Laurel Massé

And it is good

Happy Easter! Yes, still! Easter lasts fifty days in the church calendar, and will not end this year until (counts on fingers) June 8th! 

I re-enter the world of bloggery with this offering to you all. Draw sweet water from the well, make yourself a cup of tea, and settle in to listen to some extraordinary music. I want - I fervently desire! - to sing in a performance of this work. Watch the video, and you'll hear and see why.

 

Vespers for St. Hildegard was created by British composer Stevie Wishart, who wove in passages from Hildegard of Bingen's music. I especially love the groundedness - as in both feet firmly planted on God's green earth - of the singing. I long ago grew weary of celestial fluttering soprano renditions of Hildegard's music, even though they were often beautiful. Hildegard was a mystic, yes, a nun, a writer, and composer and painter... and an herbalist who had had her hands in the dirt caring for plants and soil. It is that side of her that I've been longing for. Here are highly skilled yet unmannered, low-pitched, strong voices of women with real bodies. I am in earthy bliss.

Thank you, Terri Windling, for introducing me to this music. If I could draw like you can, I would send you a picture of me with mud on my feet, and a smile on my face and musical notes swirling all around me.

 

Have a beer with St. Brigid and God!

 Brid agus Muire dhuit!

Today is the feast day of St. Brigid of Kildare, to whom I have a special devotion. Patron saint of poets and brewers, of healers and midwives (and, along with Patrick and Columba, of Ireland itself), she was strong and gentle, prayerful and practical. St. Brigid worked miracles: my favorite is the healing of a blind Sister so that she could see the beauty of a sunset. To ease the thirst of lepers, she once turned a tub of bathwater into a tub of excellent beer. She was called Mary's Nurse, meaning that she helped Mary with the infant Jesus (a Time Lord!). Like so many of the great saints, she was as earthy and real as soil and water, and as wild as fire and air.

The following 10th century poem has been attributed to her:

I'd like to give a lake of beer to God.
I'd love the heavenly
Host to be tippling there
For all eternity.

I'd love the men of Heaven to live with me,
To dance and sing.
If they wanted, I'd put at their disposal
Vats of suffering.

White cups of love I'd give them
With a heart and a half;
Sweet pitchers of mercy I'd offer
To every man.

I'd make Heaven a cheerful spot
Because the happy heart is true.
I'd make the men contented for their own sake.
I'd like Jesus to love me too.

I'd like the people of heaven to gather
From all the parishes around.
I'd give a special welcome to the women,
The three Marys of great renown.

I'd sit with the men, the women and God
There by the lake of beer.
We'd be drinking good health forever
And every drop would be a prayer.

 

In my mind's ear, I can hear this woman laughing, and singing, her voice husky, her eyes shining. How could I keep from loving her?

For my solo album, Feather and Bone, I adapted traditional prayers collected by Alexander Carmichael in Scotland in the 1800s and composed Radiant Flame of Gold, a prayer to Brigid. Here is the track, with the sorely-missed Layne Redmond, and Tommy B on frame drums. I pray it in my times of trouble, and for others in theirs: Download 09 Radiant Flame of Gold

I am under the shielding of good Brigid each day,

I am under the shielding of good Brigid each night.

I am under the keeping of the nurse of Mary

Each early and late, every dawn, every light.

 

To learn more about St. Brigid, start here. To purchase Feather and Bone, send me a Facebook message here.

 

A song in my heart, and a cold in my nose

Gustave Doré, Angelic Host (because, sometimes, singing with a choir feels like this).

One might think that, living in a more isolated area as I do, and staying in a lot while my arm heals, as I have done, that I might not catch (or be caught by) any of the foul cold contagion that has been swooping through grocery stores and malls. But alas, whatever little I did out there in the populated world was the wrong thing to do, and I have spent this day with chills and sniffles and sneezes. Tired of hearing all that, I have been listening to music of all kinds. Here is today's favorite.

In February two years ago, I flew to Chicago to be part of one of the most deeply moving projects of my career, a live recording session for Roman Hurko's choral Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. This Ukranian Catholic work is the first in that tradition to be written in English (rather than translated into English). The work was premiered in New York two months later, and again I was privileged to be in the choir.

I cried a lot over this music, and still do, though not because of its complexity. In fact, it is disarmingly simple to sing. Any congregation with the habit of singing in parts could manage the choral pieces. But it touches something very profound in me, deep in the bright dark place from which I say, "Lord, I believe!" and then right after that, "and... help my unbelief." The rising, swirling Alleluia is particularly beautiful. The whole liturgy is sung without accompaniment, and, as one reviewer said, "From the very first “Amen,” one knows that the Kingdom has come in power (see Mark 9: 1)."  

