("I greet you warmly," were the opening words of then-Governor Earl Warren in 1948 at the Republican National Convention. He was broadcasting from an auditorium without air conditioning. I liked his double meaning and although my contexts have differed from his that night, those words have stuck with me: I've since used them as my signature 'howdy' thousands of times.)

So I go out to Anna Amalia for my little meet & greet spiel.

Arriving in a stately Mercedes-Benz, she has not kept us waiting after all. I hadn't known that M-Bs were used as taxis. Ever.

Befitting the royal family that Anna married into in 1756 (that’s not a typo), she’s bejeweled and be-gowned. She is of a certain age. I'm reminded of a summer day by the scent of her perfume.

At first, Anna acts as if I’m another just-arriving guest. When I say that I'm her co-host, she winks and sizes me up as ‘My Lord,” as if to give attention to my “Estate.” Once inside our pad -- it's not grand, no vaulted ceilings or wow-inducing staircases, for instance -- she no longer "My Lord(s)" me.

Returning the kindness of our invitation, Anna has brought a cabbage casserole for us and special meat bones for our white-haired dog ‘Presto,’ which she pronounces with a rolled r as in Priesto. He responds to her language of food.

Right away, with a glance here, a head toss there, the lady exudes good will.

I show Anna into our dinner party’s staging area, which she dubs the ‘Conservatory.’ What da? it’s only a small living/sitting/meeting room. It is well-lit, however. We figure that will make everyone feel 'up.' Anna, who lived without electrification, is fascinated.

Anna likes our positioning of chairs in a circle near the harpsichord, the better to spur music and music-talk. Experienced in hosting musicians, she says she particularly craves harpsichord proximity. Anna, it appears, is less partial to piano chords, and so I feel vindicated: Barb and I had contemplated clustering chairs tonight in our dining-kitchen space ‘round the battered upright piano that we bought third or fourth-hand back in 1974 for $200. (Our daughter was supposed to learn how to play it. Piano-playing is another skill I once wished that I had.)

(Hope you don’t mind all these flashbacks. As they say, isn’t Memory, Life?)

Barb joins us from the kitchen and to my surprise the two women shake hands indifferently, warily. From the way she holds herself, Anna slights -- or seems chilly towards -- Barb. What gives?

What's not to like about the woman I love? Does aristocrat Anna have some sort of radar that enables her to discern and disagree with Barb's feminist goals, e.g., better wages and benefits for working-class and middle-class women in the retail and health-care sectors? Does Anna somehow sense Barb’s irreverence towards ruling classes and political families? To cut to a really core belief, does our rich guest intuit (very mystically) that Barb interprets the Bible partly in terms of its suggestions for the 'good of the poor and marginalized'? At bottom do these two women have rival world views?

Where are Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Kenny Chesney anyway?

Anna Amalia’s handshake strikes me as guarded, her look critical. I almost sense she might send me back to the kitchen. Surely, though, I misperceive. Maybe she is puzzled about why on earth we summoned her tonight.

Maybe I should have dressed more fancy? But tonight is not a costume drama.

We all sit, but not before Anna fluffs our chairs’ pillows and realigns our flower bouquets. She directs most of her attention to Rick.

I know that polite hosts are not supposed to jab their guests with questions before the meal, but I cannot resist. I ask her about the fire in 2004 of her library with major collections of handwritten musical scripts, German literature, and medieval manuscripts. Knowing that her library is regarded as a significant contribution to Western culture, I butter her up over East and West Germany each wanting it after World War II. (In the end, the holdings were split between the two.)

Oh my, I have it all wrong. The burnt library was not hers, but her aunt’s -- the contemporaneous and same-named Anna Amalia, who was a Princess of Prussia rather than tonight’s visitor, a Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel. Well, no one has ever called me infallible.

We are told that our guest’s architecturally famous library in Weimar, thank you very much, is still intact with some 850,000 volumes. Icily, Duchess Anna inquires about our library. Rick, trying to lighten the tone after the mix-up and looking for a laugh in this self-deprecatory and ironic era of ours, says our library consists mostly of our kids’ left-behind textbooks. Anna frowns at me.

Anna asks Rick that inevitable question, the one that provides context for conversations, “What do you do?” Rick appreciates that it is not dynamic for a person of his years to say he is retired, lest he come across as too detached from the blooming, buzzing world. So he replies that he is a “self-employed consultant.”

Anna does not press to learn what he consults about or whether his self-employment brings in money.

Anna does not ask what I do.

Her fragrance smells like Mrs. Robinson, the character that Ann Bancroft played in The Graduate.

