Deep Reflections on Incomprehensible Necessities, While Wonder Shines All Around (Chopin, Bach, Negro Spiritual, Schubert, Schumann)

Reflecting on deep matters can lead one to find beauty and meaning in unexpected ways ... this piece by Chopin epitomizes what can be done with just tonic and dominant chords ...

... just unfurling glittering figurations on a sturdy deep bass, like gold leaf blowing across velvet...

By contrast to that level of finding depth in brightness, Bach accomplishes bringing forth the incomprehensible in a different way, with Busoni providing this remarkable piano transcription ...

Bach composed this Chaconne originally near the time of his first wife's death. All his emotions of grief and anger are here, contrasted with his certain knowledge at the height of the piece that she has gone on high beyond all grief and pain. His joy for her, because he loved her and his God so fully, is powerful. Yet he also knew that he and their four children had to still make their way in the world without her, and he does not shy away from that reality either. One hears him navigating the incomprehensible necessity of life and love and grief all together. Now, Busoni borrows from the piano size and style of late Beethoven and beyond to flesh this all the way out, but it is still Bach at the core, for only Bach can stand between grief and joy, love unending and loss unfathomable, in this way outside of the Negro Spiritual.

Surprised by Chopin while again and again turning to Bach ... of one, the depth of simple joys ... two chords repeated as variation after variation plays merrily over them ... and of the other, of grief and love, in height and depth both beyond any measure ... one can delight in the glory of small things ...

... while walking among giants...

Of course, Easter has just passed also in the Western world (still not here yet for the Eastern Orthodox churches) ... so I have been contemplating that in the frame of incomprehensible necessities as well:

1. That God, in the Spirit, took on manhood
2. That He, being all-knowing, learned about all it was to be human through all human experience except for being sinful
3. That He, being sinless, agreed to take on the sins of the whole world and die in the place of all humanity as a perfect substitute
4. That He, being immortal, DIED in his humanity
5. That He, being dead, ROSE AGAIN

All I could say, upon considering it on Easter Sunday morning, was "Thank You, Lord ... thank You so much!" I expect I might have spent a couple of hundred million years on that, without the necessity of getting ready to go to church... but this is also why I take my walks in the park, away from the crowd ... a few hours at a time, I begin upon my activities of the next couple hundred million years... "Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise," as the hymn goes, "the glories of His righteousness, the wonders of His name!" My prayer journals show English and German now, with general thanks in a few other languages -- progress!

Yet, like Bach, I walk between the height and depth ... more of my old students walked in on Easter Sunday to be blessed to the utmost of my ability as I plan on blessing their children whom they are bringing to me ... the honor and the privilege and the blessing!

And yet ... I have walked in last week's clarity as my old friends are bivouacking and I must move on ... there is simply no way to be of this mind ...

https://youtube.com/shorts/wOXyzHcnQLE

... and remain long with those who are of this mind ...

Again, Theo Adam's voice is incomprehensibly wrong to be singing this from Winterreise ... just like a doomed bass nightingale, his song far too beautiful for such a fate ... I just want to start yelling at him -- "Herr Adam, if you do not immediately stop talking about not caring about being lost in some river valley like it doesn't make any difference what light you follow because you are used to going astray -- if you do not immediately get your tailbone up outta there--!" I just want to throw shoes, tomatoes, whatever it takes ... I literally am sorry I listened to it, and I'm even more sorry I listened to the next song, "Rast"!

The idea of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" is beautifully inverted here ... he sings even more beautifully about being in safety as if he were a cruelly caged bird, for the character in Winterreise despises rest until, of course, the day he wishes he could find it, but cannot any more!

When Theo Adam voices the character in "Der Wegweiser" wandering farther and farther without rest, hopelessly now seeking the rest he once despised, he just about rips my heart from my chest, and completes the job when at last the reality sets in on the last lines: "I must go down this road from which no one has ever returned."

