Solving Deep Mysteries Gently, with help from Bach, Löwe, and Leonard Bernstein (as Songwriter!)

All photos taken by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, on June 4 and June 10, 2024

June came in gently, but it is a difficult month for me ... spring anniversary stress is a real thing, and a big anniversary hit me like a ton of bricks, augmented by other people in certain situations finally ready to tell their stories ... I went and bore witness with them to the truth, but that brought some of the darkest moments of 2022 back upon me ... the steps of us shutting dangerous people out of our lives while knowing some would LITERALLY DIE in their foolishness. Said outcome occurred in June of 2022!

It is a heavy thing to realize that one can live in such a way that good people REJOICE at your death ... and understanding that the Scripture said this would occur -- "The name of the wicked SHALL ROT" -- and seeing it in real time. Our legacies are in the hands of those we leave behind. It is a sobering reminder.

But also, those closer to the fire than I was reached out to me to thank me for how I have always backed them up, and many of my students and their families, past and present, have been bringing me news of graduations and advancements. I found old friends promoting my book to people without being asked ... made new friends in high places because of finally getting the nerve to express my sincere admiration ... so what was predicted last week came much quicker than I expected:

The day will come, Frau Mathews, when your students and your true friends will come around you, and bless you back. You have chosen love, and love will overtake you!

Reconciliation in one week, so much re-connection in the next ... and then new opportunity literally busting out all over ... and, a surprise world premiere of one of my cello pieces (scheduled sooner than I thought)! My heart bows down in gratitude to Him Who called me and led me, for had He not, I know that I could have been on the wrong side of this week ...

But to be on the right side of June ... come to broad plains of peace, overtaken by reconciliation and re-connection. I see why I had to be led to gentle music, and down gentle paths ... the shock of all of it at once!

I found Bach late in my teens, and I remember that I said to my mother, "When I listen to Bach, order comes back to the universe." I connected with him especially through his St. Anne's Fugue, for the subject of the fugue is also the beginning of the hymn tune "O God, Our Help in Ages Past," which I played every Sunday in those days for part of the Sunday medley prelude. Those were the years that I was developing into my own faith as a deep, core portion of how I would live my life, and Bach's biography of deep faith as a motivation of his prolific creativity allowed me to connect there ... a tune sounded out between the centuries between us, in holy accord ... but also, that prelude ... pure joy and sunshine and majesty ... so, in total, this was a quarter-hour refuge for me in my youth to which I returned a quarter-century later.

"Warm, intelligent, restrained" ... that was said of a later German musician, but also applies to Bach ... in this beautiful prelude and fugue I hear a catechism of sorts I learned while still very young, listening to Christian radio with my grandmother, and the advice of an old minister of how to pray: "Tell God your sorrows, that He may lift them ... your joys, that He may sober them." The former part I could understand even then, but the latter it took maturity to understand ... except that in Bach, it already made sense to me in my teens.

Bach can express the height and depth of all human emotion and experience temporal and eternal -- he takes us to dances, to flights with fugues, to the scenes at the Cross during Holy Week, and perhaps, with his very last six notes written, shows us himself passing away in peace -- without ever becoming deranged, without ever lashing out, without ever disregarding the stewardship of order and beauty to which he was called. His strength is so great that he can help his listeners find and retain their own balance.

There is no pride, prejudice, or pretense in Bach ... there is peace, purpose, and power. There is neither excess nor scarcity -- there is abundance that is enough, and Bach even wrote down, even out of a moment of deep sorrow, why that was. So long as he had his Savior, he had enough, enough so that when it was time to let go of the world, and all its grief, he was more than ready ... and was already living with the view of the One Who loved Him best before him...

Bach and my grandmother were teaching me the exact same thing ... their enough came from their Savior, and their life's work reflected that holy, peaceful abundance. No sorrow ever drove them to despair, for their faith connected them to peace that passed understanding, love that comforted their deepest hurts, joy that would not be quenched and yet was not so out of control that it separated them from their wisdom. Although I did not fully understand all this at 16, this was the way I realized I was called to go ... and wanted to go ... and so, I did, the Negro Spirituals I learned from my grandmother and Bach blending their light from there over me.

