As I suggested recently you need to pre-qualify for an essentially Christian heaven, an exam many would fail. But suppose a secular heaven for non-believers was launched. Would that attract my custom?
Via much lateral thinking and billions spent on a time warp machine. I may volunteer for the planning phase.
Mozart’s clarinet concerto is the 622nd work he composed, very close to the last. The first/second LP I bought and not even stereo. Not as famous as The Marriage of Figaro or the Haydn Tribute quartets but I know in my tripes it’s a masterpiece. Its opening theme is part of my backbone, proof of what music can do to me and for me.
Suppose Secular Heaven allowed me to watch Wolfgang compose it. Or Rembrandt paint a self-portrait. Or James Joyce write you-know-what. To be there at the creation. Just as an observer, you understand. It would ease the sting of leaving my four-bedroom, detached residence with integral garage for the last time.
Previously I mentioned controlling the narrative of half-awake dreams. Perhaps I was over-precise, more a case of willing the next stage. Whatever, it is a seductive experience. Mechanising it for greater sensitivity would be a great Secular Heaven project.
Overhearing discussions by Doctor Johnson and Isaac Newton. Swimming the Hellespont with Byron. Watching Neanderthal Man create the flame that would make mammoth steak more digestible. Discovering why Orson Welles’ directorial genius is only manifest in Citizen Kane, A Touch of Evil and part of The Magnificent Ambersons and how self-destructiveness took over. I could go on. And so could you.
Heaven – secular or Christian – should be a place of wonder. For me it should also be based on inarguable truth. I suppose oblivion is truthful; no one can argue about nothing.
Hell welcomes all-comers.
ReplyDeleteTom: Did you know that the most recent interior designers employed by Hell were a Yorkshire couple from Blubberhouses. Their theme for Satan's Ballroom was based on a retro-take of Armley Jail, the last place to stage a court-ordered hanging in the county. Yorkshire has organised many other hangings since but these have always been informal, ad-hoc affairs in the more remote villages, arranged as epilogues to such traditional celebrations as Pancake Tuesday and Empire Day, mainly to save money. The gallows is dismantlable for the same reason and is easily strapped to the roof of a Mini.
DeleteI became lost in 1964-5 when you mentioned the Mozart concerto. My boyfriend at the time was a clarinetist and I was a third chair violin player in a traveling youth orchestra. He was the soloist for this piece and I remember it clearly and also a challenge and beautiful piece for the violins. Lost back there---was heaven for sure...Sandi
ReplyDeleteSandi: Oh please tell me more about orchestral violin playing; post about it and I'll never be away from your comment column. Two powerful friends introduced me to music when I was I was in my teens (one of them a bit too powerful and he later became an enemy) about ten years before the period you mention. Over the years, and not least via the Jewish Y in Pittsburgh, my interest has grown but only as a listener.
DeleteSuddenly, aged eighty, in a frame of mind I am still unable to explain fully, I decided to take singing lessons and these have continued ever since. The pandemic has not hindered me; the weekly lessons have continued via Skype. They started on lesson one when V, my soprano teacher, handed me the score of Sarastro's aria Oh Isis und Osiris from Magic Flute. I had had no experience of reading music but had seen the opera several times. I staggered on with V at the piano singing an octave up. After three or four goes I started stringing phrases together and found myself in a state of ecstasy. Me! Mozart!! I broke away in tears and V uttered unforgettable words of comfort: "Don't worry, that's what's supposed to happen."
A boyfriend who could play the clarinet's plaintive yet confident and spritely first notes after that perfectly conceived yet brief orchestral introduction! Had I been you as violinist and had he been magically transformed into a woman, the bonds would surely have lasted for ever.
I still sing Oh Isis with my baritone voice, perhaps a bit too reverentially. The high bit:
Lasst sie der Prüfung...
which once caused me problems now glides past. Making music rather than just listening to it is more than heaven, it's a re-created world.
