Music

Variations on a Theme: A Song for Saint Cecilia’s Day

written by Guest Contributor December 2, 2016

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The “Jubal” section of Handel’s “An Ode for St Cecilia’s Day” (based on the wonderful poem by John Dryden) contains the most lush music of the piece. Every year on Saint Cecilia’s Day (November 22nd), I listen to the ode to the patron saint of music. While there are many patron saints of the written word (Saint Columba is the patron saint of poets and bookbinders), Saint Cecilia’s link to Jubal, “the father of players upon harps and flutes” in the Old Testament, is too attractive a narrative to not envy. While the original text in Genesis is light on details, Dryden gives us a rich scene:
What passion cannot music raise and quell! 
                When Jubal struck the corded shell, 
         His list’ning brethren stood around 
         And wond’ring, on their faces fell 
         To worship that celestial sound: 
Less than a god they thought there could not dwell 
                Within the hollow of that shell 
                That spoke so sweetly and so well. 
What passion cannot music raise and quell! 
 
Did the written word inspire such awe? Even when so much of it was probably spent on record keeping and mercantile squabbles? This poem offers a variation of Dryden’s text, focusing on the written word’s journey through various technologies.

Music can hold enormous power in memories and experiences, transporting us instantly to an age, location, or person. What sonic joys, mysteries, disbelief, and clarity have you experienced? Identify songs of influence in your life and explore them like variations on a theme, melding syntax and song structure, recalling the seriousness or levity that accompanies. Whether it’s an account of when a specific song first entered your life, the process of learning to play a song, teaching someone a song, experiencing the same song in different places as it weaves through your life, unbelievable radio timing, sharing songs with those in need, tracking the passing down of songs, creative song analysis, music as politics, etc, I am interested in those ineffable moments and welcoming submissions of your own variations on a theme, as drawn from your life’s soundtrack. Please email submissions to meganentropy@gmail.com and keep an eye out for others’ Variations.

**(“song” is a broad phrase: could be a pop song, a traditional tune, a symphony, commercial jingles, a hummed lullaby, 2nd grade recorder class horror stories, etc)**

screen-shot-2016-11-29-at-10-29-31-amTim Duffy is a poet and scholar working in New York City. His poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, Bop Dead City, The Indianola Review, Open Letters Monthly, and elsewhere.
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