You never know, if you keep an open mind and heart, when you may understand your own position and someone else's viewpoint a little better. Ways may open to new understanding, and sometimes these roads will loop around to carry you back to a part of yourself.
To my intense and unpleasant surprise, not long after my lovely day in the meadows last week, I got new perspective on Schubert's "Rast" from his song cycle Winterreise. The line that came to me in that surprising moment came transliterated into English as "It is now that I rest that I feel how tired I am." He goes on to say that while he was walking, contending against the storm, he neither felt the bruises on his legs from previous mishaps, or the cold... or the deep pain in his heart that we know is for the loss of his hope of marriage to his beloved in "Gute Nacht," song 1. But once he comes to a stop, all the pain hits him, and of course, no one gets across the slow but steady and finally devastating increase of that pain for this character than my favorite musician.
Now I do know that physically, I've worked hard enough to know the phenomenon of not knowing one is tired until resting, but generally I have been of the mind that welcomed rest, only surprised by how much I needed it.
Nonetheless, the combination of having to take rest after surgery with the severe but largely asymptomatic anemia that is already there triggered an intense moment -- only as I am beginning to recover have I finally experienced how unwell others would have long since and would still be in my position.
Some days after my time in the near meadows of Golden Gate Park, I received a piece of immense news late in the evening, and upon exploring the ramifications of it -- well past my intended bedtime -- I gained the insight to understand it ... my mind just opened like a pre-spring flower ...
Sometime after I had prepared my briefings for the next day, the immensity of the news, and thus the insight and the stewardship, hit me as I was in prayer and preparing to rest. It could not have been more than a few seconds, but I was breathing and seemed to be getting no air -- so then I was breathing faster and becoming dizzy, finally having an acute onset of the kind of thing that happens with severe anemia -- but I had been thanking God for granting me the insight, and I remember I put my hands up in surrender. If I was thus to leave this world, I would leave in grateful joy ... but instead I was directed to just hang on for a moment -- literally put my hands down and hang on where I was and breathe deeply -- and then go to bed. I was not to be snatched away just then!
I was thus in bed already when it further occurred to me:
I had to be called away in 2022 -- the realization was beginning to hit me in the spring then that I would have to go.
None of those I was called away from can get this insight from me now-- they may see the news elsewhere, but there is no way for me to bridge the insight to them because the growth and learning gap is too wide. That full circle in October showed me that ... it would be almost like trying to explain ... in German!
Only those called with me, at this time, are prepared to share in the understanding and benefits.
Even if I wanted to run around after so many I used to run with, and attempt to knock down their proverbial doors -- even if there were any hope that I could catch them up -- I cannot. I literally cannot. I dare not presume upon my strength to make the attempt.
There is another quote, and because of Who said it, it is inescapable as a sad reality.
To him that has, more shall be given. To him that has not, even what he has shall be taken away.
So many would not, though I begged and pleaded ... now, they cannot, and if things go as right -- and as wrong -- as they can, well ... I'll let Billie Holiday explain as only she can.
Yet I do have the strength to make sure those I am called to and with have what they need. I made my briefings and rested ... York Bowen's beautiful lullaby to his son, in its glorious blend of familiarity and lovely strangeness, is quite a piece to think of as a lullaby ... to go off to the realm of sleep through such portals of light and shade, but gently led ...
... yet it was a feeling that I understood, having a loving earthly father, and an even more loving Heavenly Father, both older (the Latter, of course, infinitely so!) and knowing things about life and how to live that I am still learning. My journey continues to be unique, and some harmonies in it are strange even to me, to say nothing of how they may sound or not even be audible to others.
But we do not get to choose all things. To go back into terms of Schubert's "An die Musik" and also the Negro Spiritual "Over My Head" ... the music in the air, and what notes go into der heilige Akkord, are not for us to choose. On one end of my classical music life there are Bach and Beethoven, and later came Brahms, Bruckner, Berg, and now Bowen in 2025 ... I did not choose that my heart would be attuned to all of those. But so it is, and in all of them, I have found that, when not in the intensity of the labors to which I am called, I can rest.
