Earth Tones: Music of Grief and Rebirth

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by Genevieve Williams

I was intending to give you my usual run-down of new and recent releases of interest to pagans. There are quite a few, now that the labels have gotten their fall release schedules under way, and in fact some of them are included here. Thanks to the events and aftermath of September 11, however, I've gotten a little sidetracked. So, the focus of this Samhain column will be on the twin themes of grief and renewal, which would be appropriate anyway, but this year they have a special relevance.

Music can be a catalyst. I know that I wasn't able to get properly upset about the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks until I heard the Beatles' "Let It Be" one night -- for the entire preceding week I'd wandered around in a sort of numbed haze. Not only is music a catalyst, but people respond differently to the same piece; few things are such a matter of personal aesthetics, and therefore considered to say so much about us, as the music we choose to listen to. So I'm including some new, some old and more variety than you'd expect: a recording of Mozart's Requiem to start things off, Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8, a few selections from Beethoven, Gabrielle Roth's Refuge, the latest from Lanterna (titled Elm Street) and a couple of CDs from Gaelic Storm.

One problem with especially popular and well-loved classical works is that recordings of them abound. What's the casual shopper to do when there are a dozen available recordings of Mozart's Requiem? Well, you could take my word for it and get the same one I have, courtesy of the Wiener Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert Von Karajan and available from Deutsche Grammophon. Or you can pick your own. In general, if it's a major orchestra (London, San Francisco or Berlin, say), your chances of good quality are assured. I chose the one I have because of the conductor; you might also choose based on the soloists or some other criteria of your own.

The Requiem is one of Mozart's best-known works, having been used quite often in many contexts up to and including film, notably Amadeus and the recent Elizabeth. A lot of people have heard only the most dramatic segments of the Requiem, generally bits from the Introitus and the Offertorium, but hearing the whole thing, including the more quiet moments, can be very rewarding. Make no mistake, this is the music of grief, which doesn't make it at all lugubrious or difficult to listen to. Even in its darkest moments, Mozart's music has a certain lightness of spirit. When the final chords of the Communio crash home, they leave the listener with a sense of renewal, and yet the Requiem is unfinished; though events didn't quite fall out as portrayed in Amadeus, Mozart indeed did not live to complete the work. This fact makes the Requiem especially poignant, if no less satisfying or catalytic.

A similar case is Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8. I first encountered this piece in college when the orchestra for which I was timpanist performed the first movement. There is something quite otherworldly about the first movement of the Eighth, and whenever we rehearsed it, I would look out the windows of Smith College's Sweeney Performance Hall and wonder what ethereal beings were listening. The first movement begins quietly, so quietly that silence threatens to overwhelm the susurrus of strings, until the oboe comes in with the first statement of the theme. Things build rapidly after that but then recede into a relaxed cadence that's pleasant enough. The real treat comes later, in a first movement that runs over 12 minutes, but I'll leave you to discover that on your own. Suffice it to say that the movement ends with the musical tension screwed to the sticking point; it then relaxes in the second movement, in a delicate, expressive segment that's the musical equivalent of the sun coming out. And... that's it. Like the Requiem, Schubert's Eighth was never finished, though a few composers since then have tried their hand at it. My version was recorded by the Cassovia Philharmonic and can be found on Lydian, sharing a disc with Schubert's Fifth and some music for a largely forgotten dramatic production.

The selections from Beethoven highlighted here will strike those familiar with his work as blatantly obvious, but in a way that's the point. Beethoven is among the very few composers whose work always has an immediate effect, no matter how many times you listen to it. This is certainly the case with the Third Symphony, called the Eroica. Ostensibly composed in honor of Napoleon, the Heroic Symphony takes us on a musical journey similar to the hero's tale outlined in the writings of Joseph Campbell, among others. Of particular interest here is the second movement, titled, in a manner unusual in orchestral music up until that time, the Funeral March. The best music never communicates a single mood, or perhaps more correctly the single facet of a mood. This is the case with this portion of the Third; incidences of gently stirring and triumphant melody amid the overall melancholy never provide an unmixed emotional moment. The second movement has, as a result, far greater emotional impact than would a piece that held to a single mood all the way through. When the third movement begins, necessarily lighter and more cheerful than what preceded it, it has an understated, almost hushed reverence. My favorite version of this symphony is included in a boxed set with the other eight, all conducted by the aforementioned Herbert von Karajan and issued by Deutsche Grammophon.

