I’m so happy to share with you…

Pipers of the Heart

for piano

composed and performed by Ishmael Wallace

The pipes are calling — not “from glen to glen, and down the mountain side”, but in a space within.

Our lives are both branch and trunk. Sensing correspondences — correspondences between Schubert and Johnny Cash, for example — we sense the trunk. Though the branches often forget the trunk, in time of need we feel it; so it was with me when I left New York to begin anew here in Thailand. Among the branches, it all had shifted, but I felt what had always held me.

One can hear this in Pipers of the Heart, from a series of album leaves for piano I composed in 2021. These are pieces in which the life of the trunk is very strong; they remain close to what is true everywhere and always, remain close to the basic things — “I love you”, “I’m sorry”.

They are largely marches and waltzes, tributes to nobility and beauty. I found working in these genres tremendously illuminating; what had always been present in Mozart and Schubert, what saturates their music — suddenly, I heard it as what it was! Most classical music is genre music.

This piping in the heart — it is always there; are we quiet enough to hear it? May we all follow the call, never fainting 'til we reach that kingdom appointed for us!

Thank you so much.

With every good wish,

Ishmael

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I’m so happy to share with you…

Moment Musical Op. 94, #1 (D 780)

by Franz Peter Schubert (1797 — 1828)

performed by Ishmael Wallace, pianist

A melody which moves through a chord, tracing this chord note by note as one might, with sympathetic hand, trace the outlines of a statue: such a melody will often speak of nobility, will tell of the hunt, of bugle calls. Here, it tells of the high mountains and the free people who live there.

This freedom is akin to that described by Coleridge1, the clouds free to respond when the Spirit breathes, the waves to give homage to the Moon:

Ye Clouds! that far above me float and pause,
Whose pathless march no mortal may countroul!
Ye Ocean-Waves! that, wheresoe'er ye roll,
Yield homage only to eternal laws!...

If you ever are in need of tears, go to YouTube and listen to Alpine music — to the ranz des vaches, to jodeln…

In the middle section, the feeling is different — the melody stepwise, like a hymn. In both sections, we hear the movement back and forth from major to minor, the major third lowered and then reinstated. The initial movement, E to E flat and back (bars 1 — 8), the music remembers; transformed in memory (line 3), E flat becomes D sharp:

Like waves and clouds, the tones move within a great oneness — within a Mind which knows all, remembers all, loves all!

Thank you so much.

With every good wish,

Ishmael

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Music as a Path:

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A meditation instruction1 from Thich Nhat Hanh, first encountered in young manhood, has remained with me, giving forth ever more sweetness.

Breathing in, I calm my body.

Breathing out, I smile…

This smile, we may see in statues of the Buddha or Bodhisattvas, great beings who have stayed within the world of birth and death to help out. When we see it, we feel something of the same smile in our own body. It is not only a Buddhist experience; the Welcoming Prayer, a prayer with deep roots in Catholic tradition, leads us into the same terrain. One is welcoming all which may appear in one’s awareness as a gift from God.

As Father Jean de Caussade writes2,

The active practice of fidelity consists in accomplishing the duties which devolve upon us whether imposed by the general laws of God and of the Church, or by the particular state that we may have embraced. Its passive exercise consists in the loving acceptance of all that God sends us at each moment.

The instruction continues:

Breathing in, I dwell in the present moment.

Breathing out, I know it is a wonderful moment.

When I first heard this teaching, it seemed Epicurean, seemed about connection with the pleasant.

I was reading the Rubaiyat3:

Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,

Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!

In explaining this teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh often mentions the beautiful — speaks of the blue sky, a child’s eyes.

But one may wonder, what if I don’t like it? What if I don’t like the present moment?

Entry into the present, entry into God‘s presence, must be without conditions. It is indeed bliss, but one is not given guarantees. This is well known in the positive thinking tradition; as Florence Scovel Shinn writes4,

When a man can say, “I desire only that which God desires for me,” his false desires fade from the consciousness, and a new set of blueprints is given him by the Master Architect, the God within.

A child’s eyes, the blue sky — these are not only sources of pleasure, not only sources of the positive to be reckoned against the negative; they are windows on the Infinite. The great wonder of the present moment is that here the “me” is absent; there is no Ishmael!

Thank you so much.

