I finished my lesson and spent a few minutes arranging a time for a sequence of instruction that fall. The girl watched, and listened. When I walked out, I said hello to her and her face broke open into a smile that lit the room.
I continued down the Coast to the town of Sechelt where I had errands to do. I felt ten feet tall, full of music, its rich possibilities, the excitement of actually learning something new. I spent an hour buying groceries and then stopped at the library to take out the next week’s worth of books. There was the little girl again, this time with a woman who could only be her mother — the same hair, the same bright eyes.
“Hello again,” I said, as I took my books to the desk to check them out.
She didn’t say a word to me, but loudly whispered to her mother, “It’s the girl from piano!”
And I, almost fifty, smiled at them both as I left the library.
When I was the age of Jenna (for I discovered that this was her name), I lived in Nova Scotia and had a friend who was the son of a United Church minister. His family lived behind ours, with a shared fence, easy to climb over. This boy (whose name I forget) took piano lessons and sometimes I’d sit quietly in his living room while his teacher (it might even have been his mother) guided him through scales, little exercises, and even some simple tunes.
I wanted so badly to learn to play the piano but my family moved every two years and our furniture would be driven across the country in a moving van, often with damage incurred along the way. A piano was considered impossible. Neither of my parents knew anything about music and the idea that a child might want to learn to play was frivolous in the extreme. I’d listen to my friend patiently practising, and sometimes he’d show me how to play "Chopsticks" or a one-handed version of “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore.” I was taken by the magic of creating music by pressing the ivory keys in sequence: plink . . . plink . . . plink . . . plink . . . plink. Ha . . . le . . . lu . . . u . . . jah. Astonishing. And when the boy began to play the first classical piece I ever heard, “Für Elise,” I cried. I wanted to have this kind of beauty in my life in a way that was so personal and immediate, music unfolding from my fingers like soft cloth.
I was also learning to knit that winter, an untidy mess of knots and lumps that I hoped might become a scarf one day if I was patient, and was struck by the similarity. Starting with a kind of bold confidence, immediately making a mistake. Going back to the beginning, as the boy so often did, and as I did with my yarn, determined that the next time would be better. Taking deep breaths to stay patient as I cast on, knit, then purled, keeping the steps in my mind as clearly as I could. As I hoped, in later years, would happen with singing. I didn’t know then that a throat could be trained the way fingers could be, that agility could be practised and learned. That a girl could age in the blink of an eye but still find a way to brush past the rosemary into the studio to open her mouth and hope that what came out might resemble music, though whether the beauty of plane trees or the guttural commentaries of ravens was not yet clear.
To the hills and the vales, to the rocks and the mountains,
To the musical groves and the cool shady fountains . . .
— Dido and Aeneas11
I was waiting in the car while John filled the tank with gas from the Extra Foods gas pumps in Merritt. I had been thinking of a few favourite arias, humming to myself as I leaned my face against the window. The day was mild, not quite warm, and we’d driven down from Kamloops where we’d spent the weekend with our older son Forrest; he was living there for the months of May and June to teach Canadian history as a sessional instructor. I was humming and remembering; one so often leads to the other, in no particular order. And then I saw the most extraordinary sight: at least twenty ravens on a dumpster behind McDonald’s. Some were perched on the side of the dumpster itself and some were lined up on the surrounding fence. One was on the ground, walking away in a slightly pensive posture. I realized the aria I was humming was Dido’s lament from Purcell’s sublime opera, Dido and Aeneas.
I’ve only seen one performance of this opera, though I have at least three recordings — one with the late great Tatiana Troyanos as the doomed Dido. The production I saw at the Chan Centre in Vancouver was modestly staged; this is not unusual for Baroque opera, I understand. The chorus stood on risers, the principals moved to centre stage to perform. The singers all wore evening dress. It was an effective performance, the singing was generally good and occasionally quite fine, but I missed the splendour of full operatic spectacle.