So where are Kenny Chesney and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau?

Decked-out in a tux and evincing the presence of a Master, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is lengthy and firm in shaking everyone’s hands. He looks fit, like he spends at least half-hour a day on an exercise bike. Dietrich says that he has a musician son, a cellist and conductor, who’s Kenny Chesney’s age.

Anna Amalia steps up to welcome Dietrich and later Kenny Chesney as if she is tonight’s hostess. The Duchess passes out wine spritzers and the carrot-stick appetizers that Barb obviously had made. Carrot sticks are what the weight-conscious Kenny had requested when Barb conference-called Dietrich and him last month.

Anna’s hyper-activity prompts Dietrich to whisper to me, by way of explanation if not justification, that “In old age, you shouldn’t abandon that which is most important to you.” Surely as the evening progresses, Anna and our guests will not abandon their important art either. We hope they'll sing some, but (as artists do) they’ll leave us wanting more.

It develops that Kenny came to the art of music in Tennessee at age 19, when his mother gave him a guitar. On the other hand, both of our Germans declare they’ve been hard-wired for music almost from infancy, both also encouraged by their moms. Kenny and especially Dietrich seem impressed that one of Barb’s great-grandfathers used to sing lieder around his parish house. (That’s the great-grandfather/reverend who left his family to run away with the choirmaster.)

For everyone's info, and as Anna modestly seems to shrug off my data, I spell out that our Duchess played the harpsichord, violin, and flute.

Nope, I have not come correct, for it turns out that too was not this Anna Amalia right here. Instead, the three-instrument lady was the Prussian Princess. Curiously, tonight's Anna feels compelled to add, perhaps out of regal competitiveness, that her aunt's marriage was quickly annulled. Our Duchess Anna here acknowledges that she too was into music and that she too largely lived single -- but as a dowager, her royal husband having died two years into their marriage.

The present Anna became Regent for her infant son. “With prudence,” she administered the duchy for 17 years, strengthening (as she notes) its resources and diplomatic relations. This Anna was independent enough to entertain all the literary and musical artists she wanted.

Was her Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach a great state, or what?

Leaning towards Dietrich, Anna Amalia lowers her voice, “My husband was very gentle.”

Anna Amalia asks if Rick and I are married, and when I specify that we are and that we had two sons and a daughter, she asks if we married once our kinder were old enough to be part of the ceremony.

Earlier, I had noticed that Kenny Chesney twigged to the mention of annulment. Now he says that after a four-month courtship in 2005, he had wed the Hollywood star, Renee Zellweger. “I remember coming back from the wedding and we landed in Little Rock, Arkansas. I had a show. We didn't have a honeymoon, you know? Welcome to Little Rock, Baby! Happy Honeymoon!”

Another four months later, Baby filed for an annulment, citing fraud as the reason. The couple believed that was the broadest of the available legal reasons that could be filed in her home state of California.

It must be difficult for dual celebrities to make a go of it. And then there is that gentleman's code, 'Never badmouth a lady.'

According to Kenny: “The only fraud that was committed was me thinking that I knew what it was like...that I really understood what it was like to be married and I really didn't."

(Allow me this aside: My Rick here is one of those billions of men who love being loved and loving, even in a long-term marriage. But my girlfriends -- we call ourselves “The Golden Girls” -- tell me about bachelors who are busy entrepreneurs, state judges, teachers, et al.) who are commitment-phobes. These guys also have shows coming up, always. They are happy boozing, working, staying up late, traveling, doing jock things, dating Babies-of-the-moment. The complicated relationship and lifestyle of marriage and fatherhood simply is not on those guys’ ‘To-Do’ lists. Like, Kenny has to spend months on tour with the 100 full-time employees of Kenny Chesney Inc. Hence I can understand why he has taken –- at least for now -- an Incomplete in Long-Term Marriage.)

Dietrich jumps in with a reflection on his own experience, much of it as a widower and father of three: ”I was rarely at home, often inaccessible. And when I was at home, I had to work [study scores, familiarize himself with composers as persons and with the times in which their work was created, develop an interpretation that is original]. I was subservient to this work. I was its slave…One tries again and again to scale back, to make adjustments, to fulfill one’s obligations…But in the final analysis, I don’t think it can really be done. You have to make the sacrifice, and unfortunately others are a part of this sacrifice as well. It is a bitter lesson, which everyone in my position will experience. I think the same thing has happened to everyone who has seriously devoted himself to Music...”