With every good wish,

Ishmael

Music as a Path:

I help musicians and music lovers deepen their connection with music through coaching online: counterpoint, harmony, analysis, composition, interpretation… For more details, please see my website:

Wallace Stevens’ Anecdote of the Jar… it is a very strange poem, but one I’ve always felt I understood — entirely because I’ve read it together with a poem by Rilke.

The two are worlds apart in feeling, but speak of the same phenomenon: the arising of place, the dawning of place in a consciousness.

Place is not a matter of meters and millimeters; space is not a matter of these. We know this through the paradoxes of motion: I cannot move a meter without first moving half a meter; cannot move half a meter without…blah, blah.

But what is space?

Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee,   
And round it was, upon a hill.   
It made the slovenly wilderness   
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.   
The jar was round upon the ground   
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.   
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,   
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Because the jar is on the hill, that which had been a slovenly wilderness now surrounds the jar. No longer wild, it has become that which surrounds.

Here is the poem by Rilke:

Die Sonette an Orpheus, Erster Teil: I

Da stieg ein Baum. O reine Übersteigung!
O Orpheus singt! O hoher Baum im Ohr!
Und alles schwieg. Doch selbst in der Verschweigung
ging neuer Anfang, Wink und Wandlung vor.

Tiere aus Stille drangen aus dem klaren
gelösten Wald von Lager und Genist;
und da ergab sich, daß sie nicht aus List
und nicht aus Angst in sich so leise waren,

sondern aus Hören. Brüllen, Schrei, Geröhr
schien klein in ihren Herzen. Und wo eben
kaum eine Hütte war, dies zu empfangen,

ein Unterschlupf aus dunkelstem Verlangen
mit einem Zugang, dessen Pfosten beben, —
da schufst du ihnen Tempel im Gehör.

In Stephen Mitchell’s translation:

The Sonnets to Orpheus, First Part: I

A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence!
Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear!
And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence
a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared.

Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright
unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests;
and it was not from any dullness, not
from fear, that they were so quiet in themselves,

but from just listening. Bellow, roar, shriek
seemed small inside their hearts. And where there had been
at most a makeshift hut to receive the music,

a shelter nailed up out of their darkest longing,
with an entryway that shuddered in the wind --
you built a temple deep inside their hearing.

A. Poulin, Jr.’s translation of the end is very beautiful:

…And where there’d been
hardly a hut before to take this in,

a dugout carved from their deepest desire
with a lintel of trembling timber —
you erected temples for them in their inner ear.

The forest is bright, unbound, because it now surrounds the temple.

Music as a Path:

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I’ve been warming myself at Ruskin’s Mornings in Florence. He is telling us what to see, for example at Santa Croce; above all, he is searching for meaning, for the place where beauty, goodness, and truth are one.

He writes of Giotto, what Giotto sees, what Giotto’s seeing has to teach us:

“You shall see things—as they Are.”

“And the least with the greatest, because God made them.”

“And the greatest with the least, because God made you, and gave you eyes and a heart.”

It shows us the meeting place of high and low, the space created by our Lord’s Incarnation — the place we know so well from Shakespeare! In such a meeting place both gifts are needed, both eye and heart.

One of quite the first results of Giotto’s simply looking at things as they were, was his finding out that a red thing was red, and a brown thing brown, and a white thing white—all over…

But a deeper result of his resolve to look at things as they were, was his getting so heartily interested in them that he couldn’t miss their decisive moment. There is a decisive instant in all matters…

This is what got me — the “decisive instant”; it is the same in music. In every phrase, a decisive instant; the interpreter must find it!

Weill’s song Wie lange noch? contains some wonderful examples.

My performance:

Wie lange noch? [How long?] (1944)

by Kurt Weill (1900 — 1950)

to a text by Walter Mehring (1896 — 1981)

performed by Ishmael Wallace, tenor and pianist

(for the full text, please see Castalia 373)

Its theme is the entrance in of evil; evil must be invited, as Mephistopheles insists Faust invite him. So in the first phrase, the decisive instant is at the word “willingly” (“willig”).

I will admit, there was a night

When willingly, I gave myself to you.

Ich will’s dir gesteh’n, es war eine Nacht

da hab' ich mich willig dir hingegeben.

The harmony here is created by counterpoint: a neighbor motion in the alto (C — D flat — C), a bass arpeggiation (C — A — F). It does not act like an A7 chord — resolves, not to D, but F minor — yet sounds like one. We are in the presence of a pun, though a pun more disturbing than funny. And when, in the end, the song has moved from its F minor beginnings to captivity — enmeshment — in D minor, it is a movement prepared by this sound.