The ravens on the fence were different sizes. Some of them would lift their wings briefly and then settle again. One large bird sat on a pole — a sentinel? I got out of the car and walked towards them. The sound was amazing. Chortles, gurgling, clicks, toks. The raven on the ground stood still and posed in profile, throat shaggy as a ruff, while others plundered the dumpster. I listened. I know that the avian vocal organ is the syrinx, a bony structure at the bottom of the trachea. In humans and most other mammals, our vocal chords are contained within the larynx, located at the top of the trachea. As air is blown across them, the chords or folds vibrate to produce sound. Well, as I understand it, vocal chords oscillate as they make contact with each other.
Birds have a particular skill, or at least some species do — song thrushes for instance, though I’m not certain about ravens: they can control two sides of their trachea independently, thus producing two notes at once. A throat that is its own duet! When I have difficulty even creating one true note, I think of this with something like envy, something like awe.
“Split-voice, wind-carried child of sound . . .” sang Theocritus of the syrinx in the third century BC.12
It was a kind of magic, a black magic, that I was in a part of the country I love — the golden hills rippling like buckskins, rainbows appearing over the irrigation sprinklers on the hay fields, cattle with their young waiting to be transferred to the high ranges — watching a theatre piece at the McDonald’s while all around me drivers filled their vehicles with gas, shoppers transferred groceries from carts to the backs of pickup trucks, someone swept the sidewalk in front of the Dollar Store, the Open light at the Taco Del Mar was flashing red and blue, and a loud clanging of iron up at the Canadian Tire indicated someone was hard at work with wrenches and jacks.
The ravens on the fence muttered and yelped. Periodically they’d change places. One would hop down into the dumpster while another would take its place on the risers. It seemed choreographed, orderly. Occasionally there would be a loud falsetto passage, like a countertenor from Dido and Aeneas calling for some kind of macabre action:
Wayward sisters, you that fright
The lonely traveller by night,
Who, like dismal ravens crying . . .
And they did, on their risers, a concerted high cry, pretending to be dismal, though obviously exuberant at the possibility of yesterday’s hamburgers and stale sesame-seed buns.
Beat the windows of the dying
Appear! Appear at my call, and share in the fame
Of a mischief shall make all Carthage flame.
Appear!
The black chorus on the fence would answer:
In our deep vaulted cell charm we’ll prepare,
Too dreadful a practice for this open air.
I walked closer. A few birds eyed me suspiciously. Was I there to steal from the dumpster? I looked away so they wouldn’t get ideas. That one on the pole — a sentinel? Or a conductor? It watched but never made a sound.
Thanks to these lonesome vales
These desert hills and dales . . .
The raven on the ground, followed now by another, uttered its own noise. It gurgled, chuckled as though in great amusement as it gazed out towards the hills rising beyond the highway leading to Quilchena, and then it began to utter a ravishing song, like water falling into more water, rattling against stones. The other bird inclined its head, listening and considering. Although I know it’s an anthropomorphic imposition, I am t
empted to say that this was Dido’s grand aria. The raven was as regal as any queen as it croaked and gulped.
When I am laid, am lai . . . aaa . . . id in earth,
May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble . . .
Remember me, remember me, but ahh . . . ahhh, forget my fate!
An easy reach to that high G. Remember me! And the second bird trailed behind like Dido’s faithful maid, Belinda.
I listened, closing my eyes to shut out the Extra Foods store, the Canadian Tire, the Tim Hortons with a line of cars waiting at the drive-through lane, the McDonald’s itself. This was music worthy of my concentration, an outdoor opera with a cast in full voice. Even the sorceress’s role cunningly sung by a countertenor, which would have pleased Henry Purcell. The falsetto was quite clean and confident, which made me realize how art often sounds artless but the reality is that there are obstacles to such beauty. The Adam’s apple lodged in the male throat (and to a lesser degree, the female throat, too, but not as obvious a protrusion) is a thickness of cartilage around the precious voice box. And if I had trouble hitting a G, a clear A flat, how on earth did a countertenor do it? A raven?
When I opened my eyes again, there was just a raven walking across the road to the grassy verge, where a sprinkler spun under a couple of small pines. Spreading its wings a little, tilting its head up and opening its beak, throat shaggy and silent, it entered the spray.
In my mind, I see three plane trees, leafy and beautiful, two men playing backgammon in their shade. From their branches, golden ornaments hang and turn in the breeze. But wait, there are ravens on the boughs too, one there, and another there, and look, two more on the crown. And wait, listen: the ravens are singing “Ombra mai fu.”
