuring, “I made it too hard. . . maybe it was just too hard. . .” But when they came to “The Tightened String,” a miracle happened. Maybe because it was so hard and they had to concentrate, the performance was– so far as I could tell– perfect. It is a beautiful piece. Tricks like “prepared piano” usually annoy me, but they were used with musical logic this time. The thing I should have been most concerned about–the setting of the words– took me some time to express an opinion about. It was an apparent act of adoration. The words were set in blazing, expressive clarity, and to say I was happy falls short. I was amazed. It was as if Helen Mirren and Patrick Stewart were starring in one of my plays. I did not truly understand what music can do for poetry (always sort of assuming a composer was a poet’s natural enemy). I’m still thinking about it, still fathoming the power of true collaboration. I suppose it’s what a baroque poet felt when Monteverdi set his text. If Jon asks again, that’s what I’ll tell him.

The Tightened String as follwed by The German Requiem. Whatever else happens, one must grant Brahms the higher seat.