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Mordent Notes
Pure mordent notes drift through the lounge
Trip quietly down empty stair
Like Hendley always on the scrounge
Like candle smoke on breath-blown air
A zebra prances in the house
Mariana shimmies in the hall
Old classic Beatles; a little Strauss;
Old ragtime players have a ball
How sweet the sound of heart-strings plucked
My tears are never far away
So poised with feet beneath you tucked
So calmly let the strain decay
Your notes fly swiftly as your years
Fast fingers blur across the strings
I watch entranced; the camera clears
I listen to your life take wings
Full days of this would not suffice
Or surfeit father's appetite
To melt the heart once bound in ice
To help those parted reunite
The weekend ends and house falls still
Though echoes in my soul remain
You pack your bags and leave until
You bring your music back again.
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Synopsis
The idea for Mordent Notes came in two halves; both on the same day.
It was a "girls' weekend" (one weekend in two when I see my daughters) and I had collected Blythe from home and Natalie from Music Centre where she had been practising a new piece that included "mordent notes." She explained what they were but I didn't connect the term with a title for a poem until the second event when she played for us in the lounge later that afternoon.
To any parent who has listened to a gifted youngster play an instrument, I need not describe the feelings of pure joy and pride that the experience engenders. To anyone, parent or not, who has not had such a privilege I don't think any powers of literary description would be sufficient. Beautiful music, of any genre, is a wonderful thing but classical guitar has always been in my top three favourite instruments. When the music is combined with the pleasure of a live listening experience, not in an auditorium but in your own home, when the music is especially beautiful and haunting, when the instrument is of fine quality and above all when the player is your own elder daughter ... I often find it near impossible to keep the tears from flowing.
Natalie played a variety of pieces for us that afternoon: Zebra Music, an old favourite (hence the "zebra prancing in the lounge"); a new piece to me - Mariana - which I found enchanting; the tried and trusted Beatles numbers such as Lady Madonna that Natalie's group always play in competition; and several pieces with a ragtime theme - seemingly a favourite of the composer.
Listening to her play that afternoon, all the worries and worldly rubbish seemed to melt away in the strength and clarity of her notes ("the camera clears" refers to an imagined camera obscura, focussed on our lives which had, before that moment, been shrouded in a mist of uncertainty) and I was filled with an unexpected confidence: here was my first-born, with all her radiant beauty, honesty, integrity and talent, demonstrating in a very concrete way that her life was taking to its wings and her future was full of promise.
I chose the title of the piece because I was intrigued by the (almost) homonyms mordent and mordant. The dictionary defines mordent as: "A melodic ornament in which a principal tone is rapidly alternated with the tone a half or full step below" whereas mordant of course means "harshly ironic or sinister; bitingly sarcastic". This lead me to think about the potential irony of composing a darkly sinister piece of music made up of a series of mordent notes. I should add that nothing Natalie played that afternoon was mordant!