This week’s prelude is one of many “Songs Without Words” that Mendelssohn wrote over the course of 15 years. The concept of writing a wordless song seemed foreign to many at the time, and may still today. But Mendelssohn himself expressed it as well as anyone could. ”There is much talk about music , and yet so little is said… People frequently complain that music is too ambiguous: that it is unclear to them what they should be thinking about when they hear it, whereas everyone understands words. For me, it is exactly the reverse. And that is not only for an entire speech, but even for individual words. These seem to me to be ambiguous, vague, and so easily misunderstood in comparison with real music, which fills the soul with a thousand things expressed better than words… The same words never mean the same thing to different people. Only the song can say the same thing and arouse the same feelings in one person as in another – a feeling that cannot be expressed, however, by the same words.”

As we explore the theme of reality this month, Mendelssohn’s thoughts about music can get us thinking about the ways we communicate, and how music can convey a kind of human truth that words may sometimes be designed to obscure — or even deny. Certainly, our current social discourse is being saturated with untruths, either created knowingly to mislead or simply believed and repeated by willing or susceptible recipients.

The “Prelude in D-flat major” by Chopin has been named “The Raindrop” for the remarkable repeated note that is present in the accompaniment figure, almost without exception from the beginning to the end of this masterful and expressive work. This repeated note is part of a sublime melody at the opening and through the initial third of the piece. Then it is transformed in the middle section into a quiet but relentless force that brings us into a realm of darkness, foreboding, and mystery. That darkness is unexpectedly broken twice by a few measures of pure power in which the repeated note emerges triumphant. Ultimately we return to the comfort and simplicity of the opening music, which eventually comes to rest in peace.

“Snow Angel” is a wonderful evocation of the beauty and magic of winter. Composer Daniel Dorff indicates at the beginning that the mood should be “serene.” The glistening sound of the flute and the spacious writing for the piano, much of it in the higher register, create a sense of boundlessness. Although its title is clearly descriptive and points us in the direction of a real image, one can also hear this music in more metaphorical ways, or with different imagery. In either case, the reality of the expression is not only personal to each of us but is also shared through the musical experience that reaches us all.

 

— Shaylor