The song continues:

You possessed me, drove me from my senses…

Du hast mich gehabt, von den Sinnen gebracht…

Here the axis is the word “possessed” (“gehabt”); we are pulled toward IV. In the next few notes, one hears the voice writhing in resistance. IV is the dark wood, the midpoint of one’s journey1. It is the fall into sin, forgetfulness of one’s true nature — not, of course, the end of the story2, though in this song, the singer will remain a captive…

Thank you so much.

With every good wish,

Ishmael

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Physical starvation can be a real problem; there is also starvation of the spirit. This latter is the theme of a novel by George MacDonald, Adela Cathcart, which I am reading with a great sense of recognition.

Adela’s case is well described by the young Dr. Armstrong:

“It is as if, without any disease, life were gradually withdrawn itself—ebbing back as it were to its source…”

He suspects “the cause of her illness is… a spiritual one. She has evidently a strong mental constitution; and this strong frame, so to speak, has been fed upon slops; and an atrophy is the consequence.”

Many women “…go into a consumption just from discontent—the righteous discontent of a soul which is meant to sit at the Father’s table, and so cannot content itself with the husks which the swine eat. The theological nourishment which is offered them is generally no better than husks. They cannot live upon it, and so die and go home to their Father. And without good spiritual food to keep the spiritual senses healthy and true, they cannot see the things about them as they really are. They cannot find interest in them, because they cannot find their own place amongst them.”

One thing in particular has confirmed his suspicion:

he has “looked over her music on purpose…and not found “…one song that rose above the level of the drawing-room, or one piece of music that had any deep feeling or any thought in it…”

Music as a Path:

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I’m so happy to share with you…

Wie lange noch? [How long?] (1944)

by Kurt Weill (1900 — 1950)

to a text by Walter Mehring (1896 — 1981)

performed by Ishmael Wallace, tenor and pianist

The German (please scroll down for my translation):

Wie lange noch?

Ich will's dir gesteh'n, es war eine Nacht,

da hab' ich mich willig dir hingegeben.

Du hast mich gehabt, von den Sinnen gebracht,

Ich glaubte ich könnte nicht ohne dich leben.

Du hast mich das Blaue vom Himmel versprochen

und ich habe dich wie 'nen Vater gepflegt.

Du hast mich gemartert, hast mich zerbrochen.

Ich hätt dir die Erde zu Füssen gelegt.

Sieh' mich doch an! Sieh’ mich doch an!

Wann kommt der Tag an dem ich dir sage: es ist vorbei!

Wann kommt der Tag, ach der Tag nach dem ich bange?

Wie lange noch? Wie lange noch? Wie lange?

Ich hab' dir geglaubt, ich war wie im Wahn

Von all' deinen Reden, von deinen Schwüren.

Was immer du wolltest, das hab' ich getan.

Wohin du auch wolltest, da liess ich mich führen.

Du hast mir das Blaue von Himmel versprochen

und ich! Ach ich hab' nicht zu weinen gewagt.

Doch du hast dein Wort, deine Schwüre gebrochen.

Ich habe geschwiegen un hab' mich geplagt.

Sieh' mich doch an!…

How long?

I will admit, there was a night

I willingly gave myself to you.

You drove me utterly insane;

I thought without you, I must die.

You promised me the heaven’s blue;

I cherished you as a daughter might.

You tortured, broke me through and through;

I’d have placed the whole world at your feet.

Look at me! When will it come, the day I tell you, “It’s over!”

When will it come, that day I dread?

How long now? How long?

I believed you, like a lunatic —

Believed your fine speeches, your vows.

Whatever you wished, I did it —

Where you wished to go, I let myself be led.

You promised me the heaven’s blue;

I did not dare to weep.

But you lied — broke all your promises!

I stewed and bit my lip.

Look at me…

(translation by IW)

So many years I have lived in the house of fear — hoping to win a glance from you, hoping to win a word of praise. I have struggled to breathe, struggled to swallow, struggled to prove I was a proper person.

Yet a step away, one sunswept tile away, is the house of love — the house where a crown waits, where a banquet is spread for me.

When our Lord healed the lepers, what exactly did He do? John Dominic Crossan suggests He defined leprosy away — redefined health to include leprosy. A common strategy in this world!