So then, to Bach I returned, between devastating sorrow and surprising joy, and then went out upon my walk as Beethoven had taught me ... and there it was that I remembered the third of the three German musicians who I had adopted ... and about whom it was indeed said that his singing was "warm, restrained, and intelligent."

Kurt Möll, to me, resembles Bach in many ways ... he can evoke all the heights and depths of human emotion, of human experience temporal to eternal, without the least hint of pride, prejudice, or pretense. Deep with peace, purpose, and power, he sang and covered it all ... but not in a way that is emotionally intrusive. One can sit in the sheer beauty on the surface of his voice, but the invitation to greater depths is there for whoever desires to hear all of what he can communicate.

But that also highlights a great mystery that YouTube cannot solve: it is VERY HARD to find a recording of Herr Möll singing Bach, even though it is known that Bach was among his favorites because he said so in his interview with August Everding. It could simply be because Bach's bass parts run a bit high for a basso profundo (today, many of those parts fit better into baritone), and Herr Möll stayed in his lane unless specifically invited to show just how wide and beautiful his range was ... or unless there was an emergency. There once was a struggling young tenor in his first big opera who really needed some guidance on how best to approach his lines, but no tenor was available ...

"Frau Mathews, that story is still out there?"

"Not only is it out there, but your grateful young colleague wrote that you sang tenor better than most tenors."

"Well, given that I am seven years into permanent retirement but still coming to Q-Inspired in the role of the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past just goes to show: I still cannot pass by a younger musician in need when I can help. But really, Frau Mathews, is this why you think that other than Pavarotti, Domingo, and Carreras, no other male opera singer of that time really needed to have a job but me?"

He appeared, white-haired, about 55 years old, and instantly did a double facepalm -- and I rolled laughing.

"I needed that laugh," I said. "Danke schön!"

"I know you did, Frau Mathews," he said. "We shall go gently through June, meine Töchterlein, and gently walk through this mystery that YouTube cannot solve, to a solution that will benefit you. It is quite simple, and you have already grasped the key to it, but you love a long walk with side trails, so ... "

While we simply walked and took in the symphony of spring, I considered what I already knew about him ... famously, there were bass roles he simply would not touch, and in the case of Hagen his explanation had been both eminently practical one side and utterly shocking on the other, given his colleagues and predecessors who had gladly sung the role and the reverence opera singers generally hold for Wagner. I tried to imagine the scene when he, in that voice as smooth and calm and deep as the great depths of the sea, solemnly declared: "Hagen is a role for those who cannot, or can no longer, sing." Now he did go right on and define precisely what he meant ... "sing" in terms of Mozart and lieder, two things deeply important to him ... but in essence, this was like listening to someone calmly explain why they had just as calmly dropped a whole bomb. No one dared to ask about Wotan, after that!

So then, what was I doing, getting ready to do a meeting of the minds with that mind about why Bach had been overlooked? How many centuries of accepted musical convention was I ready to reconsider? Was the 21st century ready yet for the answer, given that the same mind had foreseen composers writing music and becoming massively prolific in the 21st century by observing what that same Wagner could have done by transferring his method of building motifs into the tools of personal computing -- in 1988?

"What the 21st century has going for it, Frau Mathews, is that at least you have sense enough to ask the question on the Hive blockchain -- we shall see just how solid it is, after all. I do hope the developers have updated all their stacks, double-checked their Github resources, and that Hard Forks 27, 28, and 29 are ready to go, just in case."

I looked at him with wide eyes, but it was too late. Hive was ready or not ... for the stage villain laugh from the great beyond, backed by an organ chord worthy of Bach's darkest C minor endings:

"MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Every seismologist in San Francisco stopped what they were doing on that C1 and RAN ... and then did not know why suddenly they stopped feeling afraid as they worked on their own mystery while everyone in earshot in the park pretty much started laughing ... he just rolled up from that C1 across 3.5 octaves of C major chords and kept on laughing, because ...

"Frau Mathews, your imagination -- just got a little away from you there -- just a little bit more than usual -- but you know ... you know I cannot resist a comedic setup as an old opera singer, who, quiet as it is kept, loved his years in basso buffo roles! Danke schön!"