How should I react to Dietrich's lesson? Well, people (other than my sister who had to endure hours of my practicing) used to tell me that I could elicit mellow tones out of my clarinet. But now -- as happens most days -- I am glad that I did not seriously devote my whole life to music. I do not verbalize that opinion in front of our guests, though...

Toting his guitar, Kenny Chesney has shown up in his trademark cowboy hat, drawstring pants, and sleeveless T-shirt. He’s just in from his home in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

In modern terms, Anna Amalia is hardly well-traveled. Tonight she’s curious about Caribbean scents and sounds. In her mind, the Islands have Rome’s bright allure. Anna remembers that Eternal City as enabling her to somewhat escape northern Europe’s gloomy seasons.

She asks Barb if she’s been to Rome. Barb hasn’t. Anna inquires if Barb has been to the Virgin Islands either. Nope. Dangerous trip-whetting questions, those. They manifest little empathy for our budget.

Kenny picks up on the travel theme, regretting that when he tours the U.S., his time is scheduled tightly. The complexity and pace of his mainland life never ceases to amaze him. On the road, it’s “about time and place…but down there [on the Islands], you don’t always know what day it is. It’s great.” He invites Anna, and Barb too, to visit sometime and see for themselves. He knows this neat seaside bar where tourists don’t pester for autographs.

Anna says she’d like to take Kenny up on his invitation. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau simple-truths that travel goads one to shed provincial assumptions. "It reminds one what's important globally."

Anna asks if skinny-dipping goes on in and around the Virgin Islands, which she enjoys pronouncing it as ‘Vergin Isles.'

Now exactly where did that question come from? In her day, did she nude-bathe in the Trevi Fountain? Try that at the Trevi now and police will arrest you.

Kenny acknowledges that skinny-dipping is 'in' on the Vergins’ powdery beaches. To keep the conversation afloat, I add that old and creaky as I am, I still feel 'liberated' when swimming free, free at last in warm and sunlit waters, experiencing a sensuality that’s open, confident, respectful, and harmonious with nature.

I don't mind that Barb characterizes my ‘liberation’ at the lakeside cottage that she and I occasionally get to visit. (One of our kids married into a family with that often-empty cottage, and what's wrong with a little nepotism that gives us access?) Her Big Reveal is that I remove my trunks only after I’m in water over my height and can park my suit on a neighbor’s raft. So much for my ‘self-expression.'

Anna laughs and forgives my modesty, saying that we all reflect the time & place where we grew up. Coming of age in the '50s, I was as conforming and other-directed as our decade's organizational men.

My turn to speak: I characterize Barb as indulging my skinny-dipping during the day, but she's never done that herself -- until moonlight. Says it's more romantic then.

So much for sharing the unvarnished details of our sex life.

I cannot get over what a relief it is to see that our Anna Amalia and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau are compatible. For example, they share peak regard for their national hero Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, paramount star of her Court of Muses, the Court of artists whose careers Anna advanced during her glittering regency. A composer of songs and harpsichord sonatas in the Italian mode, in 1776 Anna put some of Goethe’s words to music.

And then one day in Stockholm almost two hundred years later -- that was in 1970 -- Dietrich happened to record that very same song, Johann Goethe’s and Duchess Anna Amalia’s song. Talk about artistic affinities.

Dietrich brings Anna up-to-date on civic plans to revive her Weimar as the place where Europeans discuss the meaning of today’s Europe. Now they’re bantering in German, almost like Hepburn and Tracy. Sure, Kenny Chesney, Rick, and I are not talking the same language, yet we do not feel left out -- Anna and Dietrich converse so enthusiastically that they are fun to watch (for a while).

One point that Dietrich translates for us is Anna’s observation, perhaps from her Court days, that “A little flirting gets you through the day sometimes.” After our rocky start tonight, I am glad to see Anna gradually becoming more relaxed, at least with the men here.

Since he is energetic and persuasive, Kenny eventually interrupts and coaxes Anna over to our harpsichord. With her accompaniment, we soon hear Dietrich singing in English about love and the constraints of different social classes ( “…In the country and the city/One is plagued by futility/For the little that one has/One must struggle with one’s neighbors/All around God’s earth/ Is hunger, toil, and envy/Enough to drive one out…”).

As the Germans warble about woe, my mind digresses to the joy of Kenny’s sold-out shows. I know about those shows from a friendly young teller at our bank. Everybody has a good time, bringing friends. One morning after one of Kenny's local concerts, this very open woman informed me that Kenny's music is all about the playful person she wants to be.

(My banker also claimed she would be disappointed if Kenny were gay. “Some of the good ones,” she told me, “are gay or already married."

