2021.12.19 Let Heaven and Nature Sing—Bringing Music To the Soul With Wendy G.

This Sunday is Fourth Advent, an invitation to focus on Mary of Nazareth AND lots of other bringers of brilliance, including Wendy Gerbier, Mezzo-Soprano. 

 

 

When I was in college I took a basic music course as part of one of the requirements. I chose it over Art 101, not because I disliked great art, but because there was music in my family, and I loved to sing—in a large choral group—too shy to solo. Strangely, I loved studying classical music and discovering opera. It made my heart soar even when I did not understand the words. My dad had a rich deep bass voice, and his mother had given up her vocation as an opera singer to get married and have children. She did a good job at that, spawning six children. Operatic drama, however, stayed in her soul. She would frequently summon her “boys”, one of them my dad, to stand around the piano after dinner to sing. I don’t know why she never invited the daughters. Maybe they too could sing, but she favored those four boys. They all joined their father to sing in the Mendelssohn Glee Club in New York City. Felix Mendelssohn only lived to be 38 years old. His music will last forever. Did you know he composed music for “Hark the Herald Angels SING!”?  And sing we must.

My mother hated those concerts. She favored show music, even though her own father had been a New York impresario (importer of musical talent from Europe to this country) and was, like Mendelssohn, Jewish—a fact I discovered only after Mom died. She had “adored” her father and felt devastated when he died in 1924, when she was twelve. With the help of technological stretch on the internet and our parish archivist, I researched his beginnings in Eastern Europe before he emigrated/immigrated to the USA. Knowing such details of my own history made my life, my heart-and-soul being, richer and wiser. I wish I had known my Zaide.

This long string of extraneous personal facts warms me, yet is a mere lead-in to tell you about the roots of my love of operatic bravura—and Auntie Wendy, the finest mezzo-soprano soloist I’ve ever heard and felt a tiny bit related to.  

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Wendy Gerbier, Wendy G., a professional singer of classical music, is Aunty Wendy to my stepdaughter Honor’s son, Brianjohnson. We first met Wendy in Nantucket when she came with Honor for a weekend visit. She brought immediate delight. We were lucky to have mostly sun that weekend, yet I bet Wendy’s exuberant laughter and buoyant presence could have penetrated any island fog-sweeps, just as her mezzo voice penetrates the sound barrier. Honestly!

On December 3, 2021, we heard Aunty Wendy sing professionally for the first  time. We went to her concert as part of the Silvermine Artist Series in Norwalk, Connecticut, originally established in 1983 by Karen Shaw, Professor of Music at Indiana University’s Jacob School of Music. The venue was a nondescript brick house set way back from the road. We drove back and forth, passing it a few times until we saw Brianjohnson waving us in. He wore a jacket and tie—symphonic, really, and with a great grin. 

The interior of this house looked like a museum, crowded with antiques and amazing paintings, and seasonally swathed in Christmas greens and holiday decor. Chairs for the audience were set up facing the grand pianos—three of them. Here is one.

The audience chatted and waited. Somehow everyone suddenly knew to hush into anticipatory silence as we heard a distant voice calling. Aunty Wendy descended a side staircase, her voice growing louder, crescendoing, as she sang the spiritual, “Rise Up Shepherd and Follow.” Immersed, I would have followed that voice anywhere. I didn’t move, but my soul did, and my head turned, knowing something wondrous was about to happen. I wasn’t with those ancient biblical shepherds that followed a star, but quickly knew how moved this scruffy bunch of shepherds of old must have felt. Today I still follow that “star” and that call wherever I see or hear it.   

Wendy G stood at a podium to sing, and her gifted accompanist David Harris took his place at one of the pianos.   

The concert officially opened with Panis Angelicus (Bread of Angels), music by Cesar Frank, and text by Sylvester Wager.  As Wendy sang this very traditional Christmas anthem, I envisioned angels soaring about preparing a visitation to a young girl of Nazareth named Mary. I bet these angels conferred as to how to approach this teenager with the idea that the child to be born from her womb was of God. I’m guessing Mary fretted about being pregnant before marriage, but the biblical version tells us that a guy angel delivered the message to Mary, and a guy Joseph stood by. We all rest assured  to know that her scandalous condition was no offense to God, so why would it be so to mere humans?  

