Small Things

Once again I had some refills to pick up at CVS, and once again I decided to head over to the Brookside Avenue wetland behind the store. After my initial portrait session with a male Cardinal, I figured out that today's theme would be Spring wildflowers, as the wetland is carpeted with them. Come take a look.

Northern Cardinal

Dandelion

Heal-all (also known as Purple Dead Nettle)

Daisy Fleabane

Rue Anemone

Celandine

© 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger

The Park Is Getting Very Green

I did my weekly walk in the Dykeman Spring Nature Park yesterday morning. As you'll be able to tell from the photos, it was overcast and gloomy, but it also emphasized how green everything is getting. Take a look!

It's very green along the nature trail

And along the streams in the wetland

A view across the wetland

Another Canada Goose poses for a portrait

A view of the north duck pond

This Red-bellied Woodpecker bid me farewell as I left the park

© 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Sunday Bach - Easter 2

The second Sunday after Easter has traditionally been called the Good Shepherd Sunday because of the Gospel reading for the day, John 10: 12 - 16, where Jesus calls himself the good shepherd. Bach responded to that theme with three cantatas of the most pastoral feeling of all his works. The one I've chosen for this year is BWV 104, Du Hirte Israel, höre (Hear, thou shepherd of Israel, Leipzig 1724). This is a magnificent and beautiful cantata, and it's no wonder that the young Felix Mendelssohn was inspired by it to start what became the rediscovery and revival of Bach's music in the early 1800s. Here's the late Craig Smith of Emmanuel Music on this most beautiful and influential of Bach's cantatas:

The pastoral ideal is a significant and common occurrence in music of the Baroque. The twin concepts of the secular Arcadia and the sacred Eden not only stimulate the composer’s imagination but create a sort of nostalgic world that was a favorite of opera composers for the 17th and 18th centuries. This bucolic world doesn’t fit very well with the austere “Weltanschaung” of Lutheran Saxony. Yet several readings in the yearly lectionary summon up this important style. Obviously one is about the shepherds at Christmastime. The other spot in the church year is the so-called “Good Shepherd” Sunday. One of the most gorgeously and purely pastoral pieces is one written for that Sunday, BWV 104. This is a work that was known even before most of the cantatas were published. In the early 1800s a volume of six cantatas later to be numbered 101 through 106 appeared in Germany. These six pieces became significant in the Bach revival culminating in the 1829 performance of the St Matthew Passion by the young Felix Mendelssohn. Our cantata, BWV 104, was particularly influential upon Mendelssohn. The opening chorus is the obvious model for the chorus “He watching over Israel” in that composer’s “Elijah.” The Bach chorus is a marvel. Permeated with a beautiful and easy counterpoint, the spinning out of the fugue themes is both masterful and irresistible. Each of the three subsequent fugues is more ecstatic and passionate. 

The tenor aria continues in a pastoral vein but is darker and more colored. The chromaticism is so easy and elegant that it slips in almost unnoticed. Compound triple meter, a common characteristic of all baroque pastoral music, reappears in the lyrical bass aria. There is something more personal and dark about this aria that throws it in relief of the opening chorus. A rich harmonization of “Allein Gott in der Höh” ends the cantata. 

© Craig Smith

This week's performance is the benchmark recording of this cantata, the 1973 recording by the Munich Bach Chorus and Orchestra under the direction of Karl Richter, and featuring Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, one of the most sublime bass voices in the repertoire. Enjoy!

Photo © 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

The Long Way Home

I had a couple of refills to pick up at CVS this morning, and I figured I'd take the long way home up Burd Run, through the Brookside Ave. wetland and the Burd Run restoration project park. It seems the theme of the day was birds; the Tree Swallows are back at Brookside Ave., and I saw several Brown Thrashers in the restoration park. And as has been usual lately, the feral cat was guarding the boardwalk at the entrance to Brookside Ave. when I arrived.