In this week, I saw, to my horror, two things: certain of my old friends bringing the very folks that set up their hurt last autumn into what I am terming the "bivouac," and certain of those folks getting a level of real-world warning about their lives that could have turned deadly in a hurry... but without deep comprehension of what they had just experienced ... it is like watching Winterreise nos. 9 and 10 being dramatized ... I want to throw shoes, tomatoes, a whole fit ... but no. No. For me there remains the incomprehensible necessity of climbing on, because

Anyone can need to get a better understanding, can be confused, can be distracted. But ... there is nothing a guide can do with a firm refusal to climb further.

"And, Frau Mathews, how do you know you are seeing a dramatization of songs 9 and 10, and not song 24, as folks keep going back to their favorite nearer-death-than-they-thought hurdy-gurdy players, three years in?"

Leave it to a basso profondo to provide the deepest, firmest reality check imaginable, though gentle ...

What Kurt Möll brings to the tragedies of German lieder is the unmistakable reality that people get where they get because of their choices. His winter traveler is lost by his own choices from Song 1 to the final choice in Song 24, and what makes it so tough is that "Der Leiermann" is two-thirds descriptive narration. Herr Möll describes the old hurdy-gurdy man's situation with such deep and even tender compassion that surely one would think in that third verse that the younger, stronger man of these two -- Winterreise's main character -- would be moved to assist the older man.

But it is said that diamonds are set on velvet to show the diamonds ... Herr Möll achieves the reverse, on the high, bright side of his voice ... a bright setting to show the end of a dark, twisted soul. It does not matter when that main character and the hurdy-gurdy man actually die: they are both doomed by the main character's choice to see in that dying old man only someone else to make chattel to his will. It is just a question of time ... and for the first time I had a different reaction ... let me get my shoes, tomatoes, and a few knives, too ... the sheer evil of that character finally got through to me, and it enraged me!

"I knew that eventually, Frau Mathews, you would understand," the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past said grimly as he sat down by me. "You saw it in the winter and spring of 2024, but I did not press you, because your heart is so tender. Yet it is a good thing that you have met me in my immortal patience, for as much as you might have wanted to take some people and shake them in real life, so might I, and I am far too large a man to be under that kind of temptation for an entire year."

"I get it," I said. "I am a big woman in many ways, and God only knows how many times I have nearly shaken some things loose this spring -- and we are just at third of the way through now!"

"Here is the difference, Frau Mathews. You can actually get some good out of being shaken up. You got called, got out, and have never stopped climbing -- even when you slowed down to allow others to try to catch up, you have never stopped moving forward -- ever. When I met you through music so many times at that kitchen table in 2022, you were not having me sing at a pity party. You were looking for support to keep going, and you did keep going. You are answering how you are called, at any and all costs -- so even if I have occasionally frightened you and angered you in the process of your learning, I took those risks because I knew they would bear fruit ... and speaking of which ... ."

"Oh, my dear, kind, sweet master singer," I said, "that's a whole lunch right there -- danke schön!"

"Gern geschehen."

As I was looking at the fruit I heard him sigh, but looked up to see him smiling gently.

"As a musician myself, I know your weekend was highly interesting."

I started laughing.

"It always is when you love people in community who are doing the best they will," I said.

He laughed.

"I note your choice of words -- the best they will, since they know they have a master musician in their midst but do not want to turn the thing over to her, and missed the chance to do that forever anyway."

"I just help out on special days -- I still love the people involved, and I always will."

"I know. I imagine your Resurrection Sunday would have been more pleasant without the burdens of Easter, because to understand the first is not to need a day to be called the second ... but others have need, being culturally tied to these traditions ... and I see another two students of yours brought themselves and their little ones on that day."

"And I will put up with anything I have to for them," I said. "28 years and counting."

"I have taken the long way around to remind you of the incomprehensible necessity of not applying that kind of dedication where it is not warranted, Frau Mathews, while at the same time, I know withholding anything from those whom you still love is unspeakably difficult."

I sighed.

"As I am thinking my way through Winterreise again," I said, "and being shocked and awed by Theo Adam ... ."

"Is he not magnificent, Frau Mathews?"

