Heaviness and Lightness in Terence’s Farewell to Kathleen

by Christopher Balchin

Note: This paper was given as part of the Opposites in Music seminar given at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York City in December 1997, accompanied by both live and recorded music. The great recording referred to is from the EMI CD titled "Songs of My Heart, Popular songs and Irish ballads," D 102454.

I love Aesthetic Realism for explaining the meaning of music. In the Opposites in Music class, these completely new things are shown: 1) what makes music beautiful; 2) why people have been stirred by musical works in all different styles, from all over the world and all periods of history; and 3) what music can tell us about how to have kinder, happier, more integrated lives. And the basis of all we study is this great principle stated by Eli Siegel: “The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.”

I am going to speak about a song of Ireland --which I care for very much--it is "Terence's Farewell to Kathleen" with words by Helen Dufferin, sung by the great Irish tenor John McCormack. It is a about a young man saying goodbye to the girl he loves who is forced to leave him and her country to work in England and who he feels will never return. I think the song has a moving relation of opposites which affect all people very much: heaviness and lightness, also separation and junction. About the first, heaviness and lightness, Mr. Siegel asks in "Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?":

Is there is all art,...the presence of what makes for lightness, release, gaiety?--and is there the presence, too, of what makes for stability, solidity, seriousness?--is the state of mind making for art both heavier and lighter than that which is customary?

As you hear the beginning of “Terence’s Farewell to Kathleen,” you feel heaviness first, the weight of things, with a halting, descending piano introduction.

(Play introduction)

But I was thrilled to see that even in these sombre few measures there is a feeling of lightness and release. The piano has a relation of holding back and rushing forward, and there is a lilt to the rhythm, which is a very flexible waltz time. And the melody’s first four notes are all ascending.

(Play introduction again)

Then we hear the voice of John McCormack, which itself is a magnificent relation of brightness and depth, singing "So my Kathleen you're going to leave me/All alone by myself in this place." And the way the melody begins painfully in the minor and then suddenly changes to a yearning major chord on "me," and then back to the minor--is lovely. We hear Terence's dashed hopes, his deep pain, his confusion. Listen to how the piano both rises delicately, encouragingly, above his voice and descends to that deep tonic note, adding to both the weight and the release of the song. (Play up to "...truth in that face.")

That voice is beautiful. John McCormack has here, as Eli Siegel writes, that “state of mind...both heavier and lighter than that which is customary.” His tone is both piercing and caressing as he takes the weighty meaning of the words telling about this awful situation, and gives graceful form to them. The high “O” has both release and a cry of anguish coming from the depths! It is full as it goes out into space, into the distance that is soon to separate them.

The melody continually rises up and falls back again. Opposites in music that are related to heaviness and lightness are minor and major. Major seems to represent bright stability sureness; whereas minor stands for something both more weighty and also more unsure. The difference between a major chord and a minor chord is so slight-—one half tone higher or lower on the middle note of the chord: yet this difference affects us so profoundly, it really gets us. Imagine -- or better still, play it if you have a piano handy -- what would happen if the opening phrase of this song were in the major.

Then, something dramatic and beautiful takes place as we come to the bridge of this song--making for a thrilling new relation of heaviness and lightness. We have been predominantly in the minor, and now, with a quickening waltz rhythm, which sounds like a man's heart surging with feeling, we are propelled upwards into the bright major key on the words “Tho’ England’s a beautiful country ” The melody stays in the major all the way until nearly the very end of the stanza, where we hear a reminiscence of the earlier minor melody on the plaintive words "You’ll never forget your poor Terence/ You'll come back to old Ireland again.” (Play entire first stanza)

If the bridge continued in the major it wouldn’t take in the seriousness of the situation described and would be falsely light; if the whole song were minor, you wouldn’t feel there was any hope, it wouldn’t be true to the way a person’s feelings can rise and fall, and it wouldn’t be beautiful. And what does it say about the relation of heaviness and lightness in the world, that these sad words by Lady Dufferin are set to the air of a merry Irish song, called “The pretty girl milking the cow?”

Heaviness and lightness are opposites that have affected me very much, as they do all people. Before I met Aesthetic Realism I wanted to act happy-go-lucky, and I felt I had to make people laugh, but I didn’t really show myself to people and felt lonely and depressed. In an Aesthetic Realism consultation, when I said I often felt I wasn't present when I talked to people, my consultants kindly asked:

Consultants: Do you feel that your lightness is honest? If you're not present it means that you're not showing the depth of yourself.

CB: Quite often I feel that I’m too light, and I don’t like the way I can make some bright pun or comment.

I learned the reason I felt bad is because I was using lightness to make less of things--to feel falsely on top, which is contempt. And my consultants asked:

What should be the basis of your being light or being serious? It has very much to do with what your purpose is: Is your intent, your purpose, to have a person like the world more and be stronger, whether you’re talking with your wife at the breakfast table or you’re talking to your students about a particular subject?

And they suggested I write about how the opposites of the formal and informal, the severe and the lightsome, or heavy and light are in the world itself. I wrote about a brass music stand, a paving stone, a pussy-cat's graceful leap, a pencil, traffic lights--and more. Aesthetic Realism has changed the way I feel under my skin--I no longer shuttle back and forth from feeling light and insubstantial, to heavy and depressed--and what I have learned, everyone should be able to.

As John McCormack sings this Irish song, he is showing us how heaviness and lightness can work together, because his purpose in this recording of 29th August, 1934 , was to be fair to the notes, the words, the meaning of the song. (Play second verse.)

Another pair of opposites--separation and junction--are also central in the song’s meaning. Eli Siegel has explained that in all evil there is an ugly relation of these opposites, "a managing collision" and aloofness--and in the history of England ’s brutal exploitation of the land and people of Ireland there have been both. As an Englishman I hate this. There is a taken-for-granted, disgusting contempt had by many people in England for Irish men and women--and I used to have it. Eli Siegel defined contempt as the “disposition in every person to think he will be for himself by making less of the outside world.” Aesthetic Realism needs to be studied so that this attitude and the horrors it leads to will no longer plague relations between people of different countries.

This ballad and the beautiful way it is sung and played is in complete opposition to that contempt which is at the heart the profit system in the form of English imperialism--where the feelings of Irish women and men were made like nothing so they could be used, robbed of their hopes, possibilities, and very lives--all to make wealthy Englishmen wealthier. "Terence's Farewell," though perhaps not the greatest Irish song, has important feeling in it, and should be listened to and thought about seriously by every English person. The performance of John McCormack is fervently sincere--listen, in the third verse, to what happens as he sings her name for the last time: it is heart-wrenching, yet relieving through its very utterness. And the way the pianist, Edwin Schneider is both together with and respectfully separate from John McCormack, is beautiful--and adds to the power of the song. The two musicians--who were, in fact, close friends for 25 years--need each other and add to each other’s meaning.

(Play final stanza)

It is my careful and passionate opinion that when the Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel--including its beautiful understanding of music--is studied by every person in the world, the ill will between people of different ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds, which has caused so much pain for thousands of years, will end forever