All in a Garden Green

If you live near Leesburg, Virginia or are passing through, take a stroll through the demo gardens at Ida Lee Park and Rec Center. A wonderful team of master gardeners tend flower and vegetable gardens and work to cheer on our bees and butterflies. Even planting a few native perennials around your home can make a difference and it brings peace and joy while making the world better for our children. After all , we are our children’s future.

Your accompanying music is Debussy’s Bruyères (heather) from Préludes, Book 2. And/or if you enjoy harpsichord, listen to a recording of the English Renaissance piece, All in a Garden Green by William Byrd, and played by Elizabeth Farr. Her performance is delicate with a lovely clarity.

Hope springs eternal.

Another violet. This one growing near a sidewalk. Have you ever noticed how plants break through? They grow in rocks and cracks and make everything new again. A beautiful and hopeful thing.

Le Violette!

Le Violette: Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725)

My first beautiful thing will be the violet (Viola hirsutula)– a lovely little flower that grows in the forests in the spring.

One of the privileges we have as pianists is accompanying other musicians.  Listen to a recording of the lovely Italian art song, Le Violette, by composer Alessandro Scarlatti, and lyricist, Adriano Morselli.

I have two favorite recordings: one by Maria Lagos, soprano, and Dalton Baldwin, piano; and the second a sweet video by Joyce Yin, soprano, accompanied by Elizabeth Smith, piano. You can listen on many streaming audio or video services. (I’m not an endorser – you choose.)

The violet is so small and delicate it barely commands our attention. The text of this delightful song contemplates the humbleness of the violet in contrast with our own sometimes overly ambitious desires.  It is a sweet song that I hope brings a bit of joyful and peaceful perspective to your day.

If you have more time to contemplate the violet, I’d like to tell you about the Sweet white violet (Viola blanda) in my garden.  I am working on planting native plants to feed our pollinators.  This violet supports the Fritillary butterfly larvae and its nectar attracts butterflies and bees. Members of the Viola genus support Andrena fragilis, Andrena integra, and Andrena platyparia bees.  Bees are good!

Are you able to get out for a walk and find a woodland violet today?  Let me know in the comments!

Beautiful Things

– In Beauty Will Save the World: Recovering the Human in an Ideological Age (p22), Gregory Wolfe wrote that “Reaching deep; into our collective thoughts and memories, great art sneaks past our shallow prejudices and brittle opinions to remind us of the complexity and mystery of human existence. The imagination calls us to leave our personalities behind and temporarily to inhabit another’s experience, looking at the world with new eyes.” (Wolfe, Gregory. Beauty Will Save the World. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2014. )

This blog is dedicated to directing our minds to something beautiful.  This might take the form of a listening suggestion, artwork, an element of our natural world, or some other sublime form of creativity.  Within these posts will be contemplations on what constitutes an education that leads to an honorable and fulfilling life – a truly happy life.  Fostering our natural sense of awe and wonder, so often lost as we grow older, can reawaken our sense of imagination, idealism and hope. This is the main aim of this blog and why I teach music.