In an Elegiac State of Mind

Is sorrow best expressed through poetry?  Not for me; I seek comfort in music when in a plaintive state of mind. While some seek solace in words, I look to sound. 

Today is the first of two difficult days.  It was condoling to hear Barber’s Adagio for Strings when I turned on the local classical music station this morning.  Today and tomorrow are days of mourning, tainting March with melancholy.  Today my daughter would celebrate her forty-ninth birthday; that life stolen eighteen years ago tomorrow by her sudden, inexplicable death.

In Melancholy March winter wearies the spirit with memories of what might have been, forcing acquiescence to what shall never be.  In Melancholy March only music can touch my loneliness.  A life cut cruelly short; so much promise extinguished—forever. It is the unhealable wound. 

How can I ameliorate the ever-present ache, especially today?  I turn to favorites like Mahler’s Adagietto  in his Fifth Symphony, the Der Abschied (IV) from his Das Lied von der Erde. or the final movement (V) from the great Resurrection, Symphony Number Two.  Dark music for a darker soul.  Tobias Picker offers solace in his Old and Lost Rivers from The Five Sacred Trees CD, as does Antonin Dvorak’s Largo (second movement) of the Symphony for the New World. However, I think the best is Vaughn Williams’ The Lark Ascending performed by many with the finest performance by Iona Brown in Ralph Vaughn Williams:  Orchestral Works.

I find some comfort in Yo-Yo Ma’s rendition of Tan Dun: the Eternal Vow from the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in his Classical Yo-Yo album.  Mychael Danna has often settled my harried mind with his Skys album, especially Sky 9 and Sky 10, with plaintive sounds of far off thunder and lonely train whistles in the empty night.  With his brother, Jeff, the Dannas reveal the beauty of loss in Two Trees, the concluding piece in A Celtic Tale:  the Legend of Deirdre.  In the apparitional She Moved Through the Fair (arranged by James Galway and Paddy Moloney) from James Galway: the Celtic Minstrel she comes so very near.  Just one moment more!

There are others that go unmentioned. Each has their place in my longing.  Each helps numb my overwhelming sense of loss for a little while.  At least I still have that.