Leonard Bernstein conducts Beethoven's 9th symphony at the Berlin Celebration Concert in commemoration for the German reunification (1989).
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Excerpts from
Eagle, Robin, Pine
by Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh
In memory of
Catherine Nugent (soprano)
(1930-1989)
[…]7
Darkness. Doing 65 on the highway to Dumbarton.
Beethoven’s 7th fills the car. The 2nd Movement.
The air pulsates with slow insistent eagle-wings of sound.
8
What if there is meaning in everything - infinite meaning?
What if even suffering and death can be snatched from the abyss
and by the transcendent mercy of God be given meaning?
9
A robin visited you the day before you died.
It watched you from the foot of your bed
before leaving by a window.
10
Thank God for Beethoven on the road to Dumbarton.
The wings broad.
The talon precise.
[…]
Thank God for Beethoven on the road to Dumbarton.
The wings broad.
The talon precise.
[…]
12
“Lift up your heads, O you gates;
be lifted up you ancient doors,
that the King of Glory may come in!” (Psalm 24:7)
13
Is it really credible? - Meaning in everything?
Ultimate, unqualified, infinite meaning?
A final awesome Sunrise?
14
Beethoven. Thank God for his 7th Symphony.
The blanket-broad wings descending.
The scalpel-exact talon rising.
[…]
19
And late on, we listen to Beethoven’s 9th, with its “Ode to Joy”.
And his 5th Piano Concerto - “The Emperor”.
Try to analyze its power.
How the full orchestra may defer to a single piano-note.
As a storm ends or begins with a single rain-drop.
Precision. Tenderness. Courage.
20
I walk through the woods.
I feel a rain-drop on my cheek.
I see a pine-needle spiral slowly downwards.
21
Beethoven conducting us through storm to calm.
Through darkness to light.
Through confusion to meaning.
And the meaning of the fragile and the small
inspires and secures us against the baleful and the huge.
As a single candle-flame defies a universe of night.
22
The hurricane-swollen creek
The hurricane-swollen creek
swallows house after wooden house.
You and I sit in the kitchen’s darkness.
A solitary
candle-flame
reflects on the table’s formica.
23
The music is as water which mirrors the mind.
The composer’s fingertip touches the pond
and a new vision and another dilates in waves of sound.
The music is as water which mirrors the mind.
The composer’s fingertip touches the pond
and a new vision and another dilates in waves of sound.
Or as a painter on canvas wipes back with a rag.
Restates. Reinterprets.
Life is complex but not inchoate.
Life is complex but not inchoate.
Within the window of the stellar Plough
more than a million galaxies spin.
We cannot contain such vastness in our head.
We cannot contain such vastness in our head.
Yet knowledge need not be exhaustive to be valid.
A single star can steer us through the night.
A single Star turns Earth’s night into day.
A single Star turns Earth’s night into day.
24
There is mist in the woods tonight.
Straggling flotillas of seagulls row home in silence
low above the slow viridian swell of pine.
[…]
35
The night is black. My car is white.
Beethoven’s scalpel opens a parturient red mouth in my breast.
Gives sudden Caesarean birth to my grief.
I hear the infant howling, howling, howling,
howling for the Mother
who is dead.
36
The Eagle soars.
The Robin consoles.
The Pine-needles spiral down.
[…]
54
Meaning like the kernel of a nut we must unhusk.
– You are unhusked.
Yet the husk also has meaning.
It is said of Michaelangelo
that he did not so much impose form on the marble
as release the imprisoned image from the stone.
But his mallet beat a rhythm
on the chisel
just the same.
Mallet-beat and chisel-cut.
Wing-beat and talon-strike.
Heart-beat and scalpel-cut.
as release the imprisoned image from the stone.
But his mallet beat a rhythm
on the chisel
just the same.
Mallet-beat and chisel-cut.
Wing-beat and talon-strike.
Heart-beat and scalpel-cut.
Beethoven’s 7th.
Beethoven the Deaf.
And out of the Silence, Thunder.
55
The pistol-shot of a frost-bitten pine
splitting in the snow-stunned forest.
But who hears the breaking heart?
56
Christmas Day. Steady rain on the window.
On TV, Leonard Bernstein in Berlin
conducts Beethoven’s 9th. Freiheit! FREIHEIT!
57
My car is white. My breast is red.
A window opens. I am by your bed.
A door. I flutter in the Face of God.
[…]
58
Lift up your heads, O you gates;
lift them up you ancient doors,
that the King of Glory may come in.
Who is he, this King of Glory?
The LORD Almighty -
Beethoven the Deaf.
And out of the Silence, Thunder.
55
The pistol-shot of a frost-bitten pine
splitting in the snow-stunned forest.
But who hears the breaking heart?
56
Christmas Day. Steady rain on the window.
On TV, Leonard Bernstein in Berlin
conducts Beethoven’s 9th. Freiheit! FREIHEIT!
57
My car is white. My breast is red.
A window opens. I am by your bed.
A door. I flutter in the Face of God.
[…]
58
Lift up your heads, O you gates;
lift them up you ancient doors,
that the King of Glory may come in.
Who is he, this King of Glory?
The LORD Almighty -
He is the King of Glory! (Psalm 24:9,10)
[…]
67
Of all creatures, I am the first
to glimpse the sunrise.
I am Eagle.
Of all plants, I am the first
to sense the sunrise.
I am Pine.
I am Robin.
Wherever I go,
I carry the Sunrise with me.
[…]
67
Of all creatures, I am the first
to glimpse the sunrise.
I am Eagle.
Of all plants, I am the first
to sense the sunrise.
I am Pine.
I am Robin.
Wherever I go,
I carry the Sunrise with me.
(Copyright Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh)
