on Beethoven’s Symphony no. 6, the “Pastorale”

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      The Sound of the Flute 

 

               Xu Beihong

 

                 ________

 

 

                                    for Susan, who urges

                                               me ever to write

 

 

a friend wrote recently, extolling a

performance of Beethoven’s Sixth

Symphony he’d just seen, a 

noteworthy conductor conducting 

 

then again, how can you go wrong, 

I wrote back, with that already 

enchanting music, sent him, in

return, a version I’d ferreted out,

tried out for him, had been duly

enchanted, had laughed, had cried, 

taken shelter from the storm, come 

out the other side transported, again  

 

I wondered about the power of music, 

during my intermittent musings

throughout the variegated movements, 

as the peregrinations ambled on along 

their own magical explorations, long 

irrepressible arpeggios running up or 

down the scales, performing 

arabesques at their peaks, rumbling 

tremolos at their grumbling bottoms, 

before returning to the more stable 

middle ground of the melody

 

where, wondered, does it all find its 

source

 

sounds, individual sounds, would 

have been signals of danger, 

originally, a single note from a horn

warning of strangers on the way to

a community of otherwise peaceful

cohabitants if not only family, twig 

cracking in the forest when you 

believe you’re all alone

 

individual sounds would’ve picked

up meaning beyond their own pitch

and volume, resonance, reverberation,

rotundity, through Darwinian, even, 

time

 

a mother’s voice, for instance, 

identified immediately, upon a single

note, perenially, by any of her brood

 

 

it’s a long way from there to a symphony

but those are its roots, why we laugh, why

we cry, take shelter from the storm, and 

come out the other side transported

 

notes are written, emblazoned, on 

our consciousness, our lives depended,

depend still, on it 

 

listen

 

 

 

R ! chard

 

psst: interestingly, our Darwinian evolution

          has produced pitch as an identifying

          factor for our species, a female voice 

          is higher than a male’s, this has 

          allowed us, as a species, to sing