More likely, he showed the lepers what they were in Him.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

as Rumi writes1, there is no thought of the skin, no thought of right or wrong — but the skin improves.

Goodness appears when there is no thought of being good, when we are simply living in love2.

The house of love, William Morris has well described in his News from Nowhere, an anarchist utopia — anarchocommunist — which people of traditional bent also can treasure. It is that house in which one works, not from a sense of scarcity, but from genuine interest. This has always been a factor in work!

So I put my hand into my waistcoat-pocket, and said [to the boatman], “How much?” though still with the uncomfortable feeling that perhaps I was offering money to a gentleman. He looked puzzled, and said, “How much? I don’t quite understand what you are asking about. Do you mean the tide?…”

Thank you so much for reading, and for your support!

With every good wish,

Ishmael

Music as a Path:

I help musicians and music lovers deepen their connection with music through coaching online: counterpoint, harmony, analysis, composition, interpretation… For more details, please see my website:

The story of Oliver Twist is a true story; we have been living in poverty, working for crooks, but wealthy relatives are searching for us, are very near to us. That we long for more — like Oliver, request a second bowl — is not a sign of insanity, but of where we belong. As C. S. Lewis puts it, this longing for something not to be found on earth is a sign we belong to Heaven.

Charles Lamb writes of Coleridge, “I think his essentials not touched”; “his face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory…” That glory which Wordsworth knew (Lamb was writing to Wordsworth):

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home…1

Music as a Path:

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Openness to God’s presence, reluctance to feel what one is feeling — these do not go together. To welcome Him, I must welcome all. This does not mean it all is good, does not mean that black is white, but it means it all belongs, all belongs to the story, and that in all, His face is shining. All things, all people, have a higher life, their life in Him. When something or someone disappoints me, I may pray, “May it be as it is in my Lord!”

Mother Teresa knew of this; it is why she would not oppose war: she would be for peace.

So what about walls? is one allowed to have them? or must one allow strangers to wander in and out at will?

When a few years ago, “No Walls” became a slogan, I knew this could not be right, for I had tried it. But walls too, I have tried, and walls too, are not it. Demons are kept at bay, not by walls, but by salt, garlic, the cross; here is the answer, I think.

A friend says that on emerging from Reiki treatments, at first people accosted her on the street. They could sense her openness. But after further treatment, she began to give off light; then they left her alone.

Bringing forth what is sacred is far more effective than combating the fallen. In ourselves, too, His face is present.

Florence Scovel Shinn writes,

There is for each man, perfect self-expression. There is a place which he is to fill and no one else can fill, something which he is to do, which no one else can do; it is his destiny!

This achievement is held, a perfect idea in Divine Mind, awaiting man’s recognition.

And again:

Christ was both person and principle; and the Christ within each man is his Redeemer and Salvation.

The Christ within, is his own fourth dimensional self, the man made in God’s image and likeness. This is the self which has never failed, never known sickness or sorrow, was never born and has never died. It is the “resurrection and the life” of each man!1

In A Little Princess, Sara Crewe has fallen on hard times. She remembers the Christ in her by thinking of Marie Antoinette. What Marie Antoinette would do, she does.

“Haven’t you had any dinner?” said Sara.

“No dinner,” more hoarsely still and with more shuffling. “Nor yet no bre’fast — nor yet no supper. No nothin’.”

“Since when?” asked Sara.

“Dunno. Never got nothin’ today — nowhere. I’ve axed an’ axed.”

Just to look at her made Sara more hungry and faint. But those queer little thoughts were at work in her brain, and she was talking to herself, though she was sick at heart.

“If I’m a princess,” she was saying, “if I’m a princess — when they were poor and driven from their thrones — they always shared — with the populace — if they met one poorer and hungrier than themselves…”

Many years ago, I was introduced to a Sufi practice — in essence, the same practice; one walks as that person who embodies the quality one seeks2.

The “little princess” has become a drudge; yet all she does, she does as a princess. We too may live as who we are in truth.

This “living as”, C. S. Lewis also advises, though his vision of our relationship with Christ is different3; he points out that, in saying the Our Father, we are standing in the place of Christ, speaking as Christ.

Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Thank you so much.

