Four Rooms in Music’s Mansion
1
_The maestro grasps a complex score,
conducts his orchestra without reserve.
Connoisseurs praise him; audiences adore
_his aura of command, his verve.
Spacious chords swell; musicians fill the stage,
__laboring to outpour
luxurious works of our Romantic age.
2
_Five players in a chamber group
commune together in an elfin space.
Each instrument descants, a subtle loop
_of intimate entwined embrace.
Devotees sit enrapt as at a séance,
__secretively snoop,
aspiring to decrypt each artful nuance.
3
_Baroque salon, glossed Steinway grand—
a solemn pianist plays ornate scales.
A blonde sings lieder, set in fairyland,
_ill-fated lovers’ woeful tales.
From gilded chairs, reflective murmurs float,
__all listeners astrand
on islands paradisal and remote.
4
_Where sounds the music of the spheres
hummed in supernal realms, heard by each soul?
Robed monks have chanted psalms through countless years:
_our Lord, their melodies extol.
Quiescent a cappella voices weave
__a cope of sacred tears.
Christ showers grace that skeptics can’t conceive.
lieder: German art songs mostly from the 19th century
Mary Jane Myers resides in Springfield, Illinois. She is a retired JD/CPA tax specialist. Her debut short story collection Curious Affairs was published by Paul Dry Books in 2018.
A very distinctive scheme for rhyme and meter here–nice to see a change from familiar regularity. Your 1st 3 stanzas bring to mind various musical works; the 4th specifically Lasso’s swan song, Lagrime di San Pietro.
Julian
Thank you for your kind comments. I like to experiment with form.
It’s such a privilege to have knowledgeable readers like yourself. I have never encountered the specific work you referenced. I found a description on Wikipedia and a recording on YouTube. The piece is absolutely gorgeous. I am making a note to learn more about the musical genre of “sacred madrigals.” I will bookmark the YouTube recording, and listen to it in its entirety.
Most sincerely
Mary Jane
Your beautiful musical poem takes me back to concerts I have attended in Austria, Munich, and other places in Bavaria. You captured the details of the concert with wonderful words and exquisite rhyme sending my mind back in time.
Dear Roy
Thank you for your kind comments. Here in Springfield, we have a wonderful “intimate” music hall (capacity 125), with perfect acoustics, built by Ursuline nuns in 1908, and unfortunately closed (and abandoned) in 2007. A dynamic local developer is renovating the building with private donation funds. The first recital was given in the refurbished hall on November 9th. What a joy to hear music performed in such an elegant space!
Most sincerely
Mary Jane
If what the author means to say is that music is the natural language of the soul, she has succeeded. Seance/nuance is a very artful slant rhyme. In my Father’s chamber there are many mansions; in His ear, many chords, none discordant.
Dear C.B.
Thank you for your kind comments. That “seance/nuance” combination “appeared out of nowhere” and I “went with it!”
Most sincerely
Mary Jane
Like Julian, I’m enamored of the varied meter and rhyme scheme.
And I second everything C.B. said.
Lovely music poem, Mary Jane!
Cynthia
Thank you for your encouraging comments. Music is a preoccupation of mine. I seem naturally to gravitate toward music (both theme and variations!) as subjects for poems.
Most sincerely
Mary Jane
Four rooms with different kinds of music, of instruments, of furniture, and of hearers. First an orchestra conducted by a maestro, performing luxurious romantic music to connoisseurs and a large audience. Then the intimate music of a few chamber musicians (mostly string players, probably) for devotees conscious of its fine artfulness. After that soloists (pianist and vocalist) with ornate baroque tones and woeful lieder for listeners on gilded chairs. Finally the music of the spheres, melodies meant for every soul, sacred words chanted by unaccompanied choral voices. The last reflects tradition that the human voice is the very best of instruments–best heard when united with other voices in divine praise, where the celestial spheres may add supernatural angelic lustre. An exquisite set of rooms, Mary Jane, suggesting that there exist many more, although these examples make this particular part of the mansion so attractive
Margaret
Thank you for your kind comments.
The composition of this poem was interesting for me, because my subconscious trajectory has been from the excitement of orchestral concerts conducted by “star” conductors in huge venues, to the stillness of more intimate recitals (chamber music; lieder), and now I actually love best a capella Gregorian sacred music. So the arrangement of the four stanzas was mysteriously “automatic,”–I wrote them in order, from “extroverted” to “introverted,” and as I wrote, I realized that this order also reflects my current preferences.
And yes, there are many more rooms, as many rooms as genius composers have built for us.
Most sincerely
Mary Jane
This is a beautiful poem, Mary Jane. You not only capture different styles of music and the different forces involved – from a symphony orchestra to unaccompanied voices – but also the different audiences, from the perhaps rather showy audience for the orchestra to the apparent absence of an earthly audience or congregation for the monks’ chants. There is also a fine interplay between the setting of the third stanza, with its ornate baroque room and glossy modern piano providing a setting for the “woeful tales” and the “fairyland” of the German Lieder, which we might associate, not with a baroque style of music but with the conscientiously introspective styles and woodland-type settings of Brahms or Schubert, written to be performed in a refined, indoor, bourgeois setting but designed to put the audience in mind of a simple, natural outdoor world. You also capture the intended audience reactions brilliantly.
Morrison
Thank you for your kind comments. I am grateful to have you as a reader. It’s odd, isn’t it, that the musical form itself teaches the listener how to react. When I attend an evening full orchestral performance, my “inner extrovert” comes out: a lot of chatter with others, in my velvet jacket and satin dress. At an afternoon chamber music recital, I dress in sober wool, and I’m more subdued and reflective. And attending a Latin Mass, listening to Gregorian chant, I lapse into an introverted mystical reverie.
It is crucial that these complex and beautiful musical forms are not swamped by the banality of “pop culture.” Indeed, to pass on the knowledge and love of these complex musical forms to the next generation is to save our very civilization.
Most sincerely
Mary Jane
I love the concept of this poem, portraying different ways we experience music. I have been blessed to be present in all four rooms, so to speak, and your descriptions evoked fond memories of those concerts (and Mass). You not only bring each “room” to life, but juxtapose them nicely. I even think your poem mirrors the symphonic structure, with your first and last “movements” describe the grandest experience, with the chamber concert mirroring the intimacy of the slow movement and the lied performance the lightness of the scherzo.
Dear Adam
Thank you for your kind comments. It is such a thrill to have a sensitive critic develop an aspect of my poem that is entirely unconscious: that is, that my four stanzas might mirror symphonic structure. If that subtlety indeed is present in my poem, it was entirely infused by my “muse,” behind my back, so to speak. I toast my muse, and give that hovering spirit my heartfelt thanks and praise!
Most sincerely
Mary Jane