A Year Without Joe Maneri

Yesterday, August 24th, marked a sad anniversary: one year since the world was deprived of the life of Joe Maneri.

Joe left the world a more impoverished place and left a hole in my life that could be patched but never filled. But despite Joe's departure (or because of it? It would be like him to be pulling some strings Up There!), the riches that have appeared in my life this past year have been astonishing. Indeed, as I looked back, I had to stop and think, "Did all that really happen within 365 days?"

A year ago I was unemployed. Now I have two jobs, each one a "dream job" in a completely different way. MIT and Christ Lutheran Church in Natick, Massachusetts – two remarkable places with remarkable clergy and remarkable potential both to use the skills I already have and to stretch myself to develop new skills. I wasn't the first person in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church to note that denomination's knack for mystery and deceit where truth and honesty are instead appropriate. I prayed to find a job where (a) the boss was honest; and (b) I could use my gifts. I found not one but two such appointments. The hardest part has been to convince myself that I'm actually working, such has been my happiness in these two positions.

The relationships I have forged with people this past year have been equally remarkable. I have friends that I cannot believe I have known less than one year. They "get me" in a way that I've rarely been "gotten."

And then there's the small matter of a baby named Matteo Giovanni Ciampa. He is my third child, my wife's first. At 3.5 weeks of age, he at times behaves like an infant weeks, if not months, his senior. It's too early to tell if he will have a sense of humor, but if he goes in the direction of his two older brothers, I can soon expect hilarity in triplicate. (Sometime this past year, I asked my three-year-old, Federico, "Are you the best boy in the whole world?" He replied, "Flattery will get you nowhere.")

I telephoned Sonja Maneri on this sad anniversary. She shared with me a poem that has been helping her get through these difficult days:

NOT IN VAIN
by Emily Dickenson

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain:
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

Neither Joe nor Sonja have lived in vain. In fact, between them they have patched more breaking hearts and eased more pain than a squadron of theologians.

The Antonym of Counterfeit II

Joe & Sonja's wedding anniversary was easy to remember: Tax Day, April 15th. Every April 15th – I mean every April 15th – I called them to wish them a Happy Anniversary. Similarly, every February 9th I called Joe on his birthday. For almost 20 years, I did not miss one of these two annual phone calls.

Until last Tuesday. I couldn't call Joe. It was such a strange feeling.

You've read in these pages the story of the evening I first set foot in Christ Lutheran Church in Natick, looked up at the wall, and saw Sonja's Moses. I was never quite sure of the connection between Sonja and that church, until yesterday evening. In attendance at yesterday afternoon's Hymn Festival was a former pastor of the church, the Reverend Arthur von Au. He recalled an art show at Harvard Divinity School (where a parishioner was a student); the artist was Sonja Holzwarth Maneri. Rev. von Au was taken by Sonja's work and immediately became a patron. Meanwhile, he grew to know and appreciate Joe as well (who didn't?), to the extent that at his farewell service in Natick, whom do you suppose he asked to play? Joe Maneri.

Joe played at my church ...

The Antonym of Counterfeit

Yesterday would have been Joe Maneri's birthday. The first one since his passing last August.

I wanted to write about him yesterday, but I couldn't bring myself to face the significance of the day. There was a memorial service for him in New York. I was here in Massachusetts. When he died, in Massachusetts, I was in Utah. I can't seem to be in the right state at the right time.

In my last telephone conversation with him, last summer, we talked about his birthday, for some reason. He told me something I never knew: he was proud of the fact that he was born on 2-9-27, whereas Charlie Parker was born on the 29th, and Lester Young was born on the 27th. Eerily, both Parker and Young were born in August, the month Joe would die. In fact, Joe died three days shy of what would have been Young's 100th birthday.

Over the years, Joe would say certain sentences that seemed to me so inspired that I would write them down. I wish I did this more often. I did write down a sentence about Lester Young: "Every note that Lester Young played said, 'I love you.'"

