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Di pensier in pensier by  Orlande de Lassus
Unstable--that's how I've been feeling. Of course most of us have been there for a while. The exigencies of the pandemic, of politics, of wildfires, of loss of income or of inability to be with others, of a sudden pause of vocation or of avocation: All these things and more have beset us over the past year and a half.

The losses of my dad and of our old friend and compatriot Don Green last week seem to have kicked this sense of instability into a higher gear for me. Sometimes I feel fine and normal; at other times life seems strange and forbidding. Even the sad passing of two such important men in my life has fathered-forth certain silver linings, such as sharing happy memories with family and friends. Joyful events, such as celebrating 20 years of marriage to Margaret last Wednesday, seem to alternate with less-than-ideal experiences: I spent much of yesterday in the emergency room. 

(Don't worry, long story, I'm fine.)

Curiously, I think this is all actually normal. Despite our efforts to smooth them down, life does has its ups and downs, its losses and gains. And I suppose that really allowing ourselves to feel the downs, rather than escaping in any of several available ways, is one of the things that help define our character, that help us to develop compassion for others' troubles, and that also make the ups so blissful when they happen.

And yet whiplashing back and forth is not my idea of a good time. 

The fellow in today's madrigal, 'Di pensier in pensier' by  Orlande de Lassus, is clearly experiencing such swings of emotion. He's out there in nature, avoiding people and signed roads, finding good spots in which to mull his fate, growing hot and then cold, weeping and then smiling. His only constant is uncertainty, and (as he says at the close) anyone familiar with these manifestations would be able to immediately diagnose his condition: Unstable.

Take a close look at the poem (No.129 from Petrarch's 'Canzoniere'). You'll find a good translation on the attached text sheet. Get to know it a bit. Notice the descriptions of natural surroundings, of opposing feelings, of a sense of normalcy immediately displaced by one of disturbance or agitation. In its totality, it masterfully brings to life and to memory this disturbed state which has fallen upon all of us at some time or other.

Then, with your reading of the poem as a backdrop, listen to the wonderful recording available at this link. At first, just listen, don't think too much. Try to notice what you hear--the antiphonal textures, the mercurial sense of motion followed by repose, the sadder passage, the happier strains. Then open the score (also attached), and follow it as you listen. Your eyes will help you hear more, and your ears will help you see more. Try to connect the pictorial words--mountain, tranquil, stream, weep, smile, disturbed--
with the music Lassus has used to set them. 

And then, after that heady work, step back again and just listen. I hope you'll agree with me that Lassus has taken Petrarch's wonderful picture of instability and given it a perfect musical guise, the words joining the music to evoke this state which is, at root, familiar to us all, a part of life and of our response to its inevitable ups and downs, its trials and tribulations, its natural oscillations and peregrinations.
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