Yes, music can be transforming...for sure. Favorites I played, pit orchestra for Community theatre's for South Pacific, Flower Drum Song, Finnegan's Rainbow---a real challenge, I was 2nd chair and the 1st chair was a music teacher who got stage fright the first night, and I had to jump in (at University)---and play the lead part)--OY!, West Side Story, King and I. Note: Broadway scores are notorious for changing keys every few bars...sometimes in keys I had never seen before.
ReplyDeleteI was so desperate for music(no orchestra) in college I was in percussion for the concert band(mostly miscellaneous--as the other three drummers didn't read music?, which I found astounding. I had the Bass Drum also---which was interesting.
The clarinetist went to a different University and continued to play for the Chicago Symphony in the summers and he ended up teaching, conducting, and eventually went into administration. He went through 3 wives..so I believe I dodged a bullet there.
Favorite music with him was after he did rehearsals with the Chicago Symphony---consisted of bumming in Chicago on the west side and him jamming in a jazz club on a sax. We were under age, so the CSO 'black' trumpet player claimed he was our parent...LOL. Then we took the train home to Wisconsin, smelling of smoke and spilled booze.
My favorite classical for violin---Handel, particularly "Water Music"---all of it---not hard to imagine a million fountains and waterfalls while playing the myriad of notes.
Ravel, Beethoven of course for drama, Vivaldi-(for exhaustion, lol), and my mom was fond of waltzes, so the usual and Listz's Mephisto waltzes. Horribly fond of Tchaikovsky---anything. And I will echo you on Mozart's "Magic Flute" only had the pleasure of play small bits of it in concerts, and Mozart was always simply FUN to play!
That's it for today---have to put up holiday lights before snow tomorrow!
Sandi: Thanks for that. V, my teacher, teaches violin as well as voice so we occasionally chat about orchestral stuff. In fact the two disciplines do overlap. I'm weak on getting the "attack" right for the opening note of some songs; V is able to instruct me by showing how a violinist would "sweep" the bow into the sharp, clean sound that is necessary.
ReplyDeleteMy repertoire, as you might expect, is mainly classical (Schubert, Wolff, Schumann (Clara as well as Robert), Mozart, Dowland, Purcell, Head, etc) but when I'm practising at home I warm up with thirties show tunes because I love the often complex lyrics and the dynamic range is comparatively narrow (eg, Moonlight in Vermont, Cheek to cheek, Can't take that away from me).
I'm a Handel enthusiast too but V tends to steer clear of him, perhaps because the piano accompaniment is hard work and she is a self-taught pianist, having only taken it up so she can teach voice. She has a fantastically strong soprano voice. On my own I flirt with things like Ombra ma fui, He was despised (from Messiah), Where'er you walk. I like the fact that Handel operas - which were neglected for ages - have started being resurrected over the last thirty or forty years. Especially Theodora
That's real desperation, being able able to settle for percussion with the band. When I moved south to work in London I shared an apartment with a jazz drummer. Not quite as bad as it sounds; he mainly used a practice pad.
Magic Flute is great for baritones. I love singing the Bei Männern duet with V.
I didn't know Broadway scores were notorious for key changes, but on reflection I can see why this might be. I'm facing some of that with my most recent song, Roger Quilter's setting of Weep you no more. The vocal line looks so simple; coming to terms with it is another matter.
Hope to chat some more about "the beguiling art" in the future.
Thumbs up...! I did chorus and church choir for years, but there simply wasn't enough time to do it all...I'm somewhere between a tenor and a contra-alto..love singing along with the tapes/dvd's. And I was brought up on 30-40's big band music...so I love to hear lyrics which mean something and a real melody.Stay Safe! Sandi
DeleteSandi: I considered joining a choir but worried about how I would occupy myself when singing alone at home. The baritone line of, say, Haydn's Creation wouldn't be much fun. I'd love to hear a sample of your "tenor/contra-alto" voice; nothing fancy, a chromatic scale would do.
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