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.
