1. Teaching at Lane Community College for about twenty-five years afforded me the fulfilling opportunity to work with many older students (often called non-traditional students).
Hold on to that sentence for a few seconds.
Over the past week or so, as I've been writing about the classical music that has stuck the depths of my soul, there's been a 20th century symphony roaming around the edges of my memory that I haven't been able to place, let alone remember its name or the composer.
What I have never forgotten, though, is that in the fall term of 1995, one of my non-traditional students somehow intuited that I would be moved by this nearly hour long symphony and she handed her cd of it over to me outside of class.
She was absolutely right.
This cd struck me dumb.
Instrumentally, vocally, and, above all, emotionally, it was one of the most beautiful, haunting, and unsettling symphonies I'd ever heard.
Earlier this week, I was suddenly struck dumb again.
SiriusXM's Symphony Hall played a movement from this symphony, and I learned again its name and composer.
Henryk Gorecki.
Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, composed in 1976. It premiered the next year.
The symphony is in three movements and each features, within the movement, a soprano singing Polish texts, mournful ones. The first is a lament of Mary, mother of Jesus; the second is a message written on a Gestapo cell during World War II; the third is a Silesian folk song of a mother searching for her son who was killed by the Germans in the Silesian uprising (1919-21).
The cd the student asked me to listen to featured the mighty opera singer Dawn Upshaw bringing these three laments to life.
I've been longing to find out, somehow, the name of this symphony and its composer.
Now I know.
If I forget again, it's now recorded in this blog for posterity.
It's a piece of music that opened my mind to possibilities in classical music I hadn't imagined and became a kind of portal into a deep appreciation of Vaughan Williams, Samuel Butler, and many other composers of slow building and emotionally rich compositions.
2. More Vaughan Williams news!
First of all, my friend's four hour dental procedure was a success and listening to the Vaughan Williams cd I mentioned yesterday helped her endure it.
Second of all, through a Facebook comment on yesterday's blog post, Christy told me that I had recommended the Vaughan Williams' cd that settled my friend's nerves to her about thirty years ago. I had completely forgotten I'd done so. Christy lived in northeast Washington state then and listened to Vaughan Williams while driving and taking in the beauty there. She listened to the album again, after reading my blog post, and told me how it brought back memories of driving with Everett in NE Washington, memories I sensed she was happy to have rise up.
3. I sauteed chopped white onion with chopped carrot and celery in a pot while I stir fried shrimps, seasoned with Old Bay Seasoning, and gyoza potstickers in the wok. When the vegetables softened, I poured chicken stock over them and added the shrimps and some frozen broccoli to the pot and let this soup simmer. After a bit, I added a few dashes of Bragg Liquid Aminos to the soup.
The combination of the vegetables, especially the carrots, the shrimp, the Old Bay Seasoning, and the liquid aminos created a broth that astonished me with its depth and subtle sweetness.
I ate the gyoza potstickers as an appetizer and thoroughly enjoyed this soup I created out of my head.
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