(I remember replying to her, as she was cashing my check, that I would not be disappointed. Kenny's orientation is his business. When she brought up Biblical injunctions -- there was no line-up of people pressing behind me -- I said I had a hard time buying the anti-gay, non-inclusive stuff in segments of the Old Old Old Testament. She seemed to agree.)

(Excuse the theological digression. Back to tonight's party.)

More than daydreamy me, our cockapoo Presto is focused on Dietrich and Anna's impromptu recital. He howls.

Kenny's demeanor signals approval of their classical European music. I wager that he sees their singspiels fusing together into satisfying dramatic wholes. “Encore,” he says. He claps his hands broadly, probably like he does after guest songstresses complete their turns at his sold-out concerts.

With a pinch of loss, Kenny is admitting now that he does not know much about opera. One thing Kenny says he does know is that "audiences get more comfortable seats at Dietrich's recitals than at my country concerts."

Following an explanation that the organ-grinder in their next song is the Messenger of Death, our two Germans get a charge out of harmonizing for Schubert’s Winterreise. Anna Amalia’s voice is pleasant, though a little reedy. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s is astounding. The guy has the experience and love to do equal justice to words and music.

While respecting Dietrich’s rich projections of failed love and bitter loneliness, Kenny Chesney raises questions about the despair of those words by the poet Wilhelm Muller. Thus, from Kenny, “Does all this resignationism suit the inner Dietrich?”

“The alienation does suit Schubert,” Dietrich replies. “He knew he had syphilis and madness and death would come of it.” But “My [own] disposition is completely different from that…I’m very cheerful, and I think that’s a certain prerequisite to being an artist: a good measure of cheerfulness and humor.” Kenny then strums a cheerful riff, as if to say that he too is anti-miserabilism.

“I figure as long as I’m here, you might let me play a song,” Kenny cheers, hat still on, guitar in hand, and with some courage given the act that he is following and also given our group's advanced demographic. Rick and I had pondered about the reception that U.S. southern-born Kenny would receive from our two European romantics. After all, Anna and especially Dietrich have benefited from rigorous musical training, whereas Kenny has not been so advantaged. Generally he is a lot more carefree in his choices, regularly singing for instance about “going to class just to pass the time [and having] a keg in the closet, pizza on the floor left over from the night before.”

Just to be clear, this moment is -- if not like a gunfight at the O.K. Corral -- almost like a musical equivalent of a poetry slam contest. In a sense, by proposing Kenny as a fellow-guest, Dietrich has set in motion a clash or an accommodation between wildly different approaches to music. Will our two tradition-minded Germans regard Kenny’s 21st century emotions and techniques as less majestic, emotional, and cathartic than what they're accustomed to? In the wake of exposure to Kenny's firepower, will those elders remember and respect all the creative courage that it takes, in any era, to evolve into a musical artist? That is the question. Of course, that is not as pithy as the most famous question in drama, but 'tis apt for this tough crowd.

Kenny adheres to a classic structure. He starts with an instrumental statement of his melody, embellishes it, adds his voice singing alongside his guitar’s melody, develops that some, and closes by returning his voice to the guitar’s melody. I do not know if that is his technique at his shows, but tonight that is his mode. He presents his tongue-in-cheek She Thinks My Tractor Is Sexy: (“…She likes the way it’s pullin’ while we’re tillin’ up the land/She even kind of crazy ‘bout my farmer’s tan…” Next he kicks into Being Drunk’s A Lot Like Loving You,“…Well I felt the hangover of loving all night/I’ve sat at the bar all alone in a fight/I’ve bottled up feelings and poured ‘em out too…”

We all applaud Kenny's set, none moreso than Dietrich, who catches Kenny’s indolent message, his good ear, his reservoir of strength, his physical pleasure in singing his kind of music. ”The most important thing for a performing artist…[is] to build up a community of love for the music with the audience, to create one fellow-feeling among so many people who have come from so many different places and feelings.”

When Barb asserts that Kenny has that gift, Dietrich notes that “Anyone who’s not moved himself cannot move others with what he is doing.” Dietrich continues, “Your songs are not theoretical.”

“Kenny, you knows how to open the heart,” Anna says, sounding like Paula Abdul, the judge on American Idol,“You don’t do a theoretical job of just making a theoretical fellow-feeling.”

Dietrich adds that these days it is exceptional for newcomers to get traction, as Kenny has been able to do, in the music industry. At best, most hit singles last about a week, and only a couple of stingy corporations control much of the all-important choosing, marketing, and distributing. Thus only a few artists can achieve Kenny's widespread success.