Music dedicated to the courage of this young girl named Mary and the glory of divine courage followed. There are many tunes and texts to Ave Maria. My own prayer version only alters one word: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is within thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” Wendy G. sang this to a tune composed by an Italian composer, Guilio Caccini (1551-1618) of Fiorenze (Florence), Italy. Caccini’s music is every bit as melodic as the traditional tune, and even more meaningful to Honor’s dad and my husband, Richard John Simeone, whose father was born in Italy. I never knew his father but lovingly call him Ernesto di Napoli. His presence at this concert was invisible although honored by the presence of his son and granddaughter and maternal great grandson. Here are Wendy and Dick Simeone. 

The Spiritual, “Mary Did You Know?” graced this audience and the biblical story with a musical tradition familiar and beloved by African Americans. Wendy G. did it justice: “Mary did you know that your little baby would be a king?”  Similarly, “Pie Jesu” from the requiem by Andrew Lloyd Webber, also the composer of my all-time favorite rock opera, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” swept over us with deep tenderness and volume rich enough to make me hold my breath and think to myself: Aunty Wendy rocks!    

The closing hymn “O Holy Night” composed in 1847 by French composer, Adolphe Adam, a name close to that of my maternal great grandfather, Adolph Adams, whom I never knew. Wendy sang it with such power and volume I turned my head to look up to the balcony to follow her voice—almost too big for the humble space. I felt grief and grace. But is that not the point of Incarnation, God in our flesh, praised and mourned?  

At Christmas, 1982, my 71-year-old father was dying of esophageal cancer. Surgery had not been enough. He was young. He made a final stab at “Merry Christmas” and came to sit at the head of the family dinner table. He couldn’t swallow or eat. My heart wept as we all smiled and cheered Christmas. Later that night Dad sat alone with his nurse as the night settled in and sang “O Holy Night.” It was his own “Magnificat”. 

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining

It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth

Long lay the world in sin and error pining

’Til he appeared and the soul felt its worth.

Wendy G. sang traditional seasonal music—vital because it is beloved. She gave it the brilliance of Mary’s life and story as well as her own and mine. 

This concert made my soul feel its worth. It was Advent anticipation blended with Christmas joy—already and not yet in the same moment. Every day we live this story over and over as if it were our own. And so it is. 

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See WendyGerbier.com for a schedule of Wendy’s performances and to hear her sing. She is a United States Anthem Ambassador with a three-octave range and sings regularly at Greenfield Congregational Church in Fairfield, Connecticut. 

2021.12.12 The Arts in Advent. What Poems Can Do.

Poetry is one of the most subtle, supple, and sacred arts. Here is the story of one poet whose soul spoke wonders in poems.  

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American educator and poet, was born in 1807, the second of eight children, in Portland, Maine, which was then a part of Massachusetts. He was studious and became fluent in Latin, publishing his first poem in the Portland Gazette in 1820, at age thirteen. Henry entered Bowdoin College and graduated Phi Beta Kappa at 15.

As a senior, Longfellow wrote to his father about his own aspiration in literature:  “I will not disguise it in the least…. the fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature, my whole soul burns most ardently after it, and every earthly thought centres in it…. I am almost confident in believing, that if I can ever rise in the world it must be by the exercise of my talents in the wide field of literature.” 

*  *  *  *

I can identify with such determination and passionate confidence. Growing up, I discovered who I was through diaries and journals. Still, as an adult woman I was not as fee as Longfellow. I wanted a family, plus a bit of writerly status. I became a thief of time, fitting writing into the rest of my life, personal and professional as an Episcopal priest.  

*  *  *  *

In 1829, Longfellow turned down a professorship at Bowdoin College. Imagine! He wrote to the president of Bowdoin that he was turning down the professorship because he considered the $600 salary "disproportionate to the duties required". The trustees raised his salary to $800 with an additional $100 to serve as the college’s Librarian. All of this was to him a “joyless work.” So guess what?—he married a childhood friend, Mary Storer Potter, and they settled into marital unhappiness.    

By 1834, he was contacted by the president of Harvard to be contracted as professor of modern languages but stipulated he had to study abroad first. There he studied German, Finnish, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic. In October of 1835, Mary miscarried at six months and died. Longfellow sent Mary’s body to be buried in Mt Auburn Cemetery in Cmbridge and fell into a deep sadness. “All day I am weary and sad.” 

Returning to Harvard in 1836, this young brooding man of thirty, lived in Cambridge at Craigie House where he rented rooms and began to publish poetry. Longfellow was well liked as a professor, though he disliked being "constantly a playmate for boys" rather than "stretching out and grappling with men's minds.” The malice of discontent took residence in his grieving midlife soul. 

