George Winston

The piece that had been my inspiration – minus the rudimentary synthesizer embellishments – was from George Winston’s landmark album, December. Born in Michigan, but raised in Montana, Winston developed a strong sensitivity to the moods and meanings of the different seasons. Picking up piano in his late teens, he released an album of solo ballads and blues in 1972 on the fledgling Windham Hill label. And then he disappeared for eight years, before starting the season cycle that would bring him fame and almost single-handedly create a new genre of music. His sensitivity of touch and impressionistic pastoral sense and gentle jazz embellishments captured the flow and feel of the seasons perfectly (better than Vivaldi, anyway), and his albums Autumn and Winter Into Spring were well regarded, and became minor classics in the solo piano genre. But it was his next album, 1982’s December, that really captured the public’s imagination and put Windham Hill in the forefront of what was soon to be called new age music. Like most new genres, the early pioneers were revolutionary, creating stunning and significant bodies of work, soon to be overrun by wan imitators. Nowhere was this more true than in new age music, which quickly devolved from being a peaceful and tenderly contemplative music, closely aligned to the appreciation of nature and a meditative calm, to a cartoony babbling brook kind of navel-gazing music, played at yuppie brunches and candlelit poetry readings.

But December is remarkable. Combining classic Christmas carols with some original compositions, Winston applies his gentle touch and soothing melodic sense to create the perfect evocation of a deep, snowy, silent winter. The dynamics are much more pronounced than one usually thinks of in new age music (or in winter, for that matter), with moods alternating between quietly solemn and explosively joyful. It is a deliciously intangible combination, meditative without getting sleepy, energizing without becoming bombastic, the music is heartbreakingly happy, and almost unbearably sad at the same time. Sacred and humble, the music is unified by Winston’s tender touch. He even manages to do justice and bring new life to one of my least favorite pieces in the classical repertoire, the execrable and irritatingly hooky and repetitive Pachelbel’s Canon. He treats it almost as a jazz musician treats the blues, using the unwavering circle of chords as the basis for improvisation. He states the chords plainly at the beginning and end of the piece, but then uses them for the foundation of feathery flights of fancy (forgive me). Other standouts on the album include a contemplative reading of the traditional Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head, and a scurrying, exciting interpretation of Carol of the Bells, which perfectly captures and expands upon the joyfully overlapping lines of the traditional multi-part vocal showcase. But my favorite piece on the album is the mysterious Minstrels, a traditional song played as the third part of a song cycle called Night, with the first two parts being original Winston compositions. The first movement, Snow, captures perfectly the swirling inevitability of snow falling.

Growing up in Michigan, I was quite familiar with snow, and the way it transformed landscapes both exterior and interior. Although fun for the first couple of months, the novelty inevitably wore off long before the snow did – many, many months before. Our house had a basement that you could only get to by going outside and down a flight of stairs on the side of the house that was covered with a sloping tar-paper roof that ended just above the ground, right outside my bedroom window. Every year that we lived in that house, I would be in my room as the first snow of the season fell. I’d sit at the window, and watch it flutter down, melting as it struck the black roofing right outside my window. There was always this feeling of excited dread, of bittersweet contemplation as the snowflakes landed and instantly turned into water. I knew before very long the sheer quantity of snow would overwhelm the heat of the house, and the flakes would start sticking, and soon the roof would give up its fight and surrender to the awful, ineffable white of winter. I’d marvel at the way the flakes, stunningly beautiful and frightening fragile, unable to stand the lightest touch, would keep coming in the millions, eventually conquering everything. Snow perfectly catches this mood, this wonderful swirling of the intricately beautiful flakes and the underpinning menace of total domination they represented.

Sometimes, I’d put on my boots and hat and gloves and scarf, and push the door open against the drifts of snow, and go walking out through the silent woods in the middle of the night. The snow muffled everything, and reflected what little light struck it, making it seem to glow slightly in the moonlight. The blue snow transformed the countryside into an alien landscape, soft and mysterious, all gentle curves and stark contrasts and trudging through it, it was easy to feel like you were the only living creature. There was such a profound quiet on those nights, and sometimes I would make my way out to the highway and lie down in the middle of it, staring up at the stars, impossibly cold and remote in the barren night sky. No cars ever came down that lonesome road at that time of night, and I could lie there until I got too cold and bored and had no choice but to reluctantly get up and trudge back through the snow, to the lonely dark house at the edge of the woods. Such is the sound of the second movement of Winston’s Night suite, called Midnight, its sparse notes plucked in isolation on the strings of the piano, echoing dully through the impossibly dark night. And then comes Minstrels.

Minstrels is a very simple piece, no chords at all, just a concise figure repeated several times over a steady six note pattern, which changes slightly near the end of the figure before returning to its starting point and continuing. The mix is most remarkable for this piece, and quite uncharacteristic of anything else Winston did, or, really, anything else in the piano repertoire. It starts of quietly all in the left channel, the notes so tender that you have to hold your breath to hear them, lest they scatter and melt. As the cycle repeats, the sound centers in the speakers and the playing gets louder, more assured, but never wavers from the two interlocked patterns. A couple more times through the figure, and the mix slowly moves into the right speaker. As it does so, and the notes slowly lose their resolve, the six note pattern inexplicably repeats twice between cycles, before the melodic figure returns. Now, all in the right speaker, the figures continue and fade out to nothing, never actually ending. It’s such a strangely artificial way to treat a piano solo, in that you could never actually play it like that, and gives you the impression of walking by a house in which somebody unseen has been playing this figure indefinitely, and continuing to walk off into the woods as the piece continues until it is swallowed up by the perpetual night. It is haunting and heartbreaking and inexplicable, and perfectly encapsulates the deep power of winter, silent and impenetrable, eternal and unforgiving, omnipresent and omnipotent.

White.

Silent.