Music as day labor, music as life

Poet (and notebook) at a Symphony rehearsal

Photo by Kael Bloom on Unsplash

[Remember this, from the autumn of 2024? No? Even better!]

This is not High Musical Analysis; just me, some years ago now, gifted by a friend with a ticket to what’s called an “open rehearsal¹”, listening to music I don’t know and letting it stir me up and scribbling down the stir-up note by note. Not at all the way I usually write a poem — ‘way more Impressionistic as to process and results, both.

No deep thoughts from me at the end of this one. (It’s long.) I hope you have fun with it even so. I had fun writing it, and I love reading it aloud.

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SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AND CHORUS REHEARSE MAHLER              (2012)
Open Rehearsal, 5/4/11 


It may be the Second Symphony. 
It may be the Ninth. 
The program is noncommittal. 
So is the docent, roundabout and gracious, 
though the eloquent heart of her half-hour 
is given to Two, some hasty words 
at the end for Nine; a clue perhaps — 
or a reminder that she is a soprano, 
and the Second includes a chorale. 

Now she has bowed herself politely off stage 
and been politely applauded 
and orchestra members start to show up 
in street clothes, languid, ignoring the stagehands 
fussing with sound apparatus. 
I hear, so far, an organ, drums, and a flute, 
and am waiting eagerly for the leaning forest of bass violins 
to be raised and brought to thrumming voice. 
(O, to play a bass violin!) 
Two harps are also onstage, I see, 
but mostly what we have now is empty chairs, 
organ riffs, and a horn playing scales offstage. 

The audience is out of uniform, like the players. 
Women to be sure have pulled on a decent pant-suit 
or blouse for the occasion, 
but the men have left their coats and ties at home. 
Plaid shirts slouch in every row. 

Now the violins begin to arrive, frail 
and inconsequential when carried past the basses — 
of which, look! two are upright at last. 
(O, to play a bass violin!) 
And still the organ mutters and scowls, a worried impresario. 

Singers sprawl in the tiers above the orchestra platform, 
thumbing through black folders. 
I think we’re hearing the Second tonight. 

Violins; flute; horn, still distant; murmuring drums. 
The organ has fallen silent. 
An oboe sketches a sharp descending chromatic. 
Strings upon strings; the seats are filling fast. 
How homely and serious the orchestra looks 
with everyone in their day clothes. 
No formal, artificial black and white: 
Music as business, as day labor, music as life. 

One slender, black-jacketed sprig at the podium 
raises her hand; 
house lights dim, onstage tuning quiets, 
then swells again to the concert master’s pitch-note. 

There’s the maestro at an open door, just offstage. 
A piccolo player (voice deeper than expected) 
is honored to make the evening’s introductions. 
Orchestra members scuffle their feet as we applaud: 
soloists and conductor walk on — two full-bodied ladies, 
blonde and brunette, and the silver-haired willow wand. 

Last movement of Two, 
then parts of Nine, he tells us, 
and turns to tell his orchestra what we don’t need to hear 
before his baton rises for the first time, and falls. 

Layers, layers of sound, texture of harmonies; 
bass-rumble, brass-blare, the ting of a bell. 
How are the horns offstage following his cues? 
Sweet, ironic oboe answers those horns, 
nearer horns, a harp; 
pre-dawn under skies prone to storm — 
morning opens out, under hovering blackness. 
Daily beauty, shadowed by horror, 
anxiety rising, falls; whispers 
through the moving-forward of the day 
— and light breaks out, sostenuto, 
to applaud the courage of the dawn. 
Will the light hold? It will. 
Through the shadow the light always returns. 

O, drums! O, thunder! 
The strings shriek in fear; the trumpets shout — 
and then it becomes a game, a dance. 
Always the light returns. 

— A pause for the maestro to adjure the strings. 
There’s a crispness he wants that they haven’t got to yet. 
Again, please; more so. And again. 
That’s it. A breath, and the baton points us all back in. 

Half comic, half grand — the dance, the march. 
How the darkness tries to break through, 
how the light returns. 
Melodies, voices, overlapping — 
passion here, melancholy there, urgency 
offstage first, then all around: 
something huge is coming closer, closer! 
… and arrives in quiet, in ripples of sound 
like cool water. 

The singers are on their feet. 

Trumpet-calls offstage; the whisper of drums. 
A flute twitters in the midst of lowering brass, 
innocent, self-absorbed as a lark on the Day of Judgment. 

Now a soloist stands, la blonde. 

Bows and wind fall silent; 
the chorus exhales mystery, a cappella. 
“Auferstehen wirst Du….” 
The soloist repeats it: Thou shalt arise. 
The orchestra replies, rejoicing. 
Horns! Strings! Bells! 
Long curving melodic lines of joy. 

Chorus again, 
with a rich continuo from cellos and bass. 
(O, to play a bass violin!) 
Soprano, trumpet take the top notes; 
a new interlude of joy breaks out. 

Ah, the second soloist rises. 
O glaube, mein Herz, o glaube! 
Believe, my heart, believe! 
Tenors, baritones, trombones, affirm; 
the chorus’s whisper of faith crescendos. 
Bereite Dich zu leben! they cry. 
Prepare to live! 

Orchestra, soloists, reaching, longing — 
chorus sings back assurance of joy. 
Cymbals, bells! As if each silver clash 
burst, scattered, into sparkling motes and stars! 

Faith in glory to come, fortissimo! 

And now we catch our breath, and applaud. 

And now the maestro gives notes to his musicians, 
mostly on rhythmic matters. 
A reprise of “O glaube, mein Herz,” 
with instructions to the strings; 
again, please. And once more. 
(O, to play a bass violin!) 
The chorus is tired of notes — 
lounging while the conductor instructs, 
slouching up again like reluctant teenagers. 

Again the faith and glory swells, unchecked! 
Again, finale. Again, applause. 
And back again to the chorus’s first soft, mighty entrance. 

And now, lights up; they’re ready for a break, and so are we. 
And afterwards? “Some of the Mahler Ninth, for variety.” 

Audience mills. Orchestra mills. 
Chorus closes black folders 
and melts away. Poet closes 
her notebook, lets the pen fall at last 
from her cramped bow-hand. 
She watches plaids and pant-suits stretch, 
listens to arpeggios cartwheel on the stage, 
waits for the lights to dim once more, 
for the baton to rise and fall, for the music, 
day labor and glory, to play again.

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1. The musicians and conductor are in full rehearsal mode, starts and stops and repetitions and all … but a select audience has been invited to sit in on the work session, as a treat. Sometimes a docent gives a talk beforehand about the composition being rehearsed, and/or about its composer. Open rehearsals are often a perk for donors to a symphony orchestra or other performance group. Sometimes a donor will pass along their open-rehearsal ticket to friend (hi) who can’t afford a ticket to the public performance.