*  *  *  *

I recall a similar midlife feeling when I was a young mother of four blooming children and married to a husband pursuing his own ambitions and not home enough to be a companion/partner in project life. I prayed and lamented. I experimented with extramarital flirtations. Unable to find each other, my first husband and I divorced in 1982. I journaled my way through it all. 

*  *  *  * 

Longfellow married Frances (Fanny) Appleton in 1843 after a very long courtship in which he pursued her over seven years with vigor and passion. When she finally agreed he was so nervous he walked 90 minutes to her house on Beacon Hill in Boston and crossed the Boston Bridge which, as of 1906, was renamed the Longfellow Bridge. Perhaps the American version of the Florentine Bridge of Sighs. 

The couple had six children. Tragedy struck in 1861. Fanny was putting locks of her children's hair into an envelope and attempting to seal it with hot sealing wax while Longfellow took a nap. Her dress suddenly caught fire, though it is unclear exactly how; burning wax or a lighted candle may have fallen onto it. Longfellow was awakened from his nap and rushed to help her, throwing a small rug over her, and trying to stifle the flames with his body. Fanny was taken to her room to recover and a doctor was called. She was in and out of consciousness throughout the night and was administered ether. She died shortly after 10:00 the next morning, July 10, after requesting a cup of coffee. 

Longfellow, in trying to save her, had burned himself badly. He was unable to attend her funeral. His facial injuries led him to stop shaving, and he wore a beard from then on. That beard became his trademark. We all have scars to hide or disguise—most of them left by love.  

Devastated by her death, Longfellow resorted to laudanum and ether to deal with his grief, begged not to be sent to an asylum, and noted he was “inwardly bleeding to death.”  Eighteen years later he wrote a sonnet: “The Cross of Snow”:  

Such is the cross I wear upon my breast

These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes

And seasons, changeless since the day she died. 

*  *  *  *

In the late 1970s into the 80s I too experienced such an overload of grief—a deluge in which I thought I would drown. My youngest sister died, my father died, my marriage died, my divorce was finalized, and my vocational aspirations in the Episcopal Church died. At the same time I suffered a bout of asthma so severe it resisted usual treatments. A pulmonologist administered medical treatment enough to help me breathe, but my lungs have never been the same. They carry the memory of all that grief. 

When you banish or bury pain you also banish love. Therapy helped me retrieve my lost feelings, including anger, and saved me from drowning, or trying to live a rich full life from the neck up only! Writing, theological studies, prayer retreats, liturgy, growing children, therapy, and trying out big sins also helped round me out. In time I found a new and vital lover whom I married, and a new diocesan bishop in time ordained me deacon in 1987 and priest in1988.  

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Longfellow's personality became part of his reputation, in part because he had been presented as a gentle, placid, poetic soul, an image perpetuated by his brother Samuel Longfellow who wrote an early biography which specifically emphasized these points. James Russell Lowell said, Longfellow had an "absolute sweetness, simplicity, and modesty.”  At his funeral Ralph Waldo Emerson called him “a sweet and beautiful soul.’ His real life, however, was more difficult than people assumed, or than he let on. He had neuralgia, chronic pain and poor eyesight, and much bereavement over the death of his wives and later a daughter. He was quiet, reserved, private, and more introverted. He found his energy and emotions through his poetry. In later years he became unsocial and avoided leaving home, dying at 75.  

When you banish pain you banish love.  

Longfellow remained popular with children, who adored him. He wrote a poem about the village blacksmith under the spreading chestnut tree. When that tree was cut down, the children of Cambridge, Massachusetts, had it converted into an armchair they presented to him. I still hold dear this phrase in his poem “The Children’s Hour.”  I begged my mother to read it nightly. It made me feel important. 

Between the dark and the daylight,

      When the night is beginning to lower,

Comes a pause in the day's occupations,

      That is known as the Children's Hour.

After Longfellow’s death, his bust was placed in Westminster Abbey in London, the only American so honored. He was also honored with a commemorative stamp issued by the US Postal Service.  All this, yet his popularity declined quickly after his death in 1882 as academics shifted their attention to other poets like Frost and Whitman. The twentieth century literary scholar Kermit Vanderbilt noted, "Increasingly rare is the scholar who braves ridicule to justify the art of Longfellow's popular rhymings.”

*  *  *  *

Such scholarly snobbery angers me. I tend to write it off as the jealousy of lesser, maybe would-be, poets and those who refuse to acknowledge the joy of children  who live their live in rhyme. Why do we all remember nursery rhymes so well?  I remember memorizing some of Longfellow’s work, as does my youngest son John, now fifty-one, who recently told me that when he struggled in school with learning problems, bullying, and later with colitis, he would every day read to himself before he went to bed Longfellow’s poem of 1844. I wept.

