Swimming

Water seems to crop up in my imagery frequently at the moment. I'm swimming in all the beginning-of-semester busy-ness, of course, which is a little more hectic than I'd initially forecast.

I'm also immersed once again, and delightfully so, in the sound waves of music. It's around me all the time as I walk down the halls; snatches of vocal exercises or arias, violin notes, and oft-recognizable strains of various piano pieces all catch my ear as I involuntarily find myself trying to place what they are and where I know them from. Practice rooms and studios are poor keepers of sound, allowing much to escape, much to my happiness. There's a wonderful communion in being able to be "one of" the musicians here. When I left in May to study Italian in Florence, I felt keenly the dearth of my constant musical blanket. It's wonderful to be back among it. It lives, too, in all the new music I'm learning and processing. As I walk down the street, the rhythm of my feet call to mind the rhythm of a new piece, and I find myself running through it in the time metered out by my steps. Of course, there are the coachings and the lessons and practicing where I'm actively singing, too. And there's the music I put on at home, my evening companion as I work or wash dishes.

But perhaps the most interesting water imagery to me is the one linked to the piece whose score you see in the above picture. This is the second of three pieces Richard Strauss wrote about Shakespeare's Ophelia. Set with text from after she's lost her mind, these works are splintered in much the same way you see the water and glass twisting the notes above. Each vocal phrase sounds tonal and centered on a key when excerpted by itself. But the very next phrase will be just slightly different, with another key center. And the piano accompaniment clashes in defined ways that are just slightly off, perhaps by a half-step dissonance. Labyrinthine in their keys and notes, as well as their chromatic turns, these pieces also reflect Shakespeare's text; Ophelia tends to leap from one bit to another, making sense within a verbal paragraph or stanza but then twisting to another moment.

These pieces will be part of my recital in the spring, and I have much to do on them. So I am immersed in these as well. I find myself thinking often of a cracked mirror or shattered mirror fragments, too, as I search for the vocal core of these works. An interesting journey.

~Hope