Buoyed by our reactions, Kenny sings again, this time about frat parties and bare feet on the beach. He's into juvenile kisses, broken hearts, and lives that transition from school to adult responsibility. These are moments that everyone here tonight knows about from late in their teens. Undeniably, sadness or bitter-sweetness does mark Kenny’s texts, but not as much as in Anna/Goethe and in Schubert/Mueller.

In his ballads about chilling-out as well as his upbeat rockers, Kenny yearns for The Perfect Moment in Life and Music, yet Perfection is destined to be lost like sea foam.” All in all, Kenny takes the long view that one has to persevere. His idea, or one of his ideas, is that life’s unexpected tragedies often yield reasons for living.

At that, Presto, our critic in white, wags his tail with vigor. I don’t mean this post to come across like a film where a remark from an actor is followed by a cutesy, quizzical close-up of a dog. Just sayin’ that Presto is having a good time. His ears too are being tuned-up. (Now I’m sounding like a judge on American Idol.)

On our table in the adjacent dining room, Barb (who's been a new level of kitchen-busy) has just put the whipped cream on the cold creme of asparagus & mushroom soup. Those ingredients are in season (read: cheap). Seven hours ago, I cut and stirred them with chicken broth, butter, flour, pepper, and juice from half a lemon, storing my brew in the fridge until a little while ago.

Our three guests, however, don’t seem to want to budge from our music circle. So Barb brings in the living room a tray for each of us to eat off of. We haven’t used those trays for years, so she has to dust them after we haul them up from the basement.

Before anyone can take a sip, by way of a prayerful Grace, Anna Amalia gives us a pitch from the harpsichord and leads us in a half-dozen or so musical ‘Hallelujahs,’ guiding her right hand up and down to induce the high and low notes and sacred air that she wants.

Barb distributes the protein shake that lean Kenny Chesney had requested in advance. She's disappointed that Kenny won’t try out the goodies she’s later places on everyone else's trays -- chicken schnitzel, hot potato salad, baked sauerkraut with apples, and the cabbage casserole that Anna brought.

Anna tells how she was happy in providing artists with a true home and a spiritual family. At large feasts, she'd sit in a chair watching happy faces of guests savoring her labor of love. (Does our Duchess exaggerate or lie? Doubtless she had cooks who did the actual preparation? I've never met a Duchess before, so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.)

Anna confesses that once when the food wasn’t as tasty as she would have liked, she had to endure dangerous sniping, even hostility, from her guests.

Kenny assures her that since guests kept returning, she should take that as a vote of support. Kenny wins a smile from her and with a grin, promptly forgoes his radical diet. We're all happy to see him digging into the food.

Hand slicing the air vertically, Anna claims that similar to Kenny, she’s conscious of her extra weight, and so for 35 years she fought for the rights of over-weight people. (How precisely did she fight for them? I wonder, but am reluctant to ask.) With a shudder, Anna says she could never go on a protein-drink regimen. She says her personality changes when she’s overweight. With a margin of error plus or minus 3 to 5 pounds, I do not see Anna as chunky. A person can think others notice their problems, but often they don’t.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau mentions how episodes of TV’s Sopranos generally feature a meal -- just folks like us co-mingling and enjoying each other. “However, if something looks idyllic or familial,” Kenny warns, “it can be glum.”

Munch, munch, the rest of us chew.

There’s pain in the best of families, but no one steps up to extend the conversation with particulars of their families' glums. Just as well -- after a hard week, who needs party-dampeners?

Over his beer stein, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau holds that, when he has performed songs by different authors, for each piece he has to become an altogether different singer: The song’s interpreter should completely disappear. You shouldn’t be able to detect him.”

For an opposite tack, Kenny Chesney reflects that in the past, he has been fairly consistent in his good-time persona. Further, he is attuned to what designers call consolidated aesthetic totality. “That’s where what you wear sounds like what you sing, where your haircut and teashirt looks like it belongs with the instrument you play, or where your flip-flops fit the chair you’re sitting in.”

Alluding to his own musician son, Dietrich says that it is pompous to give advice to the young or the young middle-aged artist, except maybe ‘Never compromise.” Nonetheless, he, Dietrich, cannot help feeling that within him, Kenny has the stuff to work well not only as a songwriter (something Dietrich is not) but as a fine performer in other genres too.

Dietrich is more cautious, indirect, and considerate in tone than I am here, given my constraints of time and blogspace. For instance, he invokes Science to comment on changes in heartbeat that come with aging and that accordingly affect a singer’s tempo. Dietrich is Mr. Tactful, cloaking his message “in words that will not cause emotional distress.” As boiled-down by me, Dietrich’s counsel is that Kenny could build upon his natural curiosity, broadening-out from his country-rock niche.