The Guardian of the Bridge

Mom and Dad take the kids out for a spin on the collection pond

The Tree Swallows are back!

A Blue Jay in the Brookside wetland

A Brown Thrasher in the Burd Run restoration park

A female Red-winged Blackbird in the restoration park

© 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger

In a Garden

The other day I showed you the Dogwood tree in the garden next to the Widow Piper's Tavern at the corner of King and Queen Streets. I decided to go back and get a closer look at the garden and show off it's dazzling color. Come take a look.

The Dogwood blossoms up close

Red Tulips...

... and yellow Tulips

Phlox and Daffodils

And here's a little music from Peter Mayer to go with it.

Photos © 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Earth Day 2020

Do you want to improve the world?
I don't think it can be done. The world is sacred.
It can't be improved.
If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it.

— Tao te Ching # 29, Stephen Mitchell translation 

Photos © 2008 - 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Dogwoods Deluxe

I had to pick up a refill at CVS, and I took the camera along to see what was going on today along King St. I couldn't really take any time with it because there was a front line with heavy rain, strong winds, and the possibility of at least hail, if not lightning and thunder as well, heading for the area, and I wanted to be back home before that hit. Well, that didn't happen; I got caught in a downpour with high wind on the way home. I had my umbrella with me, and I aimed it at the wind and hung on for dear life, but I got soaked from the knees down. Oh well...

Meanwhile, what got my attention on the way down was how my favorite Spring-blooming tree, the Dogwood, was blooming all through town. I got the first two shots on the way to the store, and I got the last one on the way home, after the rain had moved off. It was worth getting wet to get these shots!

The Dogwood in front of Christ Methodist

The garden next to Widow Piper's Tavern, an historical site from the colonial era

The McLean House guest house on the banks of Branch Creek, with Dogwood

© 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger

The Sound of Small Birds Singing

This week's Sunday walk in the Dykeman Spring Nature Park was a pretty joyful one, with lots of birdsong and birds flitting about. The Spring Warbler migration has started, and there are lots of tiny birds with lively voices in the air. I only got a shot of one Warbler but saw lots more flitting from branch to branch way up out of the camera's range. But they weren't the only birds in the park today, and I got a few workable shots.

The one Warbler shot I got; I don't know which kind because a lot of these little'uns are hard to tell apart.

A White-breasted Nuthatch

A Red-winged Blackbird fussing at me in the wetland by the north duck pond

A Black-capped Chickadee way up in a tree

© 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Sunday Bach - Easter I

Bach wrote two cantatas for the first Sunday after Easter. Today's cantata is his earliest one, BWV 67, Halt im Gedächtnis Jesum Christ (Hold in remembrance Jesus Christ, Leipzig 1724). This work is based on a conflct - on the one hand,the glory of the Resurrection, on the other the doubts and fears of the disciples in the aftermath of the crucifixion. Here's the late Craig Smith of Emmanuel Music on this cantata:

Both cantatas for the Sunday after Easter are masterpieces. The earliest that we have is Cantata BWV 67, written for the 1st Jahrgang in Leipzig. The ambiguous and difficult situation – doubting of the verity of Christ's resurrection and hoping it was true – is perfect for a musical treatment. Contrapuntal music is perfect for expressing conflicting emotions, and there are several classic examples of that technique in this work.

The cantata begins with a representation, or rather a memory, of the Resurrection. For all of its vitality the chorus that opens this work is remarkably static. The fugal chorus is almost always used by Bach to promote conflicting and lively ideas. It almost inevitably leaves us in a different state than where we began. Here the chorus is a monolithic thing which provides a foil for all of the doubt and fear that follows. The chorus begins with a marching and grand motive in the winds and trumpet against sustained string textures. Three major motives emerge: a marching theme, a long held note associated with the word "hold", and a rising melisma associated with the resurrection. Bach achieves rhythmic and emotional liveliness without real thrust by limiting himself to a diatonic harmonic language. One can hardly think of a comparably impressive and rich chorus in all of Bach that is this uncomplicated in harmony. There is a glorious and moving breadth to the piece with the richness provided by the "resurrection" melismas rising against the "hold" long notes. The harmonic and dramatic shape of the cantata, with an important segment dipping into the relative minor of the tonic A major, is reflected by the shape of the opening chorus.

