Those sidelines were magical. Even before the concert, I got emails and missives from chorus members and a mother of one, and one who was in her 40’s, a volunteer out of love of music.

Joseph Eppink and his women from the College of the Saint Rose Women’s Chorale delivered a sensitive performance, which showed they understood what I was writing about, namely, a daughter (me) who had lost her mother, a daughter who had not resolved all the issues with her mother.

As that daughter, I had to write a requiem in gratitude to my mother Irene, because there was not that final word between us that I wanted to have taken place. Closure and resolution, so crucial to music, took place on a higher level because I turned it over to others.

It takes courage to perform a work, which is both thematically and musically difficult. It also takes courage for a conductor to entrust this work to young budding and maturing college singers, whose life experience lay largely before them. I wondered if perhaps I should have restricted this work to more mature choruses, but how can you put clamps on on your music? But they got it–the fact that I was struggling with life, death, laughter, tenderness and love, and everything in between in this work, and that I was, by the way, a Lesbian (although the word does not occur in the Requiem). They took in as they would information on any work.

This essay would not be complete if I did not ask what it takes in the choral world, when I hear raves, tears, gratitude, enlightenment, insight, and growth from people, for this work to find acceptance. Bach did not have it easy in his life, and as my mentor, I have learned from him that art is not about the moment (although it is certainly so during any performance), but for serving a higher purpose, about acceptance, insight, transcendence and joy.

As the director wrote me after the concert: “I chose a piece that challenged us in many ways in addition to the music. We took a journey together that was sometimes extremely pain-filled but none without many laughs and terms of endearment along the way. I thank you for that. You gave our musicians, me, the audience, and our college a wonderful gift.”

One the following day, he wrote to me:

“As I was driving to work this morning, the tears started and they wouldn’t stop. You see, my grandmother died 2 years ago and it had been a few years since we had spoken. . . . . It was very sad and I didn’t even know she died until about a month following. Anyhow, this morning driving in it totally hit me… “If I could see you one more time, what would I say to you… could this second chance with you ease the pain inside…” Perhaps now I’m finally ready to say “blessed be” and allow that part of me to heal.

And from one singer to her conductor:
“Just wanted to let you know how much I’ve appreciated the entire experience this semester…. I was out of my element on many levels but I pushed myself and had fun…. had a lot of laughs last night, behind the scenes and came away with a new found outlook on my relationship with my own mother…. which has for the last seven years, been strained…to the point that we haven’t spoken in the last two.”

I treasure these letters, of which I have received many from other performances with similar emotions and themes.

Composing this work was/is worth the struggle.

Thank you for your love and support.

Congratulations to you Naomi on your new, expanded website and the recent performances of your splendid composition, Mater in Memoriam for your mother Irene, and Ancient Christmas Carols in Rome and San Francisco. When you asked me to write a guest editorial, I fell into musing on the subject of Lesbianism as a special challenge for Classical musicians, especially Lesbian composers.

As a child, I had many occupational daydreams, doctor, inventor, publisher, artist, but although I had already begun to compose small, childlike compositions at the piano, it never occurred to me that I could grow up to become a composer. This realm seemed to be forbidden territory for a woman.

In thinking back on these childhood forays, I distinctly remember that they were usually inspired by my love of some particular woman, either my mother, a favorite teacher or girlfriend, or even a Hollywood star (Ingrid Bergman, for example).

In other words, my compositions were inspired by, and dedicated to a Muse.

The role of the Muse, a female figure, is reflected in the root word for Music.
One might ask, why is the Muse a woman? Is there such a thing as a male
Muse? And if not, why not?

Which line of thinking led to me a strange but fascinating conclusion. The reason women composers are so suspect is that there is an element of unconscious
Lesbianism intrinsic in the very fact of their composing. A woman writing love songs for a Woman? Sappho got thrown over the cliff for such an outrage.

Of course there have always been female composers along the way—(Hildegard of Bingen, Clara Schuman, Alma Mahler, and that composer with the greatest number of compositions of all: Anonymous). But it wasn’t until the third wave of Feminism which broke in the late 60’s/early 70’s, that woman musicians and troubadours started to come into their own, Chris Williamson, Tret Fure, Meg Christian, Sue Fink, to name a few. However, these Lesbian composers tended to remain ghettoized, writing music for and about Lesbians solely.

