Call me a sentimental fool, but the death scene in the movie 'Finding Neverland' never fails to move me.
But then, I harbor a hope that fairies really exist, and if so that they are something like the ones in 'Midsummer Night's Dream'; free to play in the woods and play tricks on mortals.
I went to the Church of the Advent on Beacon Hill in Boston last night to hear their magnificent choir sing the 'O Michael' Mass by John Taverner and motets by Peter Philips, Robert Parsons, and Orlando Gibbons. The performances were uniformly excellent; the group sounds wonderful and tunes so well that the thickest textures seldom felt clogged or hazy. There were so many memorable moments that I will not even try to list them; these were real composers, not hacks, and they each exhibit personal qualities within their common musical language.
I was most impressed with the Taverner piece, however. It seemed gracious and generous, full of radiance and goodness. In some ways it reminded me of the 3rd Piano Sonata of Boulez. Neither piece really takes you on a journey; instead you float on an undulating bed of sound. But the differences are huge. With Boulez the texture is dissonant and often jarring, and the piano sound is sharply crystalline. With Taverner, the sounds are consonant and the voices are warm and sensuous.
Hearing the Taverner, I felt as if I were riding on a raft in Paradise. Everything was safe and benign, and I didn't care where the raft was going, because it was Paradise. The music seemed to be the embodiment of a vision of transcendent goodness.
That vision is one of the best things about Christianity, and one of the major reasons that consider myself a Christian. That vision sustains and inspires me.
A conversation with a skeptic after the concert reminded me that this music is difficult for most people to understand. There are no big repetitive tunes to hum, and little in the way of conflict and resolution in the structural sense.
But an hour spent in Taverner's heaven was just what I needed.
I'm reading Bring Me the Rhinoceros by John Tarrant, who presents a number of Zen koans and associated stories. He quotes Emily Dickinson in one of the chapter headings:
"Friday I tasted life. It was a vast morsel. A Circus passed the house - still I feel the red in my mind though the drums are out. The lawn is full of south and the odors tangle, and I hear today for the first time the river in the tree."
This strikes me with great force every time I pass my eyes over it. It is like a hallucination or a peek into the world of an alien mind. I can't make logical sense of it, but it seems true, and it makes reality seem more real.
I guess this is what koans are supposed to do.
I am beginning to put some of my scores onto Lulu.com, so that people can order copies.
Here is the link to my storefront:
http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=3542096
I have put scores of my two string quartets there, and more will follow.
In this film, it was not the story that moved me, but the faces of the women and children, and the ocean, and the beautiful camerawork, and the exquisite sense of timing.
I love to look at faces anyway, but the main character ('Jean-Do') cannot move or speak, and human faces are perhaps the most meaningful things that he sees. He learns to communicate using eye-blinks, writes a book, and tries in small ways to mend some of the broken things in his life.
I would have liked more depth to Jean-Do's character; except for his paralysis, there seems to be very little there in the way of life choices. His relationship with his father is important and touching - his rocky relationships with women, less so.
The film's most memorable scene for me: Jean-Do is dreaming that a young, 19th-century woman is wheeling him down a deserted hall in his wheelchair. He suddenly can move, and he turns and kneels on the seat and kisses the woman. This is one of the most erotic and least salacious things that I have ever seen.