I read about her before I heard her sing. There was a wonderful profile on Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in The New Yorker, written by Charles Michener. After reading it, I thought, This is a singer I must listen to. I wasn’t sure why, but I think it was because she didn’t sound like a diva in the profile. She’d done things other than sing; for instance, she had helped to erect living quarters in the yard of a Mexican prison so she could be near her boyfriend of the time, a man convicted on drug charges. Her allusions to astrology amused me; I remembered my own encounter with a medium who told me I was in the care of Pan.
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson photographed by Richard Avedon — a gorgeous woman with long hair and a shirt open at the neck, smiling. It was so refreshing to see a generous mouth and crinkly eyes instead of a stern-faced Valkyrie in breastplate and horned helmet, or an elaborate brocade gown showing fierce cleavage bound in whalebone. Michener had heard her sing first at a benefit concert at the home of Leonard Bernstein and had been so taken by her voice that he said to her, “‘You have one of the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard. Who are you?’ ‘I’m a violist,’ she replied, with the trace of a smile.”13
I love this anecdote for what it tells us about the woman — her voice, the sense of that voice as an instrument, a mid-range instrument, with a depth and texture that one doesn’t encounter very often. Not a violin, not a cello. Elsewhere in the profile, Michener refers to the “darkly gleaming” quality of her voice. (I thought of coffee, the kind I love most: dark roasted beans made into a strong infusion, flavour consistent with strength.)
What I heard in Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s voice the first time I listened to it — after reading her profile, I went out to buy whatever I could find: a recording of Handel arias (of course) and two Bach Cantatas, BWV 199 and BWV 82 — was a luxurious depth of emotional engagement. This was not simply a technical performance, a gifted virtuosity, but something lived and felt, singing that was a process, an act of offering.
Once she was on my radar, I encountered her everywhere. In truth, she was there before I knew her name. A recording of Dido and Aeneas, bought and listened to reverently: when I took it from the shelf and checked, yes, it was Lorraine singing Dido. Mentioning her to a friend who has sent me gifts of music, to my surprise he told me I was revealing excellent taste. But I have no particular taste, I thought. I have no basis for liking what I like. I only know what moves me. And she did.
I thought of that quality in some Renaissance painting: chiaroscuro — a balance between light and dark. The brilliant highlights on skin or interiors serve to effectively contrast the areas of strong shadow. Caravaggio for example: his Madonna of the Pilgrims shows us the dark-haired Mother with her child, her throat a chalice of light and her infant’s thigh gleaming while behind her a dim plaster wall shows brick, one pilgrim’s cloak ripples on his shoulders like a pelt, and the Madonna’s own shirt and skirt are studies in dusky tonality. Lorraine’s voice has this balance — the clarity and brightness of tone held in exquisite tension with such deep and velvety warmth. You could see her singing, although of course it was a recording.
I began my own singing lessons with her as my inner muse. I’d leave my lesson and listen to her sing “Ich habe genug” on my way home along the Coast Highway, taking in every note, every passage of open-throated beauty as I drove past views of islands, the Strait of Georgia glittering in sun or gun-dull in rain. I’d never heard this cantata sung by a mezzo-soprano before (though in truth I think the transposition is nearer the alto range) but had heard a bass, a soprano, the gorgeous obbligato passages played by flute. In this recording, the oboe d’amore echoed Lorraine’s rich vibrato. Or she echoed the oboe d’amore, the two of them engaged in a long legato duet.
Where did Bach’s glorious creation end and Lorraine begin? I’d never known that a singer could reside so completely within the emotional and spiritual landscape of a composer that he or she was somehow its embodiment. (I had heard this in a way with Rostropovich’s transcendent interpretation of Bach’s suites for unaccompanied cello. But with Cantata BWV 82, in this recording, it was as though Lorraine and the oboe d’amore and the sorrowful resignation expressed by Simeon, as he both anticipates and regrets his own impending death, are all of a voice, all in the same place.)
