Pliable mailed to say he's linking the site -- most of my music stuff has gone all jumbled up into my
main blog -- in the meantime let's try to ressurect this blog.
Folks, I've fallen deeply in love with Richard Powers'
The Time Of Our Singing. Will write more on it, meanwhile
here are some excerpts.
Jude and
Tuck pointed out Vikram Seth's An Equal Music to me, which I liked but left no deep impression. There's Yen's Bel Canto, and there's still the Gold Bug Variations by Powers to read. *rubs hands in glee*
Please let me know if you can think of any other good books with music underpinning it.
*
Came across
this blog entry that makes me want to listen to the Tchaikovsky trio. So many pieces, so little time. But check it out, the guy's right that his excerpts show that Argerich is Queen. Okay since all of you are so dear to me I'll share this lode that's kept me occupied for many a night.
Enjoy!
And there's
this blog entry that touches on Metamorphosen, and music, and war; he also writes of
music and terrorism. And you
must check out this
piece on the
cellist (although I think the title of this webpage I'm linking to is false -- "Cello Player Saves The World" -- you
can't save the world with a cello, and he played his beloved cello with all the intensity he could muster because he couldn't, he played for 22 days in a row, one day for each bread-queue victim, as though it could ease the rampant suffering while protesting the madness with an articulate gesture of possible self-sacrifice) of Sarajevo:
"The opening night concert featured unaccompanied cello only. There on the great stage sat a single, solitary chair. No piano, no music stand, just a chair. Each performer played only one piece, so the atmosphere was charged with concentration and focus. If ever a chair could be called a hotseat, that was it.
The moment of a lifetime followed the performance by Yo Yo Ma. He played a piece called the Cellist of Sarajevo, written by a contemporary English composer named David Wilde. The program notes told the amazing story behind the piece:
On May 27th, 1992, a bakery in Sarajevo which happened to have a supply of flour was making bread and distributing it to the starving, war-shattered people. At 4 p.m., a long line stretched into the street. Suddenly, a shell fell directly into the middle of the line, killing 22 people outright and splattering blood and gore over the entire area.
A hundred yards away lived a 37-year-old man named Vedran Smailovic. Before the war he had been the principal cellist of the Sarajevo Opera Company--a distinguished and civilized job, no doubt. When he saw the massacre outside his window, he was pushed beyond his capacity to endure anymore. Driven by his anguish, he decided he had to take action, and so he did the only thing he could do. He made music. Every day there after, at 4 p.m. precisely, Mr. Smailovic would put on his full formal concert attire, and walk out of his apartment into the midst of the battle raging around him. He would place a little camp stool in the middle of the bomb-craters, and play a concert to the abandoned streets, while bombs dropped and bullets flew all around him. Day after day he made his unimaginably courageous stand for human dignity, for civilization, for compassion, and for peace. As though protected by a divine shield, he was never hurt, though his darkest hour came when, taking a little walk to stretch his legs, his cello was shelled and destroyed where he had been sitting.
The news wires picked up the story of the extraordinary man, sitting in his white tie and tails on a camp stool in the center of a raging, hellish war zone--playing his cello to the empty air. The composer David Wilde was so moved by the report that he wrote the piece which Yo Yo Ma played for us that evening.
Yo Yo sat down quietly on his little stool in his white tie and tails, and began. Quietly, almost imperceptibly, the music started, creating a shadowy, empty universe pervaded by the sense of death. Slowly, it built and grew into an agonized, screaming, slashing furor which gradually subsided back into a desolate death rattle--fading seamlessly back into silence.