And if one is called to hear, and realizes that one need not have heard, and also realizes that there are others hearing things one cannot and so one needs those called alongside, then all there is, still, is to rest in gratitude.
On the following day I was in virtual attendance again at a women's conference at which I also was a speaker two days before ...
... and on the third day, not having the pressure of my own speech before me any more, I was able to deeply listen without distraction, and received healing insight ... one of the things about moving forward is releasing ideas that may have worked on previous stages of the journey but do not work any more.
The thought came to me: "All of us, or none."
Now in reality, that didn't make sense to me as a maturing child past a certain scale ... I can count, and I read well. Not all of us are ever doing the same things at the same time. Still, the thinking is quite prevalent in a particular way: unless the collective sees benefit from it, it is of little value. This, combined with survivor's guilt in a broken community, can be a problem ... to have survived is automatically be where all cannot go. Should one even feel good about it? What obligation does the privilege imply for everyone else? Can one ever enjoy the vista of a broad place alone, when so many did not and will not make it?
But against that, there is an older invitation.
Whosoever will, let him come.
Whosoever is willing ... the opportunity is available for everyone willing to do all the things necessary to receive it ... to be willing to learn, to grow, to walk, to then mature and teach those also willing to come but in earlier stages of the same process ... this gives room for the trail blazers and mountain guides of life to both enjoy the vistas they have opened for themselves without guilt for not being able to carry everyone along (which I already knew as a child could not be done), while also allowing for the making of maps and fixing of ropes for those also will come along, and also even the reaching out of a hand and going in company with the willing, all helping each other ... community restored, just in a different formulation ... everyone willing can come.
A burden lifted from me upon knowing I am called to the the second of those ideas ... it required 35 years for the clarity, but I am only 44 ... not too late at 44!
With these things in mind I considered a life of deeper stillness, and winter's last strong pushes cooperated ... and yet, when I thought of all that had happened through the winter, gratitude and heights of joy met me that were comparable to any I have experienced deep among the trees, though more brief ... I actually have a piece of music that illustrates ... my "Clouds to Sun Lullaby" for flute and harp, world premiered three years ago!
"Frau Mathews, I will walk in here for a moment because ... I cannot believe you have been holding this piece back, first ... and second, I am trying to understand how you brought the melody into the sunshine by just transposing it up a step, and neither the first or the second are actually in the key the song is in ... before you even knew of Strauss, or Berg, you just eased over into polytonality -- all that from lessons in the Hindemith book, 20 years earlier?"
"Actually, the rapper Z-Ro has a D flat melody and accompaniment on a E flat minor bass," I said.
"You have broadened into rap at last, Frau Mathews?"
"The hook was on another video I was watching, and Z-Ro actually sings on his songs and is a beautiful bass, so ... ."
The ethereal bass with the most beautiful voice I have ever heard put his head in his hand.
"I should have known there had to be a bass in it," he said.
"I heard that about four years ago -- that plus the Hindemith, 20 years back. And I still don't believe I wrote 'Clouds to Sun Lullaby' either. I forgot all about it."
"You forgot it because you didn't believe it -- that is the problem, Frau Mathews! It is a different week's lesson, but I am going to step out again and get that lesson plan together! In parting, I tell you about what you don't believe: you run your polytonality from the bass-hand side, but in jazz you would write those as Emin9 and E6 -- so you have fused the late 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries -- it's like that take on "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" that you did last year -- you are masterful at deep musical miniatures, Frau Mathews! Believe it!"
"Well, I did have a new piece in mind, but I didn't think there was enough of it ... ."
The Ghost of Musical Greatness Past was just a little dismayed by that -- just enough to have a whole King Marke flashback, in tune -- as if he as a brokenhearted clement king were looking upon Tristan and Isolde having thrown away everything -- Did you REALLY [just do that?]
"Tatest du wirklich?"
Then, he caught himself.
