How Charles Ives Saved My Soul

Thank God for Charles Ives! Without him I couldn’t have gotten through seminary. To be more precise, without his The Unanswered Question, I might have lost my sanity altogether. I discovered this short piece of music as I was plowing through the writings of the Early Church Fathers. (Yes, they were only Fathers in those days.) Mystics and theologians battled – literally - with one another over words and even over the spelling of those words. They argued with a vitriol I had not heard since I stopped listening to radio preachers years before.

One evening in Bound Brook, NJ, as I poured over these ancient texts, unable to fathom the light within them that had animated and agitated so many, the local public radio station broadcast Ives’ piece into my study: The Unanswered Question. Fittingly, it is subtitled “A Contemplation of Something Serious.” The music struck a chord with me, if you’ll pardon the expression. It is hauntingly plaintive and inconclusive, and it has stayed with me ever since. It is a deeply humane composition.

Ives wrote The Unanswered Question in 1906 along with its companion, Central Park in the Dark in the Good Old Summer Time (subtitled “A Contemplation of Nothing Serious”). Within its simple structure there are three distinct kinds of music layered upon one another: a string chorale, an unchanging trumpet phrase and a chattering woodwind response. Ives wrote,

“The strings play pianississimo (very softly) throughout with no change in tempo. They are to represent the ‘Silence of the Druids — Who Know, See and Hear Nothing.’ The trumpet intones ‘The Perennial Question of Existence,’ and states it in the same tone of voice each time. But the hunt for ‘The Invisible Answer’ undertaken by the flutes and other human beings becomes gradually more active, faster and louder.... ‘The Fighting Answerers,’ as the time goes on and after a ‘secret conference,’ seem to realize a futility, and begin to mock ‘The Question’ — the strife is over for the moment. After they disappear, ‘The Question’ is asked for the last time, and ‘The Silences’ are heard beyond in ‘Undisturbed Solitude'."

The contrast between the words on the page and the music in my ears was startling. The apodictic certainty of the theologians paled before the “Perennial Question” put by the trumpet’s voice. I experienced great empathy with the Questioner, and a deep yearning for The Silences, but I felt the theologians were the “Fighting Answerers” whose many words lead nowhere. In that moment I gave up forever the search for all-explaining dogmatic formulations. I turned whole-heartedly toward ambiguity and embraced it. Henceforth The Question, not the Answerers, would be my guide.

Left to my own devices, I would choose to dwell within the Silence of the Druids. This is the “tacit dimension” about which the Hungarian physicist Michael Polanyi wrote so perceptively. It is the “imaginal world” of the 12^th Century mystic, Ibn Arabi; it yields real knowledge though it can be accessed only through the creative imagination. It is the Tao of Lao Tzu, the Logos of St. John and the Wheel of American Indian spirituality. “We know much more than we can tell,” wrote Polanyi. And we love much more than we can know.

In later years, I came to understand that theologians also are “Questioners” first, whose “certainties” grow out of their struggles with all that is unresolved in their own hearts and in our world. I accept their words as their hypotheses, their attempts to cross the chasm.

Charles Ives was a church-going New England organist, and a Transcendentalist, but he was more. He was willing to let words fail and answers dissipate. "Vagueness,” he said, “is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect truth." Today, when too many are too certain about too much, a little vagueness would be salutary, and the Silences most welcomed

Wales forever, Amen!

When the train doors opened, a veritable sea of excited sports fans flooded toward Cardiff Arms Park. Like small figurines in a swift current, we were swept with them through narrow lanes of vendors hawking fish and chips, beer and leek soup. Leek soup? Yes, the aroma of leek soup wafted over us in the damp March air, as pervasive and enticing as the smell of sizzling bratwursts at a Vikings opener. The Welsh National Union rugby team soon would take the field against their vaunted English rivals. Two of the greatest players of all time, Gareth Edwards and Phil Bennett, would lead the charge. Spirits were unbelievably high. Little did I know I was about to witness one of the finest games in what later came to be called the “second golden era” of Welsh Rugby.

The rivalry between the Welsh and the English is especially deep-seated and arouses the most intense emotion. It is rooted in the long and unfortunate history between these two nations. Just before the match, I later learned, Bennett rallied the team with words that became iconic throughout the country:  "Look what these bastards have done to Wales. They've taken our coal, our water, our steel. They buy our homes and live in them for a fortnight every year. What have they given us? Absolutely nothing. We've been exploited, raped, controlled and punished by the English — and that's who you are playing this afternoon."

