Recorder Consort • Night School
Nancy Hathaway
We begin with Buxtehude –
a kyrie, a credo – and end
two hours later with Debussy.
How well we know each other,
how one forgets to count the rests,
one can’t seem to learn the high notes,
one gets lost, one can’t slur, one
needs a hearing aid, and no one
ever wants to play the bass.
Warring rhythms and wrong notes
plague us. Dissonance abounds.
And yet at times our separate sounds –
soaring soprano, noonday alto,
consoling tenor, muffled bass –
meld, ornamenting the autumn air
like a line turning into a shape –
invisible, architectural,
as cunning as calculus, gold
edged in silence. And those moments
keep us coming back, and this –
this pastime with good company –
has been going on for years.