Naomi has taken a courageous and dangerous step, composing choral works intended not only for Lesbians, but also with universal appeal for all women, and men for that matter. She can tell you what resistance and obstacles she has encountered in getting her work widely distributed. This rejection and deliberate neglect is not only an insult to an artist, it represents severe financial hardship. Maybe she should write about that sometime.

Back to the question of the relationship of Muse to Music. The patron saint of music is St. Cecilia. Faust’s Muse was Gretchen. As Goethe succinctly put it, “Das Ewig Weibliche zieht uns hinan.” The Eternal Feminine draws up upwards). It seems that woman alone has the power to draw out of men and women heavenly aspirations, the desire to dance and sing and at the same time, to become a better person.

Could this also mean that women are intrinsically superior to men? Hm.

To end with a quote from one of my poems, Roadsong:

I am amazed at our fatal amusement with mazes.
I am amused with our futile amazement at muses.

Sue Carroll Moore, LCSW, ASCAP

***

Editor’s Note: Sue Carroll Moore has had a long and illustrious career as a poet, playwright, writer, therapist, and feminist activist. She single handedly was responsible for the organizing forces to help pass the ERA in Indiana in 1977, the last State to do so before Phyllis Schlafly stepped in with her scare tactics to quash the movement.
Sue’s poetry inspires me every time I read it, and I have set a good half dozen of her poems to music, including Spring Song, and Learn to think Lizard, both on naomimusic.com, and in the books we co-authored, Fulfill Your Soul’s Purpose. We have worked together for over 30 years to help people find their purpose in life (long before Rick Warren).
You can read about her work at www.lifemissionassociates.com, where Sue heads the Editorial page, as well as the internet therapy program she is designing. You can reach her at smoore9375@aol.com

Here’s what people are writing me currently about this work:

The conductor: “Thank you, thank you, thank you, for giving us this gift of Mimi (Mater in Memoriam). Each time I’m rehearsing it, I find something new, an new idea, a new thought, a new profound sense. You are amazing!” Dr. J. Eppink

And a fellow artist friend: “Congratulations Naomi! I remember the West Coast Premiere in Ventura California. Beeee-U-ti-ful! Passionate! Heartwrenching! Inspiring! Break legs, tongues and baton!” - J. Nelson, audience

Dr. Stephan, I am a community “add on” to Dr. Eppink’s St. Rose Women’s Chorale. I want to tell you that it is an honor to perform Mater in Memoriam: For Irene. I find your work a truly brilliant work of art. I would like to describe the musical specifics which I admire in your composition, but I am not that sophisticated. I just recognize mastery when I see it, and genuine human feeling communicated in a way I understand. - Doris S.

Having just heard the St John Passion of Bach on Good Friday in a packed Berlin church in sweltering heat, I was struck how Bach portrayed Jesus as a determined and defiant man who had a mission and was willing to die under excruciating pain for that mission to bring salvation to others. Now the story itself demands quite a stretch of imagination. But, here was no escaping that message: Jesus symbolizes someone who bothered to care.

Whether or not you believe in a real Jesus, the message of service is clear: “for this cause am I come.” How many people can really say why they are here? Or even worse, really care. “Hey I’m hear to make $10,000 on a short term forex trade.” PUHLEAZE.

Sometime back, Jon Stewart really lambasted a guy who wrote a book about short trading. As I recall, Stewart said something to the effect: didn’t that life have to do with service? I wanted to stand up and shout hurray that someone in TVland thinks there is value in serving others.

(I too find the loathsome practice of short trading, scalping the market, forex trading, and the like is the perfect example of people doing nothing concrete but pushing numbers back and forth. Make a buck, greed, the almighty (!)dollar, make a killing instead of rolling up your sleeves and doing something for humanity. Oh, I am sure these guys give all their money to charity. )

And lest you think I am ms goody two shoes, I’ve traveled, gotten a higher education, and written books and musical compositions, an opportunity I know others have not had or perhaps never will had. No one ever writes classical music to get rich. But I did it all on my own dime. No get rich schemes to fund them.

Lack of service is pervasive, insidious and frightening in its acedia. Acedia being the 7th deadly sin of sloth, not caring, indifference, apathy. Don’t bother me with anything that might require commitment, reliability, caring responsibility–or my time and energy

I live in a country now that has the worst notion of service I have ever encountered. Go to a store, shut up and don’t ask questions. Find what you are looking for yourself: what do you think–I am paid for helping you find anything?

