La Corona - John Donne

The first poem in La Corona is it’s namesake: 

LA CORONA.

I. Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise,
Weaved in my lone devout melancholy,
Thou which of good hast, yea, art treasury,
All changing unchanged Ancient of days.
But do not with a vile crown of frail bays
Reward my Muse’s white sincerity ;
But what Thy thorny crown gain’d, that give me,
A crown of glory, which doth flower always.
The ends crown our works, but Thou crown’st our ends,
For at our ends begins our endless rest.
The first last end, now zealously possess’d,
With a strong sober thirst my soul attends.
‘Tis time that heart and voice be lifted high ;
Salvation to all that will is nigh.

First Things

Where does one begin when composing a major work?  My friend Andre and I often discuss what we call, “The Plan”.  All composers have it in one way or another.  Without it the infinite musical possibilities would cripple any composer of “serious music” (which is another discussion for another day). 

J.S. Bach is a wonderful example.  How is it that Bach wrote at least 1127 works varying in format from cantatas, to large scale choral works, to chorales, to sacred songs, to lute pieces, chamber works, orchestral works, canons and fugues, as well as scores of keyboard pieces?  He certainly did not just “riff” at the keyboard until something sounded right.  He had The Plan.

Pick any major composer and you will find the same is true.  They all have The Plan and they have it for every piece that write.  Even John Cage’s fabled 4’33” did not just arise out of the aether, it was a well planned piece of serious music.  Cage had a philosophy that silence was as important to music as the sounded notes were.  He also did not believe in absolute silence being possible in any piece.  He knew that as long as there were people in the audience, air conditioners, creaking floor board, busy streets outside of concert halls, etc. that there would be noise and that noise became part of the music.  4’33” was as much a proof of concept as it was a piece of art.

So where does The Plan begin for me?  I have read, reread, and re-reread my subject La Corona by John Donne and I have outlined the mood shifts that I receive from each poem.  I have made rough estimates at styles of accompaniment and melody.  I have tried to pin down which sentences of the poetry I want to focus on and develop, and which ones I hope to move through rather quickly.  In essence I have drawn up a road map.  Here are some main ideas I have laid out:

1. The work will be a large scale choral work.
2. The singing of the texts will be supported by organ accompaniment. 
3. There will be 7 pieces-one for each poem of La Corona
4. There is a possibility that 2 of the 7 pieces will be mostly developed by solo singers.
5. Each piece must flow directly into the next due to the form of the poems themselves (which is also another discussion for another day)

The Plan includes much more than this when you move to the micro level.  Each piece I write is planned out from the very beginning with an idea of the tonality,  complexity, accompaniment idea, etc.  These will be discussed alongside each piece.

You write a major work the same way you train for a marathon: one step at a time towards measurable goals. 

John Donne - Redone

I have decided that for my “major work” I will be setting 7 poems by the poet John Donne.  Donne was born in 1572 and died in 1631.  As the folks at Norton Anthologies say, “Donne’s poetry demands imaginative effort of the reader, whom it absorbs in a tense, complex experience.”  He is what the literary types would call a “metaphysical poet”. 

Though the man had a bit of a split personality when it came to his writing, the bulk of his work is dedicated to complete repentance and utter devotion to God.  He distinguished his writing as coming from two persons, Jack Donne and Dr. Donne.  Jack Donne wrote scandalous poetry dedicated to chasing after women, while Dr. Donne was chasing after God.

I have chosen to set his cycle “La Corona” for many reasons.  The work has many layers of meaning, but it is basically a meeting between Dr. Donne and his Lord Jesus Christ as he prays that his poetic muse will be used to refine him and bring glory to God and to Donne a “crown of Glory, which doth flower always”

The poem is cyclical and can be read ad naseum due to the form being that of circle or crown.  The first line of the first poem is restated in the last line of the last poem, and so it begins again. 

I definitely have a great deal of work ahead of me.  Donne’s verse is often difficult to read, let alone understand, and this difficulty does not decrease as one tries to set the text for choral declamation.  Sacred music is intimately and irrevocably linked to its text.  I must write so that the text is not only understood, but understood rightly. 

Divine Poems and Religion Loving Atheists

It will prove most fruitful for my audience’s understanding of my work if I understand the source material from which I have derived my work.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, John Donne wrote his sacred or “Divine Poems”, as they are called, as an act of prayer and praise to God.  It is obvious that the verses he penned were not just the hollow reverberations from the heart of a religion loving atheist. This is an important distinction to make.

Religion loving atheists are not new by any means, so it is not that John Donne predated the concept, but it is more so that he does not represent its definition.  I had personally never heard the phrase until I read CHORAL MASTERWORKS: A Listener’s Guide, by Michael Steinberg, who before writing the book had written program notes for the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Boston Symphony.  He also wrote liner notes for all the major classical record labels and was a music critic for the Boston Globe as well as a faculty member at Manhattan School of Music and the New England Conservatory. 

At any rate, you get the idea that Steinberg pulls quite a lot of weight in the world of “serious music” (I promise we will define this phrase eventually as well).  Steinberg borrowed the term from Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer, who coined the phrase while wrestling with a way to describe his own spiritual situation.  It seems like a straightforward enough term, but some unpacking may be useful. 

You see, many people in the world are not true God-fearing believers, but are instead religion loving atheists.  They come in all sorts of packages, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and so forth.  People cling to routines and habits and religion is one of the most gripping ritual behaviors humans have in the repertoire of repetitive lifelong traditions.  When our love for the comfort that comes with ceremony trumps our deepest convictions of either a) the existence of God, or b) our hearts inclination towards Him, then we become at strongest conviction religion loving agnostics, and at least religion loving atheists.

What does this have to do with composition?  Many of the greatest works in the repertoire of God-honoring sacred music were written by men whose faiths were, as Steinberg says, “shaky or outright nonexistent”, or by men who were, “engaged in an unceasing struggle to reinvent God.”  Interestingly this does not make their work any less transformative for true believers, in fact even non-believers are often moved and somewhat transformed by masterful sacred music.  The music is in many ways separated from its composer once it is unleashed upon the masses. The French literary critic Roland Barthes wrote extensively on the subject, “To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text.” 

In many ways I do agree.  Interpretation can only be unleashed fully when an art touches a viewer and affects him personally.  I believe, however, that a master artist can forge his creativity into a precise concept strong enough to sway the average viewer towards his intent.  

John Donne, then, being a devout Christian is meaningful to me because I know that I am connecting with his same thoughts and struggles that he had in writing his Divine Poems as I wrestle to set them to music. 

Why is it an important distinction that John Donne, by all accounts, believed in the God he was writing to?  Because I personally feel a stronger connection to the text and its author knowing that his art was more than a mental exercise. 

Yes, Roland Barthes, I understand the author is dead, but so are you.

My Major Minor Work

As a Master of Church Music student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary I have decided to complete the coursework necessary to graduate with a double major in piano and composition.  My final project for the composition portion of my degree is to compose a “major work”.  The work has two guidelines:

1. The major work must be no less than 30 minutes in length.
2. The work must be sacred in nature, therefore it must have text

This leaves me with a great deal of leeway in which I can work out my own voice and compositional style.  I will post some samples of my work as well as my thoughts on the state and nature of composition as I see it through the crucible of a “major work”.