Festival Music to Sing and Play
/BOOK REVIEW: “In Praise of the Seasons – Festival Music to Sing and Play” by Christof-Andreas Lindenberg
In honor of Christof-Andreas Lindenberg’s 90th birthday, I thought it appropriate to look back at his beloved book of music, In Praise of the Seasons – Festival Music to Sing and Play, published in 1995 by the Rose Harmony Association.
In Praise of the Seasons is a wonderful collection of music, with arrangements for lyre ensemble to unaccompanied choruses and a variety of other settings in between. In addition, a mighty, hidden treasure can be found in the Forward that begins this musical journey, where Christof-Andreas gives us an illustration of the “Year’s Festival Compass”. To summarize his words, in order to ‘sail through the rough sea of tones in our time’, we need a good compass that shows more than just four directions. “The Festivals of the Christian calendar offer us such a compass, which, if allowed to direct our awareness from year to year, eventually creates a rounded wholeness. Practicing this awareness makes for a sounding together of the different parts of the year, each with its own musical interval.”
Working consciously with this awareness, we begin to notice that the different times of the year can be characterized with particular musical intervals. The larger intervals seem to have their sound in the light half of the summer, and the smaller intervals in the darker winter months. Thus, a musical pathway is revealed to us. For example, during Ascension, 40 days after Easter, when we celebrate the Christ connecting the earth and the heavens, the octave sounds. Then, as we move towards late spring into Whitsun, the 7th sounds, and so on through the whole cycle of the year. Moreover, even though the seasonal interval may not be obvious in every song, the ear can nevertheless be schooled, in a sense, to ‘hear’ the intervals as we move through the year. Christof-Andreas calls this developing discernment of the seasonal/festival intervals “the dawn of a new hearing of the Michael Age”. Just imagine this practiced over time, and how the new hearing can begin to come alive!
Having recently performed some of the pieces from this collection, I can attest to the power of the intervals that accompany each season. For example, the summer round “And the Light”, for 3 voices, gives the sense of the summer outbreath, with its opening melody rising up into the perfect fifth. “Weaving Threads of Gold and Silver”, a summer canon for 2 lyres or lyre-chorus, has a dreamy quality with the opening canon, and then in the B Section, wider intervals with surprising accidentals bring on a startle, as if to be suddenly awakened, but then quickly put back into a summer slumber as the music returns to the opening dreamy canon. In the Advent Round for 3 voices, beginning with the words “You shall have sorrow”, one becomes aware of the ever-growing darkness of the season with its close intervals, yet the music also glimmers with hope, reminding us of the approaching birth of the Being of Light. Among the many songs for autumn, the 4-part chorus “Michaelmas” presents the ‘Michael Call’ with the interval of the 4th, along with a moving text by Anke Wiehs, which lends strength in the words, “He (Michael) stands behind you, behind you with his glistening shield”. “Candlemas Time” features the interval of the second – ‘the interval of Winter Light’.
Overall, there are instrumental pieces and songs for every nuance of the four seasons, with wonderful texts by Carlo Pietzner, Rudolf Steiner, Karl Konig, Anke Wiehs, the John Gospel, Christof-Andreas himself, and others. Additional festive pieces from the collection include “Song of Light”, for St. John’s Tide; “The Three Soul Forces”, for soprano and solo lyres, originally composed for R. Steiner’s Mystery Dramas; “Michaelmas Music for Lyres, Flute and Cello”; and “The Friends Gone Before”, a three part round with bells – a tribute to All Souls. The Advent to Christmas section contains instrumental arrangements for violin and lyres, lyre chorus with cello ad lib, sung rounds, a 4-part chorus entitled “Choir of the Heavenly Host”, and more. It is not surprising that the book ends with “Seeking Peace”, a lyre piece for all seasons that brings a sense of peaceful, inner contemplation.
With this collection, one is never at a loss for finding festive music that has a multiplicity of uses - from community gatherings, to therapy, to church services, for schooling one’s musical hearing, and, of course, for one’s own enjoyment.
In conclusion, In Praise of the Seasons is not only to be enjoyed in the playing, singing and listening, but it is so organized as to invite the development of the ‘new hearing’ referred to in the very important Forward to this collection – the Michaelic hearing invoked to awaken in us now, and in the future.
Book review by Sally Willig, Montvale, NJ
*Windrose Publishing and Educational Services of Rose Harmony Association, Inc. 1995.