Joe was a chameleon in the best sense. Sometimes he was Italian; sometimes he was German; sometimes he was a classical musician; sometimes he was a jazz musician. But when he was a jazz musician, he was REALLY a jazz musician – not some sort of imitation, like when a concert pianist plays Gershwin, or when an English boy choir sings an African-American spiritual. Joe was bona fide at all times – the antonym of counterfeit.

As an example: this is a story told to me by his son Mat the afternoon of the funeral (one of many anecdotes floating around 7 Maple Lane that bittersweet afternoon). One evening, the Joe Maneri Quartet – consisting of Joe, Mat, Randy Peterson on drums, and I'm not sure who the bass player was at the time of the story – were giving a concert. After the concert, Mat and Randy stayed up quite late. The next morning, Mat and Randy groggily descended to the breakfast table. There was Joe, eating breakfast. Now, before I go any further: I had many breakfasts with the Maneris and can attest, firsthand, that fresh garlic was not an unusual ingredient on the breakfast table. It wasn't every morning. But it was not at all unusual to have what Joe would call "Sicilian French Toast": bread dipped in egg and fried, in the regular way, but instead of butter and maple syrup, the condiments were olive oil, grated pecorino romano, salt, pepper, and fresh chopped garlic. Another permutation might be bread or toast dipped in olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and lemon juice. In any case, Mat and Randy sleepily arrived at the breakfast table, to see Joe with, in Mat's words, "a jelly donut in one hand and a clove of garlic in the other." Joe's response to their facial grimaces: "Man, you cats don't know what it's about."

Indeed, it was as a "cat" that the Joe Maneri of later years was most widely appreciated. And yet it was as the great classical composer that I always saw him. Joe had one of the rarest musical gifts I ever encountered. He could hear any piece of music – and I mean any piece – and he had the uncanny ability to know what the composer was doing. Maybe some rare musicians can do this with Palestrina, or with Mozart, or with Elliott Carter, or with Milton Babbitt, or with Pietro Mascagni. I personally witnessed Joe do it with all of them. Even my own music! I'll never forget the time we sat and listened to a CD of my "Suite Siciliana" for chamber orchestra. Mind you, he'd never heard the piece before. Well, every nuance in the music, even the most subtle one, could be seen in this reactions on his face. For a moment I wondered if he had actually composed the piece, not me.

The last piece of music he and I ever listened to was Al Jolson singing, "You Made Me Love You." Though Joe played this sort of music in his youth in Brooklyn, I doubt seriously that he listened to, or even thought about, this sort of genre for many years. And yet I will never, so long as I live, forget the radiance on his face. He bobbed his head at every musical nuance, as if he knew what was coming next, as if he himself had did the orchestration and was himself singing. His smile lit up not only that room, but my whole life. Because if music is to be felt any less strongly than this, what is the point?

Musical Excellence

The following was a piece I wrote for The Reporter, the monthly newsletter of Christ Lutheran Church in Natick, Massachusetts, where I am Director of Music.

MUSICAL EXCELLENCE

Since age seven, music has been the raison d'être of my life. There was not a single, solitary instance that my parents had to ask me to practice. There were times when they hoped I would stop.

This is not to say that music has always made me happy. It's just that not doing music made me unhappy, so I really had no choice. I didn't choose music; it chose me.

The times I was unhappiest were the times that music felt like entertainment. When music is entertainment, practicing suddenly becomes a striving for the things that don't matter. No harm is intended when a concertgoer watches a young pianist and says, "Wow, look how fast his fingers are going." But how does that make the young pianist feel? For me, it felt like being a circus attraction. "Wow, look how tall that woman is. Look how fat that man is." It's the fixation with some unusual physical attribute, not an interest in the person. It made me want to practice less, because if practicing made me more "unusual," I didn't want to do it. I wanted to be normal.