Rugby occupies an exalted place in the Welsh consciousness. It is said that one Sunday morning worshippers entering their chapel were confronted by a huge sign on the communion table.  Cymru am byth! (Wales forever!) The minister was perturbed and had the Deacons remove it because it lacked religious significance. But when he returned that evening he found an even bigger sign that now read, Cymru yn oes oesoedd. Amen! (Wales forever and ever, Amen!)

Indeed, in Wales rugby approaches the status of a national religion. A Welshman in Hong Kong, Gareth Thomas, declared that Twickenham (England), Stade Français (France) and other national stadia “are great fortresses of the game, but its cathedral is in Cardiff.” He observed that anyone who has experienced the unique atmosphere in the Welsh capital on the day of an international  “cannot but subscribe to this notion.” Comedian Max Boyce said that the roof over the new Millennium Stadium is pulled back when Wales attacks, “so God can see us play”. It was even suggested that a church be built on the spot where Edwards once scored a “try” over Scotland in the mud.

The two other great passions of Wales are poetry and choral singing. Although the “Chairing of the Bard” is perhaps the grandest annual ritual in the country, it is for their music that the Welsh are justly famous. Every Sunday afternoon in chapels across the land they gather to practice their four-part singing of sacred songs. Cymanfa Ganus (Singing Festivals) are held in towns throughout the year, and annually at their great cultural event, the National Eisteddfod. Throughout the world, wherever two or three (of Welsh descent) are gathered, there are Cymanfa Ganus.

Oh, and I forgot to mention one other favorite pastime: the pub! Many a Welshman - and woman too - repair often to the pub for a good time and good conversation. In Pontardawe even the local A.A. meets in the pub. (“Recovery means drinking less,” I was told.) The Welsh insist on distinguishing between “chapel” and “pub” folks - you are one or the other - but many households have a foot in both. The proof of this soon will become obvious.

We entered the stadium and found our way to our places. Cardiff Arms Park was built to hold 53,000 people, more or less. The announcer told us the crowd that day numbered in excess of 60,000. Among the throng of people were many of the rich and famous. The announcer even welcomed Frank Sinatra. There were no seats or bleachers to be seen. Sinatra et al. may have had seats but the rest of us stood through the game. (That’s why they are called stands!) Forget any sense of personal space. We were a single collective mass who raised a deafening roar when the Welsh players ran onto the pitch.

Though we were packed elbow-to-elbow and front-to-back, somehow vendors made their way to and fro, up and down among us. Beer was abundantly available, and abundantly consumed.  As my fellow stand-mates began to drink, they also began to sing.

They sang in four parts, and they sang the great hymns of their great tradition. The more they drank, the more they sang. They sang and drank and cheered and sang some more.

How gloriously they sang! They sang the sweetest of lullabies, Ar Hyd y Nos, with an unimaginable tenderness, and they sang their stirring national anthem, Hen Wlad fy Nhadau with patriotic fervor. Imagine 60,000 Welshmen, with no apparent concern about designated drivers, singing in practiced harmonies: Cwm Rhondda. Aberystwyth. Bryn Calfaria. Llangloffen. Ton-y-Botel. Hyfrydol, Calon Lân. (Now I understood Vernon Davies' comment about his son’s decision to play for England: “I knew he would never play for Wales," he said. "He’s tone deaf.”) Raucous cheers punctuated their singling when Wales scored or made a play, and indignant boos when England did the same. 

The Welsh triumphed over the English, 14-9, in that well-contested match. I had gotten to see Gareth Edwards and Phil Bennett at their peak, even as they were nearing the ends of their storied careers. In high spirits when the match was over, my friend and I sang our way out of the stadium with the boisterous crowd, down the narrow streets and back onto the train.

I always will remember that day - not as much for the match as for the music. Not as much for Gareth Edwards or Phil Bennett (or even Frank Sinatra) as for the thousands of anonymous Welsh men and women under that gray March sky who sang of their homeland in the language of their ancestors. I have been to many cathedrals in the UK and elsewhere, but never have I been so stirred. Leek soup and Welsh hymns were not what I expected when I left Pontardawe that morning.