Oh, he was so tickled ... and my heart just melted ... I had accidentally but deeply blessed him, and this gave me another clue ... he was this big, famous bass to the world ... but he had passed over Hagen in order to remain in voice for his hilarious Don Bartolo and Osmin in Mozart, and to sing Löwe's hilarious yet poignant "Kleiner Haushalt" as it describes a life lived in communion with Creation and one's calling, and how one will be provided for including, on the day when one must leave loved ones and family behind, the proper grave! This song is an athletic feat of singing for which Herr Moll's voice should be far too deep, dark, and heavy ... and yet, one has in Creation such moments in which the midnight, in all its immense, full blackness, may sing merrily at midday should the sun and moon dance into total eclipse, and the stars be so kind to provide the music of the spheres. He had passed over the most famous bass role in Wagner, so that he could sing for decades more like this.

At about that time I realized I needed to sit down and calm down, because I had been listening to Bach for help for a reason ... the extremes of experience in the week had my imagination running wild, all the way from blockchain-breaking seismic-shattering vocal depths all the way up to the rare grandeur of a solar eclipse.

Meanwhile, my companion who had laughed until he cried about him breaking Hive in answer to a question, caught up with what I had been thinking while his emotional guards were still down, and so, got caught up!

"Oh, Frau Mathews ... you heard me, and you understood to the depth of your heart, with all your love ... oh, Frau Mathews!"

Another mystery for me thus was solved ... for about a year and a half, I had just been doing my thing and men in my neighborhood were just losing it in one conversation ... I knew about the businesses they owned, how much they were worth, what systems of redundancy they had in place, how they had settled things and gotten their ex-wives squared away ... some of them were picking down fruit trees they owned just because I had an interest in the fruit ... ladders and all ... I mean, 5-10 minutes flat ... they had been just offering it all up to a plump little African American woman in her forties in a world in which I am supposedly too old, too fat, and too Black to have access to men like that. It was a mystery to me until I realized ... how often does anyone listen deeply enough to anyone to hear the heart of a matter nowadays, and how often does a man even of goodwill meet a woman like that, with the world being the way it is now?

It is sometimes even mentioned here on Hive: many men feel that all women want is their material things and their money, and do not hear their hearts. On Web 2, it is constant conversation, and among well-to-do men it goes that they will do as little as possible in terms of showing their wealth until they can find some way to find out if the woman is interested in them, not what she thinks she can get. Now, to my mind, dishonesty will get you nowhere, and I would consider a man like that too silly -- but I have heard that if somehow you can capture a man's heart, he will gladly give you everything else he has just to keep you, and his heart, together.

This also had given me another clue about the nature of men in general: for what they loved, there was nothing they would not give up. Not that many weeks ago, I had heard Herr Moll sing Loewe's "Reiterlied," and in the second verse, the character is explaining to his parents that he has to ride -- he is willing to give up his home, his inheritance as their son, his blood -- for the life of the rider. Now, lieder singers, compared to opera singers, do not get paid well ... the role of Hagen fetches a much higher price than anything in Loewe ... over three or four decades, that's a large money and status difference to make up, especially for a married man. But then again, if said man can come through with a show-stealing Osmin twice in a year, the gap is filled ... where there is a will, there is a way...

And this gave me yet another piece of the puzzle to consider: the deeper drama of who people who believe in the world system think a person is and the role said person should play, and therefore the pressure applied to conform said person to that role, as compared with the struggle of the person who knows himself -- or herself -- to remain free. The drama of being in the world, as a big-time German operatic bass, and thus expected to sing Hagen, but not of the world, and so, denying Hagen in order to sing of Loewe's wise little man in his humble little household...

And yet another piece to learn: how to show up boldly as the person when the the role is the one invited, and as the person, put those expecting the role firmly in check. That answer about Hagen ... that bombshell of an answer ... and on the lighter side, that bit about composing in the age of personal computing ... by the time the person was finished having his say, the role had been escorted from the minds of the interviewers and everyone else.

Now all this still left the question of the unsung favorite, Bach, as mentioned to August Everding ... but at least I had now added context in advance to whatever bombshell was going to be dropped ... and established that I was interested as a person to understand the answer from the heart of the person I was inquiring of.

"Which is why the answer will be given you, Frau Mathews ... which is why it can be given you, to bless you. This is another aspect of what I have already said to you: you seek answers as one who has already chosen love. Therefore, love will overtake you with its answers, also."