"I will see you tomorrow, Frau Mathews -- I shall have to adjust my lesson plan for this week -- I shall see you tomorrow, in the restful place of your choosing. I am not going to raise my voice with you, listening to you talking about what you are great at and are actually doing but don't believe ... I am past that stage of my existence ... having a very strong flashback, but I am past that stage of my existence ... even in my mortal existence, with my voice being this big and heavy, I would not have permitted myself ... so I shall see you tomorrow, Frau Mathews!"
He was maybe just a little disturbed ... it seems that the colors of the Northern Lights tipped into the sunset as he passed through that evening ...
... but I went to bed and did not worry about it, and the next day found myself in another day of wondrous blue. I chose to ride five-sixths of the way up Alamo Square, and then walk and sit around the top.
Now, rarely did I ever see the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past on approach. He could materialize wherever he liked relative to me. But Alamo Square sometimes formed an exception; because it was so open and often so crowded, sometimes he walked up just because of that. But not along the steepest route, cresting Hayes Hill from the eastern side, so I did a double take as he came up from the Fillmore side.
Apparently -- and it was clear on his face -- he was pacing himself, for he was in an intense mood. Costuming up home had recalled the Met's beautiful slate blue look for him as Commendatore, just adjusted as a winter hiking suit, matched with black hiking poles and black laptop bag. That and the measured speed of his approach indicated the deep gravity of his thoughts. Now, he looked absolutely stunning, his white hair and dark eyes both set off by that suit and those huge shoulders and long legs just giving what they were supposed to give in fine rhythm ... but that was a lot in the eyes of the world to do for some little middle-aged contralto composer unknown to the world, relaxing on a hill.
Which was the point, actually ... he intended to block out a lot of people's opinions from my mind that day, and he was already starting, because ...
"Ooh wee ... who is that big, gorgeous man? He's new around here and we need to make him feel at home!"
"Naw, girl -- you're two seasons behind the welcoming committee. He was out here hiking Buena Vista Hill in the summer and literally ran into her at the coffee shop up on Haight and Masonic ... caught her, looked down, and got caught up. He has been coming out to see her ever since -- and look at her, just glowing as she stands up to welcome him!"
After that I saw and heard nothing in the world for some time, for he had reached me, and blocked all that out...
"Mein geliebtes Blumenkind ... meine liebe Dame," he said as he took me fully into the embrace of his arms and his voice.
"Well, hello, Mr. Knock-'em-Dead -- you know you are going to have every woman on this hill mad at me."
"There are plenty of Envy apples for them to buy over at Falletti's."
So much for the serious mood -- he rolled me right off my feet, laughing, and thus made a gentle opening to the day's conversation.
"I suppose," he said after some time of just soaking up the sunshine with me, "that Beethoven would have enjoyed a day like this, too."
"I think of the second movement of his Fifth Symphony often on such days as this when it is warmer ... I can hear his summer joy and sweet reflections," I said.
"It seems that he wrote many of his great works after being inspired by days like this," he said.
"Many days like this in summer, away from the crowds of Vienna, in nature, and taking deep rest."
"And in the years in which he had many family responsibilities, what he did most often write?"
"Fewer large works, but many fine small ones," I said.
He was silent for a long moment to let me think.
"Oh," I said. "I am tracking Beethoven in that sense, too."
"Frau Mathews, you have had so much responsibility for so long that your composer life in practice is more like that of Bach, writing for the church and community ... but still, here you are, also tracking the footsteps of Beethoven ... and because you are taking deeper rest and seeking more time in nature, of course, instrumental miniatures are coming to you. Do not be led by the pain of the past to neglect them. They are enough. Hold on to this key part of who you are -- do not let it go! You are a composer of great and wide gifts, no matter who can or cannot see and support you in full -- hold on, mein Blumenkind, hold on for your dear life!"
He had lit up, his eyes burning, his face coloring intensely, his expression almost fierce in its intensity, but then that passed into what was behind it ...
