Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, December 16, 2023
Going from the bookends of Schubert's Winterreise to any song by Schumann is a risky proposition. Robert Schumann wrote some beautifully heart-wrenching songs as well, but after Schubert's "Der Leiermann," there truly was no way to go but up. It shook me to my core ... and that last line of the lovely but all-too-real interpretation by Kurt Möll (1938-2017) had me SHOOKETH as the young people say today.
What hurt so much was the realization of what was missing there that could have salvaged that whole situation. Love was absent. The loss of love is what starts the spiral downward in Winterreise for the main character in the first place ... its complete absence as denoted by the young man's self-centered request at the end given the pitiable state of the old man he meets is almost begging a definition of what it means to be with the unredeemed and unloving in Hell ... to be dying, and be met with someone who only has another demand upon you ... to be dying, and to be making demands that will ensure that you die ... to be confined, forever, in that state ...
Fractal art by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, December 16, 2023
... but this is also why I thought, at the end of that writing, to close it by thinking, "If my spirit is shooketh by these songs, what would my beloved meistersinger in the spirit feel like after all that teaching and singing and acting? I will do for him what he indicates should have been done for the old hurdy-gurdy player: not rush off to my own things, but sit with him in the sunshine and share with him the quiet love offering of presence ... for ever he was, in his almost-79-year actual lifespan, known for the love he showed others, and that is what he would need also."
Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, December 16, 2023
The sunshine, the blue sky, and the presence of hope and love ... that comes up in plenty of music ... Irving Berlin gave us a classic in jazz on that, too, and Ella Fitzgerald sang it as only she could ...
And of course, who could forget "The Storm is Passing Over!" in gospel?
And in clear skies one might hear music coming down ... our favorite meistersinger in the spirit gave us both Schubert's "An die Musik" and Brahms's "In Der Kirchhofe" as both figurative and musical pictures for that, and we will invite Ms. Randye Jones to sing to us what our ancestors heard over their heads...
Schumann left for us a further sidelight in his stunningly lovely "Stille Tränen" or "Silent Tears" ... beautiful blue skies have a cost, too, and love pays it, over and over again, for the beloved.
If Kurt Möll has an equal for vocal beauty among his fellow European basso profundo peers, Martti Talvela (1935-1989) is that bass to me. I have known of him longer than I have known of Herr Möll, and I have loved his voice and his singing all that time. Mr. Talvela's deep, dark voice is like the deep, long midnight of his native Finland with all the Northern Lights in all their ethereal colors playing across it, while great, deep silver bells ring through and through!
To Mr. Talvela we owe the conception of the heavenly choir I have used in my writing here in Q-Inspired, for he told a friend in 1989, "I have heard there is an opening in the heavenly choir for bass. The problem is, rehearsal is tomorrow!" Mr. Talvela made it on time, after walking his daughter down the isle at her marriage, and dancing with her one last time, that very next day -- love's duties to his family fulfilled to the last before his duty to God commenced in Heaven, ever after.
Mr. Talvela also, like Herr Möll, is remembered for his deep love for those around him, and still mourned ... but Finnish is a more remote language and culture to English speakers, and because he passed in 1989, there are not as many people who have stories to share about him in English on the Internet. However, Herr Möll in his interview with August Everding remembered his Finnish colleague with honor and a loving smile, and Mr. Jerome Hines's wonderful interview with Mr. Talvela in English is still in print! One or two YouTube interviews of him in English are still out there as well ... he was an earnest man, and sometimes hilarious!
Mr. Talvela spoke for himself in many ways ... like with Herr Möll and Mr. Hines, one can track his interests through his personal choices of songs to sing, and this by Schumann fits the bill ... I imagine Mr. Talvela might have been thinking of his wife or daughter as he was singing ... so tenderly he tells the story ... the beloved wakes up and goes out through the meadow, and sees the heavens in wondrous blue...
Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, December 16, 2023
... not knowing that all night while she slept, the heavens wept many tears ... a great storm passed over, but had dissipated by morning, leaving the sky and meadow glorious again ...
Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, December 16, 2023
... and in like manner, many men weep only in the deepest, most silent part of the night over the pains of life, so that they may keep their loved ones' worlds untroubled. The song repeats the last lines twice: "And you in the morning imagine/His heart is always happy."
Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, December 16, 2023
There is not even the hint of an accusatory attitude in Mr. Talvela's attitude as he divulges this great secret ... even the sharing is an act of love, as he sings it ... if to his wife, than a simple opening of his heart about how much he loves her, and what it costs him in the world to do that. If to his daughter, the same thing, perhaps as a lesson on what she must know to be able to love her future husband as she passes from untroubled childhood (the realm of not knowing what parents pay to provide their children a good life) to adulthood. Or perhaps he might have sung it to himself while thinking of her at play, still untroubled ... she would have still been a child in 1971, most likely still playing in meadows.
How much Mr. Talvela loved his daughter and how much pain he was willing to endure for her sake, we know. Sick literally unto death with heart failure in 1989, he made sure his daughter's well being was taken care of to literally his very last earthly step.
Like with Herr Möll, there is no pretense in Mr. Talvela's singing, but they are quite different in their approach to recording German lieder.. The German bass, in the habits of the master teacher he was, will let you admire his voice and pass right on (or pass right out if you catch him on a Knockout Zone type of day), but if there is something you need to learn, his interpretations will capture your mind, and then pierce your heart to its depths. The Finnish bass's singing is like walking out under his native skies and seeing those Northern Lights for the first time, every time -- you are not going to walk past that, ever ... but afterward, your thinking about the experience will allow you to engage your intellect to great depth.