 “The Day Is Done”   

The day is done, and the darkness 

      Falls from the wings of Night, 

As a feather is wafted downward 

      From an eagle in his flight. 

I see the lights of the village 

      Gleam through the rain and the mist, 

And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me 

      That my soul cannot resist: 

A feeling of sadness and longing, 

      That is not akin to pain, 

And resembles sorrow only 

      As the mist resembles the rain. 

Come, read to me some poem, 

      Some simple and heartfelt lay, 

That shall soothe this restless feeling, 

      And banish the thoughts of day. 

For, like strains of martial music, 

      Their mighty thoughts suggest 

Life's endless toil and endeavor; 

      And tonight I long for rest. 

Read from some humbler poet, 

      Whose songs gushed from his heart, 

As showers from the clouds of summer, 

      Or tears from the eyelids start; 

Who, through long days of labor, 

      And nights devoid of ease, 

Still heard in his soul the music 

      Of wonderful melodies. 

Such songs have power to quiet 

      The restless pulse of care, 

And come like the benediction 

      That follows after prayer. 

Then read from the treasured volume 

      The poem of thy choice, 

And lend to the rhyme of the poet 

      The beauty of thy voice. 

And the night shall be filled with music, 

      And the cares, that infest the day, 

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, 

And as silently steal away.

Longfellow captured hearts and soothed souls, even if his poetry wasn’t gushing with subjectivity or bulging with the latest innovations. It was enough for me to cross over the Longfellow Bridge in Cambridge regularly. That bridge always meant we were nearing home.

As I age, I feel, with Longfellow, that “sadness of longing not akin to pain”—the deep sigh of homing. That’s what the gentle flow of a poem’s soul can do for my own soul.

*  *  *  *

There are reasons why gospel writers  remember Jesus’s affection and wonder at children—the chief exemplars and purveyors of the heavenly kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. 

2021.12.05 The Arts. Music.

I have always believed, and said many times, that the Arts would and could save the world from extinction, or from itself. I think this because the Arts—music, painting, photography, medicine, literature, oratory, journalism, iconography, and Nature herself—are creative and desire to explore and express the depth dimension of life itself. By this I refer to that curious place inside each one of us all in which Mystery informs us of things we cannot understand that we know to be true and life-giving. Some call this internal meeting ground Soul.   

Hector Mendoza is the campus minister for liturgical music—music for public worship—at the University of Portland, Oregon. First of all, I think it is unusual to have a campus ministry for liturgical music, sacred music. But then this university, founded in 1901 as a private Roman Catholic university affiliated with the Congregation of the Holy Cross, with a sister school at Notre Dame, honors the spiritual needs of its students and faculty. You know there has to be a robust worship component. There is a chapel in every residence hall and their main chapel is the Chapel of Christ the Teacher where “people come together to evoke God’s harmony.” Here are its doors, carved from walnut local to the area, showing a sunburst. 

Some might say this is overdone religiosity. I quite disagree. It merely acknowledges that every student has a soul that also needs an education. 

Mendoza started his musical journey when he was a child. At seven he was already performing percussion in the Venezuelan ensemble, “El Sistema,” a publicly funded music education program, founded in Venezuela in 1975 by musician and activist José Antonio Abreu. His vision was to offer young people a free education in classical music that promotes human opportunity and development for impoverished children. He called his system (sistema) Music for Social Change. Students receive instruction and free use of an instrument. Today, El Sistema is thriving with over 400 music centers in Venezuela and also many in the U.S. An education in music is spiritually formative, encouraging creativity as well as discipline. What could be more “gospel” than this? 

Mendoza followed his music to the University of Vienna, where he taught about contemporary Venezuelan music and its influence on Europe. After his wife died, he moved to the US with his son. He was very angry at God and confused. He said: “I wanted nothing but to forget my past. I wanted to quit being a musician.”  This is often a pained grief response, to run away to forget. But, quite against his plan to escape, Mendoza got a job playing an organ in a church orchestra. Most of us learn that we just can’t run away from our passion, our natural gift—inwardly energizing God-given.

I do not believe that God ever manipulates for the sake of control. I do believe that the Holy Spirit of God entrances us, beguiling us to follow what we love and care deeply about for the sake of Love itself—and bids us look up when everything’s going downhill.  