With every good wish,

Ishmael

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I’m so happy to share with you

Frühlingsnacht [Spring Night]

a setting by Robert Schumann (1810 — 1856)

of the poem by Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788 — 1857)

12th and final song of Schumann’s Liederkreis Op. 39

performed by Ishmael Wallace, tenor and pianist

The German text as sung (please see below for my translation):

Frühlingsnacht

Über’m Garten durch die Lüfte

Hört ich Wandervögel ziehn,

Das bedeutet Frühlingsdüfte,

Unten fängts schon an zu blühn.

Jauchzen möcht ich, möchte weinen,

Ist mirs doch, als könnts nicht sein!

Alle Wunder wieder scheinen

Mit dem Mondesglanz herein.

Und der Mond, die Sterne sagens,

Und in Träumen rauschts der Hain,

Und die Nachtigallen schlagens:

Sie ist deine, sie ist dein!

Spring Night

Borne on the breeze, I hear their voices,

Birds returning to the north,

And with them comes the breath of spring;

Already little flowers come forth.

I feel like crying out, like weeping —

All I’d longed for, here again;

The wonders of the past returning

In the glory of the moon.

And in the nightingales’ wild throbbing,

In the light of moon and stars,

From the meadows in their dreaming,

Comes the single word: “She’s yours!”

The young man has seen the sun go down, has seen the going under of legitimate authority. He has mourned the lost castle, the death of the beloved. He has heard the nightingales give forth the song of longing from its tomb. The nightingales… they wished to tell him something of the good old days. In the twilight, he has remained faithful, though desperately afraid. And now, hearing the migratory birds, he knows Spring is on its way.

In the glory of the moon, all the wonders of the past return. What nightingales, moon and stars, and rustling meadows all have to tell him, at last he understands. He has received the word.

Thank you so much.

With every good wish,

Ishmael

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The songs which lead us to this point:

#1, In der Fremde [In a Foreign Land]

#2, Intermezzo

#3, Waldesgespräch [Forest Conversation]

#4, Die Stille [The Quiet Woman]

#5, Mondnacht [Moon Night]

#6, Schöne Fremde [A Lovely Spot in Foreign Country]

#7, Auf einer Burg [On a Castle Wall]

#8, In der Fremde [In a Foreign Land]

#9, Wehmut [Sorrow]

#10, Zwielicht [Twilight]

#11, Im Walde [In the Forest]

Music as a Path:

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For many members of the church where I used to teach in Harlem, the events described in the Bible were taking place now. They were right about this, of course; I feel the same way about Schumann’s Liederkreis op. 39, to texts by Eichendorff. Today, it’s a joy to share with you the 11th of the cycle, the penultimate song:

Im Walde [In the Forest]

a setting by Robert Schumann (1810 — 1856)

of the poem by Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788 — 1857)

performed by Ishmael Wallace, tenor and pianist

The original German (my translation is below):

Es zog eine Hochzeit den Berg entlang,

ich hörte die Vögel schlagen,

da blitzten viel Reiter, das Waldhorn klang,

das war ein lustiges Jagen!

Und eh ichs gedacht, war alles verhallt,

die Nacht bedecket die Runde,

nur von den Bergen noch rauschet der Wald

und mich schauert im Herzensgrunde.

1836

A wedding party passes by

I hear the little birds

Riders burst forth and sound their horns

A lively hunt it is

And before I can think, it’s died away

The horizon swathed in Night

Only a rustling from the hills

And a deep fear in the heart

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The young man has spent all day on the mountain. Marriage, which would bring him down from the mountain, unite mountain and valley, bring idea into realization — this, he longs for, but fears may never happen. Down below, merry-makers pass, a wedding party — the world which seems so far away; they disturb the birds — how the birds chatter! I think of aunts in the drawing room — for the mountain is not only a mountain, the forest not only a forest.

And then, like lightning, the hunters burst forth. Hunters, who feel something is lacking, who seek completion; hunters, who prey on innocent deer. One might of think of Don Juan, always seeking to add to his list (and to “wear the horns”, of course, is to be a cuckold). A lively scene indeed — but suddenly, all is gone, and the boy must face his fear.

Thank you so much.