Perhaps the most harmful aspect of the musical world is the competition. A musical competition is no different from a figure skating tournament in the Olympics. You go on the ice. As soon as you slip, the judges put a checkmark on their sheet. You just went from 10 to 9.75. Slip again -- another checkmark. Now you're at 9.5. And so forth. It's not that the best skater wins; the skater who did least badly wins. The winner isn't chosen; everyone else is eliminated. If the point of my practicing is to prevent the judges' checkmarks, it's very hard to motivate myself to practice.

The times I was happiest were the times that music felt not like entertainment but like healing. When I play a religious service or a concert, the best I can hope for is for someone to say to me afterward, "Thanks, I needed that. I was having a terrible day, and I almost didn't come. But I'm so glad I did, because your music soothed me. I'm feeling so much better than I did before." A doctor may prescribe a pill; the pill might make you feel better, or it might make you sicker. But if I can make people feel better with my music, that is no small feat.

When the goal is healing, then I have a reason to practice. Because now I'm not serving the competition adjudicator, or the circus spectator. Now I'm serving a person on a human level. I'm trying to prepare that piece of music so that its expressive qualities -- indeed, its healing qualities -- can best emerge.

One of the most miraculous things that has occurred to me in a long time occurred right here at CLC. I was in the car with my wife, heading for Natick for that first interview. I fretted the whole way -- to the great annoyance of my wife Jeanette, who wondered why she was wasting the time and fuel to take someone somewhere that he didn't seem to want to go!

We pulled into the parking lot. I walked in the door. I looked up on the wall. And there was Moses.

I was floored, because I instantly knew who the artist was. The reason I instantly knew is because I first met Joe & Sonja Maneri when I was about eight years old. They were like my other parents, the parents that I would have chosen if one could choose one's parents. Joe passed away last August. There is no way to convey my grief at the loss of one of the greatest musicians, and human beings, that I have ever known.

It was Joe Maneri who taught me that music could heal -- and must heal. There is an amazing story, an absolutely true one, which I do not believe was unique in Joe's life. Many years ago his daughter Nina was sick in the hospital. And yet he had this powerful urge inside him to attend a party. He was at war within himself. "My daughter is here sick in the hospital, but why do I want to leave and go to this stupid party? What's wrong with me?" To make a long story short, he quietly left the hospital, went to the party, and there was a young woman, crippled from birth with cerebral palsy, sitting in a wheelchair. Her grandmother sat next to her. Joe took out his clarinet and started to play, "Hava Nagilah," which in Hebrew means, "Let us rejoice." Sonja accompanied on the piano. The girl stood up from her wheelchair and started moving her hips. She was dancing! The girl's grandmother was floored. She said, "I don't know who this Jesus of yours is, but he must be pretty wonderful." Joe returned to the hospital, and his daughter recovered just fine.

I don't know how to heal someone like that. But I should would like to find out! May I always strive for the highest musical excellence. But may it never be for entertainment.

The "Hava Nagilah" story was even wilder than what I wrote in the church article. One day Joe had been wearing a pair of shoes that had seen better days. A woman said, "Joe, if those shoes last another year, I'm going to throw a birthday party for them." A year passed; Joe was still wearing the shoes; and so the party in question was -- get this -- a birthday party for his shoes! Imagine Joe's dilemma: stay with daughter in hospital or go to birthday party for shoes! Just goes to show: sometimes what the Lord asks us to do is more unusual than, "Put $100 in the collection plate," or, "Recite the 'Our Father.'"

The Italian (& Hungarian) sides of Joe Maneri

Friends,

I know many of you have been waiting for a (to use one of Joe's favorite adjectives) heavy-duty post from me. Certainly the man whom I said was both "one of the greatest musicians of our time" and "like a father to me" was someone about whom I would have something to say.

Well, I still can't bring myself to write it.

A book could, and should, and will, will written about him. Several, I'm sure. But to reduce him to one blog post? It would be easier to arrange a ten-minute piano work entitled, "Highlights from Beethoven's Last Five Piano Sonatas."

I did, however, find a journal entry that I wrote several months back. It is not even the tip of the iceberg -- it is a snowflake on top of the tip of the iceberg. Still, I think begins to hint at the immensity of my feelings:

3 April 2009

Today was the day that I learned that Joe had a heart attack two weeks ago, and now has congestive heart failure. So it's only natural that I wanted to get some thoughts on paper.

I'm sure I will write something about Joe. And I'm sure it will be viewed by some as a student's adulation for his teacher, something not "impartial."

Well, I will tell you this:

If you went to the home of the greatest Italian chef who ever lived, and you tasted the greatest ravioli ever created by the hand of mankind, and if your reaction was, "Those ravioli are pretty good," that is not impartiality. That is inaccuracy.

If I use superlatives to describe Joe, it shows that he must be very great. If he were not very great, why would I want to write about him? And why would I write with superlatives if he were "normal"?

For to state that "Joe Maneri was within the range of normal" would be an inaccuracy. He was well beyond the range of normal. The only honest thing is to describe a great man with great terms. If through my writing the subject emerges as someone "great," that is not my fault. I am merely reporting a fact.

Joe and I spent many hours -- who knows how many? -- listening to and talking about Italian opera and song. Though Joe had a thoroughly German training with Josef Schmid (1890-1969), his heart and his upbringing were equally thoroughly Italian. At the time it was the furthest thing from my mind that I was "influencing him" in any way. I was simply sharing, and anyone who knew him knew that he was a limitlessly generous man who had a gift for drawing the loves and passions out of those around him. It was natural for his students and friends to share what was in their hearts.

Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana was an opera known and loved by countless Sicilians of Joe's parents' generation. Though many musicians and musicologists persist in thinking of this work as being "crude" and, in the worst sense of the word, "pesanty," Joe found much sophistication in it. I can still hear Joe singing the cello theme that opens Scene II -- that heart-breaking F# minor melody. There is a spot where Mascagni uses an F major 6/4 chord, with the cellos playing an open C. Quite a distant chord in F# minor. Joe told me, "When I first played that chord, I cried."

I had trouble holding back the tears when, following Joe's funeral, I was at the Maneri home, seated at the Knabe piano that used to be his mother's, with the old yellowed score of Cavalleria on the rack. I couldn't bring myself to play Scene II, but I played the Prelude. There are no words for the sadness I felt. I think I was sad in particular because I realized, at that moment, how sophisticated that music really is. Joe was right all along, yet the world was years from realizing it. The story of his life.

I often brought CDs of Caruso and Gigli, singing Verdi, Puccini, and of course Mascagni, but also Tosti. Many times did I play Tosti for Joe on one or another of the various pianos in the Maneri residence. On one of these occasions, Joe said to me, "You know, I have to tell you, I think that Paolo Tosti is really my favorite composer."

Joe once paid me a compliment that, at the time, I didn't think I deserved in the slightest way. Today, I think there may have been some truth in it. He said, "You've influenced my teaching. Before my teaching was too German. But because of you, I put more of the Italian in there."

Another composer whom Joe loved in a way that few people realized was Franz Liszt.

Liszt was a lot like Joe. Liszt had a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of all other music and musicians of his time. Liszt encouraged the musicians around him and treated them with the utmost generosity. Liszt pushed tonality ten or twenty years before the rest of the musical world as a whole started pushing it. Liszt plunged depths of spirituality and profundity, yet his detractors insisted he was "posing." All of that could be said about Dr. Maneri.

Once, I had a beautiful print made of Liszt seated at the piano (see image) and had it professionally framed. I don't remember the occasion; Joe's birthday, maybe? Anyhow, when he saw it, he went wild! He looked at it as if to know everything that Liszt was thinking at the time of the photo. It would be a little cliché to say that "it was like Joe knew him." What it was was: Joe really related to him. And he got very excited every time we talked about him.

Once, in class, Joe unexpectedly asked me to go to the piano and sightread (!) several of Liszt's late, mysterious piano works (Nuages Gris and one or two others). These works profoundly moved and fascinated Joe. After all, they were, in the best sense of the phrase, "ahead of their time."