My favorite example: I called a Danish do it yourself store to get a part that was missing in a box I had just bought from that store. After trying a number of times to for someone to answer the phone, I called back the next day at a different time. Yes, they had heard the phone, but didn’t answer. “When we have customers standing at the checkout, the last thing on our minds is to answer the phone,” was the answer I got. Don’t bother me, in other words.

Don’t call up to complain, you will have a short course in Kafka’s “Before the Law, a short piece in his novel Amerika in which a suppliant waits to enter the law. Don’t bother he is told, and finds he isn’t allowed admittance by the doorkeeper, and even if he were, there would be even bigger doorkeepers and gates to go through. At the end of his life Gregor, weak and unable to move, asks again why he couldn’t enter and was told, this door is only for you. Only you can enter.

Service is never saying you are sorry or that you will look into resolving the matter at hand. You can stand in line, with a sign saying to notify the personnel when more than 5 people are standing, and when it does, it takes 10 minutes for someone to bother to get to the check out, who then lets all the people standing in the back to second check out line first. I pointed out this wasn’t fair, and was looked at with a blank face.

So how to end this on a positive note? A quick fix solution? I haven’t got that. What I do have is the certainty that caring, compassion, concern, commitment, devotion, responsibility will never be easy, but always rewarding, These qualities reap untold rewards.

Perhaps loving something that really matters.

As I sit on your birthday listening to the B Minor Mass, I am stunned once again at your power, genius, fervent faith, your untiring energy and devotion to your craft. In spite of losing parents at an early age, and your first wife suddenly, you forged a life unparalleled in most of male history, (Hildegard of Bingen, Jeanne d’Arc, Sophie Scholl being major female counterparts of yours, for different reasons).

To be sure, you had help, and they are not to be forgotten: Anna Magdalena Bach, one of your librettists, Christiane Mariane von Ziegler, and no doubt your children, who copied for you.

As a feminist, I sometimes have problems that you omitted women from your family tree. Or that none of your female children ever became composers. I wonder just how much Anna Magdalena actually wrote on her own, under your pen.

Nevertheless, I have to see you in perspective. You lived at just the right time to write what you did and powerfully as you did, remaining unrecognized in your lifetime. That wasn’t the point. No Christmas bonus for you; no, you gave that to us.

The creative process needs dedication, not vacation. But for a few trips, you eschewed travel and lolling about in the sun in more southerly climes, like many of your modern day countrypeople, not taking every opportunity to have a day off, six weeks of vacation, or Saturday and Sunday free. Instead you amassed an oeuvre of over a thousand works, instead of a garage full of castoff, ephemeral toys.

From you I learned that Aries determination, that drive so prevalent in your works.

Thanks for the incredible music.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

You came out of nowhere, on July 29, 1986. Like an Angel. Nadine knocked on the door and said “I’ve got a present for you.“ How did she know it was my birthday?
You fit into my hand, big ears and covered with fleas. Wonderful markings, a black spot on your left side, ears surrounded by grey-black half circles with an extra dab thrown in.

I didn’t want you at first, I must confess. I called Sue and asked what to do, and she said “Take her,” and so I did.
Worms, fleas, playfulness and all. Straight to the vet to clear things up, and off we went for a house sitting visit to Janet. I remember you, full of energy, bounding down the house wanting to go out, but I was too afraid to let you explore yet.

At Marine Street, your paradise, you grew and caught birds, made friends with Sesame, who taught you all sorts of cat secrets, and you generally kept us together. Of course, you got into trouble and ended up on the neighbor’s roof and we were frantic with worry on how to get you back. Jack threw a ladder across from one roof to the other, and the ye old faithful cooked chicken in a pot lured you back across to safety.

Times were good, you feasted on Trader Joe’s tuna and crunchies, climbed trees and chased squirrels, and endured our fights. You got to know Mutz and Judy, Julia and the gang. Each night you slipped under the covers - I never could figure out how you managed to breathe. In the middle of the night, though, I could hear the sound of crunchies, as reassuring as my parents quiet chatter in the car on a vacation trip.

One day, however, the wonderful days at Marine came to an end, and I remember seeing you at the top of the stairs all hunched together looking down at me, unaware of what was going to happen, but somehow calm and strong.

