Angels Within

She lifted the little glass angel to its designated branch and stood back, her eyes losing it in the glow of the Christmas tree, her soul believing it was there.

At times

the angels within us sleep

only as the stars sleep

in the noonday sky

in the reality

that doesn’t know us

as our dreams do.

 

Praying for non-violence to prevail
in the New Year and beyond.

Copyright 2012 DM Denton

 

Wishing you love, health and happiness
– many blessings –
for the holiday season
and 2015

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.

Repost: Contemplation on Saint Cecilia – Feast Day: November 22nd

The martyred Saint Cecilia (2nd Century) is the patron saint of music, musicians, and poetry.

I’m so grateful for all the arts, including music and poetry, and for those who participate in them in whatever way they are inspired to.

So, every year I like to repost my prose-poem below in honor of Saint Cecilia’s Feast Day, which is November 22nd.

As she was dying she sang to God. It is also written that as the musicians played at her wedding she “sang in her heart to the Lord” … and that she listened to the voices of angels.

Copyright 2012 by DM Denton

 

 

If music was a light, it would sound brighter in the dark. Like the glow around the moon, it would fade to illuminate the stars.

If music was composed of rays, it would lift the mist from the world, until its brilliance played across the skies not silenced by the clouds.

If music was a mirror, it would reflect each soul that listened.

If music was eternity, it would be heard beyond all breathing, accompanied by the heartstrings of the angels, never to be broken.

If music was silence, it would be for our ears to hear nothing but its calling us to paradise.

 

 

 

“Oohs” and “aahs” made Master Purcell’s cheeks pinker as he took the hand of Leonora and brought her forward. Unfortunately, cheers and even whistles greeted the prospect of her singing ‘She Loves and She Confesses Too’ accompanied by a self-directed Charles Coleman on the theorbo. Her bright eyes and voice, swelling chest and gestures were unashamed and confident that honor was no match for love—a meaning Donatella’s mother helped her understand. No translation was necessary when a long-faced Henrietta stepped up to insist on concealment of the heart’s desire, a nobler course than pleading for or forcing love, so it was lost to silence in the grave. Despondency sighed out with her breath, Leonora only agreeing as her echoing part required. The divergence and blend of their crying vocals was joined in a dramatic and richly harmonic final section by Master Purcell singing bass, all three voices slowing and softening until they culminated in a single sound of grief.

Stillness inescapably filled the room like smoke overcoming its occupants, only broken by fits of throats clearing and coughing. Donatella squeezed her mother’s hand or her mother squeezed hers, as aware as everyone else there was more despair to come. Draghi, who had claimed the harpsichord again, followed William Turner’s sudden falsetto into ‘A Dark and Melancholy Grove’. The countertenor’s head and chest voice mixed on waves of low and high emotions, his consonants clear and vowels open, nothing about his singing pushed and yet such force in its exhibition; creating a pain in Donatella so deep and beautiful, pleasure could never again be preferable.

A swelling grief siezes on ev’ry string,
And I weep when I should sing.

~ Excerpt from To A Strange Somewhere Fled (sequel to A House Near Luccoli) VERY SOON to be published by All Things That Matter Press.

 

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.

Contemplation on Saint Cecilia – Feast Day: November 22nd

The martyred Saint Cecilia (2nd Century) is the patron saint of music, musicians, and poetry.

I am reposting my prose-poem below in honor of Saint Cecilia’s Feast Day, which is today, November 22nd.  I won’t share any gruesome story about her death and matrydom, just that as she was dying she sang to God. It is also written that as the musicians played at her wedding she “sang in her heart to the Lord” … and that she listened to the voices of angels.

I give thanks for all the arts, including music and poetry.

If music was a light, it would sound brighter in the dark. Like the glow around the moon, it would fade to illuminate the stars.

If music was composed of rays, it would lift the mist from the world, until its brilliance played across the skies not silenced by the clouds.

If music was a mirror, it would reflect each soul that listened.

If music was eternity, it would be heard beyond all breathing, accompanied by the heartstrings of the angels, never to be broken.