"He goes over to the opposite extreme from you. One cannot help to imagine him as handsome as his voice, and actually he kind of is, so you just know that he could get up a few mornings later and dust himself off and have a wife. Few women could resist that bass nightingale singing at their window for long! But there he is flapping around in Schubert's winter, beautifully complaining all the way to the last bad decision in song 24 -- nobody gets across just how ridiculous it all is better than he does. Theo Adam is devastating in that respect -- it is like, how dare he waste himself and die out there over some woman when there are billions of us in the world?"

"Theo Adam is the winter traveler you finally managed to get mad at, Frau Mathews, and then I just came along and nudged you a little further in that direction because I want you to see something: can a person like that be rescued?"

"No," I said. "I realized when you sang 'Der Leiermann' again more clearly than I ever have: such people will waste themselves and everything they touch, trying to condemn God for not doing for them what they want and trying to make everything they can grapple with confirm them in their wilfulness. A near-death warning will not dissuade them; they are committed. But ... ."

I paused.

"They are also erring lights for others ... and that is where the pain hits for me ... everyone needs light, and I understand that people go for the light they know in a dark world, not always being willing to forge through the darkness to a more distant one."

"Permit me to be your sedate octogenarian reality check yet again -- are the sun and moon that distant to anyone's everyday experience? Are you so distant? Have you not made yourself available, and have you not opened up the wealth of your knowledge of all things in heaven and earth freely so that anyone can grab hold of such things for themselves? Permit me to inform you, Frau Mathews, that bargaining with reality is a stage of grief, and you are in it!"

There is nothing like a basso profondo for a reality check, but also, no equal in depth of tenderness.

"I knew that last week's clarity would cause you deep pain," he said gently. "You are a kind and loving woman, so even though you know there is nothing left to do at the bivouac, if you will, and even though you are climbing on, of course there is great pain. No one of your temperament would ever leave anyone exposed on a mountain, knowing they would die -- you would prefer to die first, but the challenge is, you are ordered onward, and thus, not to do that, and you are obeying. It is an incomprehensible necessity, just like it would be on Mt. Everest."

"I have this immense intellect, and it does me no good at times like this," I said.

"Yes, and no," he said. "At least you know the dimensions of what you are up against. You can explore it, examine it, study it, and understand to the limit of what can be understood. That is an advantage, Frau Mathews. But if you mean can that intellect get you to the resolve you want, you are right. You are as helpless as the biggest idiot in town, and to be more annoyed, because you can see and understand more of the good you can never force anyone to accept. But ... aber ... Selig sind da die Tragen... ."

I smiled.

"Blessed are they that mourn," I quoted in English, "for they shall be comforted."

"Yes," he said. "Yes, Frau Mathews. You have learned from Bach and Brahms, echoing as they do greater truth, how to walk in unending love and incomprehensible loss, and the former is great enough to comfort you in the latter."

The object lesson of him wrapping that voice around me in all its black velvet loveliness was making the point ... pain was being escorted off the scene, and the day's charms reminded me of Chopin again ... so I turned it back on, and he listened with me with great pleasure, and a chuckle at the end.

"That is a nice bass figuration there," he said, "just calmly holding everything together."

"You know my tastes," I said, and he laughed.

"A mind and heart like yours requires the stability of the deep and profound," he said. "I see why you love this piece, and even more why basso profondo is your favorite voice. I do hear the same tendency in your music as well ... you major on that deep bass and build everything else around it."

"It is written: 'If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?'" I said. "Modern gospel music and trap music make me nervous for the same reason: in music, no bass means no foundation, and that is not how Creation even works. This whole spring -- all these lovely blooms ..."

" ... but what plant sets forth leaves, buds, flowers, and fruits before its roots?"

"None," he said. "It cannot be done ... you have me wondering if Adam was a basso profundo and Eve was a soprano now, and between them put forth all the other voices."

"Now that is a good question!" I said.

"I will have the answer for you when you come to your alto seat on high," he said. "Not that you will think to ask me for quite some time, but when far down in eternity hence you have time for its smallest joys, I will remember when you ask."

"Something else to look forward to," I said, "and I enjoy your sweet humility so much even now."

"Frau Mathews, I guarantee you -- when you have at last feasted your eyes upon Him Who called you, and heard His voice -- I may as well be humble, because you will not think of me for possibly ages. I am but a small echo. I sound immense to you here, but only because you do not have the perspective of getting past the echo.

