Transformation and Cycles
Our new website was launched almost a year ago. Already there are plenty of pictures, musical offerings, thoughts expressed, the results of ideas, effort and activity. In one year’s time, there will be more. Our 85 year old society will have increased its internet profile and outreach. It has been transformed to become part of the contemporary world.
Days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia continue to roll past. We feel all manner of human experience, the best and the worst. One of my weekly yoga classes classes starts or finishes with three vocally sounded ohms. The sound starts quietly as an ‘ah’, crescendos and becomes an ‘oh’, then dies away on an ‘m’, a communal vibration on a single note with every participant sitting still. It is strange how everyone, musically minded or not, comes together on the same pitch. It is intended that the sound is felt throughout the body, to imprint the lessons which train the body to work well at the end of the class, to calm the mind, to de- stress at the start of the class. It is satisfying, when, after a day of grappling with crotchets, quavers, pedals and trio sonatas, everything is stilled, and distilled into that one single sound. I sometimes think of this as a sound of creation.
Organ sounds are also created from vibrations created inside pipes of large and small lengths, creating gorgeous aural timbres. When combined in great musical works of art, we recreate compositions of great richness every time we play. By being aware of the root of the sounds we make, we appreciate all the more the full glory of what comes out when something as joyous as ‘Dieu Parmi Nous’ is played or an exhilarating improvisation springs to life on the spot.
That is why daily practice in the right frame of mind is important. Sometimes our practice is good. If we are tired and frustrated, it all falls to bits. We have to return to basics and find the way to that richness all over again. This is just one aspect of the cyclical nature of what we are doing. We have to learn to be satisfied with work in progress when body and mind have had enough, mastery comes later when the work is done.
As Advent progresses and Christmas approaches, we look forward to familiar carols again, and wonder which Toccata we might play after Midnight Mass or Communion. We might hear a new arrangement of a familiar tune, or be excited by a new composition, and resolve to ‘do’ that one next year. All part of the same story, with the same thread or vibration running through it. This year, I am inviting our choir to sing the Hallelujah Chorus as the final voluntary following the Midnight Service on Christmas Eve, before playing In Dulci Jubilo BWV 729. Last year there was an impromptu sing along of another chorus, which has prompted this step…and so the annual cycle continues with a bit of gradual transformation to keep it interesting and lively.
This year, my family, like many others, has experienced the joy of birth and the sorrow of death, points in life when extremes of emotion are felt with great intensity. Music has helped greatly at these times. December is incomplete without playing for carol services. Great comfort and joy is to be found in this communal, annual repetition of the familiar, now tinged with reflections of those events. Next year, we expect to do the same again, affected by new events or meetings, including seeing and playing, hopefully, a few more great organs.
Happy Christmas, everyone, and if you get the chance, watch Norman and the choirs of St George’s Cathedral sing Midnight Mass on BBC1 on Christmas Eve. They will truly deserve their Christmas Dinners…all the time sparing a thought for those unable to share our joy.
Marilyn Harper
