ELEVATION!
I was in Provence, it was summer, and I was despondent. Assigned to search among the stately
old houses for lost manuscripts. in particular for any signs of that lost (or destroyed) symphonic
poem by Ernest Chausson, Solitude dans le Bois, I had adopted the garb of a medieval
troubadour in the hope that it would open to me the doors of that noble but somewhat guarded
civilization. Unfortunately I had underestimated the cynicism of its modern day inhabitants, and
overestimated their sense of their own glorious history as the birthplace of courtly love: in short, I
was misunderstood, mocked in my festive red costume as "Robin Hood" (though "Will Scarlet"
would have been more apt), and even followed with suspicion by the local police.
My melancholy state, consequently, is easy to imagine, especially if you combine such
misadventures with the futility of my professional endeavors: I found nothing. But to all these
frustrations must be added another circumstance, of a most personal nature that, conspiring
with those worries already mentioned, cast me into deepest gloom:
It was our 300th anniversary.
In August of 1708, as a young man nearing the end of his seminary training in my native Italy,
eager to embark on a dual mission of composing music to the glory of God while (with the aid of
music's charms) converting the swarthy Indians of the New World to the true faith, I, then known
as Domenico Zipoli, found myself with a little time on my hands, and betook me to that same
southern France. And it was there that I first set eyes on the beautiful maid whose ravishing
glance called forth from my heart a melody - naive, awkward, fragile as a doe - unlike the pious
hymns of my intended career - a maid whose image I would rediscover across the ocean as a
heathen princess, whose soul I've sensed in countless incarnations through the long years that
have followed my stumbling on, drinking, bathing in the accursed Fountain of Youth.
So I was reflecting on her, on the bane of immortality, on the forms in which I've found her, and
on the sundry shapes that melody has taken as I attempted, in the face of eternal frustration
but fired by unquenchable hope, to capture her elusive spirit in tone, across continents,
centuries and upheavals political, geological and stylistic.
Then, being sad and in France, I thought of Baudelaire. There was something I read, long
ago...I found a copy of Fleurs du Mal, I skimmed through, and eventually I came to:
Derriere les ennuis et les vastes chagrins
Qui chargent de leur poids l'existence brumeuse,
Heureux celui qui peut d'une aile vigoureuse
S'elancer vers les champs lumineux et sereins...
"Above the boredoms and the vast chagrins
That charge our fogged existence with their spleen..."
I felt my soul gliding, soaring: the world, so beautiful and good, I embraced in my heart, the more
fully for having risen above its weight and woes.
In overflowing gratitude I turned to the piano, wishing to pour out in sound this frothy
effervescence of joy. There, on the music rack, sat a copy of Ofterdingen's Blue Flower. I
began to play. And before my eyes the notes were instantaneously transformed, like so many
quantam particles, altered by the act of my observation. What sounds were these, and what
feelings? The music sang of transcendence, but in a French style, and utilized a pantheistic
nature - scale with raised fourths and flatted sevenths, a flexible rhythm, a lightness of touch, the
very "language of voiceless things."
Elevation indeed - but how should I understand this epiphany? As the Blue Flower
transformed, as Romanticism purged of murky metaphysics, a veritable Fleur Bleu for which
sensuous charm is spiritual essence? Or as another, involuntary variation on that melody I've
been making and remaking since I met that maid? - Note the relation of this music to the Fountain
of Youth Trio, and witness both the undeniable (if unconscious) thematic similarity and the
equally telling difference in style. Or again, in this magical, timeless land, have I been granted an
intimation, or ghostly reminiscence, of greater things to come: is this little piece but a hint of that
grand, mysterious Chausson symphony that lies buried, silent and irretrievable as the artist
himself who, prematurely torn from life in a cruel accident, I imagine stumbling among unknown
vistas, seeking some bright place where perhaps unicorns wander, and troubadours are seen for
what they're worth, and where the subtleties of courtly love are cultivated undisturbed alike by
old religious bigotries and secular vulgarity, where a man can pluck and sniff a flower in the deep
woods' solitude - even a man in scarlet tights, as he soars on vigorous wing, above the vast
chagrins of his critics, his detractors, his colleagues, adversaries, ex-girlfriend, nasty Uncle Lou,
even above the snorting hound that hovers ceaselessly, threateningly, about the person of his
lovely next - door neighbor, thwarting his earnest and honorable efforts to introduce himself in
song! May this little fleur serve as his courtly calling - card.