All but two photos in here are from my day in San Francisco's Alta Vista Park, and all this blue day, Mr. Talvela's voice was ringing in my head ... the passion and depth and willingness to love even unto death of the man's real-life love came through loud and clear.
That is the thing missing in "Der Leiermann," and in why many people do not enjoy the holidays ... the absence of love and the sacrifices it takes to be present in a loving way sometimes is deadly. Schubert's Winterreise might be taken as what happens when the character's beloved can no longer love him, and finally what happens when he is too far gone to even have human compassion for the old hurdy-gurdy man with the dogs waiting to eat him up. She cannot love on one end, and he cannot love on the other end of the cycle, so that becomes a winter tragedy. Many people, every holiday season, take their last winter journey to a permanent end, either intentionally or by putting themselves in deadly situations.
But then again, even in winter, some people keep shining a light...
Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, December 16, 2023
Just this week, I received the account of a friend who, though devastated by a relative lashing out at him, still took care of some major business for her ... and that was how the relationship was restored, after what for him were many silent hours of weeping. His personal sacrifice bridged the gap for her to see blue skies in her declining old age.
Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, December 16, 2023
Just this week, I connected with a younger woman who reached out to me ... both of us in some rough waters this year ... but she had reached out to me a moment when I needed help, and I reached back and was also able to help her ... we were able to help each other find wide blue skies again.
Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, December 16, 2023
All of us are Winterreised, which new parsing of mine is going to get me in big, big trouble with a certain august spectral singing personage next week... even though in Old English coming out of Middle High German, it probably would sit between winter journeyed as a description, and the English winterized, meaning prepared to endure winter. Win-ter-rei-sed, as if before the Great Vowel Shift when the -ed in every English word was actually pronounced (pro-noun-ced) ... which is to say that all of the people I speak of have surely been on dark winter journeys ... but we have been and are enduring because we are prepared by love to walk in it, and even to be able to say, just as Mr. Talvela confesses in song, "It costs me greatly to love you in the storms of this world ... but I love you and will do what I have to do to clear your skies," thus leaving the door open to also be loved in a healing way in return.
This is also why I remember in my fictional writing that Kurt Möll was indeed a childhood survivor of World War II in Germany. He was born in 1938 in a village quite near Cologne, Germany, which was destroyed in the more than 260 air raids on it in the first seven years of his life. To return here in the role of the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past, he would have to be in the world where those terrible memories would await him. So even in fictional writing, I note that it would be a great sacrifice indeed, and I write myself returning the love, because that is what actual love would do. Every occasion to make art is an occasion to practice what one does and knows to do in real life (which also is why I am SO PICKY about the artists I listen to, but that's another story)!
Love, present, despite the cost, is to me is the meaning of "Stille Tränen" ... and if you think of how the Christmas story is presented, there you have another "Winterreised" situation ... Mary is found with child before being married to Joseph, but he takes her into his home anyway because he is told what is really going on ... at long last, God is fulfilling His promise to send a Savior into the world, and Mary is going to be His mother. So, Joseph takes in Mary anyhow ... but then, Caesar Augustus wants his tax money, so Joseph and Mary have to hit the road to Bethlehem where she goes into labor, and there is no room for them in the inn ... which fact is referenced in Schubert's Winterreise ... but Joseph finds a stable, and ... well, I suppose we will get "Silent Night," after all ...
But that is just the beginning of the story ... for the Child would grow up, and climb a great hill called Calvary, and there make love's ultimate sacrifice: death, humiliated and scorned on an old rugged cross, so that all Who believe that He died for our sins and rose again on the third day would be redeemed from the punishment of sin and eternal death. The story of Christmas is the beginning of that story ... and one way to understand the Christian life is to understand it as receiving and becoming an agent of His love.
Note that I did not say "church life," or "holiday spirit." There is no day to switch such love off and on ... and as it is said in Scripture, "He endured the cross, despising the shame, for the JOY that was set before him" ... the joy of delivering those He loves FOREVER from eternal damnation. There is no single day to walk in that love, and joy ... only eternity is big enough, and we head into that day by day!
This is why I have made it my decision this year to dispense with the trappings of the holidays and keep doing what I am doing. The pain of losing love ... the pain of losing the ability to be present to love where others only wish their own destruction and would sacrifice me to it ... the pain at times of great sacrifice in the world, in order that the beloved be benefited... the JOY of love given and received ... there is nothing but to keep walking, day by day, step by step.
And by the way, Mr. Talvela has a song about that too ... "Niin kauan minä trampaan," in which the great bass declares boldly: "As long as I can walk this road, I will love my people, and that's not something YOU can stop!"
Martti Talvela meant all of it, to the literal last step he took ... and this is why he also is a great favorite of mine.
We shall see more of Mr. Talvela and Mr. Hines next year, and in the world of imagination we may leave them merrily laughing their "short" German friend clear across the bass section of the heavenly choir room, because "Winterreised" is surely getting a response of "Win-ter-rei-sed? Only Frau Mathews!" We shall have to hear about that in Q-Inspired before the year is out ... I do not think a certain master singer and teacher is going to let that pass ... but in the meantime, enjoy those that you love as Christmas comes and goes, and above all things, love those you enjoy!
Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, December 16, 2023