With every good wish,

Ishmael

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The remainder of the cycle (excepting the last song, still yet to appear):

#1, In der Fremde [In a Foreign Land]

#2, Intermezzo

#3, Waldesgespräch [Forest Conversation]

#4, Die Stille [The Quiet Woman]

#5, Mondnacht [Moon Night]

#6, Schöne Fremde [A Lovely Spot in Foreign Country]

#7, Auf einer Burg [On a Castle Wall]

#8, In der Fremde [In a Foreign Land]

#9, Wehmut [Sorrow]

#10, Zwielicht [Twilight]

Music as a Path:

I help musicians and music lovers deepen their connection with music through coaching online: counterpoint, harmony, analysis, composition, interpretation… For more details, please see my website:

It is a long process, getting the discount; one must download an app… But lady and waitress remain good-humored. As the lady at last gets down to her sundae, she tells the girl: “Thank you, child”.

“Thank you, child” — in these words, the shining forth of nation. The older sees the younger as her child — can do this, because younger sees older as mother.

Seeing as — yes, nation is poetry. Two mortals body forth an eternal image.

Participation in this image constrains their freedom; the younger is responsible to the older, the older responsible for the younger. Yet it is also fulfillment: the gathering up of earthly experience upon a heavenly altar.

Goethe writes of this: “All passing things are but a simile”. 1And Rilke: “We are the bees of the invisible. We madly gather up the honey of the visible to store in the great golden hive of the Invisible.”2

Music as a Path:

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I have often wondered about non-resistance to evil; perhaps you have too.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also…

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

(from the Gospel of Matthew, 5:38 — 45)

“Children of your Father… in heaven”: this already seems to help. The child of such a Father is not unprotected.

I think the key is in another saying of our Lord:

In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

(Gospel of John, 16:33)

Two forces stand opposed: the Kingdom and the world, God’s order and that order which has forgotten God. Yet this second order already is overcome.

The Kingdom is here, among us: as we remember this, we see it.

The Kingdom appears as we sit with the one we love, sit together in the little room at the heart; when the world importunes, better not to chase it out: running after it with a stick, we soon are far from home. We can simply utter our Beloved’s name.1

Seated around the bar at the inn, our faces flushed, we debate the merits of this or that system, this or that religion. Falling silent for a moment, we sense Someone has entered; has entered on little feet; on little, slippered feet.

A lady, for example, who has a six-room apartment in New York, has made it available to friends as a space for meditation. Here in Thailand, people who love trees, who love the cheerfulness trees exude, have gathered around a man who knows trees. Together, they go from place to place planting trees.

We have felt ourselves to be Ishmael, son of Hagar the Egyptian, cast out with his mother into the desert to die. But where should we be thrown that our Father not be?2

Thank you so much.

With every good wish,

Ishmael

Music as a Path:

I help musicians and music lovers deepen their connection with music through coaching online: counterpoint, harmony, analysis, composition, interpretation… For more details, please see my website:

Oh Lord of the Universe
I will sing Thee a song.
Where canst Thou be found,
And where canst Thou not be found?
Where I pass -- there art Thou.
Where I remain -- there, too, Thou art.
Thou, Thou, and only Thou.

Doth it go well -- 'tis thanks to Thee.
Doth it go ill -- ah, 'tis also thanks to Thee.

Thou art, Thou hast been, and Thou wilt be.
Thou didst reign, Thou reignest, and Thou wilt reign.

Thine is Heaven, Thine is Earth.
Thou fillest the high regions,
And Thou fillest the low regions.
Wheresoever I turn, Thou, oh Thou, art there.

Who we are in truth can inform who we are in fact1.

Fact is a small cross-section of truth: truth after it has happened, seen by a third person. It is what sociology can see. Fact is always the product of a past, determined by a past; were fact all, there would be no redemption.

The fact point of view, we find well expressed in a poem by Auden:

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I’m so happy and honored to share with you…

Intermezzo in F minor and Romance in F major, Op. 118 nos. 4 and 5 (1893)

by Johannes Brahms

performed by Ishmael Wallace, pianist

Brahms’ Op. 118 begins with a pair: intermezzi in A minor and A major, the one seeking home, the one already there. It continues, down a step, with a Ballade in G minor.

Pieces four and five again are a pair, again a step down: an Intermezzo in F minor and Romance in F major. The next and final piece of the opus will be in E flat minor; Brahms is laying out a pathway, step by shining step, a pathway into the dark — a pathway from which, as a song by Schubert puts it, “no one has yet returned.”1 Check it out; going down in whole steps from A, we reach the same key on the piano, but it is not A:

Brahms is bidding his friends farewell, bidding farewell with tremendous tenderness.

Thank you so much.

