You, Neighbor God

(SATB choir, piano, tenor solo)

Program Notes

            I have been struggling with this text since I came across in in the back of the Liturgy of the Hours in 1996. I am deeply attracted by the way Rilke turns the traditional God/human relationship on its head and imagines the vulnerability of the incarnate Word. The idea that God is waiting for me to turn toward God it stunning, and the concept that the only barrier between God and me are my limited conceptions of God… 24 years, and this text still has something to teach me.

            My dear friend, Travis Crouse, died suddenly last October (2018). Travis was complicated. He was born and raised Catholic, but had a very complex relationship with God, too. He was a “mercenary tenor” at the Episcopal cathedral in Des Moines, because he appreciated their music and their acceptance, but he continued to attend Catholic church as well. Travis was also an avocational musician. He was an exceptional tenor, and had been active in choir in high school, but—rather than studying music like he wanted—he went to community college and got a degree in computer science. He could be kind and generous. He also had his “inner drag queen,” Mercedes, who was as perceptive + catty as anyone could be. I can’t fit my conception of Travis into words. And when he died so suddenly, I was heartbroken. The only way I could process it was through music.

            This piece, which I actually wrote in one sitting, is—to me—the intersection of all of this: Rilke’s unorthodox conception of God, Travis’s complex relationship with God, Travis’s love of music and all of his unfulfilled goals and dreams.  The opening motif was where the piece came from. I was sitting at the piano, trying to understand my grief, and that’s what came out. Throughout, there is a poignant half-step dissonance (usually tonic and subtonic), which indicates that, even in beauty, life is imperfect. I have the voices enter in an unaccompanied beat because—in the end—all we have are people and our relationships. The external scaffolding eventually departs. The cluster chord on “alone” is my indication that we’re never really alone; we just might not recognize it.

            I also changed keys there because I felt like this was a different idea. I chose the Dominant because it leads back to tonic. This return to tonic is on “I am quite near” for obvious reasons. It then has a substantial tenor solo. That’s for Travis. The rocking accompaniment beneath the solos section has a three-fold meaning: the rocking of a child; the rocking of waves; rocking in grief. Harmonically, that section doesn’t really go anywhere, because it’s behind a wall, and the quasi-whispers that conclude that section represent the secrets that we don’t want to admit; that wall between us and God—a wall of our own creating—could be banished if we just took the risk to do so. The piano here is at the extremes of the keyboard, creating an open space for the voice in the middle. In the next section, about names, the hymn tune "Grosser Gott, wir loben dich” is in the accompaniment (“Holy God, we praise Thy Name”) while singers recapture the opening motif. The two concepts exist in contention: name against will; institution against spirit.

            The form of the piece, key-wise, is ABACA. The B section went to the Dominant, so I took the C section to the Subdominant, for balance with otherwise very similar material. However, at the reprise of the opening material, the bass in the piano now has an insistent pedal point. There is a purpose. There is a goal. We’ve wandered, but now we know there’s something worthwhile about all of this. It builds toward a robust finish, in our exile…which should be sad and dissonant, but I chose not to make it either. In the end, it’s about everyday life, which has beauty in it, too. And at the end, our homeless ways are back to C major. Soft and reflective. Hope, but in sadness, too. Because we are exiled, and our ways are homeless until we reach the end of our way. And then, it’s perfect.

You, Neighbor God [PDF]

You, neighbor god, if sometimes in the night
I rouse you with loud knocking, I do so
only because I seldom hear you breathe
and know: you are alone.
And should you need a drink, no one is there
to reach it to you, groping in the dark.
Always I hearken. Give but a small sign.
I am quite near.

Between us there is but a narrow wall,
and by sheer chance; for it would take
merely a call from your lips or from mine
to break it down,
and that without a sound.

The wall is builded of your images.

They stand before you hiding you like names.
And when the light within me blazes high
that in my inmost soul I know you by,
the radiance is squandered on their frames.

And then my senses, which too soon grow lame,
exiled from you, must go their homeless ways.

"You, Neighbor God" by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Babette Deutch, from Poems from the Book of Hours, copyright © 1 941