This is one of several recordings I turn to when I need to feel stronger, more hale, hearty, and human; even when the music soars,  it has the unique earthy quality of mortal voices, and it reminds me I am not alone.

You can read more about this music and the rest of Roman's work, listen to some tracks, and order the CD, here.

While you do that, I'm going to make tea.

 

The moon on the crest

This art, a painting by Rockwell Kent, will look familar to many of you. I used it a year ago in this post, when I was still living in the city, and thought that kind of full moon unlikely to shine on me again.

Silly little mortal!

Last week, deep in the night before my birthday, the moon on the crest of the new fallen snow/gave the lustre of midday to objects below (thank you, Clement Moore). Mrs. Peel, silhouetted by the window, and I, curled under my feather quilt, watched for a while, and breathed blue light. The moon, pregnant round, near-term with hopes and dreams, sang us to sleep. The next day it snowed like white feathers drifting.

How is it that I am back in a place where the moon shines blue, and sings in the coldest nights? And that a year ago I had no idea I would be? or could be?

Gifts beyond measure, grace upon grace, spilled out, overflowing, and every once in a while one actually recognizes them. Was blind, doubtless will be blind again, but for a moment, can see.

 

Still Jo's girl

So many years ago that this is almost a story that could start with "once upon a time", my family lived in a very big house, a legacy of the days of grand families and grand architects. The realtor called it a mansion. My family still calls it The Big House.

The first floor was indeed very grand. There was a parlor for company, and a library with built-in shelves. A dining room that overlooked a formal rose garden. A ballroom. The second floor had the good bedrooms, big as New York City studio apartments, with much nicer baths than I have ever had since.

My spirit's home, though, was up one more flight, in the small third floor servants' quarters. There, in a little monk's cell of a room with one window, I had a desk, a chair, a box of onion skin paper, my Sheaffer fountain pen, and a box of ink cartridges. And my companion, Jo March. I wanted to be just like Jo March, and to that end I scribbled page after page of - what? stories, probably, and perhaps some poems. I don't remember, and as my family moved a lot, nothing remains of all that ink except the memory of the texture of the paper, and the sound the pen nib made as I wrote line after line after blotted line. Oh, I wanted to be a writer.

Singing turned out to be easier, and my dear Lord is aware that I rather enjoy the spotlight. But this "words thing" never went away. I care about lyrics, I read aloud to people whenever I can, I do inspirational speaking, Shakespeare's King Lear leaves me sobbing on the floor, for Jo's spell has never worn off. And particularly at this time of year, the connection I feel to this fictitious character and to the extraordinary woman who created - or released - her is especially strong. It has long been my Christmas season practice to read Little Women again. Every year, somehow, it seems a better book.

My pretty little red leather-bound copy is currently in storage with the rest of my things, so I went to the local library. Their copy is for in-library use only - can you imagine? I'd have to wear shoes! But I found another treasure that I could take home: Marmee and Louisa by Eve LaPlante (2012). As far as I know LaPlante is the first author to explore the relationship between Lou and her mother, Abigail. Ever since her death in 1888, conventional wisdom has held that Louisa was her daddy's girl through and through, educated by him, inheritor of his gifts, beneficiary of his attention. That never set quite right with me. If the Alcott family was the model for the March family, why was the father absent for most of the book? Well, as it turns out, Bronson Alcott was also much absent in real life, and he never made a living. His mind on higher things, he seems to have been content to let his wife and daughters do all the work for the lowlier purposes of rent and food. Unlike his wife, Alcott did not particularly believe in the equality of women, and he came late to the abolitionist's cause. It was Abigail (Marmee) who encouraged her daughters to live full, good lives and to work to utilize their gifts, Marmee who wrote volumes of journals. And it was Marmee who worked until her health was ruined, as did Louisa, whose writing supported the family until she died at 56 (her royalties did so thereafter). The relationship between mother and daughter was deep, and necessary for both women. LaPlante's is a beautiful and calmly fierce book, well-researched and well-written, sad in many ways, but ultimately inspiring. Abigail was left out of history; Eve has fixed that.

You can buy the book through LaPlante's website, to which I have inserted a link above. Amazon has it, of course, but if you possibly can, please get it from an independent bookseller.

 

 

 

I sing because

...it is in my DNA. Both my parents had fine voices, and though as a teenager I was embarassed in church because they sang so loudly, theirs were the best voices in every choir they were in.