He was now calm in aspect, but glowing, and the earth trembled just slightly ... his voice was soft, but his approximation of his mortal voice was not perfect at the moment ... those far deeper infrasonic tones that belonged to his immortal voice were still getting through, just a little.

"I shall return to the other mystery about your life that you have just solved in a different lesson, Frau Mathews ... but I observe for today that while I of course have not and will not contradict you in your desire to remain single, I knew you would discover for yourself why that may not be as easy as you think it will. Remember, Frau Mathews, as you have been on a journey away from living for the world, others have as well. Some of them are men ... and perchance, if one walks in these parks in which he also takes refuge, and you with your deep eyes and deep, soft voice and deeper mind and heart take him in ... you think of Brahms's 'Versunken' while walking downhill in the Oak Woodlands, lost in waves of wonder and gratitude and love you are directing upward ... but, Frau Mathews, that is not at all what that song is about ... Maestro Leonard Bernstein, as a composer, explained this so well ... and perhaps no one ever sang it like Mr. Johnny Mathis."

"Oh," I said. "I always thought that song was a bit overdrawn, but now ... ."

"Because, Frau Mathews, you are not unlike a little flower-child sister to Parsifal, exploring being who you are called to be in the world versus other people's expectations ... while other people are talking about houses and lands and assets in their first conversation with you. It has happened enough times that you have finally noticed. Some of those other people are dropping you poetry, and others picking up your music talking about 'I can get this scheduled in a concert TOMORROW' -- and you have finally noticed. Eighteen months, Frau Mathews -- and finally, you are noticing!

"To put this into terms of something you do not consider a mystery: you know 'Versunken' is about as close as I got to singing a love song out of the many available among German lieder. Your excellent working theory, given what I was able to do with songs including 'Meeresleucthen' and 'An die Musik,' is that I cherished my marriage and desired not to add temptation to myself or anyone else. You cherish your singleness. I solemnly declare to you: you will need to apply the same working theory to yourself."

He was silent for quite some time afterward, and still ...

"I solemnly declare to you, as I try and fail in my second attempt to get back to the main lesson ... I am a sedate octogenarian seven years into the great beyond, and I am having to grapple as a man, with a man's emotions, with how you sent me, Frau Mathews, in just five minutes, clear around the orbit of your brilliance, joy, and understanding love. To borrow your poetic terms: in June, very far north, the midday sings to the midnight, and he has put down the moon and the stars so that she might have his sky just as she wants it as long as she will just stay in all her warmth and beauty ... and he would not care not that the world itself also would drown, if the Creator Himself had not set a bound to the summer! It is June everywhere, Frau Mathews ... and even a sedate octogenarian, twice your age, seven years into the great beyond, found himself beholding the ice of the whole north dissolving into the waves of love ... and was not sure for a few moments if he was at high enough ground!"

He put his head in his hands, and I kept my deep, soft voice silent ... quite a side lesson, but given what was happening as I was experiencing this spring, I did need to learn it, and pondered this as he grappled, and we walked on to a calm place to rest.

"It is said that the third time is the charm ... "

At length, he was fully composed, his voice firmly inside his approximation of his mortal voice.

"About that mystery ... as you know, when I was starting out, I took a shocking number of roles -- if I could sing it, no matter how small the part, I did, and so got a reputation for being able to give such attention to small roles that the interest in them came out."

"That is more than once noted," I said.

"I have reminded you before, Frau Mathews, of why that particular secret to success works."

"'He that is faithful in few things is faithful in much,'" I quoted. "You reminded me just last week."

"What I wish to bring to your attention, Frau Mathews, is that in walking by that path, you find yourself, when the big decisions come, no longer in the climbing mode of needing every hand grip. I told you that in 'Mit vierzig Jahren,' and I add to it the reminder of that you also are deliberate and particular about what you will and will not bring to your church choirs, record, or perform on social media."

"This is true," I said, "although I have not thought of it before of in those terms, but instead knowing that I shall give account for my stewardship to the One by Whom I have called, and there is no position or spotlight that I desire such that I would compromise."

"So, already, you have set your iron will to not compromise on your core beliefs -- we merely surface what you are already doing, so that you may practice consciously. In that line I press further: people on Hive love your full, deep, rich contralto voice ... but you rarely sing even though you would probably be rewarded more if you did more often. Why not?"

