How To Live With Joy On the Hilltop and In the Valley -- My Favorite Climbing Song, Strauss's "Das Thal," and Löwe's "Kleiner Haushalt"

Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, July 25, 2023

Part 1: My Hillside, and "Higher Ground"

Don't get me wrong -- as you might have known from my post about all the things Beethoven was right about, I love Golden Gate Park here in San Francisco ... and we will be hunting down those pianos ... but my favorite local place in the world is Yerba Buena Park, seen above from the second-easternmost street level approach ... and, a glorious thing happened that I didn't expect on a day two weeks ago ...

[I actually did climb the hill to the top, so the pics to come are for real, but after that we will blend into a Q-inspired production of the imagination ... the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past is overdue for a visit!]

Spring was difficult in many, many, MANY ways ... but I learned so much from it that blesses me, daily ... among those things is that there is plenty for everybody ... an old mask makes for a good cup for fuchsia berries ... five different kinds in there on this occasion ...

Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, July 19, 2023)

... and plums come by the bowl ...

Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, July 11, 2023)

... which is to say that there is enough, and so no need to engage in the foolery that so many people in my culture and many others are lost in ... but to get above that thinking, one literally has to GET ABOVE IT sometimes... so when my favorite seats on Yerba Buena Hill were occupied one day, I just started singing and kept going, because the hymn "Higher Ground" is among my favorites and now I am fit enough to physically walk that out at will ...

"Higher Ground" was written by Jonathan Oatman Jr. in the 19th century, and epitomizes the life of the Christian as described in Scripture in the Proverbs -- "The way of the wise goes upwards, that he may depart from Hell beneath." So: the total picture is a narrow path going upward ... it recurs in "Climbin' a High Mountain" the Negro Spiritual --

-- and there is no doubt that the way is challenging. Yet Oatman's "Higher Ground" focuses on the reward of the climb:

I’m pressing on the upward way,
New heights I’m gaining ev'ry day;
Still praying as I’m onward bound,
“Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.

Lord, lift me up, and let me stand
By faith, on heaven’s tableland;
A higher plane than I have found,
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.

My heart has no desire to stay
Where doubts arise and fears dismay;
Though some may dwell where these abound,
My prayer, my aim, is higher ground."

So: my two favorite seats were taken on the hill ... but it was a beautiful day, and I felt good, so, up to the next highest seat, stopping to take some snaps from a higher spot ...

... and another ...

... only to discover that the NEXT HIGHEST SEAT was also taken ... so, up some more ...

... and up some more ...

At about this time I realized I had made it about 5/6ths of the way up the hill, although that was a slight disappointment ... the hill has a false peak, so, you think you are there through this beautiful passage, but no...

... but past there in a quiet place there is a large tree stump, about 7/8ths of the way up, and there at last I found my place to sit and rest and reflect, and sing ... there was no one around me for a long time, or so I thought ... but I forget sometimes ... my voice has more admirers than I often think ...

My next thought was, "Well, I'm here now ... there's always room at the top" ... so I got up, pressed on ... almost there...

.. made it and planted my feet on the highest ground in a mile!

Part 2: Down Through the Portal of Imagination into Richard Strauss's Valley

I sat down to rest for a good while, and it was about then that I thought I had to be hallucinating ... the sound of the wind rubbing against the trees came in tune with my favorite song about the beauty of Creation, although "Das Thal" is about a valley. In the song, a man of mature age returns to his favorite place after a long journey of a life ... a place he has not seen since he was a boy, but inspired him in its spring, and still does ... it renews his life ... and he knows now that even in his darkest moments, even as old age nears, if he can just get to his beloved valley, its beauty would renew his strength!

I feel that way about Yerba Buena Hill because it has been in my window all my life, and I would look up at it as a child and imagine being there ... I looked at the hawks flying over it during Covid-19's worst and took courage ... I began walking again in 2021, and again after having Covid in 2022, going a block up at a time, painful reclamation by painful reclamation of height ... until finally, at the top again!

Now, there is a limit -- a limit that divides me from the character in the song -- Yerba Buena Hill is inside a residential neighborhood, so I can't say to my hillside that when I die, I wish to be buried on it so it can take my nutrients and bloom right on! But I understand the singer in Strauss's song ... the valley gives so much to him that he desires to give himself back so the valley can bloom right on. It is a beautiful statement of the "circle of life," from a very early 20th century perspective.