I knew Joe since I was eight or nine years old, before he became my teacher. In September of 1989, during Orientation Week at the conservatory, many of the teachers gave a please-take-my-class demonstration. I could write a small book just about the demonstration that Joe gave that day! But I will mention only one thing which relates to the discussion about "ahead of one's time."

One very misunderstood aspect of Joe was his total humility, which to many seemed to be total arrogance. It wasn't. For instance, once in class Joe said (verbatim), "I'm so amazing it's scary, and I say that with the deepest humility." There wasn't a shred of arrogance in that statement. Joe gave every nanogram of credit, for every great thing inside him, to the Lord. If you knew him, you understood the simplicity and honesty of such statements.

Anyhow, here we were in September of '89 during Orientation Week. Joe's telling us the story of something that happened only a week before. He was cleaning out his swimming pool, and he combined chlorine with something else, and he couldn't breathe, and Sonja had to rush him to the hospital, and it took five hours for them to get him to breathe normally again. Joe then said -- and he couldn't say it without laughing -- "Had I died, ha ha ha, had I ha ha ha died, it would have set the world back 50 years."

That, too, was a humble statement. Joe was merely stating the truth.

The Funerals of Maneri & Kennedy

Organists and Catholic clergy have a stereotype of each other. Priests feel that organists are "in it just for the organ," and organists feel that priests are "enemies of good music." The stereotype is much more often true for clergy than for organists; I can't think of one organist colleague of mine that does not have a great liturgical sensitivity and knowledge, while a large majority of the priests I have known seem to be allergic to the arts.

However, as I read a popular organist Listserv, I see comments of such a fanatical nature that I begin to understand that, in many cases, priests' complaints about organists are entirely justified. One Lister wrote:

> I was shocked at the lack of organ used during [Sen. Kennedy's] funeral broadcast live

That is precisely the trait that priests complain about -- and they're RIGHT. What kind of fanatic listens to those eulogies by EMK Jr. and President Obama and laments the lack of organ music? Should they have eliminated one of those two speeches and replaced it with the Muffat Passacaglia?

Another Lister observed:

> It seems clear to me that all the competing priests from various
> institutions overwhelmed any proper liturgical preparation, resulting
> in bizarre absence of basic liturgical music,

As for "liturgical preparation," I'm guessing there was none whatsoever. To wit: I'm guessing there were Washingtonians organizing the thing, and the clergy simply took it upon themselves to say, "Let us pray" and "Amen" at the proper times.

As for the "bizarre absence of basic liturgical music:" Yes, it would have been nice to hear Jack Nicholson singing "Holy, Holy." But should the Mass have lasted three hours? What are these organists advocating, fewer eulogies and more Haugen?

The organists of the List missed a very crucial point. Had the Mass been more "normal" musico-liturgically, there would have been even MORE of an outcry that Sen. Kennedy didn't deserve such. (Murder is generally frowned upon in the Catholic Church. Unless you're talking about the Crusades, but "that was different.")

Though I agree that the Mass could have been trimmed down -- Domingo subtracted more than he added, and maybe we didn't need a whole cadre of eulogists -- I suggest that, overall all, it was "the way it should have been."

An interesting contrast was the funeral for Joe Maneri. It occurred last Friday at a Nazarene Church in Framingham. Sonja wanted a church service that was just that: a church service. Not a concert, not a musical marathon, just a church service. And it was, with simple hymns, a wonderful sermon, and an unforgettable eulogy (only one). The only "luxury" was to have Joe's piano fugues played for the prelude and postlude. (I'm not saying my playing of them was "luxurious" -- I simply did my best under the circumstances. They are great music).

The interesting thing about this "church service that really was a church service" is that, with Joe's hundreds of colleagues, former students, etc. that would have been happy to lend their talents at a moment's notice, it could have turned into a circus very easily.

My point is: I agree that a church service should never be made a mockery of. And there were, indeed, aspects of Sen. Kennedy's funeral that were "not like a regular Funeral Mass." But I thank God that this complicated Catholic did not receive a regular one, because that would have been a much graver mockery.