"It is too personal to me. Last week I did sing 'I Been in the Storm So Long' for Vibes Week 12 here on Hive, and even from this many days away, a tear returns to my eyes ... that was not a performance so much as it was a sharing of my people's history, and also deep personal emotion from the storms of the last two years. This week's theme of pain primed the space so that there would be reasonable receptivity of the meaning in the hearers, but otherwise I would not have done that. I will not sing what has no meaning to me, and what I do choose to sing has so much deep meaning to me that I cannot half do it. Even before Covid-19, and before Hive or its predecessor, my solo singing appearances were not common for this reason."

"But, Frau Mathews ... I know that you lifted up the heart of Mr. Eric Hollaway in his bereavement this week with your singing."

"Well, that is a bit different ... you notice I didn't put that out publicly on Web2 or Web3 ... Beethoven taught me that friends might speak to one another in tones at such times ... that was a sharing, not a performance."

"So then we see that when you know how you are called, and you have attained the maturity to respect your emotional and spiritual limitations, your choices reflect that. By this you also care for yourself in allowing others to be responsible and powerful participants so you do not need to over-compensate. You young people call this great wisdom, 'staying in your lane.'"

"Just because a basso profundo can sing tenor doesn't mean that he, being wise, will, barring an emergency," I said after a few moments of consideration.

He chuckled.

"Genau -- precisely," he said. "And speaking of precision: you listened to my interview with August Everding in German, and you did very well in catching all that you did. Since German is much more precise than American English, cast your mind back: did he ask me who my favorite composers were to perform?"

"He did not," I said.

"Very good, Frau Mathews. I bring to your attention one of my favorite lieder composers, the only one whose full name I said: Hugo Wolf."

"You even emphasized it, which I understood because he is not as well known as Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms," I said.

"Do I have any recordings of Wolf's lieder readily available -- or Schumann, for that matter?"

I jumped, and then said, "No -- and you know I have been looking!"

"The lesson here, Frau Mathews, is that human beings always imagine about a public servant of any kind that all that he -- or she -- finds important is important relative to service to them. So, of course, there would seem to be a bit of a mystery to a lover of Bach, Schumann, or Wolf that I also list them among my favorites, but did not leave readily accessible recordings. The mystery is solved thus: when I was finished with the portion of my career in which I had to sing everything available in order to get established, I decided I was indeed finished. After that, I chose what I would sing for the world, I chose what I would reserve for myself and those closest to me, and I stood firm on my decisions."

I thought on this for a long time ... it was simple, but worthy of the double-deep gravity in which he spoke as we walked on.

"You know that it is written that if you are a faithful steward of a few things, or much that belongs to others, eventually, you will be made ruler over that which is your own, and plenty of it. This is not the world's path to success, but you have avoided the world's path like the plague that it is. You have humbly handled your few things well, and been faithful steward for a decade with community assets that are, to say the least, considerable. You have been 34 years on this humble path of service.

"So then, what comes next, Frau Mathews?* Since He Who has called you is faithful, and you have followed His leading in being obediently faithful over your few material things, what comes next? Since you have been faithful in those things that belong to others, to considerable scope, Who is going to give you that which is your own?"

I considered this for a long time also, and then said, "I suppose this lesson comes not a moment to soon, then."

"Not a moment too soon, on all fronts," he said, "but to again return to our mutual favorite composer, and to return to what you learned from your grandmother's great Negro Spirituals, you already know: you have everything you need to choose well and stand firm, for He Who called you is faithful."

"Ich habe genug," I said. "Genau, Herr Moll: ich habe genug."

"You may rest in that, Frau Mathews, as you have been brought to a broad and open place, chosen just for you, with there being no bridge to those not chosen for you so that you may be all that you are called to be, and prepare for the inevitable -- you must be rewarded for your faithfulness, and we see it, already beginning around you."

I was suddenly overcome with tears ... an intense flash of mingled emotions ... but when it cleared, the truth was still there.

"I can do this ... by the grace of the One Who called me."

"You can, Frau Mathews. You most certainly can."

As we came to an open place full of sunshine, Bach's St. Anne Prelude rang out again in all its celebratory majesty, now blending with the symphony of spring, and my companion closed his eyes in utter bliss as we settled down into the grass and the light. I simply followed his lead ... what was now understood needed no further explanation.