I came back on the evening of Feb. 15, 1992 to say goodbye to you as Sue was going to care for you. I could barely stand being apart from you, and was overjoyed to see you again a few months later when you took possession of Judy’s house and became top cat.

it was good there in Venice, plenty of places to explore, and every night we slept together. In May of 1993 I got a chance to move to Redondo Beach with you where you had a whole backyard to play in, a double door to perch on, and I could be there every day except when I had to leave you to go to West LA for clients.

Sue came down to visit a couple of times, and you always seemed to perk up when we chatted and placed yourself right in the middle of the conversation creating a beautiful triangle. I remember those triangles fondly.

Then in the fall you were off with Sue again, this time to Palms, and I drifted around from Agoura to here and there, ending up joining her and the three of us survived confinement, earthquakes and moving.

There we have the most beautiful photo of you on the bed on Sue’s quilt, your contentment belying the earthquake which had happened, a time where you found the one place to hide in an instant - behind the sofa.

You got out once and we searched frantically for you for days. I was so relieved when we found you as the psychic had said “where a trash barrel is near an outside stairway.” There you were all right. Yippee!

Then we were off to North Carolina with a carton of TJ’s tuna, and you were so good on the plane. Not a peep or anything. You settled right in and we became pals especially for our nighttime ball game at 11 PM.

I fear sometimes, Angel, that I have taken you for granted, but I have always loved you and cherished our time together. I always made sure someone would take care of you when I was gone, and remember returning after a trip and finding that you had begun to get sick.

Well, that awful Asheville vet really cut you up, and you were never quite the same after that.

You never complained, and rolled with the punches, but I knew you missed LA. When Leo came on the scene, I discovered he was a bully, and I knew we had to get you out of there. One lovely June day, while you were out on the balcony, we whisked you into the cat carrier down to Charlotte, and you got to come home. Sue said you purred from the moment you got out of the cage.

I came some time later, and had to spend a few months apart from you again, after the summer heat of Ojai
ended and it was cooler and more to your liking.

And here you have been with me since 1998 - a wonderful almost 7 years. We came close to putting you away in 2001 but you survived another 4 years and tolerated Moon and Alix and Diesel and finally Brandy Bandit.

Much of the last few years you had to lie on your chair and come for food every few hours. Wet bathroom floors and throw-ups were almost a daily occurrence, yet you never complained.

I am so sorry Angel, that your end had to be so tortured. You handled so bravely, swaying to and fro on rubbery legs trying to find any way to stand up, twisting and turning with pain. When your leg slowly came back down to the floor, I knew it was over. I put you on your red heating pad on the sofa for just a while, and then we wrapped you in a towel with Sue’s initial on it.

And now you rest in peace my beloved Angel. A bouquet of flowers stands over your temporary resting place outside. I wish I could have done it differently.

The next morning, I went to Mary’s. We put you on her kitchen table and remembered, amidst pink roses from the rose hip bush, all the wonderful things about you, including bites on the feet and insistence on your way. I rubbed your
soft pads again and again and then kissed your head.

I placed the last big red rose from the garden on you and Mary wrapped you in a required black plastic bag and we accompanied you to join the ethers. “Angel” the woman said at the pound, when she asked for your name, as it she were savoring a fine wine. I patted you once more and said a final good bye.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you have given me in these 19 years. I miss you at every turn in the house - in the bathroom where your box and dish were, after eating cereal when the rice dream collects at the bottom, yes even at night when I got up and found you waiting for food, and in a hundred different ways I discover daily.

You have taught me so much, and I still will listen to you from beyond to tell me what you have to say. I will never forget you and thank you for your kindness to me.

Thanks for being there for me. Thanks for being you.

Naomi

July 29,

I attended a Youth Symphony Concert on Monday evening in Ojai (CA), and a choral festival the next day in another county. By my tally, in the Youth Symphony there were there were eight composers, and none of them were women. In the choral festival, we heard pieces from 42 composers in all of which 35 were male and 5 female, or a ratio of 7:1.

What message are we giving to kids? To the public? To the audience? No wonder I have heard many times that women “just can’t hack it as composers. If it were not so, there would be pieces to play.” I suppose by that reasoning, we could have said that blacks and women can’t hack it as athletes, until Jackie Robinson broke the barrier, or women got Title IX. And now the best down hill ski jump effort is from an 18 year old Norwegian woman, who bested all her teammates, but still can’t compete in the Olympics. Why? Well, there just aren’t that many women ski jumpers around to make the event worth practical. Do Olympic Committee men really have this kind of logic?

I will continue to be a composer activist, no matter what the obstacles out there.

Find a cause you believe in and go for it. Just make sure it doesn’t exclude people from their rights.

Naomi

I have been discussing with a colleague on a music list, the importance and relevance of gender to music and how being a Lesbian can have a profound effect on one’s performance, i.e. to identify with the text one is singing.

People have been writing me with sentences something like this: “As a long-time singer, composer and conductor of a variety of choral ensembles, I fail to see any relevance whatsoever as to sexual orientation” shows me that I see things very differently from the straight world.

The most important point he made was that in singing a song, we are all disenfrachised from our subject to a certain extent, in that we cannot be in the shoes of the person completely and utterly, and thus must find a way to express the content and emotion of the song no matter what our personal reference point is. He related that his daughter was told to think of a cat she loved while singing a song about a woman in love with her newly wed husband, since the daughter had had problems with men in the past, and could not use this image to connect. You can always find a way to connect even if disenfranchised, was his point. I replied:

“Your points are interesting and cogent. Obviously, each of us cannot ever be in the exact same shoes of the poet or the songwriter, and must find some way to connect to the person or situation one is singing about. For example, as a person who scarcely ever goes digging in the garden, let alone uses a shovel, I cannot be even close to a Gravedigger in “Gravedigger’s Lament” although I can connect with his pain. (In my desperation to avoid love songs to a man I picked such songs for my voice lessons, and my teacher
couldn’t understand why I wanted to sing such dark strange material. At the time I wasn’t able to talk about my sexual origin.)”

“But the cat as a reference point to one’s beloved when one is singing about a wedding ring? Mon Dieu. As a voice teacher, I find that a bit of a stretch, but I guess to each her own. But here is where the analogy ends.”

“In a psychology experiment, two groups were given a test to take, in adjoining soundproof rooms. Both were presented with heavy distracting and jarring music accompanying their test taking. Group A however, was given the option to press a button and turn off the music. Who had the best scores? Group A of course. Ah but here is the rub. Group A did NOT turn off the jarring music. The perception that they COULD, in the conclusion of the psychologists, constituted the leading edge for them.”

“Perceiving one’s self as having options whether actual or imagined is the point here. Given options, I can step into any role that I desire. Now suppose your daughter was told: you can choose a cat but remember it is wrong to love cats, you will sin if you do, you will be considered a freak, you could lose your job, get an F in class, or be ridiculed. How well would your daughter connect by picking a beloved cat as her reference point? It would invalidate her participation, to use your words.”

So then, in the land of cat discrimination, I would tell her, okay, you can pick the cat as long as you imagine that the cat is a woman (because that would be acceptable in this mythical kingdom). Ah but I don’t want to be singing to a woman! Besides, who wants to go through such machinations?

Dawn Upshaw held a master class in voice, which I recently attended. A young singer picked a Strauss song in which a woman clearly sings to a woman. The Soprano expressed difficulty with this, so Upshaw said, “just replace her with a man. Not “Just imagine a woman you love and sing to her.” That clearly was not an option for Upshaw.

I so wanted to sing Schumann’s Dichterliebe in my student days in Germany, but as my accompanist cautioned, “Well, you know what kind of women would want to do THAT.” At the time it didn’t take much to squelch me and my feelings. Again, it invalidated my participation. This is what countless gay and lesbian musicians have suffered through the years, some surviving better than others. Most of us have unconsciously internalized the negation of our very beings.

Now I know it is okay to sing Dichterliebe and I have done so for years. But that hasn’t yet translated itself into the general audience acceptance.

My last thought: even Charlize Theron could find her way to portray a
prostitute who killed a number of men. But you will note that in almost all cases where a Lesbian (which I believe she was not even if so designated) is the character, she is played by straights? (”The Children’s Hour”, “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Monster” and of late “The L Word” on Cable). Lesbian characters hit the big screen only when they have a defect, are deranged, die, kill or are sex crazed. No goodness, no greatness of character, no redemption.

I find it highly ironic, incidentally, that Lesbians are not selected to portray Lesbians. But this is a digression.

Kind regards,

Naomi