les mots justes
Being a singer, I’m accustomed to having a slightly different reaction to a given event than most people. Perhaps in my own subconscious way of finding patterns in the universe, I always seem to seek similarities between events and songs I know. Maybe it’s helpful to know that I’m not alone. Perhaps I’m trying to understand the events through someone else’s interpretation of similar events, or vice-versa. In the end, it comforts me – in the same fundamental way that the right song can comfort anyone at the right time.
In my senior year of college, I enrolled in an ensemble studio class where different kinds of musicians were assigned interesting and not-oft-performed pieces. The professor had a grand plan for all of the music, and always had a secret about each song that he’d mention right before the performance that would take it to that place where music has meaning. I was assigned a duet with a violin “With rue my heart is laden,” as arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams. It was part of his cycle “Along the Field” which is text from A E Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad” (1896). The poem is short, and the melodies of the voice and violin are simple. While the poem is clearly about loss, it frames it in life, as if both are part of the same gentle breeze of time.
The performance of this piece (the one involving me) was not long after That September, and not 20 blocks distant. Immediately proceeding the performance, my professor took me aside and said “what do you think this is about?” I hadn’t actually formed a picture in my head (bad singer! bad!), but then he whispered “sing it for all those lads and lasses that just lost their lives in September.” I nearly couldn’t sing. And it was perfect. It was followed by deafening silence for what felt like an eternity, then lots of fervent applause and eye-blotting.
Today it comforts me. And in the coming days, I hope it comforts those around me.
With rue my heart is laden
With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfood lad.
By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.