"And in having said that ... well, walk with me a while, Frau Mathews ...

It was a golden spring day, and he was doing his sedate octogenarian pacing bit to the hilt so we would be in the gold a long, long time...

"Tell me this, Frau Mathews. When you choose to sit in the sun on any of your favorite hills, or deep in the Fuchsia Dell, or at the Horseshoe Courts, do you at that time think feel the weight of your many responsibilities, or even the difficulties of the way to get there?"

"No ... as you know, it does not take much to nudge me to the edge of ecstasy, and if I get to sitting in the sun in a beautiful place, or then thinking of the blessings that have been shared with me and start to talk with the One Who has so lovingly called me and start giving thanks ... or even be alone at last to pour out my burdens and affirming my trust in Him as I do so and then He disclose His presence and care to my heart as I am doing so ... you know there have been moments when I have nearly come up on high because I have lost my breath in the heights of rapture I have reached."

"Some of that is now explained with the severity of the anemia you had -- you were very close indeed, Frau Mathews, possibly from lack of available oxygen in your bloodstream, but to think that you experienced those symptoms many times as an overjoy, without fear, ready to go up on high rejoicing, but instead, went to sleep so your body could level out the oxygen."

"Memory like a steel trap," I said, and he chuckled.

"You recorded those phenomena here in Q-Inspired several times, Frau Mathews, so you are helping my brain with the blockchain."

"You know ... now that you mention it," I said.

"That partially accounts for it, but not entirely, Frau Mathews. You are easily delighted by common grace. Sunshine is enough. You also can be quite excited by the voices of certain old German basso profondos, so we know it does not take much!"

"Well, midday and midnight spangled with the Milky Way for light -- balance," I said, and he laughed and blushed.

"There's my Old Blush, my darling Herr Altesrouge!" I said, and he laughed and blushed even more.

"I don't even remember the point I was trying to make, my darling Frau Blumenkind," he said, recalling the nickname he had given me in return last summer, "so all I can do is say danke schön."

"I think you may be experiencing the point you are trying to make: when love and joy take over, all the rest just falls away."

He smiled.

"That was it," he said. "The day is radiant and you are just glowing up and this little old bass is getting so dazzled as we approach this road of gold ... ."

I took out my journal and started fanning him, and he burst out laughing.

"Because you are supposed to be the sedate octogenarian pacing service, and we just can't have you going into your moonlighting-as-bouncing-seraph form right now... ."

Oh, he rolled laughing, so I had to get danced all the way up and down that road of gold, laughing, as what began with a tip in the balance of gravity ended up in the conservation of angular momentum -- for in that place, AUTUMN still danced in red among spring-clad trees -- as if winter could never journey there, and the two siblings had come again together in joy!

Now having done all this, we had come to the edge of the Fuchsia Dell, but also to the safe limit of my strength ... and were in such wonders of light that there was just no need to overdo anything by the time we got to our favorite quiet seat...

... but were hardly quiet, still laughing, with all thought of Winterreise long gone ... autumn and spring embracing ... midday and midnight, embracing ... this was also a good time for me to eat fruit and drink water, and he just sat enjoying me doing this, so much so that he was glowing up intensely ... and then shook his head...

"Bring dein Leben in den Griff, alten Mann," he said as he stood and walked off for a few moments. "Es ist nicht Mai -- ich bin kein Tenor oder Bariton!"

I thought about it and then had realized: the milder weather in San Francisco than Germany perhaps had him temporarily confused, but he had realized that no, it was not the wonder-shining month of May, and Schumann had written that for rather high tenor. Even baritone was pushing it for depth, for it requires a rise in emotion and voice to almost the breaking point ... a spring journey beginning as a young man finds his heart beginning the journey into love, and is moved to a confession as all things of spring seem to shine to the point that he can hold back his feelings no longer. Peter Schreier gets this across with the sweet sharpness of his tenor so well...

Now, the opening of Schumann's Dichterliebe song cycle is famous -- or infamous depending on your point of view! You can tell from the beginning that, as beautiful as this song is, things may not go well!