"Das Thal" is exactly the kind of song that Kurt Möll (1938-2017) loved to sing ... the kind of song that fit right into what appears to have been his life's work ... yes, he sang wonderfully in many operas, but he turned down roles he could have sung to keep his voice fresh and sweet in its power to sing the songs of his people that reminded them of who they were, culturally, for real ... who Germans were for centuries BEFORE the sad events of the 20th century. Herr Moll LITERALLY grew up in the wreck of all that, having been born in 1938 ... and gave his whole long career to singing and teaching the lieder of the German people. He had wanted as a boy to rebuild Germany ... and this is how he did it.

At about that time I realized: surely someone was playing a recording of "Das Thal close by ... as I searched, I recognized why I resonate with Herr Möll so much ... I was born in a valley neighborhood in San Francisco overrun with crime and degradation. My people, in the age of crack cocaine, had FORGOTTEN themselves -- the creators of blues, jazz, gospel, the Negro Spiritual -- and yet I as a musician was raised to learn, sing, and teach, and remind my people, and others, of who we are.

Gentrification of course changed all the situations in the valley ... my family was among the few who survived that to remain ... but sometimes I still need to climb above ... yet I return to the valley I was born in and those around it, and WORK to recall those I can reach to the better things of faith and hope, love and art and music ... and I have joy in this, for I know this is what I am called to do.

But not yet at that moment was I thinking of returning to the valley, because I realized someone else on that hill had great taste in music ... it was Kurt Moll's recording ... he was 61 in 1999, not quite in the twilight of his career, but far enough in his life to be able to look back and express his overwhelming joy ... for him, "the valley" was music itself ... and one can hear all his mature mastery with all his joy ...

But then I rounded a corner and almost tripped and rolled off the hill, for there he was at 61 years old, in a summer hiking outfit like he was strolling the foothills of the Alps on such a fine day, the trees and wind happily obliging him with an orchestra!

Leave it to the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past to teleport 50 feet and not miss a beat -- he was instantly by me, wrapped his strong arms around me to keep me from falling, his voice rolling all the way down the hill in his joy. No matter how anyone's day had been going, it definitely was better for those few minutes ... as ever he had, he carried us in his joy, upward!

When the last note had faded away, he grinned -- like I wasn't already stunned and dazzled after again being at point-blank range with that knockout voice!

"Surprise, Frau Mathews!"

"What are you -- I mean -- why -- I mean -- I'm always glad to see and hear you, and I'm sure Q-Inspired is too, but --."

"Did you think, Frau Mathews, that only for the valley of your courageous struggle with grief and loss I your companion would be?"

"I can't say that I even had thought that far ahead after the lesson you gave me about the Commendatore, and about letting go before one got scorched in messes one had no business being near," I said.

"You applied the lesson, Frau Mathews, as I knew you would. You have grown and healed, as I knew you would. Your contralto, heard now again in joy in your favorite songs, most lovely is. It is wonderful -- sehr wunderbar! -- you happy and flourishing and strong in this your summer, Frau Mathews, to see! It was a long enough climb for you to get here!"

"It was," I said. "Only with God, and by His grace."

"Which reminds me," he said, "I have another song for you, by Carl Löwe, about a little household -- "Kleiner Haushalt"!

Now, because I cast him at 61, and six-foot-forever in a half, I could not very well have him dancing and skipping around with the exuberance of a child, although it was marvelous to hear him doing it with his voice!

This song always makes me think of if Tom Thumb and Thumbelina had a family in Germany, and moved into the hollow of a tree ... this is the idea of Löwe's "Little Household," in which the man of the house never worries, for all Creation provides for him, shelter, food, clothing, transportation ... which of course brings to mind the bookends of Matthew 6:25 and then 6:33 ... "Take no thought for what you shall eat or drink, or how you will be clothed ... your Father knows you have need of these things ... but seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."

However, in all this magnificent leaping about, we are surprised by the inclusion of a spiritual truth -- we find out that the man of the house has a carriage for getting around drawn by crickets -- a leaping set of steeds indeed -- and says that he and his wife are going "Only with God!" That was where the connection comes for me ... because life is quite the journey, and I know for CERTAIN, just getting through the spring, that "Only with God!" have I made it.

But for me and everyone there will come a day, a day hinted at as the man of the house and his wife WISELY leave without their child in the carriage! This is actually said in the song ... the child cannot keep up, and that is good, for generally, the parents go through and depart from life before the children! My rough rhyming translation from German on the fly of the last two lines: "And if from the carriage, we're thrown and not saved/Then under the flowers, we'll find us our grave!" It is REPEATED for emphasis... and of course, being who he was, Herr Möll made sure the point would not be missed through his deliberate, tender interpretation of the second singing of the line.

I listened on this day, on the hill, with a different understanding ... from a modern U.S. citizen's standpoint, death and the grave are hardly thought of as provisions ... even accounting for that same German perspective of returning to nature in death that recurs over and over again, that ending strikes odd unless one is willing to take life for what it is ... all of it, in a world of war and turmoil in which many, many people never make it home to a choice of death and grave. This is still as true in 2023 as it was in the 19th century. One just has to accept the reality.

