Last night as I was preparing supper, out of the blue, I started singing the Bach organ Fugue in D major. Well, at that moment, I wasn't completely sure which of the Bach fugues it was, because I am so rusty and haven't seriously played in years, but I "sang" the music with gusto, trying to pull in as many parts as I could, even the distinctive pedal, which I boom-boom-boomed with as low of a bass as I could. A tree frog outside the window joined in with me, clearly an animal with excellent musical taste!
As soon as things were simmering on the stove and out of danger of burning to a crisp, I ran to my computer and went on YouTube and confirmed that, yes, it was the D major. After sampling several performances, I settled on Diane Bish. Talk about the captain of a ship! I've never been able to conceive of performing a big organ piece without the music in front of me, yet there she is, playing with confidence and perfection, from memory. She's wearing concert attire, a sparkly, colorful dress, with diamond rings on her fingers and gold organ shoes, which glide up and down the pedal keyboard with breathtaking effortlessness. That glitzy concert scene would never have appealed to me, yet, as I continued to sing (and "play") along with her, I recognized that we were kindred spirits.
I studied the organ from about the age of 15 through 21, when I gave quite a fine senior organ recital at Smith College that included two big Bach Preludes and Fugues. The personal high point of my organ career was teaching myself to play the glorious "St. Anne" triple fugue.
Around the age of 27, with two music degrees under my belt, I made a rash decision -- to leave the world of church music entirely. Certainly part of this was the fact that there were simply "zero" women in the specific field I was most passionate about, and from the get-go, I had held myself back from wholeheartedly focusing on organ, voice or conducting. But there was more to it than that. I had no family models for professional prominence, leadership or mastery, and even my exceptional grandmother, a pioneering Canadian woman lawyer, was forced to drop the law entirely the minute she married. It was 1919, and married women simply did not have careers. By the 1980's, society certainly had moved forward, but a generations-old melody was still lingering on in me. I was afraid that the real me (cathedral music-loving, scholarly, intense, spiritual and serious) was unmarriageable, and it's embarrassing, but that terrified me. I was good at art. I'd remake myself into a freelance artist, which would be easier than music once I married. My studio would be in the home, I could keep an eye on the kids, and I would have the flexibility to do errands, make meals, and be there for my husband. All my organ music was given away to a college library -- except for the one book containing the "St. Anne" fugue and my organ shoes, which were deposited, yes, at the bottom of a cardboard box in storage. It was a great plan, except that I wasn't being who I really am, and I never got married!
There may be only one thing in the world I love more than Choral Evensong services, and that is listening to the big organ postlude at the end, echoing off the fan vaulted ceilings and the stained glass windows. Over the last few years, I have taken tentative (though dramatic!) steps toward reincorporating this world back into my life, but so far, I haven't quite aligned with the unique related role or "home" that will work for me long term. The fugue breaking out of me (at odd moments like when I'm making spaghetti sauce) reminds me that, in 2015, the song has not gone away, it will not go away, and I just need to keep following the joy of it, for the joy of it.