"Ach, meine liebe Dame ... I will confess all my heart to you. I did not know Earth could yet contain such new pain for me than to hear you yesterday, a wonderful composer, so detached from that part of yourself. I did not know I could still feel such anger toward all the people who refused to support you as you are, even though I know from experience that communities in desperate situations do not do well in supporting anything that is not meeting immediate needs. I also did not realize I could still meet my own finite limits so harshly ... to be a man, knowing the pain of a woman he loves, and that he cannot himself solve the problem ... the frustration and humiliation ... ."
He paused for a long moment to collect himself, and then continued.
"Yet if a man is mature, and wise, he can accept matters as they are, and offer his loving presence while asking the same One she is asking for help ... for I can encourage you, but I cannot build the support that would be meaningful to you in a community that simply is not set up for that. Yet you are called to your community in humble service, to bless generations of people with a level of music and joy they would never otherwise experience. To support those who could not and cannot fully support you, and to find joy in that, is a level of maturity and wisdom few ever achieve, and I commend you for your faithfulness. Yet I now have seen with my own eyes how tremendous the cost has been to you, and as you young people say it, I cannot now unsee it, or alter it."
He paused, and his voice came near to breaking as he said, "Tut mir leid, mein geliebtes Blumenkind, tut mir leid!"
Tut mir leid means "does [to] me sorrow" ... it is a miniature lament, and can be uttered as an apology to someone, or as an acknowledgment of a shared grief.
My heart melted at his compassion, as it had so many times listening to him singing of the hard passes that human beings come to in this world ... if he could do nothing else but be an honest, full-hearted witness, he would do that, right to the limits of his voice to convey the emotion evoked by the things he was communicating ... right to evoking the breaking point that so many have been to in life, and thus communicating that no, we are not alone there ... there is someone who understands ... and to me, I heard a immense and loving echo of One Who understands all things, with compassion and love and grace ... and was comforted as well as able to gain new understanding.
So here I also acknowledged the pain of which he spoke, wrapped yet again in the velvet depths of his dear voice, bearing honest, full-hearted witness.
"I have grieved for 30 years," I said, "and thus it is almost a dream to me to hear anyone play my music, a dream because unsustainable. Community cannot be sustained through competitions and called for scores, and the void not filled 30 years ago is still not and cannot be filled. Yet those I can minister to will never feel that void, so long as I can live and work. That is enough reward for me, and I trust that in due time, the support I need as a composer will be found in the very way I am walking now. As for the rest ... ."
That was it. The deep rest was the answer. It hit me with the shock of the breeze that reminded us it was still winter -- Alamo Square's afternoon wind is no joke! He adjusted where he was sitting to block some of that, but then saw the look on my face, and stopped, his eyes suddenly lighting up as he read the change in me...
"I can rest from all the frustration and pain that has gone before ... I choose to rest from it, because I have been granted rest."
I watched his face as hope turned to relief, and relief to intense joy.
"That is what I could not do for you," he said to me, "but I came in hope that what I could do would help you to see just that ... that you also are given rest in this matter by the One Who said, 'Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.'"
That reminded me of my favorite aria by Mendelssohn, from the oratorio Elijah: "Rest in the Lord." I love especially to hear Marian Anderson, who was a contralto whose patience was indeed rewarded, sing it.
While I listened to this I wept quietly in a release of 30 years of emotion ... to come to rest even about this matter ... and finding that no, my wounds did not pain me more at rest, and there was nothing stinging my heart over who did and who didn't do things for me in the past. In this coming to deep rest, I was freed.
He who was so moved in his heart with me to sorrow was likewise experiencing the flip side of compassion ... he was so overjoyed I got a glimpse of what the joy must have been like up home ... but he was so quiet ... then I thought back to what I had heard two weeks before ...
Ich bin bereit ... I am willing ... I am willing to be pressed even thus far ... there will be no hardship worth my consideration for me in any task You require henceforth ... I am willing ... whatever You would have me do for this our beloved one, I am willing...
A man past all pain who found himself in fresh pain ... a professor, and a very decisive man on top of that, stripped of every plan but to just show up ... ... a truly great singer who uttered not a note ... a lesson in humility.
