Usually, right at this moment, I am at one of many locations in my neighborhood, outside.  Walking.  Rain or shine, cold or heat, I have been walking.  Looking at the sunrise, watching the clouds, observing the few other socially-distancing dog walkers or runners or the occasional package pirate on a scooter streaming away with their prize.

There is supposed to be snow falling outside my window right now, but I live in the great DC Snow Hole, so what we have instead is freezing wind with the promise of freezing rain as the invisible sun moves on its invisible journey around the planet. But, in the expectation of snow, I had set aside these early moments, not for trudging through the frozen water, but for writing down some of my trudging thoughts.  I want to take a few moments as light returns to the day to talk about — birds. Birds and music.

Some mornings, it seems the birds are my only companions on my walk.  And I have been, over and over again, astonished at the population of birds in my mid-city neighborhood.  Oh, and I have learned that robins, those harbingers of spring about whom we wax poetic, are actually greedy little nomads who will go wherever food is present.  There are some fat specimens here right now, surrounded by berry trees and plenty of good eats.

But while the birds have brought me solace during these pandemic walking times, and while they have helped me develop my focus on the smaller, more valuable gifts of creation all around me, even now, in this December season, their morning presence has made me think about music.  My music, specifically, or, should I say, my recorded music.

Since it ’tis the season, it is the time of year when I post about my holiday album, Weihnachtsfreude, which I recorded  several years ago.   I usually, once again, share the video that I produced of little-known art song by the French composer Cecile Chaminade, a woman, working in the heady, creative time that was the Fin de siècle music and art scene in France.  While she is mostly known to us as a composer for piano, she did write several beautiful songs (with amazing piano music included), and I was obsessed with one of them, “Le Noël des Oiseaux,” using a text by the French poet,  Armand Silvestre (1837-1901).

Maybe my attachment to Chaminade’s music comes from a childhood remembrance of learning her Scarf Dance as one of my first solo piano pieces for recital.  Or maybe it is female solidarity.  But I find the music lush and evocative, satisfying to perform over and over again (these are important qualities when recording), and it was the discovery of this piece that drove me to record a program of Christmas music.  Since it has been my custom to share this video each year after Thanksgiving, I thought, well, I will start here.  Surely there must have been something about the totality of the piece that drew me, something that spoke to me through the words as well as the music.

I sat down to reflect and write.  I pulled up the lyrics, I translated the French.  And I thought to myself, what a banal set of words.  At best, a word picture of a place and time, an impression only.  This would be appropriate, given that the words come from one of the great poets of the end of the 19th century, whose words were set to music by the likes of Gabriel Fauré, and so many others.  For the life of me, I could not understand what drew me so to this music.

Now, weeks later, I finally understand.  And I only understand because of my morning walks, and my friends the birds.  On the surface, the singer’s words seem, well, superficial.  Walking home from church, looking at the snow, noticing the birds…tra la la la la, right?  No.  If you look closer at the text, this is not just a prayer that the birds survive the winter. Perhaps It is not just a song about birds as representatives of the angels, but a song where the image of birds substitutes for the hungry children and the victims of war that were also so very present in Chaminade’s time and place.

In Sylvestre’s poetry, we often find a significant thread of a call to social justice.  And just as the most famous of Baroque composers set deeply philosophical texts about life and death to dance music, Chaminade has set these words to music that draws us in, that promises us a happy afternoon dancing in the snow.

And, honestly, maybe that is what she intended.  With all art, we read backwards, do we not?  We project our own meaning onto paintings and music, meaning that the artists never considered as they created the thing we hold so dear.

Whatever was in the mind of the creator of word and music presented here, I realize that I, the performer, saw and felt more.  There is for me some call buried here to notice the least among us, to stop, for even a moment, in the morning’s quiet, and acknowledge the presence of the birds that sing to me of their part in the world.

I hope you will listen, and, if you are interested, here is a link to a good translation of the text. I have no idea what you will hear, my friends.  But I offer this to you with a full heart, and good wishes for the season.