O tell me the truth about love

Greetings, much-loved solfeggists!

First, in honor of Valentine's Day, please indulge me in reading the following by one of my all-time favorite poets, W.H. Auden.  Benjamin Britten set it and three of Auden's other poems about love in his "Cabaret Songs" -- you can follow this link to hear a performance of all four songs (the audio quality isn't the best....sorry!).

Some say that love's a little boy, and some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go round, and some say that's absurd:
But when I asked the man next door who looked as if he knew,
His wife grew very cross indeed and said it wouldn't do.


Does it look like a pair of pyjamas or the ham in a temperance hotel?
O tell me the truth about love.
Does its odour remind one of llamas, or has it a comforting smell?
O tell me the truth about love.
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is, or soft as an eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.


I looked inside the summerhouse, it wasn't ever there,
I've tried the Thames at Maidenhead and Brighton's bracing air;
I don't know what the blackbird sang or what the roses said,
But it wasn't in the chicken run or underneath the bed.


Can it pull extraordinary faces?  Is it usually sick on a swing?
O tell me the truth about love.
Does it spend all its time at the races, or fiddling with pieces of string?
O tell me the truth about love.
Has it views of its own about money? Does it think patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar, but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.


Your feelings when you meet it, I am told, you can't forget,
I've sought it since I was a child but haven't found it yet;
I'm getting on for thirty-five, and still I do not know
What kind of creature it can be that bothers people so.


When it comes, will it come without warning, just as I'm picking my nose?
O tell me the truth about love.
Will it knock on my door in the morning, or tread in the bus on my toes?
O tell me the truth about love.
Will it come like a change in the weather?  Will its greeting be courteous or bluff?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.


Clearly, Auden isn't being too serious about all this (ergo the allusion to nose-picking), but his request is well-taken.  We've all been enculturated into the rosiest of illusions about love, courtesy of the Disney princesses, Hallmark, eHarmony, etc.  We've also seen the reality of our own and others' relationships, and the cognitive dissonance between the illusory and the real can be hard to take.  In particular, I've been noticing that this concept of the ideal often prevents people from having the guts to talk about what's real (and what's really bothering us) because we feel guilty that we haven't managed somehow to magick fantasy into reality.  Then, we get resentful because things drift ever further away from the way we want them to be, and it becomes harder and harder to salvage whatever's gone wrong.  Luckily, no one has a perfect memory, and we all forget many of our disappointments, which turns into a kind of accidental forgiveness....but it's clear that this isn't a real solution, and sometimes it isn't so easy to wait until the feelings pass.

My rising level 3's will remember me saying several times this summer:

Solfa is like therapy.  When you talk about your problems, it becomes a lot easier to solve them.

I'd like to add to that:

Your relationship to your own ideal musical self is like any other relationship.  It doesn't thrive because you feel fuzzy about it.  It thrives because you work on it.

This is not to say that you shouldn't enjoy the work.  Lucky for us, there's a lot to love about being a musician, and we should strive to immerse ourselves in the most satisfying parts of that as often as we can, whether that's performing, listening, composing, whatever.  But, there's also spinach to be eaten...and we can't expect to be virtuosi if we shy away from the aspects of our musicianship that fall short.  We have to be honest about them.  We have to talk about them.  We have to give them some attention, and be ok with the fact that it might be intellectually and emotionally difficult in the short run. But, if we believe it's worth it, we have to try.

All Levels:


Take a look at this love song by Hans Leo Hassler:

http://www3.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/hassler/hass-gmu.pdf

The gist of the text is, "Woe is me, I'm in love with someone too good for me..."

Sing through the melody first, and then as many of the harmony parts as you care to tackle.

Memorize the melody


Do a chordal analysis (rising 2's, do as much as you dare) -- you can take your pick of solfa chords (meaning that you start with a Do major) or Roman numerals.

Then, look at this setting of essentially the same melody:

http://www.saengerkreis-bamberg.de/noten/geistlich/passion/Bach_WennIchEinmalSollScheiden.pdf

Sing through the parts, and do a Roman numeral analysis (again, as you are able).

The text of this verse of the chorale (taken from Bach's St. Matthew Passion, and this harmonization is sung just after Christ dies) is:

When I must once and for all depart,
then do not depart from me;
when I must suffer death,
then stand by me;
when my heart will be
most fearful,
then snatch me from the terrors
by the virtue of your own fear and pain!


....and suddenly it's a whole other kind of love song.  You can listen to it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Q6rxdPT7A

And finally, to answer Mr. Auden's question:

Love is little, love is low
Love will make my spirit grow
Grow in peace, grow in light,
Love will do the thing that's right.
(Shaker Hymn)

Happy Valentine's Day!