With every good wish,

Ishmael

Music as a Path:

I coach musicians online, guiding composers and performers alike to deeper connection with the Muse. For details, please see my website:

I’m so happy to share with you…

Etude in C Sharp Minor, op. 2 #1 (1887)

by Alexander Scriabin (1872 — 1915)

performed by Ishmael Wallace

“The fundamental things apply

As time goes by.

It’s still the same old story…”1

— the story of something new, something which preoccupies one, which demands understanding.

It arrives here in bar 5:

Yet Scriabin tells this old story — or, more precisely, it tells itself through him — in a manner completely unmistakeable.

Thank you so much.

With every good wish,

Ishmael

Music as a Path:

I coach musicians online, guiding composers and performers alike to deeper connection with the Muse. For details, please see my website:

Brahms’ Ballade in G minor, Op. 118 #3, is not all in G minor; in the middle, we find ourselves in B major! That Brahms returns to G minor, returns to the original idea, does not on its own give the work unity; why this middle section? why this key in the middle?

I am so happy to be discussing the piece with you again; here it is, in my performance:

Ballade in G minor, Op. 118 #3

by Johannes Brahms (1833 — 1897)

performed by Ishmael Wallace, pianist

As we trace the way it happens, we gain some clarity; the B belongs to a bass arpeggiation, the bass moving through a G major chord. Before becoming a tonic, B has been a tone in the bass; after its time as a tonic, it moves on through a passing C to D, and back to G.

This is beautiful, but the Why remains; why, in a G minor work, should the bass move through a G major chord?

Music as a Path:

I coach musicians online, guiding composers and performers alike to deeper connection with the Muse. For details, please see my website:

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Life is a cat — a cat who longs to be with us, who snuggles up to us, who bites when ignored.

From the high tower, scrying the stars, he summons us to earth; his mistress waits — our mistress.

The Tower, Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot

designed by Arthur Edward Waite, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith

Aphrodite, Briton Rivière (1902)

That life is hers makes all the difference; no matter where we turn, it will show us her. Its scratches, its bites, we can accept; the blazing pain in our foot has led us to her face. And she is mistress not only of life; as Rilke writes, life and death are in kernel one1. As I enter life, I enter death as well. Not only earth, but the abyss are bathed in the light of that face.

Gérard de Nerval writes,

She whom alone I have loved loves me tenderly:

She is death, or the dead…

One might say, not only the new moon; not only the full, shining forth in glory, but the waning.

Thank you so much.

With every good wish,

Ishmael

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Music as a Path:

I coach musicians online, guiding composers and performers alike to deeper connection with the Muse. For details, please see my website:

In this beautiful teaching, Father Anthony de Mello draws an important distinction. The I is not the me — is not this or that; is not, for example, Ishmael Wallace, born 1971. One’s blessedness1, too, is not this or that — is not any created thing in particular.

The me emerges from the I, as a kind of abstraction; things happen to me, “they” do things to me, but I am.

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It’s a honor to share with you…

Tears

for piano

composed and performed by Ishmael Wallace

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Music can register the presence of spirits. In Schubert, for example — a single note, and the quality of light has shifted. We sense something has arrived in the worlds above — a cloud. Clouds are not always a bad thing: they can mean rain, rain sometimes badly needed. Earth can receive moisture, our heart become fruitful once again.

The great Italian poet Ungaretti writes,

M’ illumino

d’immenso1

(Mattina, from Sentimento del tempo, 1933)

This is completely precise.

But it speaks not of something earthly; it speaks of something beyond — something we sense in the long u, in the inward m’s.

His contemporaries found scandal in this — felt poems such as this were devoid of meaning, devoid as they were of precise earthly referents. They were mistaken, but right in longing for understanding, in believing that a poem should have meaning.

When Antonin Artaud calls for a nonverbal theater, he is speaking from a great longing to go beyond the things of earth, to reach the world of myth. We would be wrong in taking this for refusal of meaning.

But loss of interest in meaning can occur. It is likely a sign of trauma. One becomes content with a certain opacity. A composer, for example, may say, perhaps even believe, that in a certain moment the notes don’t really matter…

How much they matter! Though it speak not of earthly things, our art is a speaking — a speaking in which that rain may reach us which restores life to our heart.

Thank you so much.

With every good wish,

Ishmael

Music as a Path:

I coach musicians online, guiding composers and performers alike to deeper connection with the Muse. For details, please see my website: