The Haunted Heaven: Chapter Twenty Five: Approaching Florence 1964
By Michael Moriarty
web posted November 28, 2011
While approaching one of the few, purely divine and heavenly experiences of my life, Florence, Italy 1964, I have been contemplating the size of a Universe that renders us almost insignificant.
I do it while listening to Arthur Honegger's Pastoral d'ete.
It has not been a good day today.
There are times when the whole experience of life seems to make no sense, including the personal crusades one is committed to. This, of course, is merely one of the "tests" the Devil puts us through to weaken our faith.
Job is one of the greatest and most necessary books of the Bible to read. It foretells the likes of Christopher Hitchens telling us, in effect, to "curse God and die".
Such atheists would deny ordering us to die, but they know a Believer's life is so dependent upon such spiritual faith in a Higher Being that the older ones among us, like myself, could not possibly re-orient themselves to a world without The Almighty.
On days like this, with beliefs like Hitchens', life feels like a metaphysical Donner Pass. Surviving such spiritual cannibalism makes onse stronger actually. Not, however, when the Devil is feasting on your previous grace and trust.
Bereft of old supports to faith, new ones arrive; but not before the old ones have been excruciatingly torn away.
I receive lovely photos of my grandchildren from my wonderful daughter-in-law, Ingrid, and I've had the honor and privilege of watching my granddaughters grow up that way; but I haven't visited them much. The only family I feel I really have is my darling Irene here in Canada and Mamma Maria Luisa in Italy.
Oh, with my darling Irene, we send presents to the family of my son and all … but … well … I have not had much luck with my blood relatives. Any of them. No luck at all actually.
Such vacuums in my life have been with me from the beginning, from the very moment when I learned that both my parents had agreed to murder two of my siblings by abortion.
People who believe in abortion?
I can't trust them.
I can be polite and even have a few laughs with them … but … well … what has all this to do with Florence, Italy 1964?
To help me, for some strange reason, I am now listening to Arthur Honneger's Symphony Liturgique and the Dies Irae, day of wrath … hmmm … wonderfully histrionic and quite a nice exercise for orchestra … but would that be my idea of hell?
No … well … yes. Day of Wrath: being ripped from heaven; and I was.
Now listening to Honneger's second movement for this Third Symphony of his, de profundis clamavi, Psalm 130 of the Bible?
That is the agony of hell, that depth of sadness. However, had I heard that divine music in the hell that followed my heavenly days in Florence? It would have fallen upon deaf ears.
Dona nobis pacem, "give us peace", now plays, with its hellishly marching insistence.
I'm not sure God renders peace to those who insist.
In fact, I know He doesn't.
Only those with the patience of Job will see, taste and feel any form of peace.
Occasionally, however, even that peace, obviously, so patiently earned, can be ripped away in an instant.
Honegger's entire Third Symphony seems trapped somewhere between Hell and Purgatory. The only heaven we feel is in the compassion of his second movement. His obvious feelings and, perhaps, sympathy for The Damned.
Now the third movement has quieted into Honneger's exquisite pianissimo, reminiscent of the second movement but different. Solo flute and violin trade a kind of searching impulse, calling … yearning … quietly for the very peace contained in the movement's title.
I see people walking out of the concert in St. Petersburg … and … why?
Honegger, the more I listen to him, is, perhaps, the most underrated composer of the Twentieth Century.
Now I am hearing Mahler's 4th Symphony, fourth movement, with Kathleen Battle. What a wonderfully contrasting mix: Honegger and Mahler.
Now we have Honegger's 4th Symphony: Deliciae Basiliensis, The Delights of Basel.
"This is one of the happier and finer symphonies of the twentieth century," says the liner notes.
Now, Jean d'Arc, the first I'd ever heard of Honegger's music, live in a performance in Boulder, Colorado. It is, of course, best in the original French … for many, very obvious reasons.
Now Honegger's Pastoral d'eté. Lovely!
All of these later pieces in this chapter are here.
Now, you see, how patience can lead the lost to refuge and sanctuary such as the divine creations of Arthur Honegger? Heaven!! Heaven on earth, Honegger's portrait of summer, Pastoral d'eté!
Now, for some perverse reason, I want to examine Alban Berg. First Wozzeck which is the first of Berg's creations that I'd ever heard. I was quite stunned by it. Within seconds I am now plunged into the hell of Berg.
On an expressionist's set, we see Wozzeck and the woman he loves but must kill for her unfaithfulness … hmmm … beyond bleak, beyond despair … and all a poet's prophecy of what Europe and, in fact, the world are anticipating with the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Mao.
Now the Lulu Suite.
The unending dissonance in various degrees?
Berg is the most palatable of 12 tone composers but, unquestionably, the undeniably most depressing.
Why palatable? Perhaps you'd have to have spent your life in the theater and film to understand.
There is an almost inevitable evolution of this nihilistic surrender to a dark inevitability that became the diabolical Trinity of Hitler, Stalin and Mao Zedong.
So far the only creations of Berg's fellow 12 toner, Webern, that I can somehow stomach are the piano variations.
There is something so obscenely defiant about Webern yet mercifully brief that it is a turn-on.
I am now listening to Rachmaninoff's performance of his own Second Piano Concerto. Ah, the memories!!! As a child, a babe, on the floor of our first home just off of Grand River!! This was beyond heaven to me … its undeniable sadness and melancholia … oh, my God … preludes to my entire life!!
Now Rachmaninoff's "Vocalize" performed by Itzhak Perlman.
No one I know so captures the oceanic bliss …. The seas … All of the seas upon the earth … and the unending melody of my own soul, as Rachmaninoff … his creation flowers and flowers yet remains the same … yet different … like the sea, like the seemingly infinite and unending sea.
I took the Queen Mary to England for the first time in 1963 and was taken into a world of such combined hell and heaven … my fellow man?!
Would I have died in Vietnam but for the electro-convulsive hell those Brit, icily cold demons put me through?
Who knows?
Now the great Horowitz playing Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto?
Am I wrong, or did Horowitz himself undergo electro-shock for some reason or other?
Dick Cavett as well. I adore Dick Cavett!!
How did I come to this? Memories of an albeit brilliant TV personality … but TV … I've left TV!
Ah, now Prokofiev!
Romeo and Juliet!!
The ballet!
Then, in this all-too-brief tour around musical history, The Master: J. S. Bach!
And now, to finish up: Puccini!!
Who wins?
Pavarotti!
It is his power. Spiritual as well as physical size.
He is the Giant of Opera and will not be unseated for quite some time.
Where did Florence 1964 go in all this? Well, the thrills of great music and great artists are clearly an inheritance from the legends of the Italian Renaissance!
It is the ecstasy that erupts from great works of art … an explosion within that often leaves you exhausted emotionally.
Wonderfully exhausted.
Progressive psychiatrists wouldn't understand that … call it a sickness … a mental disease … while I live for those heights and depths at 70 years of age.
Meanwhile my own little efforts, like the two I'm working on now, the Kaufman Concerto For Orchestra, named after my first copyist and concert master, Sidney Kaufman; and my Second Concerto For Orchestra.
The Concerto is a prelude to what will eventually be called The Lear. It has evolved from a meditation on Camus' Myth of Sisyphus to an entirely musical portrait of King Lear.
The Concerto introduces the themes of a sardonic, satirical and furious nature to warm me up for this The Lear.
Florence, 1964!
If anyone had suffered from what is also known as The Florence Syndrome, I had.
Now listening to the wonderfully lyrical and surprisingly American first movement of the Cello Concerto by Honegger. I somehow understand Honegger more instantaneously than any other modern composer, except, of course, for Rachmaninoff.
That, I suppose, means I hear the story he is telling with immediate clarity.
Perhaps that is why he is so often dismissed by the "serious critics" and ignored by most of the world's symphonies.
His accessibility.
Wonderful composer, Arthur Honegger!!
He is never boring or, for me, entirely predictable. If I ever conduct my own works publicly and fare well at it, then I will include a Honegger in my evening. Now the more I hear him, the more similar we become.
Without intending it, I have somehow walked a similar path in life. I must read a good biography on him.
Ah, the opening of his Symphony No. 5!! "Grave!!!!" Grave indeed and exquisitely frightening!!!!
He takes all the liberties that Stravinsky did … but his lyricism translates profounder emotional content than Stravinsky.
I'm coming home. What does that mean? My true family and where I belong. Where I truly belong during my life.
Hearing Honegger is like returning to the place I was first conceived in. His Pastoral d'eté was the beginning, with Rachmaninoff in my heart, but it lead to Honegger's symphonies and their specific and exquisitely crafted emotional detail.
The three movement journey of the Honegger 5th Symphony is so welcome to my soul. I hear corners of my own nature exclaimed with joy! Yes, with all its apparent complexities, his music is emotionally so accessible.
I'm now listening to the finale of a later Honeggercreation, his Christmas Cantata!
As I've said in a previous editorial Christ is now everywhere!!
It is, at the time of this writing, a little over one month away from Christmas, 2011!
Never has Christmas meant so much to me.
It has taken 70 Christmases to come to this understanding of life and God and my place in this Miracle.
What a lovely "Amen!!!" And what a blissful time the conductor must be having!!!! And with that last, tiny little quote from Silent Night, leading to an organ pedal tone and then silence!!!!!
Honegger's "Jean d'Arc au bucher" finale!
A human being, a woman being burned alive because of her faith?!
"I love my Father!!!"
Her last words:
"J'aime mon Pere!"
Despite the agony!
The female Christ, our first!! Now the Second Coming!! It has been here now since our Child in The Manger. Christ, in the hearts of billions of human beings, will erupt. Exactly as it does each year in the heart of Ebenezer Scrooge!!
Everywhere!!
Approaching Florence, 1964?
I must go slowly.
Reverently. 
Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com.