“The Stepping Stones of Life”
Lyrics: John Rantzen | Music: Jochen Gutsch
There stands my Doctor Red
With a piss-pot for a head
He greets the new arrival
While he stands there by the bed
The baby views an open door
And sees the chamber now before
A chamber full of mystery
To be explored with wondrous eyes
To see, to learn to multiply
Like those who came before
Time does not really matter
To the young, the strong, the free
To unravel tangled problems
Is their future destiny
But time in fact is limited
As new ones seek their space
For chamber’s space is finite
For all the human race
Suddenly a massive change
His voice descends to lower range
Hair starts sprouting on his face
The acts of passage now take place
Parties are a total hell
His armpits make an acrid smell
girls now avoid the chance to meet him
His hands go clammy in a greeting
He wisely takes advice from others
And with guidance from his brothers
Learns body cleansing from his mother
and mornings start with shaving lather
He sets to work with soapy sponge
Buys a suit then takes the plunge
Attends some local dancing classes
Girls now give him second glances
His time has come to play the field
To find a girl who shares his need
The wish emerges to go steady
A friendship in which both feel ready
Eye pairs then make a contact fleeting
Both intent on mutual meeting
Seeking some secluded space
Where arms and legs can now embrace
To multiply
For time is short, proceed in haste
For that’s the constant urge of life
For girlfriends, lovers, man and wife
A cantor calls
From ages past
“Now raise your foot
and crush the glass”
For few decades of life remain
To love, to hold, and lips to kiss
The end comes far too quickly
Of this wonderland of bliss
The sun descents in orange red
My wife lies dying in her bed
The song of life becomes a gasp
As sorrow swamps the dreams of past
To grieve, to grieve, to grieve some more
To grieve as tear drops pol the floor
The world has changed
Its not the same
I cannot bear to speak her name
The laugh, the smile, the intellect
These are things I’ll not forget
A moving shadow on the wall
Is that my wife
I can’t recall
Old Omar wrote the song of life
A thousand years before
He now stands quietly waiting
By the chamber’s open door
He holds the open door ajar
And nods his wise old head
He beckons me to pass on through
And walk the path ahead
Behold the path of loneliness
Stretching into space
“Your song is sung, there is no more
It’s time to leave this place”
“Boaties raise and boat your oar
The cask is empty, head for shore”
We two now clasp each other’s hands
As dust that mingles with the sand
about
"The Stepping Stones of Life" is an original piece of music composed by Jochen Gutsch set to a poem written by John Rantzen. To read the poem, please click the LYRICS button that appears as you hover over the song title.
The poem is dedicated to John Rantzen’s late wife and was written immediately after she passed away in late 2020. John Rantzen reached out to his son, Andy Rantzen, and asked him to find a composer to set his words to music. Equipped with many contacts thanks to his work in an arts organisation, the latter considered several potential candidates; among them his occasional collaborator Jochen Gutsch who had written a body of original chamber music for this group Hinterlandt. The composer was intrigued by the emotional weight of the lyrics and agreed to create the piece.
In this work, Jochen Gutsch shaped a musical narrative that follows and supports the words closely while maintaining its own musical creativity. He envisaged a succession of sceneries to illustrate the situations relayed in the storyline, which follows an arch from the beginning of life to the end of it. He composed the work as a chamber-music piece to be performed by the highly experienced musicians in his quintet Hinterlandt, with special guests Andy Rantzen as narrator and Keyna Wilkins on the flute.
"The Stepping Stones of Life" starts in an innocent, playful mode, stumbles over moments of crude humour and hints of spirited absurdity, moves on to depict coming-of-age scenes and the trials of young adulthood, navigates into more complex emotional territory, triumphs in emotive unison, and eventually steers towards the inevitable: the end of life. It is only towards the second part of the piece that the dramatic melancholy that inspired the piece unfolds in its full solemnity. At the very end of the piece, the ensemble returns to bring back the introductory motif, ending on a positive note, describing the cycle of life.
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