A Dance of Light and Shadows

"Receive, O Mystery, the words of our hearts."   Lindsay Bates

Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings keeps finding me.  The first time this music found me was in September of 1971. I was in the small listening room(closet) of the music suite of the Enterprise State Junior College, Enterprise, Alabama. I pulled the album of the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Eugene Ormandy off the shelf. I removed the album from the cover and gently placed it on the platter. I put the headphones over my ears, lowered the needle to the record and was immediately transfigured.

Traveling on I-24 west yesterday morning out of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Adagio for Strings found me again. Well, it didn't literally find me on either occasion, did it?  I played that music in 1971 and I played it in my car yesterday morning.  But the music has a way of surprising me in ways  that I could never expect and could never put into words. At the junior college in that very moment "Classical music" suddenly became something powerful and beautiful instead of something to just be admired and appreciated. Since I had declared myself as a music major, it couldn't have happened at a better time. Yesterday morning this same music transformed me in a different way.

It is the nature of a "mystical experience" that it can't be put into words.  If you could explain it then it wouldn't be mystical. If the most incredible mystical experience I have ever had was a 10, then I would only rate the one yesterday  as about a 2.  But it was powerful enough. The thing that made this experience unique is that it reminded me of another experience with Adagio for Strings that happened years ago.  So I was simultaneously experiencing something new  and remembering again what happened twenty five years ago.  Since my conscious brain doesn't know the difference between a live experience and a memory, it became a stereophonic enigma.

About twenty five years ago I was leaving my church on Signal Mountain, Tennessee heading for home in Ringgold, Georgia. It was about 8pm  in a drizzling rain.  When I got to the foot of the mountain and started across Chattanooga, I put in my cassette tape of Adagio for Strings. Then something happened. As the music started so did a dance of light.  Beams of light shown down from street lights and distant buildings to my car. As my car moved, the beams of light moved with it.  As one of the beams let go the next one reflected from water droplets on  my car to the source of the light.  It was if one beam handed itself off to the next one.  The beams surrounded me and were in constant motion. The light was choreographed  with the incredible music.  Who or what was the choreographer? The phenomenon continued for several minutes and several miles.  As soon as the piece was over, the light show disappeared.

Yesterday morning the sun was just peeking over the horizon flooding the landscape with orange splendor.  As Adagio for Strings began playing the light danced in a new and different way. The interstate was flanked by a multitude of tall trees and the rising sun was out of sight behind the trees.  The light and shadows alternately bombarded me in rapid fire fashion. At 65 miles per hour the frequency of the exchange of light and shadow was dramatic.  Although I simultaneously recalled that night in Chattanooga, it was the dazzling orange  light demanding my attention.  I don't know if the light affected the music or the music affected the light. Whichever happened,  the combination of these stimuli and the transcendent beauty of the morning sun reflected from Tennessee River was ethereal.

Barber composed Adagio for Strings in 1936 for a string quartet.  He later transcribed the piece for full orchestra. This piece is usually performed world-wide for a full orchestra.  In 1967 he transcribed his music for a cappella chorus using the text Agnus Dei from the liturgical Latin Mass. Agnus Dei is what I was listening to yesterday. "Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi (Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world)".  I can't think of a better way to begin a trip and start a day than by having my sins bathed away in a canopy of music and light.