Verborgenheit

Today, I fell in love with music all over again, thanks to a man named Hugo Wolf (don't worry Nick, he's an Austrian composer who went crazy and died long ago. Interesting the amount of composers who went crazy and died....hmph). I've been trying to plan my masters recital (!), so I went to the library to do some listening. I want to do a big German set, since I speak the language fairly well. It's also close to my heart, as my time in Vienna and Graz were some of the greatest times of my life. German lieder is so beautiful, and I'm always amazed by the hordes of lieder that I don't know or haven't heard. The German lied composers were just so damn prolific! I flipped through some scores and decided to listen to his Morike lieder (songs set to poems by the German poet Morike). And that was it. I'm in love. I've sung some of his music before, but one particular piece, Verborgenheit (which means secrecy), tore me up inside. I sat in the little study carrell at the library, tears rolling down my cheeks, while I listened to this gorgeous song. It's moments like these that I know deep in my heart, I'm meant to be a musician. When I first sang through Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 in Vergene's studio at DePauw, I bawled like a baby. The other day in my therapists waiting area, NPR was playing a particularly beautiful Mozart sonata, and I felt my stomach tighten and my adrenaline rush. I can deny it all I want to and say that I'd be happy doing something else, that this profession is too much of a sacrifice, but it wouldn't be true. After I heard Verborgenheit, I rushed to a practice room to sing through it. I had to. It's been a damn long time since I've felt compelled to sing a piece of music, felt that the world might stop turning unless I sang this piece of music RIGHT NOW. For the past year, I've been forcing myself to sing. I haven't really wanted to, but I do it because I'm supposed to and because it's what I've always done. Today I sang because after hearing Verborgenheit, there was nothing else on earth I could do but go and sing it.

Today, I had to sing. And it felt so good.