But of course, it is April, not May -- and since I don't do tenors, I was in no danger whatsoever, and neither was our favorite ethereal basso profondo -- but then again, I had forgotten Brahms and his 'Versunken' ... and it seemed to me that I heard the Pacific Ocean nearer than it should have been ... as though it was right around the bend ...

... but then again, again, some men do not just get shined into falling in love -- if they go, they will go by choice, for that is the tale of 'Versunken' -- the character goes looking for what he heard about and steps right off and sinks into the depths of love. For in the end, love is an act of the will, not a temporary feeling and longing. Anyone can feel something in a day, and go through all kinds of things trying to chase the feelings of that day, and call all that love. But spring and summer and all their feelings go by. If love exists, love is chosen.

And this was the resolve of the incomprehensible necessity I was grappling with: Bach had shown it to me, and Schumann also ... for Schumann's character is confessing a longing that the music suggests may not be requited in time, and Bach had lost his wife at the time he wrote his Chaconne. That D major section proclaims that Bach knows that in the next world, all there will be for him and his beloved Frau Bach to experience is love, but the piece closes in D minor because he also knows that for this world, he will never know that mutuality of love again, and for that loss, he grieves. Love never ends, but people are limited in time to love, even if all goes well.

Eventually, time is simply up. Mozart in Don Giovanni illustrates this well. "Ah, tempo piu non v'eh!" says Commendatore to Don Giovanni, Commendatore on a mission of mercy impelled by the love above to command Don Giovanni to repent ... but all the while Don Giovanni is refusing, his time to refuse is running out until "Ah -- time there is no more!" Love, ever loving, moves on ... but not that far. The repentant Leporello is saved to seek a better master, and Donna Elvira, who also met Commendatore, goes into a convent -- so, very quietly, they achieve the new community status and the new authority status that comes with redemption, and very quietly, the focus on "the least of these" in Christianity is upheld! Love does not discriminate by class: it remains where it is received, in time!

Having followed the string all the way to the redemption of Leporello and Donna Elvira, my mind just followed them up into eternity where they eventually, because redeemed, would accept Commendatore's invitation to dinner, and once there no longer think upon that terrible scene with the loss of Don Giovanni, whom they both loved in their own way, and whom they begged to repent. Perhaps in life the nightmare replayed again and again ... and perhaps not, for at any time, the love they had chosen could grow to fill and heal that space in their heart, and their committed engagement in the good activities to which they were directed in new community could retrain the mind. The mind is plastic, meaning traumatic experiences can deform it, but healing experiences can also re-form it.

The point for me: the good offer of love has to be chosen in time. I had always left my offers open. Everyone who knows me knows that if ever I invested love into them, if the chips are down, they can come to me and I will help ... but going back into community with them? No.

This, again, was just the same thing: to not be in community with foolishness while still loving and having compassion on the people was the incomprehensible necessity ... but the resolve, still, was leaving the door open when people wanted better. Some would choose to bivouac, and if the storm swept them away, it would be their responsibility, but if some chose to rest there and then climb on, time being granted them to do so, then always they would find a rope. I cannot bivouac ... but I will fix a firm rope, and help anyone climbing it once they start.

After all these thoughts came clear, at last I was relieved of much of the burden upon my heart -- I knew what I had to do. The new thing I had learned was a crowd tends to want to bivouac ... so I would always need to leave once a crowd started forming!

For narrow is the way that leads to life, and few there be that find it.

There is no escaping that, in any endeavor higher than the average even in common grace. In the end, the company one keeps is going to be those making the same journey.

Thus far my reflections ... but I must have closed my eyes and become very still, for there was a touch of alarm in the voice I heard next, and then there was action.

"Frau Mathews?"

I opened my eyes and my sedate octogenarian walking partner had come back with my water bottle all filled up and even more fruit for me.

"Thank you so much -- I'm fine -- was just thinking very deeply," I said.

"Even at a sedate pace, that was quite a walk here, and we will not walk back," he said. "It is still only April, and we must not endanger your recovery by any means -- I must get you home to rest."