The tenor aria with oboe d'amore and strings begins with a confident striding theme that immediately degenerates into a stuttering and doubtful cadence. It is the perfect setting for the first line of text "My Jesus is risen, why am I afraid?" One is reminded of Pedrillo's aria, "Frisch zum Kampfe" from Mozart's Entführung with its similar combination of assurance and doubt. The next segment of the cantata is marvelous. In animated secco recitatives the alto leads us in and out of a performance of the great modal Easter chorale, "Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag." The chorale here has the congregational function of reminding us of our goal, but also reassuring the individual of his community. 

These two ideas, the individual doubt and the communal experience of the Resurrection, are the background for the great bass aria with chorus that is the climax of the cantata. It begins with agitated and blustery string textures in 4/4 time. They gradually wind down and a trio of flute and two oboes d' amore begin a graceful and piquant little dance melody in 3/4 time, which is the accompaniment for the bass voice of Jesus singing the words "Peace be unto you." These two radically different characters alternate throughout the movement. With the first reappearance of the agitated music the sopranos, altos and tenors of the chorus enter, begging Jesus to help them in their battle against Satan. Gradually the two kinds of music insinuate themselves into each other. In the last 4/4 time segment Jesus is heard "agitato" singing his "Peace be unto you" above the fray. In the final quiet section, the strings enter quietly under the wind trio, giving us the first tutti in the movement. The work reminds us of the middle movement of the Beethoven 4th piano concerto, with its "Orpheus quieting the furies" quality. The gorgeous harmonization of "Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ" is unusually simple and pure. There are almost no passing tones and it is the most harmonically simple of all of Bach's versions of this chorale. This cantata is one of the most extraordinary examples of Bach's ability to make a dramatic statement that is at the same time interior and profound. The sense of being in a new place by the end of the cantata without having made any outward journey is characteristic of his best pieces.

© Craig Smith, with edits by Pamela Dellal

Today's performance is from a Naxos recording by the Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart and the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart under the direction of Helmuth Rilling. Enjoy!

Photo © 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Wandering Aimlessly

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." — Bilbo warning Frodo about taking walks, from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

 

I had to go to CVS to pick up a prescription refill, and I decided to use it as a jumping-off point for a bit of a camera shoot/wander afterwards. I had no idea where I was going, I just decided at various points which way I would turn. So I ended up on a brief stretch of the Rail Trail and then a brief foray into farm country north of town. It was a cold walk (temps in the 40s with something between a breeze and a wind) but an enjoyable one, and I got some good shots along the way.

A chilly Mockingbird on the Shippensburg University campus

My favorite mother-daughter pair of Jerseys on a farm by the Rail Trail

Walking on the Rail Trail

An Old Order Mennonite buggy on Britton Rd.

A farm along Britton Rd.

A pair of cows on Mud Level Rd.

Burd Run and spring house at Newburg Rd.

© 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Critters

I had some supplementary grocery shopping to do this morning, so I made a quick run through the Dykeman Spring Nature Park, and what became obvious right away was that despite the cold (it was in the 30s when I was there) and the overcast sky, the wildlife was quite active. Well, except for the Mama Canada Goose sitting on her nest on the berm around the north duck pond. But the resident feral cats were out and about, the Wrens and Song Sparrows and Cardinals and Red-winged Blackbirds were quite vocal, and the sentinel Groundhog at the east end of the meadow was on duty. Lots of critters today! 

Eyes watching from the jungle!

Carolina Wren with breakfast

The little black feral stalking the berm around the north duck pond

Mother Goose, sitting

The sentinel is on duty

© 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger