Convalescence

Giving a title to an otherwise instrumental piece of music provides one of any number of potential starting points for reflection on what the music may express. There is nothing about this music inherently connected to the concept of convalescence, however that concept may have been in mind during the compositional process. Composers often come up with titles even after the fact, and likely a string quartet by any other name would smell as sweet.

Yet perhaps there is a particular significance to specific associations we may ponder on through listening, even if the thread of this association was observed only in retrospect. An apt title may provide insight into some of the interior movements that arose and found conveyance through music, however partially and imperfectly. The way those movements are evoked and paralleled in each person's unique experience characterizes something of the simultaneous universality and singularity that music offers.

Discussions on what instrumental music "means" have at times focused too much on its capacity (or lack thereof) to be somehow translated into discursive thought. The enrichment that I hope people derive from this work is rather the stirring up and engagement with more pre-lingual interior movements. Convalescence may signify something of our general spiritual growth and struggle, an occasion for recollection and surveying memories, or some may find a more pronounced and specific association. In any case, I hope the evoked movement will be one of affirmation and opening, that our deepest desires for healing and restoration are to be met with the real possibility and availability of God's love and mercy.

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