I know I have been absent since March. During March, April, May and June, I was composing three collections of instrumental piano music. The first was entitled "From the Lips of Babes and Children", composed as a aural prayer of calm and peace during the height of the first wave of the pandemic. The second was entitled "A Paschal Journey", which was a musical expression of the Paschal Mystery (passion, dying, and rising of Christ) as it is lived out in the lives of people. The songs followed loosely John's Passion and Resurrection account. The third is entitled "Music for the Celestial Dance" in which I composed music using musical period dances e.g. Estampie, Sarabonde, Polonaise, Tango etc as a musical form. The inspiration for this music was William Butler Yeat"s poem "The Fiddler of Dooney." 

During the month of July, I took a break from composing music and decided to compose poetry which reflected upon the experiences of this pandemic on the lives of people. I composed ten poems, the first which I have posted above. During the month of August up to this past Sunday, I composed programmatic music as an musical accompaniment for the poems. I found it interesting in how there was an interactive relationship between music and word, with music reshaping some of the text and that altered text shaping the music.

ABOUT "JUXTAPOSITION 1: Prelude and Fugue

This poem was greatly influenced from the story of my great nephew, Steven’s birth in April. Steven was born at the height of the pandemic in Chicago. As he was being born and drawing the first of many breaths in his life, elsewhere in the same hospital, were those in the ICU Covid-19 wards who were drawing their last breath. In that hospital was the juxtaposition of both the ending of human life and the beginning of human life, with all the feelings of sorrow and grief, and anticipation and joy that accompany these passages of life.

I chose the Baroque form of a Prelude and Fugue as the means of expressing these two passages of human life.

The Prelude, slower and in the key of A minor, to reflect the dying of a loved one; and the Fugue, in a fast tempo and in the key of A major to reflect the birth of new life.