A simpleton once asked a coreographer what her dance meant. She replied, “If I could say it in English, I would not have said it with motion.” The essence of her rebuke was that there are languages of the heart that surpass mere logic and must not be muddled with words. Art speaks in its own terms, in its own non-rational way. But I am a foolish man specializing in a foolish art, namely, preaching. I do exactly what I should not do, I meddle with words in matters that are beyond words. So it is with apologies to Saint Saenz that I verbalize what I felt in his music.
I do not recall when I first heard this particular piano concerto and understood its mystery for myself. Here is what happened. As the pianist played the magnificent work I had a distinct sense that the composer had given the left hand playing the bass clef the specific task of asking disturbing questions that probed the absurdity of our existence. Under its deft fingers low noes rolled out in confrontation demanding answers of the right hand. The questions seemed strong, primal, unanswerable. The treble hand responded with frenetic, yes, frantic movement, seeking to neutralize the powerful undercurrent of inquiry from the left with rapid staccato and virtuoso. The rapid answers however, were not satisfying, but seemed to me to be no more than futile exclamations of painful anguish.
The pianist’s hands continued to argue back and forth in mutual agitation they reached a profound crescendo. And here at this magnificent height the argument was suddenly and dramatically broken by a sudden, gasping pause, a pause for breath, a pause for sense. And in the weight of that pause the right hand forcefully struck a single g. It was a haunting, golden g, filled with resolution. It was a g I wanted to drink down again and again. It was a g that for one incredible moment removed the tension of life and gratified my soul. And when the tensile argument between the playing hands resumed its fury, I understood that even one entity, one living thing, just one, single person standing alone against the world for just one brief moment is of stunning significance.
When Mary Magdalene came to the tomb of Jesus the bass clef of her life was already asking urgent questions. “Why God did you forsake him and let him die? How could you allow the horror of the cross?
How could such a superlative life collapse in to ashes? Where is the promised hope of Israel? Where were you?” And although the treble clef of her soul answered from the fullness of her splendid love it seemed to be no more than a futile pretension. “I will make death better,” she said, “I will rub sweet smelling oil on his leather dead skin, I will wash his face this one last time, and then remember him as long as I live!”
But even so fragile an expression of love would be denied her, for when she arrived at the tomb to salve his body, he was not there. There was nothing for her love to anoint! Now the painful panic of the broken believer overtook her and she fled in to the dew wet of the garden crying, “They have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have put him!” In her confusion and loss she ran headlong in to the risen Lord and mistook him for the gardener. “Sir if you have taken my Lord away, please tell me where you have laid him, and I will go and get him” she sobbed. And at that desperate moment Jesus looked in to her frightened eyes and struck a single golden note, a haunting, beautiful, golden g. “Mary!” he said. One word. Just her name, “Mary!”
And she knew it was Jesus. He was not dead. He was alive! It was he, for he had spoken her name. Spoken it as he had a hundred times be- fore. But now he spoke it from beyond the grave, from the far side of her death. Now it was a resurrected name hanging in the silence of the fragrant garden. And, in that pause, the frantic music of her soul re- solved to meaning. She was his and had eternal life!
—Smuts van Rooyen