Music And Soul Poem by Daniel Brick

Bruno Maderna, Concerto for Oboe
and Orchestra No.2 (1967)

I paid the closest attention to the oboe
in the concerto which concluded
Saturday afternoon's concert. The soloist
was tense as he waited for his solo passages,
but once he began playing those impossibly long
notes, he relaxed into his mastery, and the loosed
tension entered me, making me momentarily one
of the players. All that was surface:
the oboe's sadness was a costume, a disguise
I assumed to become one with the music. Time passed,
music blossomed into a passage of utmost beauty.
these oboe sounds circled around me, entered me
through an open wound I only dimly recalled receiving,
and lodged themselves in my soul, as if native
to that place within. They adopted the deep red color
of my soul, as their tendrils pierced the nearby tissue.
And so it is: my soul enhanced by music is more than
human substance, it partakes of a beauty reflecting
the Eternal. It has happened as I willed it...
And those sad long notes summon dreams
which take the form my soul desires.