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I can hear the music changing

I sense the beat is changing, the melody transforming, a measure being added to our song. Even though confined to quarters, still I hear the music. Could it be a new song is being composed?

Maybe so.

I’m optimistic when it comes to new musical compositions, and here’s why: Despite reports to the contrary and many performances that supported the proposition — the music never died.

But it’s been pretty weird at times. Discordant, with no discernible rhythm, it’s nothing anyone can dance to. What it does is create distances and widen ones already there. New groups are formed who can’t sing; they struggle to make rhymes — but these guys aren’t poets.

So the music has suffered.

Politicians have picked up on the theme, but many can only sing solo. They have no clue how to lead a choir, how to bring all our varied voices together — basses, baritones, tenors, altos, mezzo-sopranos, and sopranos — in a universal song.

Some of these politician conductors have prevented people from voting, worked to deny basic freedoms.

How can we expect them to lead us in a song?

To conduct a choir or an orchestra takes great skill. To meld tones so as to move us requires virtuosity of a high order, but, when expertly done, produces harmonies that sustain us.

We can lose them if we don’t use them.

“A long, long time ago —

I can still remember how

music used to make me smile.

And I knew if I had my chance

I could make those people dance

And maybe they’d be happy for a while.”

Then,

“I went down to the sacred store,

Where I’d heard the music years before,

But the man there said

The music wouldn’t play.”

— “American Pie,” Don Mclean

What a difference days can make.

Maybe I was spoiled and took too much for granted. Maybe I didn’t listen as closely as I should have. Maybe I should have noticed sooner and reacted earlier when I first heard those discordant voices.

Possibly the greatest composer of all time worked through unique substantial adversity to develop a new style of music. He began going deaf when only 26 and was totally so when he composed his last and greatest work — the Ninth Symphony. It was something new. Not just an orchestra, it was a choral symphony, a coming together of orchestra, soloists, and choir. Beethoven’s final movement in his Ninth is the ” Ode to Joy,” an anthem to the brotherhood of humanity.

It is, perhaps, the most performed symphony in the world. Many churchgoers will recognize one of its melodies as the hymn, “Joyful, Joyful, we adore thee”

Now, I listen more closely to Judy Collins and Pete Seeger when I hear their song, “Turn, Turn, Turn,” attend with renewed appreciation to Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence,” hear its message delivered with great expression by the group Disturbance.

I can listen in my mind to Artie Saw playing ” Star Dust,” to Jo Stafford singing “You Belong to Me,” and I can dance to them when I’m all alone, but I’d rather not dance by myself.

Now, we stay apart because we’re working together. My hope is that, when the parting ends, we remain together and can dance to the music I hear being written.

Doug Pugh’s “Vignettes” runs weekly on Saturdays. He can be reached at pughda@gmail.com.

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