Sketches from the Twin Cities

Spirit Symphony

By Geoffrey Dean

Last month, I drove to Sioux Falls to participate in the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra’s season-closing concerts of Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony (on April 27 & 28). Being one “of a thousand” inspired a poem:

Horizon light in peach pastel
Beyond the gray-limbed trees ahead
Gave grainy texture to my drive
To symphonize a state away.

The snow was still upon the ground –
The whiteness flanked the open road –
As I toward the peach-grain made
To reach Sioux Falls by end of day.

I heard Dakota’s cry to blend
my sounds, and I made haste to join
The music forces lately gathered
In philharmonic sympathy.

The mix was motley in the hall
As in the town itself, it seemed;
The wider world assembled here
To play as one, and hear it clear.

The music vibrant, living through
Our honest work to give it form.
To sounds imagined once, once more
We all consorted, concert-bound.

Would Mahler weep to hear us play
His symphony that brought us here
To ponder things beyond us all,
To offer joy, and feel it too?

To seek to reach a spirit-place
Of love and sound transcendent,
I pilgrimized myself just so,
Weekended in Dakota snow.

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Here’s a link on Youtube to another performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, with Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic. (Be aware: I think it is sprinkled with a lot of ads.)

Copyright © 2019 by Geoffrey Dean