Bach’s Easter Oratorio starts to roll.
As well as the laptop my audio reproduction system is linked to the TV and a specialised amplifier. Until recently its handiness was sometimes unfathomable and I just couldn’t be bothered. But today all is OK. I’d forgotten how rich and detailed the sound is compared with the TV, despite the improvements the amplifier brings to the TV’s normal output.
Soloists and choir sing punchily, confident in their mastery of the polyphony. The emotion is almost tangible and I’m in tears ten minutes before the end. Ironic given the music relates to the peak event in a religion I do not believe in. For forty minutes I’m un-ill.
Re, the short story (see previous posts). I’m halfway through (2525 words written) and Larry is positioned as a real person. Feeble, yes, but – if you have sympathy for disadvantaged others – a mite tragic. Ready to bring all his failings to a date arranged by a computer.
I was tempted to post this half-story as a stand-alone. But who knows when I’ll finish it? Larry deserves a beginning, a middle and an end all woven together.
Does any reader wear titanium frame glasses? Alas, you may be offended.
Just coming home from Maundy Thursday services. We heard Duruflé, Vierne, and Messaien...
ReplyDeleteBeth: Glad you responded; you would understand. It was St Matthew Passion that triggered an experience never to be forgotten. I didn't have it but Easter Oratorio was powerful enough to remind me of what happened all those years ago. Earlier last week V helped me analyse a very knotty passage in Schubert's Du bist die Ruh:
ReplyDeleteDo you know it:
Dies Augenzelt, von deinem Glanz
allein erhellt
o füll es ganz, o füll es ganz
Perhaps I'll never manage that E comfortably but never mind, I sing with the gods. And you helped.
I would like to hear more about why the music affected you so strongly. To be moved so deeply by the arts seems like a transcendent experience. What does that mean, I wonder?
ReplyDeleteColette: Sorry, I missed this later comment. You ask a huge question and the answer may be slightly boring. I'll give it a go.
ReplyDeleteFor decades I've listened to what is known as classical music, a term I abhor for its implied elitism,. I was lucky in that I married someone with whom I shared this interest. Gradually our tastes widened to include opera, often a stumbling block for many: too expensive, too artificial, too poncy. Eventually we overcame an even bigger stumbling block - the operas of Wagner. For reasons that still remain a mystery I decided - at age 80 - to take singing lessons. By this I meant classical music songs.
Such songs are often musically complex. It would be hard to learn them by ear alone. The songs' complexities are laid out in scores, frighteningly depicted in an entirely different language. I couldn't read music. I still can't in the true sense but I am now able to use scores to help me learn the songs under V's tuition. And then use the score to jog my memory when I sing on my own.
Gradually the scores spoke to me more clearly. The symbols revealed how the songs' composers got their effects. Thus I could see - written out in difficult but nevertheless helpful language - what it was that often broke my heart when heard.
I don't suppose we will ever know how our hearts are touched by music. Many have tried. One rather boring element in this is familiarity. A song's beauty may not be apparent on the first hearing. After several re-hearings things may change and we find ourselves accurately predicting and/or anticipating the notes yet to be played. And this pleases us.
Another boring element is logic: somehow we feel that this particular note must follow what has gone before. That "must" is important; it suggests inevitability although this quality may only be relevant to us.
Another element, given we are talking about songs, is the way the notes somehow fit what is being expressed in the words. This is not only hard to explain it is also ironic: most often the words are not in our native language. Yet still we respond.
Here's an example; In the 20-song cycle (ie, collection of related songs) Schöne Müllerin (The Fair Maid of the Mill) the narrator communes with aspects of nature in an attempt to understand his love for the fair maid. But turns again and again to the symbolic nature of the river (brook, rivulet, stream) that powers the water-mill.
In Song 6 he admits to not getting any answers from the flowers and the stars. Even the stream offers nothing but he persists:
O brook of my love
How silent you are today
I wish to know just one thing
One small word over and over again
In effect: Yes or No?
The song is in German and the first line is:
O Bächlein meiner Liebe
The important word is Liebe - love.Two syllables but Schubert gives its three quite separate notes. Second note down from the first, the third up to a point between the first and second.
This is all very clumsy of me. But there is a fair chance that if you hear this line in context, and more than once, it may break your heart. If so, search out a singing teacher.
Thank you! This explanation is wonderful.
ReplyDelete