Jerome Hines, also a favorite of mine, still is my favorite writing bass ... in his biography he wrote once of volunteering at a rescue mission to sing, and not thinking highly of the woman who sang there regularly ... but then realizing, over the course of that work, that she, being redeemed from among those coming to the light at the rescue mission, could reach the hearts of those gathered in a way he never could, great a singer as he was. I carried that thought with me through my late twenties and thirties, willing never to be counted with the likes of Jerome Hines, because I knew I was the woman, called to bless the community I came from in a way that musicians like him, no matter how well-meaning, never could.
"And that is why, Frau Mathews, I am silent in the wake of the great Marian Anderson, and still more importantly, in the wake of the Voice that spoke to you Himself, for only He could release you from 30 years of grief. It is enough for me to have been allowed to be present, and to have been reminded, as still as human as you are, that there is still nothing greater than to do what you are called to, be it a large role, or a small."
But maybe he could be rewarded a little more...
"Speaking of small things," I said, "would you like to witness me working on my latest miniature?"
He lit up like a child at Christmas ...
"Girl, you gon' get that ring real soon -- keep up the good work!"
Tourists, trying to encourage love as they rolled by in their convertible ... I almost rolled right after them laughing! But his reflexes were equal to the moment, and if they looked in the rear-view mirror with his arms so ringed around me, they would have been sure they were right... the romantic comedy of errors was back on!
"Note to self," I said as I tried to stop laughing. "Some opera stars are lovely people, but they can't help but bring the drama, everywhere they go!"
"Occupational hazard," he said after a deep chuckle, "of an average day with a basso profondo buffo, with a height of about six-foot-forever-and-a-half, and just as broad. You certainly know how to pick them, Frau Mathews."
We had to sit back down so I could get myself together after that to walk down the hill ...
but we were soon on our way, and I did feel like composing ... my real note to self was to line up music time with such days that I felt very good with time outdoors ... if I was going to track Beethoven, I was going to track him well.
On to the house ... up we walked, and into that sun-drenched front room... I had not put down the shade so it was indeed very warm, so I set up a table with two chairs and cracked the window for a bit of a breeze. Now I say I set that up, but he would not permit me to lift or move anything -- he put everything where I wanted it, and there we were, me with my little computer and him fascinated in watching me work ... for in 1988 in an interview, he had predicted the impact of personal computing on composition. So, to see music come to the screen and then to the printed page was a special treat for him.
At last I had a sketch, and he smiled as I handed him the first printed copy.
"I can already tell ... you absorbed Beethoven's Opus 110 in your own way, because in the way his whole first movement comes out of his first four bars of a melody, everything is here ... this is very different, but I can already tell: it is all here."
I sat down at the piano and played through that four bars and what I had further in mind, and he quickly sat down.
"It was lovely in my head, but when you play it I can hear your sweet, golden alto purring ... the melody is an alto-range melody, but also that gently rippling rhythm is almost all up there in tenor/contralto between the hands ... it would orchestrate beautifully too ... I hear your heart singing out in the fullness of its love here ... no, this is not for competition ... you were right to hold it back. When have you not composed from love, Frau Mathews, like your ancestors making music to help themselves and each other affirm their humanity in the face of enslavement, Jim Crow, and other oppression ... like our beloved Bach, for love of God and church and community? You bring both strands together ... and you know me ... what is the legacy that drew us together?"
"Love," I said.
"Of course it makes no sense for you to pursue competition ... of course you will be called to a more loving way ... of course... ."
Then he shook himself and laughed.
"Like that chromatic downward portion of the melody, I find myself falling ... but let me be helpful to you in working this out, Frau Mathews. I am certainly no composer, but I can give you advice from the viewpoint of a professor and interpreter of music.
"First, take your time -- you live like Bach, but you think like Beethoven -- take your time in writing this ... you do well not to write to a deadline. All the beautiful days that have piled into this four bars, all the peace and grateful love ... take your time with this.
