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

________
for Susan, who urges
me ever to write
a friend wrote recently, extolling a
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
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, I 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, a 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
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
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Filed Under: Beethoven,
concerts to ponder,
finding miracles,
in search of beauty,
in search of God/dess,
in search of truth,
music to ponder,
paintings to ponder,
parsing art,
philosophy,
walking in beauty
Tags: "The Sound of the Flute" - Xu Beihong :
Beethoven's Sixth Symphony :
Charles Darwin