But the singer line runs primarily through my mom. Her father, Leonard Kranendonk, is the man standing on the right in this photo. From him, my mother and my uncle (on the left) inherited their voices; from my mother, my sister and I inherited ours.

Mom was a coloratura soprano of astonishing range. She now sings tenor with her choir. My Uncle Bob, a true musician-singer, has a rich smokey baritone voice, and my sister's is a contralto as sweetly dark as buckwheat honey. But we did not all become professional vocalists; only my grandfather, my uncle, and I followed that path.

My grandad was for many years the lead baritone of Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, an internationally-renowned glee club that started in the late 1930s. My uncle also sang with them for a time. You may not have heard of them, but there would be no Glee TV show without them (and possibly no Robert Shaw Chorale, since that's where Shaw got his start). Waring had a weekly radio and then television show, and they are considered, I learned last year, to have been the original Show Choir. English was my grandfather's second language (he emigrated from The Netherlands), but his own perfectionism and Waring's Tone Syllables, a diction technique, resulted in what you will hear on this opening track from his only solo album.

Leonard Kranendonk The Lord is My Light

My grandfather and I did not agree on the role of improvisation, but I think he was proud of me, and I feel him with me every time I sing in church. And because he sang sunrise Easter services on a mountaintop, and blessings at the Thanksgiving table, I reckoned I could, too. Singing anytime, anywhere, without accompaniment was normal.

It's autumn in upstate NY. As winds tug at the leaves of gold and flame, the trees simply let go, and drop them (you want lessons in attachment and non-attachment? Look to the deciduous trees). It's getting colder. Both my grandparents lived into the 21st century, and I lost them only 11 years ago, my grandmother Elsie (who sang alto) in October 2011, my grandfather the following spring. I feel them, and feel the pull of the old songs that are my my most valuable inheritance, and the voices that carried them. All these years later, I'm the one singing loudly in church. But really, whom then shall I fear, when I never sing alone?

 

Greene County ramble

A friend's small house in Greene County, NY has been my temporary home since last Friday afternoon. It has rained here nearly every day. I am surrounded by late-summer lush green foliage, though the Catskill Creek is running very low, and most of the country suffers drought. I read the news about India's massive power failure with sorrow. Eventually, if those who favor decrease in infrastructure spending seize the day, we will probably be experiencing the same sort of thing here. I wonder whether we are mentally equipped to handle it.

I know about the American can-do spirit, and I know most people are generous when there is trouble (yes, even some of those whose wealth affords them the ability to simply go elsewhere). But over time can-do gets diluted by can't-bear-to and don't-care-to. We need look no further than our own New Orleans to see that sometimes people and projects get abandoned.

I lived a year in this same town back in 2000, and in some ways there has been very little change. In a gorgeous part of the state, it was  then lovely, but economically depressed, and it is still lovely and, judging by the number of vacant storefronts and "For Sale" signs, depressed now. We all know that, for most, incomes have not risen. But prices have, by a lot. I remember what I used to pay at the grocery store for the same items I want to buy now. The change is frightening. Of course, that's been going on all along, everywhere I have been, but short-duration stays can capture precise memories. I know where I lived, for instance, when I got my first contact lenses, because we didn't live there long. For the same reason, I know how old I was: ten. Whereas a friend who has always lived in the same town and whose deep roots fill me with longing, often bemoans the lack of sharp markings of time.

Even those who can pinpoint events in the past can't always see the future. I don't know what's going to happen here in Greene County, or in New York State, or in America. But for good things to happen for all, I think we have to junk the idea that one can be utterly self-made and self-sustaining. The idea of "making it" completely on one's own is neither factual enough to be reality nor true enough to be myth. Even when I was driving to and from my acapella dates in the 1990s, I was using roads built by an earlier generation, and performing in spaces constructed by the generation before that. So yeah, I was booking myself, promoting myself, driving myself, and singing all by myself, but it still took a village to get me to the gig. I would like to know that, years down the line, another traveling singer could do what she does and get where she is going because my generation built good roads, strong bridges, a sustainable power grid, a national wireless network. I would like to trust that she could breathe easy because industrial polluting of the air was a thing of the past. That she could eat a dinner of non-toxic food, and drink water that is clean and pure. That, if she suffered from poor health, she could be assured of proper care even through the ups and downs of an artist's income.

I have auto insurance for anything bad that might happen to my trusty Toyota. Tree limbs, trucks, theft, all covered. But currently, I might not be covered if bad things happen to me (unless they happen as a result of being in the car when they happen).

