Two years ago, this week, I found Agnes. I have a five-year journal, a little yellow book with a paragraph for each day, and I can see that on March 18 2022 I wrote:
I read through some Agnes Tyrrell pieces today and I’m excited about them—sort of Brahmsian. All I want to do is practice. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this kind of purpose.
Then on the 21st I wrote:
The Kapralova Society sent me Agnes’s Grand Sonata. I think it might be really good—I’ve only read through it once.
I didn’t keep a record of when I first found Agnes’s name; I didn’t know it was important at the time. And I know memories are constructed, not trustworthy. But I have a very clear recollection of standing in the Interlochen library, taking a look at the reference section, and picking up the Dictionary of Women Composers and flipping through it. The Tyrrell entry caught my eye, and the detail about Liszt suggesting fingerings for her etudes really made me think she probably had interesting piano writing. Something made me remember her name and keep googling her every once in a while, even though nothing was published, and there was nothing, and there was nothing, till Kyra Steckeweh published the piano collection in December 2021. Last year at Interlochen I went to the library stacks and the book was right where I remembered it.
There’s another anniversary this week, a sadder one; my brilliant beautiful artistic hilarious quirky loving mother died on this day fourteen years ago. She would love Agnes’s music and she would be so thrilled that I’m acting as her champion.
In fact, I have an unshakable thought (to be clear, not something I declare to be factually true, but something that feels sort of truth-in-art-true).
It’s easy to imagine my mom running into Agnes in some afterlife situation and saying “oh, you’ve got to meet my daughter Jocelyn! Let’s make sure she finds your music!” In this scenario my mom made the book catch my eye and made it open to that page, and then reminded me to google Agnes once in a while. If that’s how the afterlife works—and my position on that is a staunch what-do-I-know—that’s definitely something my mom would do. And here’s a thing I love about this particular idea: it IS how my mom believed the afterlife worked. She felt like her beloved ancestors were watching over us, and sometimes she’d ask them to intercede.
So if Mom was the one to introduce me to Agnes, I’m grateful. And I love feeling like she’s part of this project.
Here’s a picture of Mom and me in about 1975, probably eating oranges, probably in Berlin.
