Ruthie and I out on a date in 1969.
I have been blessed to have my beloved Ruth in my life from 1969 to the present. There is no other person who embodies God’s love greater than she. Is it any wonder I have written so much music dedicated to her, and volumes of poetry?
The primary melody of this Psalm Offering was originally a song I wrote for our wedding in 1974. Diane Strafelda, a good friend and a voice major in music from the College of St. Catherine, sang it at our wedding. While the original setting of that music has long been lost, I have never forgotten the primary part of that melody. The melody was inspired by an aria entitled, “Dido’s Lament”, from the Baroque opera Dido and Aeneas, written by the English composer, Henry Purcell. I was tremendously moved when I heard that aria for the first time. As a young man, deeply in love and filled with grand illusions, I sought out to compose a melody as deeply moving as Purcell’s aria. Ah, the folly of youth! The song may have lacked, however, the primary melody was still very good.
I had been thinking about resetting that melody in piano music for over a year. With nothing but a dim memory of Diane’s voice singing that song, I recomposed it in this piano setting for my beautiful Ruth. The bare bones of that melody is all that remains from the wedding song. The variations on that melody and the middle section are all newly composed.
Overall, it expresses in music my relationship with Ruth over the past 45 years. Ah, mythic love. First there was Dido and Aeneas, then Tristan and Isolde, and now, Ruth and Bob. The primary melody retains the great passion I have had for Ruth. In the first part of the song (A), the primary meldoy starts simply in the lower register like one lover expressing his love to his intended. It is restated in the higher register, his lover reciprocating his affection than moves into a secondary melody where the couples love for each grows until the primary melody returns in chordal octaves, a passionate expression of love consummated then peace as the lovers begin life together.
The middle section of the song (B) is the dance of the couple as they work, have children, raise their children, and the demands of life attempts to pull them in all directions. However, in the midst of the hustle and bustle of that dance, the love and the passion the couple has does not fade as the primary melody (A) is joined into the dance.
The song concludes to a simple restatement of the love that began many years before, intact, and filled with nothing but gratitude of a life together.