"Second, I remind you of the advice you received from living and wonderful local composer Othello B. Jefferson: play what you play, but write it easier so people will want to play it. I add to that, almost 20 years later: don't think of it as having to write easier music. Think of it as making decisions about what you want to communicate, just as you do when you write or arrange a song for any choir. You think about where the words go, and how they will best be sung and thus heard, given the choir's ability that you are writing for. You listen to me, listening for the decisions I have made to emphasize one word or another ... for what I emphasize through my choice of pacing ... so much can turn on a few words, and thus, on a few notes, and all I have is my voice."
"All you have," I said, playfully teasing him. "You did well with all you have!"
He bowed with a smile, and then continued.
"Consider, Frau Mathews, that on a piano you have so much more ... here you have a melody with a rhythm against a beautifully rippling accompaniment ... 36 notes there split between the hands ... already, that is a great deal, reflecting Bach's mathematical precision that you remember in your hands ... then you have this lovely opening dissonance in the melody moving to the gravity of consonance on the fifth of the chord, a lovely elevation to higher consonance before falling back, and then the flowering of that opening dissonance into that little chromatic run downward back to the fifth of the chord ... there is so much already there, so much that already you could employ at least two instruments, or a singer and pianist, in just these four bars."
"Hmmmmmm," I said, "you know, transposed downward, that would be a nice melody for cello, bassoon, or a low-voice male singer."
"Don't tempt me, Frau Mathews!" he said. "I've already thought about that, but your beloved Golden Gate Park is not ready -- don't tempt me!"
Of course I made a note to do it anyway ... of course ... but I kept quiet and let him continue blessing me with this beautiful lesson about communicating through music.
"Take your time and study your own music, Frau Mathews. What in these four bars do you want to communicate the most, and then what, technically, would best suit that? It will not be an easy piece with a rhythmic texture of 36 notes to the bar in what I hear as andante con moto, no matter how you divide that between the hands. You can easily play more technical difficulties and score them, and to get to what you truly hear in your head, you will have to do so -- but how much and where, in service to the beautiful story you have already given us in those four bars?"
Andante con moto ... active walking speed, by softly rippling water ... he was so close to figuring out what had been on my mind ... but I let the professor go on with his lesson, because already he subconsciously had begun to react ...
I find myself falling ...
... but had composed himself to give me this lesson. So I let that discovery wait, and I was glad that I did, for he had something deep to say that I needed to hear.
"I also add this because of who you are, Frau Mathews. We shall name no names, but you have seen me literally in a sweat about it in my early career -- there is still music being programmed by composers who had zero concern and compassion for the musicians who had to perform their work, and who left some terrifying artifacts of their indifference that still have to be performed from time to time. One is not allowed to question that if one is starting out in singing for a living. However, because a composer cannot live forever or be everywhere music is played, the questions that performing musicians cannot ask eventually can become a silence the less desperate ones choose to maintain, and if enough choose to maintain that silence, the music of that composer is ultimately lost.
I thought about this and it staggered me ...
"If we are thinking about the same person ... about two-thirds of his music is basically already gone!"
"As great a name as he has, yes, Frau Mathews. His less-talented peers and successors have completely gone already, and there is a sense in which the composers of the same mind in the 20th century scarcely even arrived. But for you, it is merely to do this: score with love. Think of the highest good that you can bring to meet with the highest good of other musicians. I have said to you many times that you understand the side of love that is loving: simply extend your mastery, and you will find that your scoring struggles will disappear."
He smiled.
"How many times shall we have this lesson, Frau Mathews? Infinitely many times, through the rest of eternity ... for you know how love runs with its companions joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, patience, meekness, faith, and self-control ... meaning you may have all of them and give all the other things that trouble you a rest."
"Lass mich in die Ruh -- leave me in peace," I said as I sighed with relief.
"Genau -- precisely," he said. "Or, put another way, in Strauss ... nur ruhe."
"Nur ruhe," I said, and felt it in my heart.
"How wonderful to so end the winter," he said. "Next week, I shall embrace you on the first day of spring, with all its possibilities before you, and so much that would have hindered you left in the winter's rest. I am just a little excited for you, Frau Mathews, and what the new season will hold!"