Mendoza learned to conduct, a different approach to the same love: music in a classical mode. “When I conduct my mission is more about perfection; it’s about getting the best result possible.” He keeps three main goals in mind: Beauty. Holiness and Connection. Holiness is the most important one to him, yet he works hard to make sure a congregation is connecting  with the emotion and spirituality of a moment. Like any pilgrim, Mendoza is “always searching” not just for perfection but for the many expressions of music—jazz, classical, reggaeton, salsa, and more eccentric forms. Here is the masked conductor. 

All these varieties he discerns and follows within the context of a Mass. Is this not what the God of Creation desires and why we worship at all? It forces us to remember that we are but a blip in this cosmic universe, all of which reflects the Holy. 

What beckons you?  For me, it is the image and vision of a larger-than-religions Divinity that surpasses confinement and explodes like a sunburst inside me. I follow without knowing where I’m going.  

2021.11.29 Thanksgiving Poem

THANKSGIVING POEM

Another report from overseas

in the day’s news about

a jailed reporter

of some government’s opposition.

Someone on a street corner

hauled off by the police.

The weather there in that country

on that day was beautiful.

So it looked

in the picture. Here

where I am it is dusk, raw

and drizzly from the day’s rain.

The group of us 

in the town square

hold up our placards and wave

to the rush-hour traffic.

Whether our candidate 

wins or not is only slightly

more important than the fact

that here we are

and that when we are done

we will each go home,

change out of our damp clothes,

and have a little warm supper. 

© Carole-Jean Smith

Does this brief poem depress you, or does it give you hope? I don’t know exactly, other  than I just like this poem and its down-to-earth solidity. It seems so obvious and true that we each and all do whatever we can do, where we are, for causes and candidates—and it is enough.  The one consistent inner activity is prayer—daily conversations with God all day long—heaved forth like energetic blasts of hope. 

2021.11.21 Whose King Are You?

Today marks the liturgical anniversary of our marriage on November 23, 1986. We were married on Christ the King Sunday during the morning Eucharist in the parish church, Trinity in Collinsville, Connecticut, where Dick had served as the rector for eight years, and I had been on the Search committee that elected him to serve. 

So why all this introduction? Well, because this small parish had supported us both through more than difficult times for us and them. It isn’t easy to divorce and remarry when you are clergy, but this little place had seen us both through vulnerable times and stayed loving towards us both. That is why we wanted to celebrate the sacrament of our marriage within this context at Trinity—our spiritual home, not just his job.  

While planning our service, we fussed over the hymn chosen for the day: “Crown Him with Many Crowns.” It was the obvious choice for this Sunday before the season of Advent begins and hurls us— willingly or reluctantly, depending on one’s ability to play mental gymnastics with the ordering of events in time—towards Christmas when this “king” was crowned just four weeks prior to his birth. Either a very short pregnancy, or a very premature baby, or possibly an act only Divinity could, or would, pull off. None of that mattered much to me, but I did not want to walk down the aisle with my about-to-be new marriage partner, singing about “HIS” triumphal crowning. 

Of course I am overdoing my sarcasm here, but the truth is we did debate the hymn choice for that day—the  diademata, “Crown Him With Many Crowns.” I lost that battle; the long liturgical tradition won; Christ (not He) got crowned; we married each other. When we said our vows I had a small grief seizure—tears flowed down my cheeks. Dick’s mustache quivered with alarm. It was crazy and incongruent— unless you know something about grief and it’s odd inexplicably unpredictable timing. I did not regret my first marriage, nor did I regret the divorce, but I did grieve both and occasionally still do in spurts. 

Anything or anyone that has been such a significant part of your life, will always need to be grieved, even in cases when divorce has meant a sad but inevitable end to a marriage. 

*  *  *  * 

See what we marriage partners are doing now after 35 years of happy marriage!  It’s Halloween, 2021, at a party for the retirement community where we now live in Connecticut. A party and fun was just what we all needed—a time to laugh, enjoy hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, and show off costumes. Dick and I went as Good Brother Monk and the Beloved Monastery Cat. I dressed all in black, including mask and hat, and Dick wore his hooded alb. (Someone asked where he got his costume. It’s his liturgical vestment, the one he wore when he presided at the altar.) Ms. Cat  was saved by Good Brother Monk after she lost her tail on a coyote trail. He fed her lots of fish and milk in a dish. I made plenty of mewling, howling, and purring sounds. Good Brother Monk, who prays all day and all night, closed our routine with a somewhat edited, and slightly ribald Irish blessing, ending with Latin (illegitimi non carborundum) and final praise for the monastery pussy. 

Everyone laughed heartily and we won a prize—a large beautiful woven quilt to keep us warm in winter months. Meeeowwwpurrrr. Amen.