It is plain that curiosity is a high virtue for Dietrich: “For many years, I literally learned a new piece every day.”

Kenny, he with the traveled smile, resonates to the forementioned heartbeat-tempo link. Altogether he is nonchalant and not offended by Dietrich’s suggestion that to be his best self, he might diversify his repertoire. The cowboy agrees that one becomes stagnant unless one continues to grow. "In my quiet moments of self-evaluation back home, I'll give some thought to broaden-outing...and to broadening-out."

"We all need to check our alignment with our soul's purpose," Anna says, presumably by way of encouragement. In my experience, however, the soul's purpose is rarely singular...

Later, when Dietrich learns that Kenny moves about on stages for audiences of 20,000 or more, Dietrich wants to know what happens to the singer’s facial expressions at the front of such gigantic crowds. Can one “put much faith then in the personal presence of the individual singer?” Kenny asserts that -- at least musically with regard to audiences -- size does not matter much: his shows rock with production elements such as high, wide, split-screen views of the whole singer. Pop artists like him have to work in hip visual, audio, and even kinesthetic realms.

“It’s a spectacle then?” Anna Amalia wonders.

Speaking for his own genre and for holding to the highest levels of integrity, Dietrich seems critical (by my reading) of The Three (operatic) Tenors. Thus Dietrich opines, “I think that there’s a large measure of trickery when a tenor sings the most demanding aria literature for evening at half-voice directly into a microphone and handles it easily because amplifiers are carrying his voice. What would this poor [tenor] gentleman do if he had to stand before an orchestra and sing there in the old, normal fashion?”…

Anna Amalia asks if Rick and I might also have a song to offer, and although we are bush-league as vocalists, Rick and I only pretend reluctance. Actually, he is a more gutsy singer than I. Of course we have been marinated in the tunes that clicked with us in that remote and sentimental epoch when our musical tastes were formed.

Neither of us play the harpsichord (every time other than tonight, we have it in our LR just to look at). This time Rick does not pretend an air guitar. Rather, a cappella we more or less harmonize in a duet we still sometimes sing in the shower or in bed together: “Someday, when I’m awfully low, and the world is cold, I will feel a glow thinking of you, and the way you are tonight…” We grasp that this happy Jerome Kern song tonight comes across as square. But when we listen to the radio station of a local campus, oh my, the music of today often strikes both of us as dark, i.e., worse than square.

Now if you must know, in our rendition tonight Rick and I are off-key, flat, comparatively mechanical. But since we are the hosts, since our singing is affording our guests a time-out for them to eat my German chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream, and since they bloody well know the Iron Rule of Guest-hood that they have to be at least tolerant whenever co-hosts perform, Rick and I do manage to extract a round of applause.

The clapping is led by Anna. She says to me, "Oh, you're a soprano. I kind of thought you might be." Rick then smiles, "When she gets mad at me, she's more of an alto." (To myself, I add that if that is the case, I am only briefly an alto...No fun in staying mad.)

Noticing things, I have to say that Anna does not seem quite so entitled as before. Either I misjudged her initially or she has softened over the course of the evening.

A neutral observer would have to characterize our guests’ response to our song as brief and polite. My Rick, however, is nonplussed. Interpreting their grimaces as friendly and generous, he struts back to his chair, with what I perceive as self-congratulation.

You know, sometimes when he is having a challenge or a bad day, my Rick is not especially interested in closely, closely, CLOSELY checking-out dour facts. Fact is, we render our song so abysmally that I slink back to my chair.

Undaunted, our guests do not lack for luminous artistic experiences to talk about, and as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau explains, true “musicians feel the greatest intimacy, such as non-musicians can only guess at.” Kenny points out, though, that it is common for headliners of one era to put down the up-and-coming headliners of the next generation, as Sinatra deprecated Elvis, and as Elvis initially knocked the Beatles. In contrast to that defensiveness, Dietrich and Anna have not panned Kenny’s more contemporary work, and so he says he is happy as an oil stock-holder -- "but not," he quickly adds, "for Exxon Mobil stock. Didya hear yesterday how their first-quarter profits were a 'disappointing' $10.9 billion?"

Hearing music has its way of leaking into other pursuits, and so let me also mention tonight’s dancing. Our room is not a ballroom like the ones where Ann sponsored dances for her generation's German elites, or like those mosh pits where Kenny Chesney’s American fans shake their booties, or like the Middle-European concert halls where Dietrich is sainted. Yet once we peel back the rug, our wooden floors prove hospitable. Mostly we foxtrot which is about all that my Rick easily remembers anymore...

