So every Thursday night, I�d go plop myself down in front of the television in the lounge of my dorm to watch the weekly film. No one in the dorm thought this was odd. In fact, one of the girls from my dorm named Andrea, used to come down and we would watch together. Eventually, we became friends after a fashion. She studied karate and talked about the Zen Buddhism. Sometimes Andrea would invite me back to her room after the film and brew up a pot of jasmine tea, and we�d talk until the wee hours. To vary things a bit she would sometimes throw a section of orange or a handful of raisins into the pot.

Andrea occupied the large end room on the second floor of the dorm that looked out over the meadow and the creek. She had hung posters of the Matterhorn and bamboo reproductions of Japanese scrolls on her wall. Her bookshelf was lined with an eclectic blend of novels that indicated her major: comparative literature. She had long, straight, dark hair, and an athletic build. She really looked like she could have stepped off a Swiss hiking trail, which she had in fact hiked the year before. Of course I fell for her, but, some part of her must have sized me up for not being outdoorsy enough, so we just stayed friends.

But she did introduce me to Haiku, which I immediately took a liking to. In my French literature classes, we had to read a lot of poetry, stuff by Hugo and Ronsard, some of which were so artificially contrived that you wondered, what effete snob read this stuff. Haiku, however, was so direct and immediate. Though highly stylized-in Japanese you can only use something like 17 syllables and it must contain a reference to the observer, the season and nature-these poems seemed to have the uncanny effect of telegraphing the poet�s experience and emotions right into me. Someone once told me that dolphins can reproduce the sound pattern that they hear using echolocation and broadcast it to other members of their pod. In that way, they can completely reproduce for another being their sensory impression of the world. And that is how I feel when I read Haiku.

So one day during my �Japanese� period, I trudged off to the library and went looking for a book of Haiku. In the Japanese literature section, I discovered a five volume set that had been collected, translated, and commented on by an Brit named R.H. Blyth living in Japan after World War II. He had devoted one volume to each season, and the fifth to miscellaneous poems. There I read the work of Basho and other poets. I checked out books of Japanese artists like Hokusai, Hiroshige, and Utamaro. The emphasis on nature and the desire for ever simpler ways to express complex ideas had a profound impact on me. Here�s a sumptuous one by Basho:

The butterfly is perfuming
It's wings in the scent
Of the orchid.

The reigning clique in our dorm-the one that hung out in Mark Zatorski�s room-respected Andrea, though she was a bit too outdoorsy and down to earth to be a full time member. She also had some odd habits. One day near the end of the semester, a number of us got a bottle of gin, several of tonic, and a bunch of limes and went down to have a �garden party� on the lawn by the banks of the creek. It was a warm, overcast day, and we were drinking like fishes and carrying on. Suddenly, the window to Andrea�s room flew open, she stuck her head out and yelled at us: �Would you people shut up. It�s two o�clock in the afternoon. People are trying to sleep!� We laughed at this odd notion and invited her down, but she slammed the window back down. End of party. After that, she was somewhat cooler to me. She left the dorm the next year to live with her boyfriend, an outdoorsy type who always seemed to be wearing shorts and hiking boots.

CArmina Burana still held me under its spell during most of this semester and its emphasis on my favorite season probably contributed to that. The section devoted to spring is divided into two parts, the second of which is called �On the Lawn.� The first piece is an orchestral interlude called simply �Dance,� which always buoys my spirits. At just under two minutes, it�s an incredible tour de force. It starts out with three trumpet blasts followed by drums-a mini Tattoo. The violins then start playing an wonderful syncopated rhythm that carries you along like a galloping horse. It stops and there is a beautiful little flute solo, before the trumpets and horns return playing the galloping themes. The horns build to a climax and then the dance ends abruptly with a short drum roll.

Another song full of beauty in the �On the Lawn� section is given to the sopranos and chorus. It is called �Chramer, gip die varwe mir� and goes:

This seems like a fitting way to express the feelings invoked by Spring.

Orff Bio

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Recording with Thomas

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