"Well, there's no hurry even on that," I said. "The days are getting longer, and so we have more afternoon to enjoy, and I am resting now, pleasantly."

I put my head on his shoulder and smiled.

"As you wish, meine liebe Dame," he purred. "Rest here a while with me ... in fact ... ."

He thought for a long moment, and then continued.

"It is indeed better that you rest here -- in Q-Inspired time, we have an hour or so before it will be time to find you some dinner. But you have quite the week ahead of you on the non-fiction side. You have that concert Friday with a musician at my level in her field who is going to blow your church down -- you have a business suite launch coming, and you are being sent tools to make all such things easier in future! How do you feel?"

"I see the path being opened before me to the associations prepared for me at the levels I am climbing to, but I am deeply torn, because I am a minister at heart, and I can't minister these benefits to so many whom I still love. I have to leave them behind, and I am so hurt. I had hoped ... ."

"I know, Frau Mathews. I know."

The compassion in his face as he wrapped his arms around me, and then his voice, carefully pacing all that he was about to say ... carefully turning up the black velvet anesthesia as he went, because there was a hard, hard blow coming.

"You are a minister at heart, Frau Mathews, and your heartstrings will always be pulled that way, yet you have grasped something of the utmost importance: love is eternal, but time is limited. If in Winterreise you had gone to help at any point, you only would have so many hours before night or a storm hit to get yourself to safety. If climbing Mt. Eiger or Mt. Everest, the same would be true. If we return to Don Giovanni, the Commendatore is a soldier under orders, orders to be completed by a certain time, and he may not go one instant past that time. Now in life, things are not always so easy to determine, but you know the Voice that calls you. When He calls time, it is done."

"Yes," I said.

"Permit me to add this to your considerations: consider how far ahead you already were from people who did not even start to climb until the end of 2024, and already are tired and want to bivouac! I know you now, mein Eisernblumenkind ... my iron flower child, with the tender heart and iron will. There was nothing I might have said last spring to stop you from fixing ropes for those left behind you, but some you want to see climb are so far behind that those ropes may not do for them what you hoped -- conditions have changed, and three years of different conditioning means that even with good ropes, they may not be able to climb the paths that you have.

"Yet it is more than three years of different conditioning, Frau Mathews. You were home-schooled. You are 44, with 44 years of different conditioning than your peers. It is little wonder those whom you, your sister, your mother, and your father have taught are climbing after you -- they may be the only ones who actually can, and there are enough of them for your happiness! All others you will have accord with along the way will be like unto you: people set apart to unique journeys ... set apart ... called apart, Frau Mathews.

"Permit me to press even deeper, Frau Mathews, into this lesson. Consider what in theology you would term the incommunicable attributes of God -- for short, we know that whatever is the province of His being infinite is forever beyond our reach to fully understand or participate in because we are finite. That scales all the way down, Frau Mathews, you who will never know what it is like to be a tree, or a bee, or a bird by experience, just as they will never know what it is to be human. Some things are, in that sense, incommunicable."

"You are 44, and not only of brilliant, well-developed intellect, great heart, and iron will, but you have been thirty-five years in service with all that to humanity. Your mentors started you at just nine years old. That means you were literally formed to do what you are doing now. That is your incommunicable attribute, Frau Mathews. It cannot be duplicated. It will not even be successfully imitated by anyone not called and formed similarly."

He paused briefly, and then at last came to the point, having paced this lesson for ten minutes, but also since the previous spring, and from an angle of approach so high -- from high-level theology down through common grace to the birds, the trees, and the bees -- that the point was going to take out all resistance as it came, but stop short of taking me out, because by that time his purposefully paced purring had me to the point that pain was not even a concept that I remembered. I needed that preparation, because ...

"Therefore, Frau Mathews, what you most desire for those not so called and formed is and has always been absolutely impossible."

There. It was said, and I didn't die.

"Sleep on this for an hour in this Q-Inspired afternoon, Frau Mathews, and outside Q-Inspired, take a week, and live, and walk, and think and sleep on it for seven nights. I am far too old and not handsome enough to be Prince Charming, but you get your beauty sleep all the same, not under a curse but a blessing, until I wake you."