(Reminiscence: I'm 11 or 12 or 13 years old and an energetic neighbor lady volunteers to teach a half-dozen of us kids how to do the foxtrot. Fortunately that maneuver was to see me through the years, including two weddings.

(Oh, have I ever mentioned that Barb and I had one wedding in a big city-hall with urban chums and some family? The next day, at a rural church we had our second wedding with country chums and other family.

(Hey -- long before those weddings, in Mrs. Brown's class we also negotiated the box step, the waltz, and best of all the Delphoi Dip. The last was racy then but real tame by today’s norms. Not at all like anybody’s sexy tractor.

(I'd do the Dip then & there with Henrietta K. I was smitten by, or had a case of proximity infatuation for, Henrietta...although I doubt she ever knew it.)

Anyway, re: tonight's narrative: a couple minutes ago, out of the blue I revived the Delphoi with Anna Amalia. She went along with it -- and, get this, she wasn't heavy to Dip with. I will say, however, that Duchess Anna was hard to lead around the dance floor. She had her own ideas about where and how to go.

Now that we’re seated again, out come those wonky stories that Anna telling about her policies as Regent. Is life, story? Or what?

Kenny has this neat way of raising & lowering the pot ten or so inches as he quickly pours the coffee that Barb's made. Cool -- he doesn't spill a drop outside our cups.

Somewhere along the way, I frame an artistic injustice I’ve long felt -- it's a topic I've had up my sleeve to wind-up tonight's interactions. My notion is that talented musicians can bring audiences jubilantly to their feet whereas other artists such as sculptors, carvers, or potters never get that sort of bountiful applause. "Not fair," I maintain.

Anna: "I don't think that's a fair understanding. Each art has its own magic."

Dietrich wants to stay with music's transcendence. He quotes a neuroscientist on the source of music’s magic: all of us are able to apprehend music, and indeed we can be manipulated by it into an intense visceral experience. "Okay," I repeat, with more of a whine, "yet given the huge amount of work behind other artworks, music’s bewitchment isn't fair."

Kenny Chesney chuckles that various art forms are so different, "different, but not deficit," echoing Jeremiah Wright earlier this week when that minister over-generalized his Chicago church as representing all black churches. "Look," Kenny re-chuckles and resumes our conversation's thread, "Audiences don’t usually watch master painters working on their canvasses."

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau concurs, and goes on to unveil the fact that he’s been painting for almost 50 years. Painting “directs itself to completely different sense organs, and I think that musical ideas can only be reproduced metaphorically with lines and colors. It’s true that I sometimes try to represent subjects that I have sung, but that is not the important thing. The important thing is to be creative myself: that I can really shape something myself and don’t have to put myself as interpreter in the position of subservience to a thing, as I have been accustomed [as a singer] to do. From the first stroke, a dialog arises with the thing that I am bringing to the canvas. This dialogue can be very exciting, but also very painful. It isn’t a holiday pastime but rather a genuine discussion.”

In what is evolving into a round-robin, Barb argues that artists do draw upon music for inspiration. In various Cubist geometries, Picasso painted a mandolin, violin, and crudely shaped clarinets. Anna asks Barb, "How do you happen to have that arcane bit of specific knowledge at your fingertips?" I don't know exactly what prompts this query -- perhaps Anna thinks that I set up this conversation so that Barb could show-off, but no.

It turns out that Barb's clarinet teacher hung prints at his studio of those early Picassos, something I haven't known about. Barb adds that the great Pablo possibly was influenced by his "growing up surrounded by innovative Catalan tunes. And he married a dancer with the Ballets Russes. You know too, he regularly swapped ideas with his composer-buddy Stravinsky."

To those specificities, Anna smiles, "Well, Barb, my 'arcane' is obviously not your 'arcane.'

Dietrich: "How's about the Art Students League of New York? They sponsored a series of music and art performances. First, jazz musicians played a tuba, clarinet, sax, trombone, and shaku-hatchi piano. Several abstract artists then responded in their visual medium. After observing the artists' paintings and drawings, the musicians offered a co-interpretation of what they saw. They had the last word, or note."

Barb folds in the news that when she taught elementary school, she'd play tapes of Prokofiev's Peter & The Wolf and Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals, which her students would interpret in paintings. It's getting to be a cliche in my blog posts, but once more I discover something fine about my life companion.

