Speechless

I stole the title of this entry. It’s the name of the upcoming concert by Resonance Women’s Chorus of Boulder, the chorus I’ve been volunteering with this year. (I’ve written often about Resonance, both before and since my time with them. Try the “search” function to the right to see just how often.) This title was just too perfect to pass up. “Wordless” might have worked, but it’s not just words but speech, with all its structure and artifice, whose absence I want to talk about. I’ve learned something about this “speechless” thing listening to Resonance rehearse all year. I’ve learned that music—even, paradoxically, choral music—is about so much more than words. In fact, in an odd sense, it doesn’t have to be about words at all.

Now, I say this as someone who has always loved lyrics. Well, “loved” may not be the precise word. I’ve always been deeply attentive to lyrics, whether I love them or hate them. When I find a piece moving, I can’t help but cry as I think about the lyrics (which, by the way, makes it virtually impossible for me to sing such a piece—as my singing teacher can tell you). And I can’t seem to avoid thinking about the lyrics, so I’ve shed a lot of tears over songs. In short, I don’t take lyrics lightly.

But during this year, sitting in the room once a week and listening to Resonance practice, I have slowly embraced a different way of hearing music—of actually hearing the music. Which is to say the notes and the harmonies and the cadence and the complex interweaving of it all. And then something more, something behind or beneath all of that. When I first began to get a feeling for the songs Resonance will be performing in this concert, I was frankly a bit distressed. Would there be enough, I wondered, of the moving, lyrics-rich songs I’ve loved in earlier Resonance concerts? Would I be able to (mentally) sing along with these pieces, if some of them have no words and others have non-English words? But as I listened and became familiar with these pieces, I began, slowly, to hear the music behind the music I was hearing.

Actually, several of the pieces do have lyrics, and marvelous ones. Every time I hear “Morning Poem” by Mary Oliver, my blood pressure drops about 20 points, and I drift into a dawn-lit meadow of sound, an image of watching sunrise from a chilly mountain campsite. I love the scenes and the feelings that these lyrics evoke. And still, even in this piece, I hear something that’s new to me. Something behind the lyrics, behind even the notes. I really got this when I heard the chorus practicing it the other night, with the director, Sue Coffee, leading them in modulating the speed and the volume of different passages. The words didn’t change, the notes were the same, but the feeling of it was entirely different, moving in a new way. There is something here, I thought, that transcends the words, even the music in the structural sense.

It’s fitting that I learned this precisely as Resonance prepared this particular concert, “Speechless.” The poster reads, “125 women singing beyond words, in sonic explorations of realms perhaps not reached by language.” This description reminded me of the concept of “soundscapes,” which I’ve talked about before—and indeed, Sue has incorporated some soundscape elements into the concert (birdsong and “ambient sounds,” anyone?) It also brings to mind the multi-sensory images and complex feelings of several of the songs, which, though wrapped in words, evoke experiences that are wordless. Like the miracle of sunrise in “Morning Poem,” which I just mentioned:

Every morning

the world

is created.

Under the orange

sticks of the sun

the heaped

ashes of the night

turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches 

and the ponds appear

like black cloth

on which are painted islands

of summer lilies. 

and the unending presence of people who have passed in “Breaths” by Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock:

Those who have died have never, never left

The dead are not under the earth

They are in the rustling trees, they are in the groaning woods

They are in the crying grass, they are in the moaning rocks

Words, I know, and notes, rhythm, harmonies. And more.

And then there are the pieces that have no words at all—or no words that are understandable to most of us (imagine learning a few of those for a concert). But they still have this newly discovered (for me) something that transcends language. They have no words, but they nonetheless carry meanings—meanings as individual as the minds that hear them, as universal as the language of notes on a scale.

I’ve mentioned before the remarkable community that these women are, how much they share—stuff and caring and thoughts—with one another. As we’ve approached this concert, they’ve shared a lot of reflections about the music. One chorus member passed on a poem, fittingly called “Words,” by Dana Gaoia, which conveys something of the superfluous nature of words in the face of profound meaning. A glimpse:

The world does not need words. It articulates itself

in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.

I’d never have imagined this speechless quality of choral music before I spent this time with Resonance, immersed in precisely this sort of music. Maybe you need to hear this concert to understand what I mean. Or maybe you don’t. Likely many people have long known this. But to me, a novice to the more profound reaches of music, the surprising ability of speechless music to speak to my soul is new.

What a gift that is.

If you want to hear for yourself (which you definitely do), Resonance will be performing on two Saturdays, April 12 and April 19, at 7:00 and on Sunday, April 13, at 2:00 at First United Methodist Church in Boulder. For more information (including information on how to get tickets), click right here. I’ll see you, perhaps speechless, there! 

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