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To Herb Meyer’s Memory
Over the years, Ricochet has inspired lasting friendships, not least of which is many members’ friendship with @tommeyer, who’s not only a great guy, but someone who rendered Ricochet great service before he moved on to other things. When Herb Meyer, Tom’s father, died, the outpouring of thanksgiving for Herb’s life was tremendous. At the time, I dedicated a motet I was working on to Herb’s memory, but life having gotten in the way, I haven’t had a chance to share it with the Ricoverse until now:
I composed the rough draft of this motet a few years ago. Psalm 42 (41 in the Vulgate) is one of my favorite psalms. A penitential psalm, it describes not only thirsting for God — feeling the lack of God’s “waters” — but also of the deep sound of God’s waters, and what it’s like to be overwhelmed by them.
Get close to a waterfall of any great size, and you hear it not only with your ears, but through your feet, your breath, your spine. Like music itself, it’s something to hear with your whole self.
Abyssus (ad) abyssum invocat in voce cataractarum tuarum; omnia excelsa tua et fluctus tui super me transierunt.
Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; All Your waves and billows have gone over me.
My setting opens with each voice outlining an octave in turn, which is both a fairly literal-minded way of showing one depth calling to another, and a means of giving the voices somewhere to descend from, as waterfalls do. Rising vocal lines describe the waves’ crests, falling lines the waves breaking, the water falling: This short piece is an exercise in tone-painting the obvious way. Even the decision to cadence in the relative major on “cataractarum tuarum” is fairly straightforward: it expresses the joyful sorrow of repentance or mourning. Repentance is hard, but ultimately joyful: it is moral healing. Mourning loved ones is painful, but also thankful: we miss their presence blessing our lives because it was a blessing.
The day Herb died, I was editing this motet. In his honor, I added a few bars, to better express the grief of his loss. Church-choir members (and I know I’m not the only choir nerd here) are often called to make music for dead they’ve never met, an admittedly strange way to affirm someone’s life, but important nonetheless. I never got the chance to meet Herb in life, but I did get the chance to honor his life in its loss, a loss so keenly felt because the one lost was so beloved.
Published in General
In case the embedded video doesn’t play, here is a link to it on Google Drive. Hopefully one or the other works for everyone!
Thanks, Midge. It’s very beautiful and I know he’d have loved it.
Thanks for the link!
That’s beautiful, Midget Faded Rattlesnake.
Wow, is that moving and beautiful! I can’t believe we have someone with that level of talent among us!
Got any of these jobs scheduled in the 2035-2040 range yet? I figure it pays to make a reservation early…
Ivan Ilyn, as translated and quoted here: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/alightsolovely/2019/07/17/what-is-art-part-ii-of-an-essay-by-ivan-ilyin/
Perhaps one of the many things Ivan Ilyn is suggesting here is that it might not be wise to attempt writing bespoke funerary motets. That said, practically speaking, much art is commissioned.
The brief description of how I put the piece together was pretty analytical, making it sound as if I “chose” straightforward tone-painting for the words and then wrote a piece based on these choices. That gets things a bit backwards, though. My longstanding affection for this psalm prompted these tone-paintings to choose me, after which it can take a bunch of analytical fiddling to organize what chose you competently enough that you don’t let it down. This is, in a way, not too different from “doing the math”, as described by Pascal,
To get a musical idea right, I must spend the bulk of my efforts on janitorial duty, and in that sense the janitorial duty is “more important”. But the goal is tidying up something that deserved the honor of tidying it in the first place.
Ilyn says this later (emphasis mine):
Beautiful.
I love this, Midge.
For many years, the fine arts have put themselves on a glide slope that carries them away from wider appreciation. This divergence in tastes and interests was subtle, at first; the Fifties and early Sixties were full of middle-brow, postwar appreciation for formerly elite-only art. Gradually that faded, and by now it’s a point of pride not to engage most of the country.
Serious, soul-stirring classical music like Midge’s is something that conservatives ought to reflexively support. It might never truly be popular in the sense that Childish Gambino and Jay Z are popular, sure. No one outside of utopia would expect that, but there was once, and may still be an intelligent audience without, as I think Loren Hollander put it, “sissy ears” who would understand and like this musical piece without preconceptions.
Herb Meyer was a devoted, patriotic and celebrated American and the nation will miss him.