All good things come by grace ... it came to me as I listened to those two last lines again, and remembered the verses from Scripture: "All good gifts and perfect gifts come down from the Father of lights, in whom there is no shadow of turning" ... all the way from the living one's life amidst the beauty of Creation to the calling to useful labor, and, in the end, a honorable passing. Strauss, and Löwe, and Scripture actually are all making the same point: life is full of grace, and if received as such, full of joy ... but it does take getting above the crowd to see that, for the crowd in a culture in which "greed is good" cannot see this.

"Hence, Frau Mathews, your prayer and aim is 'Higher Ground,'" my companion purred thunderously when he had finished singing. "Your voice is in this world for the same reason mine was, except that you by your choice of song even special grace are representing -- you are 'the song of saints on higher ground' providing. Others will climb because of what they hear. As you are doing what you have been called to do, you nothing and no one that you need will lack. For you is, now and ever after, the challenge of the truth and to it, to remember and to cling. For as it is on a San Francisco afternoon --."

It was later than I intended to be on the hill, for San Francisco's great summer "Hawk" wind comes through around 3:30pm, and it came with sudden violence where we were.

"The winds will come, but if you remember and cling to the truth, you will there a sturdy shelter find!"

And, as an object lesson, my far larger companion stood and made a wind break for me. All I had to do, all the way home, was stay close to him as we climbed down, and I was not buffeted by the wind -- it tore at him, but he was as unmoved as the hill itself as we made it down to level ground.

However, once at the first crosswalk on the hill's lower streets, he put out his hand and stopped me even though the light was turning green.

"Were we in Germany on this route," he said, "I could walk on the outside toward the street and also to your west and still that wind break, but you contrary United States citizens always a conundrum have to propose!"

"*My dear sir, you are in the United States, not in Heaven -- it can't be perfect down here, or even Germany!" I said, and he laughed hard about that.

"All true, Frau Mathews," he said as he recovered, and then boomed, "BUT!"

He snapped his fingers, and suddenly we were on the last stretch of the western approach homeward, so he could walk on the outside and still break the wind for me.

"You are meeting new gentlemen on the hill, Frau Mathews. I am a father's work here doing, and making a further point about that whole matter -- how you should be guided, and protected, if you would with anyone closely walk."

"Oh, that's a whole 'nother song and story of my life," I said as we rounded the corner. "There's a basso profundo in that whole story too."

"I know, Frau Mathews," he said. "Like most women, you listen everywhere for the voices you love, and I know I remind you of one in particular ... an honorable impossibility, just as I am for you, and would have been as a married man even if we were peers. I know about that. It is a conversation for another day ... but do know that you, in your joy, may have to soon enough consider the possible.

"You are beautiful, Frau Mathews, and joy is beautiful on you. So, I reinforce what you have already been taught -- if any man is not a devoted adherent to the truth, a support to your peace and joy, and a thoughtful shelter to your heart amidst the changing winds of life -- not a gift of grace to you -- he in your life need not be. The same is true of anyone you might consider as a business associate or a friend. Let the spring of 2023 be a firm enough lesson for a lifetime, and remain in grace, joy, peace, and love, undisturbed by all but the necessities of the work and the needs of the people to whom you have been called. Remain beautiful, Frau Mathews, in your joy, on the hillside, and in the valley! Let no one disturb you!"

By that time, we were at the door of my home. Folks were looking ... I stood out as an African American survivor of gentrification always, but this big, fine, closely standing older gentleman of Teutonic extraction in the finest apparel of Germany's yesteryear really drew the eyes! But!

"Let no one disturb you, in the joys to which you have been called, Frau Mathews. Walk in courage and joy, in grace and peace, from the valley to the hillside and back again, and if you must alone walk, you will yet everything you need find. Given is this to you, amidst all Creation, in life, death, and the life that is to come."

"Only with God, as 'Kleiner Haushalt' says," I said.

"I share this with you in departing, Frau Mathews -- we had our cricket-drawn carriages and you all have these driverless cars in these San Francisco streets, so I would say the world and prospects of Loewe are nearer to you in modernity than you think!"

"You know ..." I said and then broke out laughing as a car with no driver in it cruised down my street. "It's just as ridiculous!"

"But the solution is exactly the same," he purred. "Lebewohl, Frau Mathews -- indeed, live well! You know how. Let no one disturb you!"

He walked down the street, and waved from the corner ... and then in turning the corner, vanished, so that he was not seen in the next street, but instead had stepped right back up, home, his mission complete.