Intimate Space – Intimate Experience

 

 On Saturday, March 20, New Skete hosted two composer/pianists featuring music from the 18th to the 21st centuries. The experience for the audience was a reminder of what chamber music concerts were like back when they were held in people’s homes. The monks’ recreation room was reconfigured for the concert, since the piano resides there. A large semi-circle of chairs and couches embraced the piano. Everyone had a good view, up close, of the performers.  Also, a nonintrusive videographer recorded the performance for possible future availability on YouTube. So, you may have a chance to hear the concert in your own intimate space via YouTube.

If you do listen in you are in for a special experience. The performers were Joel Feigin and Haskell Small. Both artists blended compositions by celebrated composers of the past, J. S. Bach and Eric Satie, with their own compositions. Joel opened the concert with two of his own pieces: “Meditation 1” and “Variations on Empty Space” followed by the “Small Choral Mass” by J. S. Bach. Haskell followed immediately with his own “Mystic Child,” book-ended by two pieces by Eric Satie, “Sonneries de la Rose+Croix” nos. 1 and 3. In both cases the new music grew out of very personal experiences of the composers, which they explained before performing the music. The music was not programmatic but created soundscapes that ranged from the mystical to the jazzy and was at times boisterous. “Variations” springs from Joel’s personal processing of the passing of his mother, while Haskell’s “Mystic Child” connects with the yearning for spiritual life that can find expression in monastic life. Both composers bring their personal interest in meditation and mystical experience to their music. 

Joel is a long-time student of Zen Buddhism and is now an ordained Zen priest, and Haskell has focused in recent years on how, through music, to explore quiet, spacious, and mystical experiences. Haskell has taught for many years at the Washington Conservatory of Music, and Joel is Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Visit their web sites for more information and music by these two remarkable artists: http://haskellimall.com and http://www.joelfeigin.com.

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Notes on my “Mystic Child”, Haskell Small

After I performed my composition "A Journey in Silence: Reflections on the Book of Hours" at the Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight several years ago, their abbot wrote me to say,

"The final impression left to me by your composition could be expressed with the words of the French novelist Bernanos. He writes: 'We need a whole life to reconnect with childhood'. There seems to me that there is a glimpse of this childhood which is at the origin but also at the end.  A monastic life symbolizes and realizes every day this journey into childhood which is our real future. Each of our monastic days is a step closer to the end, already present in us because it is also the origin: eternal childhood."

The philosophy expressed in these words moves me deeply and was the inspiration for my new work, "Mystic Child".  Reminding me of the oft quoted sentiment that a musician must be either six or sixty to play Mozart (and with his music saturated with a childlike spirit, is not Mozart the perfect mystic child?), I wanted to write a piece of music devoted to this idea, a "Journey" imbued with the mystic sounds of chant and angels singing, but also infiltrated with aural visions of childhood.  Borrowing from another one of my compositions with this very title, "Visions of Childhood", I have continued my fascination with the innocence of our tender years by quoting again the childhood taunt "Nanny Nanny Boo Boo", but this time tinged in mystic clothing and taken a step further- offering not just a haunting retrospection of our childhood, but now also a peek into the future at the destination of our life's journey.

The first of the five movements comprising my piece is relatively tame, opening with a searching, questioning tone before succumbing to a mild playfulness and a hint of the mysteries to come. The short second movement is a dialogue between a chant-like refrain and jazzy, frisky “recitatives”. The third is the most extended movement, intensely expressive, leading to an oasis floating in space that introduces the “taunt” theme and also a “reveille” motif suggestive of the spirit rising. The fourth movement is a brief interlude that reflects the second movement’s struggles and provides a counterweight for the structure as a whole.  It features caustic chords sardonically commenting on prayerful outpourings that hark back to and develop the first movement’s main theme, before leading directly into the last movement, a “moto perpetuo”.

A non-stop, frenzied roller coaster ride, turning the motifs inside-out and upside-down,

this final movement is where our inner child finally cuts loose in an outburst of freedom and exhilaration. After a few minutes as the energy level subsides and we take a breath, we are greeted by a chorus of angels, at first ethereally, then breaking into a full-throated song of praise. Our journey is now near its end. One last bitter taunt reminds us of our regrets, and then, with a group of child-angels guiding our way, we see a fleeting vision of each stage of our life as our spirits gradually rise and we receive the blessing of eternal childhood.