Metropolitan United Church

  Today the young musicians and their mentors who present the annual "Mendelssohn on Mull" concert series came to the Abbey. Their programme offered a series of slow movements for quartet or quintet. The first gift was the wonderful acoustic. I heard ancient stones speaking. Marvellous.

   The second gift was found in shading. Some of the sweet notes from the violins were offered as mere whispers in that great space and yet the audience hung on every vibration. Loud and soft, dynamics to anchor the moments.

    The third gift was a slow movement by Shostakovich. His own notes indicated that it was to be so slow that "flies would drop dead in mid flight." That's slow. The music was like treacle, like syrup oozing in early February, like watching paint dry, and yet it took me to the basic, minutely moving center in which we live our lives despite all our concocted busyness.

    I found myself gripped, quieted and reminded of mortality and meaninglessness. These two terrifying states from which we run like bison stampeding, became, for a moment, blessed with grace and beauty. Could it be that deep below our rapid place, and deeper than our fears of stopping and of nothingness there lies the haunting beauty of a melody that makes ancient stones sing?