1828 onwards – a new world, with ‘stimmung’

For a couple of years Isaac and I travelled relentlessly from one Methodist meeting to another across swathes of north Norfolk, accompanying the hearty singing of these well-meaning people, in Meeting Houses, chapels, farmer’s barns, in beer shops, public houses, and often in the open air.  These were people who had clearly found a voice which they loved to express, and I was usually the only accompanying instrument for them.

This was a whole new world to me, so different from the sophistication of Beethoven and Schleiermacher. It took time, but I began to truly love the ‘down to earth’, rustic style of these hard-working people.  They sang their music with their whole bodies – mind and heart together – and it resonated throughout my body too. Also, travelling with Isaac through the rich rural landscape of Norfolk, I became aware of my own profound connection to the earth. After all, some of the wood chiseled and crafted into my body must have come from majestic maple trees hundreds of years ago, probably from the borderlands of Bohemia. But it felt as though it could have come from the forests of Norfolk!

I understood afresh why Thomas Kennedy listened for the ‘singing voice’ of the trees as he chose the wood for his instrument-making. And as Isaac played me, accompanying these devoted hymn-singing Methodists, I heard a full-bodied ‘earthy’ music, a sensitive ‘stimmung’ as powerful and meaningful as anything from Schleiermacher, Wesley or Beethoven.

Listening like a ‘conversion’

During these rural travels, the Methodists often sang about the ‘warming of John Wesley’s heart’ which happened in London ninety years ago. This conversion of the heart occurred while Wesley was intently listening to a commentary on St Paul’s Letter to the Romans by Martin Luther being read aloud in the German language. It was a commentary greatly loved and well used by Pietists and Moravians the world over.  And here was a real ‘harmony in the heart’!  Here the nuances, German accents and inflexions were resonating in John Wesley’s own body – and then the great Methodist awakening began to be heard in all the world!

(John Wesley at his ‘conversion’, listening to German words by Martin Luther)

Here was a sounding together (a symphony) of the emotional power of the Christian gospel which was perfectly in tune with the sounds I experienced whenever I was played with feeling by that mixed chorus of Schleiermacher, Salomon, Ludwig van Beethoven, Samuel Wesley and (now) with Isaac Richardson. I’m sure Esther’s wish had come true for Isaac as he played me so lovingly for these Norfolk Methodist singers.  The music resonating in all our bodies – mine included – sounded like a declaration of forgiveness and freedom!

But something else was happening, too. I was about to have another ‘owner’….