Were I in Israel, though, I would be, because Israel has had universal health care since 1995. I didn't know that till this week, and neither did Mr. Romney, apparently. My Netherlands-born grandfather would have been covered in his homeland starting in 1966 had he not emigrated as a child to the States. Had he been born in Norway, and stayed there, he would have been covered starting in 1912. Many Americans will not be covered for another two years, and then only if the Affordable Care Act is not dismantled.

Since we are wont to assure the world that, in America, "We're #1!", and since Jesus told us repeatedly to take care of even our very "Other" neighbors (Luke 10:29-37), those of us who are waving the American flag in one hand and the Bible in the other have some serious "splennin" to do about why we are not living up to either ideal.

Many sincere folks say "God helps those who help themselves" as they argue for programs cuts that will hurt millions of Americans. They think, when they say it, that they are quoting scripture. But they are not. It's in a fable Aesop wrote, and Benjamin Franklin used it in his Poor Richard's Almanac. It is not in the Bible. In fact, God is pretty much on record in scripture as promising to be with us, helping the helpless, using our hands to do it. So, perhaps our hands need to be more open, and empty, and ready.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer, sweet summerrrrrr...

Writer Henry James said the two most beausiful words in the English language are summer afternoon, and lovely they are, evocative, leaves rustling in a soft breeze.

But I am partial to James Joyce's riverrun, all vowels and voiced consonants. In fact, river is one of my favorite words to sing, along with forever. Why? Because, blithely ignoring conventional choral tradition, I think R's are beautiful in the mouth.

And why is that? Because I had the very good fortune to attend Fred Waring's Youth Choral Workshop one summer, when I was fourteen. There, I was taught how to pronounce words naturally and clearly, so that the audience could understand them. I've used what I learned there in every line I've ever sung.

I balk when choir directors tell their singers to drop the final r - in "father", for instance - because "it's an ugly sound" - insisting it's better to sing "fawthuh", because a musical tradition born in England in the 1600s should sound English. I'll do it, because the director is the director. But I don't mean it.

In fact, research suggests that the English we hear today on the BBC is quite different from that of the 17th century. I have heard Shakespearean verse spoken in a way that is closer to how it would have been spoken when new, and let me tell you, it is o'erbrimming with Rs. Big, rich, juicy Rs. Fat, piratical Rs. And they sound delicious, and quite like some of our American regional Rs.

This, and other differences between the English accents in the Renaissance and today's received pronunciation, reveal rhymes that have been lost. Loved and moved and proved used to rhyme. So, when Willie (I call him that because I love him sooooooo much that he makes me howl like a wolf) used some combination of love/move or love/prove as the final rhymes in Sonnets 25, 32, and (most famously) 116, he hadn't suddenly decided, "oh to heck with it, close enough!" They did rhyme. Then.

In Sonnet 61, he juxtaposes -where and near. In 66, gone and alone. So these words, too, may once have rhymed.

Why does this matter so much to me? Two reasons. FIrst, because there is no point to put on, for the sake of "tradition", the fake English accents I hear in some choirs, especially in the Episcopal Church, if the tradition isn't accurate. Second, rhyme scheme is part of how I remember a lyric (the overall story of the song being the other part. That will be another post). I am accutely aware of a missing rhyme where there should have been one. If, when I'm grabbing a Johnny Mercer lyric off the internet, the established rhyme pattern suddenly disappears for a line, for no reason, and then returns, something's wrong.

I wanted to post a YouTube clip that illustrates what I am talking about, but an evil cabal of choir directors is interfering with my internet connection today, and my eight-year-old laptop has jettisoned its Flash drive in its confused dotage. I therefore can't watch video clips any more, and am flying blind on this. But here are two links that should take you there...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt7OynPUIY8

and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s&feature=related

If they don't work, let me know. If they fail, go to YouTube and look for ... oh, try Shakespeare authentic pronunciation.

Heaven? Brigadoon?

East of the sun, west of the moon?

None. All.

Ashokan.

Today I will drive across this bridge...

 

                                ... to get to this bridge...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

... which I will walk and trip and undulate across every day for a week while teaching and singing at Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Western and Swing camp. My green heaven. The place of my song dream. The other way into Narnia.

I'll be back in the beginning of July.

SInging as we go

 

Moving Day today, blessed by the help of good friends, seen and unseen. Your prayers for successful loading, driving, and unloading, with merriment throughout, will be greatly appreciated.