If music was silence, it would be for our ears to hear nothing but its calling us to paradise.

Copyright 2012 by DM Denton

If you wish to read more about Saint Cecilia please check out her listing on Wikipedia.

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.

Contemplation on Saint Cecilia

If music was a light, it would sound brighter in the dark. Like the glow around the moon, it would fade to illuminate the stars.

If music was composed of rays, it would lift the mist from the world, until its brilliance played across the skies not silenced by the clouds.

If music was a mirror, it would reflect each soul that listened.

If music was eternity, it would be heard beyond all breathing, accompanied by the heartstrings of the angels, never to be broken.

If music was silence, it would be for our ears to hear nothing but its calling us to paradise.

Copyright 2012 by DM Denton

The martyred Saint Cecilia (2nd Century) is the patron saint of music, musicians, and poetry.

It is told that as she was dying she sang to God. It is also written that as the musicians played at her wedding she “sang in her heart to the Lord”. Her feast day is celebrated  … November 22.

(Since I first published I have removed the details of Saint Cecilia’s death, as I realized they were taking away from my original intention of this post … to be about light and hope, not darkness or suffering.)

If you wish to read more about Saint Cecilia please check out her listing on Wikipedia.

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.

Musing Music

I’m an un-practiced musician. There grieves the piano, anticipation of my touch buried for now. A guitar excited me for a little while but was, after all, too difficult. There waits a harp, hopeful of my embrace again. My voice still sings, for an audience of angels if they’ve nothing better to do, or as I think I can put the passion I have for a career I never did into words.

And so often the fiction I write–out of history and imagining, love and disappointment, encounter and escape, silence and sound—is musing from and for music (melodious, melancholy, magical music), easier done for its company.

I share a little of my playing with words now, and will probably do so again later. 

   

     

“Musical” excerpt from A House Near Luccoli:

     What was he waiting for? The bow raised his right sleeve, turned his face away and lowered his chin, his own hair covering any expression of nerves. The violin bent his left arm, curling its hand, straightening his shoulders and curving his back so his hips disappeared and legs lengthened, butterfly knotted shoes closely parted like feet on a pedestal table. The slightly past midday sun was a spotlight on the terrace, his creamy coat and the crimson of Margherita’s skirt—no breeze or any kind of movement, not even a cough or whisper.
     Lonati stood and was told to sit down again. Alessandro was perfectly posed for a portrait or memory or the recognition of God, raising his sight, an aspiring suitor preparing to declare his intentions.
     Hands and laps held programs Donatella had duplicated for Una Storia del Cavalieri, Il Trionfo Erroneo di Amore. Alessandro wasn’t confident the Genoese elite would admittedly enjoy it. Unless he kept it at a distance in a self-indulged city like Venezia and accompanied by elaborate sets and costumes, effects and even dancing. There hadn’t been money or time for such an undertaking, so perhaps his hesitation considered how much depended on the manipulation of his music to refine and even refute the folly of its subject. Within moments of his bow sliding into sound a trick was also triumph, holding back impulse for contemplation and swashbuckling for delicacy, putting serenity in strings before the highs and lows of singers. Doriclea loved Fidalbo not Olindo and every note believed her until Alessandro played with them, Lonati following in friendly imitation, the castrato coming forward. Eventually the continuo slowed everyone, underscoring virtuosity and relieving it too if not for long. The principal of obstinato was practiced for connection and contest, a single motif tossed around in slightly different versions like a rumor or hope of one, voices and instruments in competing agreement.
     Alessandro was master of entertaining and editorializing, stealing the show without taking anything from the roles of lovers and go betweens, spoilers and servants—giving character to their romance, farce and delusion. He stood apart from the ensemble with nods for their faithfulness, or squints and frowns for what he hadn’t thought of. Less and less he was concerned with an audience irrelevant to his sense of achievement or regret, artistic isolation suiting him as much as flamboyancy.   

 Copyright © 2010 by DM Denton
All Rights Reserved

Link to my previous post Words and Music.

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.