Anyway, I’m still dubious, and say as much, 1) about putting music on the highest pedestal and 2) about interactions between various arts. Anna's much earlier point about the magical perspectives of all the arts may have gotten short shrift in our talk, and that may have prompted her to quiz Barb about Picasso's musical instruments. Now she gleefully grasps one of my concerns. A close friend of hers, Anna recalls, even wrote an important work on The Artist Hesitating Between the Arts of Music and Painting. After much debate, that musically gifted friend bypassed the life of a singer, committing herself solely and successfully to painting.

Which leads to Barb saying that music only changes the world for some people. Others here agree, citing such turn-ons as snorkeling (Kenny), politicking (Anna), crossword-puzzling (Barb, but she doesn't do them in ink), walking 45 minutes a day (Dietrich), and so forthing. Harking back to reunions of our extended family, I add "playing touch football with my kids and their cousins." Hah! When I was a lot more limber, that's something I wish I'd done more of.

Some seven hours after they all arrived, Kenny Chesney, Anna Amalia, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau are still warming to their themes, still transporting each other across their musical genres. Never knew musicians had such stamina. Neverending.

Barb and I tire. We’re usually in the sack by now. We ought to have taken a nap before the party.

We may be dorks, but ultimately we yawn and only half-cover our mouths with our hands. There!, we’ve sent a signal: our guests could well hit the road. Let's close this deal.

Our signal, transparent in our judgment, goes unnoticed. As a host, have you too ever had that 'Guests, please-go-home' experience?

Stendahl once remarked, exuberantly I bet, that caution is the death of music. Tonight the opposite dynamic's in play: our music folk are refusing interruption, living it up incautiously...and they're incautiously over-staying their welcome. What next?

People want different things in life, but tonight our three guests want to stabilize their social ties by feeling the vibe, making and re-making music.

Finally (as if anything involving work is final), because Rick and I have promised to help clean-up (rake, sow seeds in brown spots, plant flowers and six elms) our church’s grounds beginning at 8:30 a.m., we rise and thank our threesome for coming. We offer to call a cab or two, but “No problems,” Kenny says, brandishing his cellphone. An hour or two ago, he had noticed where we keep our phone-book when we cavorted in our rhumba line. (Ah, the hilarity we had in rhumba-ing and colliding with each other and the furniture. That was a part of what brought us five together.)

As we withdraw, our visitors wave at us in mid-song. A new collective, they are going with something different from the words and music that each is known for.

Rick understands that some of the good that takes place in our house happens in his absence. But this morning, maybe like Presto, he is a mite territorial, taken aback that our guests notice our exits so little.

In any event, Kenny Chesney, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and Anna Amalia do not appear to interpret our going as a rebuff.

Out of reflex, I farethewell them with “Have a good…”. I pause at the foot of the stairs, pondering if I should say “evening” or'“morning”? I re-start and re-conclude, “Have a good time.”

Knackered, Rick and I lug ourselves up to bed. A tired dog does too.

Upstairs, we do not even floss. Downstairs, the music goes on much as it has lately, not loud enough to keep us awake...

A couple hours ago, when Rick got up to go to the bathroom, our troupers were leaving the building. That was 5:30ish.

Now that we're downstairs again, Rick and I survey the scene. We're tickled that Anna Amalia, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and Kenny Chesney had found a scrap of paper to write us an affable thank-you note. "We're exhausted but we've reached the state of elation that musicians live for," the note declares. With a flourish, they had signed their names and let themselves out.

Of course everything is in place. Nothing has been stolen. Not that we were worried.

Anna has forgotten her casserole dish. It is fine Hohenzollern china that she certainly will want back. We take that as a good sign, deluding ourselves that she is giving herself a pretext to pay us another visit.

Feel-Good Alert: as far as we know, and certainly as we are keen to think, all our visitors had a swell time, and our neighbors were not bothered after midnight by the beautiful noise.

It was all quite wondrous, exactly as life can be.



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For company on Friday, June 6, we are trying to interest three interesting entrepreneurs. See you then?

In the meantime, for accounts of past parties, click our Archives. We did live blogging for the following:

November with basketball's Michael Jordan, history's Margaret MacMillan, and idlers' Tom Hodgkinson;

December with www's Tim Berners-Lee, transistors' Jack Kilby, and TV's Lisa Kudrow;

January with China's President Hu Jintao, painting's Lucian Freud, and biology's Elizabeth Lloyd;

February with Joan of Arc, Rev. Billy Graham, and Live Aid & Live 8's Bob Geldof; and

March with Hollywood's James Dean, racing's Danica Patrick, and bowling & Microsoft's Chris Peters.

Other greats, our grandkids, were visiting us on April's First Friday, so no celebrity came knocking.