3 posts tagged “music”

The phrase, 'classical music' is a foolish one.  It expresses nothing; its generality and vagueness insults centuries of effort.  Yet, what else does one say?  I use it myself when I ask permission to play a 'classical music' station.  Because to many people it is nothing but passionless symmetry, soft equations twisted into endless diagrams.  They hear it only. 

But there is much to see, too.  These dances, arias, sonatas, symphonies, quartets and counterpoints were not made to be pushed through wires and speakers like reluctant passengers on a bus.  They were performed in front of an audience:  fleshed out by the human element.

In one century a Te Deum is chanted inside a powerful, muscular cathedral.  The singers' hair shirts make them hate their bodies, and their long woolen sleeves scrape against each other.  Yet they sing to thank God for their agonies.

In another century, dancers face each other, tracing filigrees of steps on a stone floor.  Only their palms touched, like birds meeting in the sky.  Pipes and tabor, krumhorn and viol sounded solemn and exotic - entwined contrasts.  Their dour celebration echoed through dark halls lit by torches held by bronze gargoyles, their sneering faces an architecture of disrespect.

Many years later in a room where powder, perfume and sweat rose in a palpable cloud, people sat on chairs as delicate as meringes.  An audience posed in brocades that swam like silver rivers, and in silks touched with the languid colors of the aristocracy.

Around the shapes and scents, the polished thread of a sonata curled and teased.  In the back of the room, a young man idly toyed with the velvet choker of the lady seated beside him.  While in the front of the room, a 10-year old boy took his bows.

Another century passes.  And in another room a young woman stands, wearing a gown that fits like a satin cuirass, a violin nestled under her chin.  Her audience is restless.  Women gossip behind fans decorated with scenes that are as idyllic as they are erotic:  a fitting ornament to their dark eyes.  People crowd a stairway that curves like the body of a seashell.  The men that sit closer watch her, speculating on her talents, until she started to play, and the heavy sweetness of Mendelssohn silenced them.

Decades later, in Paris, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) premiered, staged by The Ballets Russes.  Nijinsky's departure from grace, Stravinsky's orchestral violence shocked the rich and complacent audience.  The rhythms, as deep as blood, stripped and pagan, were met with catcalls and whistles.  There were shouts and fistfights, a maelstrom of misunderstanding.  Nijinsky stood on a chair above the fumes shouting counts to the dancers, who were unable to hear the orchestra.

These visions of a composition's birth, of its many incarnations, of the roots draining into the flower, give music its long, heady life.  And it is human emotion - subtle, ferocious - which give it nourishment, allowing the notes on paper to bloom: to be seen and heard.

That coy minx, emily sears, has tagged me. I now walk through the city with a dart in my shoulder, the tranquilizer calming me and encouraging me to:

1. Share a list of songs that defined you during at least eight significant years of your life beginning in early childhood.

2. There could be more than one song for each year, if you like, and and they should be songs that were released or popular in that year (but if there was one important to you that year which was released earlier, that is acceptable).

3. Please tag your post 'playgroup' and then tag four other people to do the same. 

 

1.  When I was in junior high school, I was very busy.  Busy creating the Aubrey that types this very post.  All that I am was either polished, researched or dreamed about during those years.  Those were also the years when I seemed to be incurably sad.  And I considered music to be the pool to reflect my thoughts.

Paul Simon, "American Tune".  This is a political song.  But in 1975 all I heard were these words,

"Many's the time I've been mistaken,
And many times confused
Yes, and often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
Oh, but I'm alright, I'm alright
I'm just weary to my bones..."

And they meant all the world to someone who was badly in need of comfort.

2/3.  Then there were the years in the mid-1980's when I was a romantic, waiting patiently to be disappointed.  I wanted to hear the same yearning, and to hear the beat of someone else's broken heart:

The Smiths, "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side"
The Smiths, "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out"

4/5.  But during those same years, I also harbored a wish for unabashed joy - untouched by cynicism or irony.  And I wanted it beat over my head by a tirade of guitars.

Big Country, "Fields of Fire"

"The shining eye will never cry
The beating heart will never die
The house on fire holds no shame
I will be coming home again"

Big Country, "In A Big Country"

"I never took the smile away from anybody's face
And that's a desparate way to look
For someone who is still a child" 

I remember playing my Big Country records at full blast - at 11, actually - with my ears smeared across the speakers, my heart and emotions racing.

6.  I was a college graduate when I first heard this (released in 1978).  I was a secretary in a collections agency.  I was not happy with my job, or with other people.  I expressed myself clumsily and oddly.  But I had the wit to lose myself in a song that I then didn't completely understand.  It was like taking a walk in the darkness, enjoying the directions that just exceeded my grasp.

The Only Ones, "Another Girl, Another Planet"

7.  In the late 1970's, I also carefully stepped into the lava pool that was punk rock.  There was a lot of muck to step over, before discovering a passion so virulent that it could lift you off the ground.

The Clash, "Tommy Gun"

8.  This is the one.

1965.  A madness of words, somehow linking together to convey a message.  I bless the chemical, the intelligence, the truths, the lies that whispered the lyrics to this song in his ear.  Dylan in the mid 1960's was unexplainable, undecipherable; he was as exotic and unreachable as a unicorn.

Bob Dylan, "Like A Rolling Stone"

I invite everyone to take part in this little musical exercise.  During the course of this composition I did more thinking and remembering than I thought myself capable of.

I was walking back to work, from the bank - congratulating myself that my purse hadn't been stolen (I held on to it, white-knuckled, all the way back).

At one point I passed a type of box hedge, dull and olive - its flat, sheared top just reaching to my shoulders.  In its interior there was a lot of activity:  I saw the leaves vibrate; I heard delicate rustles as the tiny inhabitants jumped from branch to branch.  There were groups of twitterings rising to the surface and breaking free, the notes taking their place in the sky as if it was an endless, blue lyric sheet.

I really didn't understand anything that was being said, but surely the discussion was an excitable one.

Suddenly, pop!

From the top of the hedge there sprouted a flower.  It had wings.  It grew with quick, nervous movements.  It had a beak which had once freed it of its childhood home, when its petals were still curled and weak.  Its roots were not visible, twisted tightly around one of the branches which formed the dark labyrinth within.

Then:  Pop!  Pop!  Pop!  Pop!  Four more appeared - an entire featheration of flowers.  They spun on their stationary stalks with sharp, little turns:  like the tiny ballerina dancing inside of a music box.

This garden, alive, breathing, driven by rapid flickering hearts, was growing only a foot or two away from me.  But not a single blossom took its floating flight.  They were in constant rotation:  maybe they were looking for the sun, and were having trouble finding its warm reassurance on such a cluttered, dirty afternoon.

I walked away smiling.  If I had dared to pick them, what a charming bouquet they would have made.