When he finished, he remained bent over his cello, bow still resting on the strings. No one moved--we scarcely dared to breath. We all felt that we had just witnessed that horrible scene ourselves. After a long period of absolute silence, Yo Yo slowly straightened in the his chair, looked into the audience and raised his hand. He beckoned someone to come to the stage--and we realized it was him--the cellist of Sarajevo himself! He rose from his seat and headed down the aisle as Yo Yo came off the stage and headed up the aisle to meet him. With arms flung wide, they met each other in a passionate embrace right at my chair. I simply couldn't believe what was happening. At that point, everyone in the hall leaped to his feet in a chaotic emotional frenzy, clapping, weeping, shouting, embracing, cheering. It was deafening and overwhelming. And in the center of it all stood these two men, still hugging, both were crying. Yo Yo Ma, the suave, elegant prince of classical music worldwide, flawless in appearance and performance. And Vedran Smailovic, who had just escaped from Sarajevo, dressed in a tattered and stained leather motorcycle suit with fringe on the arms. His wild long hair and huge mustache framed a fact that look 80 years old--creased with pain and wet with so many tears. And this was the first time he had heard the piece. I stared at them, wanting to remember every single detail, so that one day I could describe it to my son, and say, "I was there"! And I thought of the audience--all the jewels and perfume and sophistication now completely meaningless and forgotten--all stripped down to the stakes, deepest humanity. What a triumph for us all. What a triumph for dignity and compassion. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony pales next to the emotion in that hall that night. And what a triumph for the cello! Here was a room filled with people whose lives had been largely devoted to that simple and unassuming instrument. Here were bowmakers, collectors, amateurs, historians, varnishers, and of course, the great master players. All come from all over the world to celebrate the cello together for a week. And here, on the first night, they encounter this man who shook cello in the face of bombs, death and ruin and defied them. It became the sword of Joan of Arc. It became the mightiest weapon of them all.
It's because of experiences like this that I call music my magic carpet. A week later I was back playing for the residents of the Penobscot Nursing Home, where I've played a free concert/sing along every month for five years or so. And I realized it's all the same. It's the privilege, the blessing, and the solemn responsibility of all of us who make music; to try to make the world a tiny bit better each time we play."
(I'm thinking of organising some music outreach to hospitals. Barry told a story once about volunteering at the Institute of Mental Health and how he stopped because it was too depressing, these people are warded there for life, forgotten, having given up. Those who can perform or sing can hold mini recitals? Would it work? What pieces would be good?)
Smailovic played Albinoni’s moving Adagio in G minor. Perhaps he chose it because it was written using music found on a scrap of paper found in the ruins of Dresden after the second World War. The music had survived the firebombing of the concentration camps. Perhaps that is why he played it there in the scarred streets of Sarajevo. Something, he thought, must survive -– something must triumph over horror.
Vedran Smailovic played this piece on his cello amidst sniper fire and bombs falling around him. He played the same piece everyday at four o’clock for the next twenty-two days. One performance for each person who died.
This story is too important to die. It never fails to move me. And it tells me to pick up my own cello, in whatever form that may take, and choose a crater to stand in, and start playing using all the resources and talent before me. What rubble do you want to breathe your life into? What damage created it? What instrument do you play? And what music are you playing?
*
Which reminds of why I'm falling in love with Prokofiev. I'd heard most of his frenetic and fighting stuff with a motoric unrelenting toccata line first, he grows with you though. Listening to the eighth piano sonata now -- the searching linearity of the first movement veering off into passion balanced with lyricism, the conciseness of the slow movement, the complex richness with contrapositions, gentle passages following turbulence and quicksilver darkness that are very profound, very beautiful. There's that tremendous clarity in each line of his writing, and with the clean structure comes an intense depth of emotion and lyricism and with the poetry there are also the ironic bits and harmonic elements that twist your gut.
I love it. There is the great strength of form, the multi-layered music which I love and moreover there is dramatic writing which speaks to your gut and soul and emotions. When he was writing his later sonatas the war was vicious and people lived in fear of being sent away to the prison camps, but amid all the fear and hardship there is also incredible joy because you have to find happiness in life. There is a combination of the joy of being alive and the keen sensitive awareness of lyricism and then the angst and pain, and Prokofiev could only release those emotions musically.