Eventually, I began to sing along with Lorraine. Having no piano at home, no means to practise in the usual way, I taped my lessons and practised by singing to my own exercises. I’d cringe as I pressed Play and heard my thin efforts, marred by missed notes, no sense of timing, my voice straining to sing even a D. But I’d persevere, trying to improve.
Discovering that I could practise by singing with Lorraine was an unexpected blessing. Not the cantatas, of course, or the Brahms, the Schubert. But there were several Handel pieces — “Ombra mai fu” for instance, the plane tree shining and beloved — that I had also begun to learn and there was no better model than her recordings. I’d like to believe I learned phrasing and pitch from Lorraine, and how to enter a song with my whole self, giving myself over to it. I loved the sound of her voice in my empty house, the fully open “As With Rosy Steps the Morn” ringing up the stairs to my bedroom where sunlight filtered through the white linen curtains, her “Deep River” like a block of dark chocolate.
A Beginner’s Repertoire (annotated)
1) “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens”: I found a Joan Baez songbook and Xeroxed two copies of this, one for Shelley and one for me. We worked on it for about three lessons and I found it very difficult. But there were moments when I’d feel my throat open and a phrase would sound out with something like a ring. I knew I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.
2) I’ve already confessed to mangling “Ombra mai fu,” the aria that led me to singing lessons in the first place. I’d been listening to Daniel Taylor’s Portrait CD and was very taken by the John Dowland song, “Flow My Tears.” I loved its mournful quality, its elegance. “Can we try this?” I asked. And Shelley kindly said yes, though I realize now what a trial it must have been for her to guide my weak and faltering voice through such a gorgeous piece. I’d take huge lungfuls of air and attack the song like a drowning woman, seeing the E looming towards the end — “Hap-py, hap-py they that in hell / Feel not the wo
rld’s de-spite” — and feeling my heart flutter with anxiety. Could I reach it? Would I strain and not arrive? Whew. But I practised regularly, my tape deck set up in the corner of the kitchen, trying it over and over again. And now, years later, I wonder how I ever could have chosen that song with only a month or two of lessons behind me. It is so hard and requires such breath control.
3) My older son had been to Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific and had sung in the college choir. One piece he’d enjoyed was “Jerusalem,” stanzas from Blake’s “Prophetic Books” set to music by C. Hubert H. Parry. After hearing him sing it in his light tenor, I tried to entice him to teach me but he wasn’t willing. Sometimes I’d hum when I heard him singing but wasn’t sure of the melody, the lyrics. So Shelley ordered the sheet music and we laughed our way through its very hymn-like cadences. (As a child, I sang in a church choir and enjoyed the practices, the occasional appearance before the congregation in our dark blue gowns with the contrasting white yokes. But it was hard not to laugh when the [very] senior choir sang “Bringing in the Sheaves” or “Holy Holy Holy.” I’m sure they felt wonderful — well, I know they felt wonderful and all the recent scientific evidence suggests that they were unknowingly keeping their blood pressure down, their serotonin levels up, their immune systems in healthy readiness — but they sounded so frail and so trembly.) Still, I’d get goosebumps when we came to the robust final stanza: “Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire!” (How did arrows of desire fit in a poem about the Holy Lamb of God? Well, that was Blake, I suppose — heaven and hell, innocence and experience.)
4) “Why not try this,” she asked? I’d bought Italian Songs and Arias, arranged for medium voice, and we were leafing through it. “This” was “Caro mio ben,” ah dearest love, by one Tommaso Giordani. What I liked about the collection as a whole was the way each song was presented: a page of background information, source, bibliography should one want to follow up, and a phonetic guide to pronunciation. There was also a CD of accompaniment included for those like me who had no way to practise the piece at home. And what I liked about “Caro mio ben” itself was its accessibility, both as a song and as an exercise for a beginner like me. It wasn’t too high (I was learning about tessitura and although there were some high notes in this piece, the portion of the range that was characteristic was very manageable). I had several months of Italian at university, just enough to give me a little bit of confidence if the tempo was, as with this song, larghetto. There were passages with interesting ornamentation, too, to aspire to. (I’d listen to Cecilia Bartoli sing this song and was breathless at her quicksilver grace as I followed the score.) This was a song I revisited, every six months or so, to see if I’d improved enough to do it any kind of amateur justice.
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