The Harmony of Wednesday Morning

So already, recently my choral conductor, Margo Euler, invited me to read aloud and "say a few words" about Mark Van Doren's "The Harmony of Morning." The Broad Cove Chorale and women of the Unicorn Singers will be performing Elliott Carter's setting of the poem as part of American Kaleidoscope, the Unicorn Singers' fortieth anniversary concert on April 14. Some Wednesday morning rehearsal time spent exploring the poem, Margo theorized, would help us sing Carter's piece with greater sensitivity and conviction. 

Before I begin to talk about what I said about the poem and how I came to say it, here is its text in its beautiful, puzzling entirety:

The harmony of morning, and a thrush's
Throat among the sleep-deserted boughs;
Expiring mists that murmur all the day
Of a clear dusk, with music at the close;
Wind harp, rain song, night madrigal and 
   round:
There is no word melodious as those.

Rage of the viol whose deep and shady 
   room
Is sounded to a tempest by the strings;
Sweet keys depressed, swift rise upon a 
   note
Whence all the narrow soul of music hangs;
The lifted flute, the reed, the horns 
   agreeing:
Words in the wake of these are scrannel 
   gongs.

In them another music, half of sound
And half of something taciturn between;
In them another ringing, not for ears,
Not loud; but in the chambers of the brain
Are bells that clap an answer when the words
Move orderly, with truth among the train.*

By the time Margo asked me to talk about the poem, both it and Carter's music were already lodged under my skin, intriguing irritants that refused to give up their secrets. I knew they fit well together, knew I felt uplifted by both of them, and understood neither of them. But now I had task and a deadline to push me, and I was determined to understand why they were holding such sway over me.

So I did what I always do when art baffles me: I worked by association. Though the poem's subject is varieties of music, its abundant visual imagery practically cries out for visual representation. That's what prompted me to make a collage (of sorts).

Besides Van Doren's poem, my collage incorporates several other texts and various images:

• The background onto which other poems and images are glued is a photo of the field in front of the one-room cabin just west of Williamstown, MA that belongs to my husband's family. Morning outside its open windows on sunny summer days is utterly harmonious.

• The left-hand bottom quadrant features Amy Lowell's "Music," in which "flute-notes push against my ears and lips, and I go to sleep, dreaming." Though we readers of poetry generally rely on our senses of hearing to experience musical notes, Lowell's speaker experiences them primarily through her sense of touch--and thus asks us to do so, too. Van Doren also changes up reader sensory expectations in his poem's last stanza: words, if they're ordered and accompanied by truth, "clap an answer" "not for ears." We readers generally experience clapping, be it of bells or hands, through our senses sight, touch, and especially hearing. But things are different in "the chambers of the brain."

• Which brings us to the picture of a small door that opens into a bright gallery-like room in the upper right-hand quadrant. Van Doren originally entitled his poem "Another Music." Given the poem's alternate title, the viol's "deep and shady room," and "the chambers of the brain," my mind jumped to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "the music from a farther room." There's more than one kind of music . . . and many different kinds of rooms.

• And that brings me to my most important association of "The Harmony of Morning" to "Musicians Wrestle Everywhere,"** Elliott Carter's setting of an Emily Dickinson untitled poem. I quote Dickinson's poem in its entirety here--in part because all of it matters, and in part because I love it: 

 Musicians wrestle everywhere--
 All day--among the crowded air
 I hear the silver strife--
 And--waking--long before the morn-- 
 Such transport breaks upon the town 
 I think it that "New Life"!

It is not Bird--it has no nest--
Nor "Band"--in brass and scarlet--drest--
Nor Tamborin--nor Man--
It is not Hymn from pulpit read--
The "Morning Stars" the Treble led
On Time's first Afternoon!
Some--say--it is "the Spheres"--at play!

Some say the bright Majority
Of vanished Dames--and Men!
Some--think it service in the place
Where we--with late--celestial face--
Please God--shall Ascertain!

"The Walk" by Marc Chagall

The poem is filled with speculation--and no conclusions--about what the musical "silver strife" is that the poet senses all of the time. But whatever is wrestling and glinting in the "crowded air," it's magnificent, mysterious, omnipresent, and teasing. That's what sent me to the paintings of Van Gogh and Chagall: I had to crowd at least some of the air in my collage with the swirls, spheres, and people.

During much of "Musicians Wrestle Everywhere," the lines sung by the sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses whirl and circle around each other, approaching and retreating, as if involved in a game of tag: "'the Spheres' . . .  [truly seem to be] at play." But Carter's setting of Dickinson's final three lines is far more sober. In fact, both "The Harmony of Morning" and "Musicians Wrestle Everywhere" conclude with a similar ordered, shimmering gravitas, perhaps a response to the intuition of and aspiration toward the "music from a farther room."

With our rehearsal fast approaching and these collage associations in mind, I decided to provide something short, clear, and provocative--something that authentically reflected my tentative answers and ongoing questions--to my fellow singers. On Wednesday morning, feeling very much like my former Cambridge Rindge and Latin School English-teacher self, I gave each of them a small piece of paper that featured this list of facts, observations, and questions:

"Morning Harmony" by Susan Swartz***

• Three things “sound” in this piece.
• Each of these “sounds” more or less “satisfactorily” than the others—or are we just talking differently?
• To sound can mean to emit something audible, or to convey something.
• Words offer “another music,” composed of sound and “something taciturn between”—between words, or between words and something else?
• Without order, there’s neither truth nor “an answer.” (But what’s the question? Something about truth and beauty—or truth and magnificence?”)

This combination of "reminders" and questions pleased a number of my fellow singers, who also appreciated my acknowledging that I was doing "a" reading of the poem and that each of them was entitled to her own reading of it. Their responses assured me I'd done right by them and also by the poem.

I also felt that my choral conductor had done right by me. Margo had done me a great kindness, though she couldn't have known I needed one: she'd "assigned" Van Doren's poem to me just when I was feeling estranged from poetry, just when truth and beauty were most eluding me. In so doing, she gave me the opportunity to engage with all three.**** Estranged people sometimes need a shove toward the "farther room" they're struggling to apprehend.

Poetry and I are working our ways back toward each other. Meanwhile, music and I are constant companions, and we better be: the Unicorn Singers and the Broad Cove Chorale will be performing "American Kaleidoscope" next weekend--on Sunday, April 14, at 4:00 at the Inly School in Scituate. Poetry and music harmonize throughout our concert, not just in "The Harmony of Morning"--and what could be more appropriate for National Poetry Month? Please come and see and hear for yourself. 

* Quoted in its entirety from inside cover of the following sheet music: Carter, E. (Composer). (1955). The Harmony of morning [Sheet music]. Milwaukee: Assocated Music Publishers, Inc. [Note: The piece was premiered in New York City in 1945.]
** Found on Bartleby.com: https://www.bartleby.com/113/1082.html.
*** Swartz, S. (n.d.). Morning Harmony [Painting]. Retrieved April 3, 2019, from http://susanswartz.com/complete-collection/morning-harmony
**** This is a reference to my first blog post of this National Poetry Month, entitled "Seeking Late, But Not Too Late."