Also included in this box is, of course, Beethoven's Ninth, but there's another recording of this that I'd like to mention here. Few symphonies have occasioned as much study and comment as Beethoven's Ninth, partly due to its sheer enormity, and partly due to its emotional weight, for which it has sometimes drawn criticism. Few works are so open to interpretation not only by listeners, but also by performers. A particular performance that highlights this effect is one by the Berlin Philharmonic, from March 1942. Conducted by Leon Furtwangler and available on the four-disc set Furtwangler Conducts Beethoven (Music & Arts), it is far from a definitive performance of the Ninth, but it certainly ranks among the most distinctive. Consider: The Ninth Symphony, of which almost everyone has heard the "Ode to Joy" from the fourth movement, is considered one of the greatest musical expressions of the human spirit, but at the time and place that Furtwangler conducted this performance, the human spirit was being crushed in ways that still horrify us today. Listening to this recording of the Ninth, you can hear it, in the harsh rhythmic accents of the first two movements, in the restrained, terribly conscious tenderness of the third and finally in the almost frenzied pacing of the finale. Furtwangler and the orchestra, chorus and soloists he conducted were perfectly aware of what was happening in Germany in 1942, so that in The Furtwangler Record (an excerpt of which is reproduced as liner notes), author John Ardoin comments on the performance's "cyclonic fury" that "is drenched with torment, anger, and a sense of struggle that goes... to a more frightening and exhausting expressive plane." More than any other recording of the Ninth I have heard, this one is a product of time and place, an expression of grief and rage through music. Listening to it is exhausting, so that I recommend owning it in addition to another version.

More peaceful is Gabrielle Roth's Refuge (Raven). This is not her most recent release, but it's among her best. Roth, who refers to herself as an urban shaman, draws on a background in dance, drama and movement therapy to inform her trancelike, meditative creations. While not surprisingly categorized as New Age, she tends to eschew the label. Unlike the vast majority of New Age music, Roth's has theme and direction, though they're often subtle. The music may wander, but it always has an audible destination, giving it greater drama and urgency than most music in this genre. As one might expect, this is excellent ritual music, and the seven tracks on Refuge are similar enough to one another that you can put the CD on repeat with impunity, while distinct enough to be separately enjoyable. This particular recording features vocal work from Boris Grebenshikov, whose previous work consists largely of hard rock. His vocals here are a welcome surprise, being somewhat subdued and perfectly in keeping with the peaceful, yet somber, tone of this album.

A similar feel is to be heard on the latest from Lanterna, Elm Street (Badman). The follow-up to their 1998 self-titled debut on Rykodisc, Elm Street is a thoughtful, meditative slice of instrumental pop, which description might make the music seem milder than it really is. Lanterna is the brainchild of Henry Frayne, who in his time has done everything from punk to ambient, and it shows. There's a darker side to this CD than is usually found in this sort of music, with the occasional foray into atmospheric sounds capes that nonetheless preserve focus and unified direction. There's an older-and-wiser feel to this recording when compared to the earlier Lanterna, with a melancholy mood that pervades the whole. As a result, while the general impression one gets from Elm Street is one of peace, it's the kind of peace that comes after grief. The titles of the individual tracks are similarly evocative: "Spirits," "Departures," "Old Seattle," "Smoke" and "New Moon" are among the selections. While Elm Street doesn't make an ideal recording for ritual use, because of its many variations of mood, selected tracks would I think work very well.

Irish music group Gaelic Storm came to fame as a result of their performance in the 1997 James Cameron extravaganza Titanic; they're the band you hear playing during the steerage dancing scene. Their first CD, 1998's Gaelic Storm (Higher Octave), was a highly engaging collection of traditional Irish music. It's been followed up by 1999's Herding Cats and this year's Tree, which adds a bit of pop to some of the songs. This is rather disconcerting at first, but there's still plenty of good old-fashioned Celtic folk on the CD, and the band is as tight as ever, so all comes out well. The thing is, there are few forms of music on this earth that are as capable of encompassing widely divergent emotions as effectively as this. Joy and grief, amusement and plaintiveness, it's all here, frequently all in the same song. Listening to Tree, especially after the rest of the recordings described here, is like running outdoors during a spring rain: renewing without making light of all that's come before. While for ritual purposes Gaelic Storm's music is more suited to spring and summer festivals, all three CDs would do very well for a little postritual roistering at any time of the year.