'for / waters' is a piece about a marriage—specifically, the marriage between the pianist and violinist featured in this recording and who this piece was written for: Bethany Danel Brooks and David Danel.

Marriage, ideally, is about two people in a state of mutual belonging. But marriage is more than a state of belonging: it includes an ongoing journey toward and into belonging. It encompasses the trajectories and momentum of individuals towards each other, even before an initial connection takes place. People are therefore in relationship with each other before they are “in relationship” with each other. From this perspective, marriage might be understood as another mystical manifestation of the inscrutable and unknowable fault line between free will and providence. Two lives are always in reference to one another before the initial “hello,” because though individual trajectories have not yet crossed, they will. This interweaving begins early: each life is conditioned, shaped, sensitized to see, hear, feel the other. Home is created in each for each.

The title of the piece and each of its movements are drawn from Isaiah 35, a sacred text read at the Brooks-Danel wedding that speaks to this deep interweaving of relationship. The text focuses on foundational relationships and presents a vision of the finished tapestry: upending, world-changing harmony.

This journey from seemingly one to finally two is mirrored in the structure of 'for / waters'. The first two movements of the piece are for solo piano and solo violin respectively. But neither soloist is alone: each is accompanied by the "non-playing" presence of the other. In the case of the first movement, the violinist accompanies the soloist by subtly bowing everywhere on the instrument but the strings of the instrument—the sides, the back, the neck. In the second movement, the sustain pedal of the piano is depressed through the course of the movement so that the violin might activate piano resonances.

But for relationship to take place and flourish, potential must become concrete, and the task of knowing must take root in space and time. And so in movements three and four, violin and piano share the material stuff of bow, string, hammer, and key. Melodic and rhythmic motifs are volleyed back and forth, at other times intertwining, at other times moving in lockstep. Harmony suggested by the one is completed by the other. Both partners move forward together into a new space.

If this all sounds very romantic and idealistic, it is. The sacred text which acted as a benediction of this particular relationship offers examples of the utmost, almost ridiculous, harmony and flourishing. The wilderness will bloom; the desert will become an oasis; the blind will see and the lame will leap. “Gladness and joy will overtake them,” the text ends, “and sorrow and sighing will flee away.” These words speak to a universal ache for broken things to be made whole, and hints at the place where what could be and what is are united: tears folded into joy, life come out of death, reconciliation and union.

It’s as good a place as any to begin a marriage.

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