Richibi’s Weblog

       “Plato’s Symposium“

 

          Anselm Feuerbach

 

                    __________

 

imagine my surprise when having put

on a concert I’d recently taped from

television and, not having checked

out the program, apart from having

noted the featured violinist, someone

I, however peripherally, knew, then

heading out to the kitchen to do

some kitchen things, chop vegetables,

stir a pot, watch water, maybe, come

to a boil, a piece came up with which

I wasn’t familiar, thought maybe it

might be Shostakovich for its atonality,

though with, here again, his signature

decipherable melodies, ever, and

characteristically, maimed, twisted,

contorted, for, too, its Eastern

European rhythms, its apparent

Jewish folklore, touches of Fiddler

on the Roof, I thought, hints of

Schindler’s List, maybe, when the

work turned out to be, however

improbably, by Leonard Bernstein,

most famous, rather, for his Broadway

shows, West Side Story, for instance,

but especially as a conductor

 

his Serenade for violin, string orchestra,

harp and percussion, known also as

Serenade after Plato’s “Symposium”,

was written, in 1954, in commemoration

of a couple of personal friends, husband

and wife, after their demises

 

Plato‘s Symposium is one of his several

dialogues, a clutch of noteworthy

Athenians meet socially after an earlier,

more crowded, revel, a kind of debriefing,

and decide to each give his definition of

love, the work remains one of the great

disquisitions on the subject, not tackled

much since, surprisingly, in the history

of philosophy

 

there are seven people in attendance,

though Alcibiades, yes, the Alcibiades,

orator and statesman, stumbles into

the gathering, late and last

 

Bernstein has a voice for each

participant, though in five rather than

seven movements, two couples, the

first and the last, have no break

between their conjoined movements

 

 I. Phaedrus: Pausanias – lento and allegro

 II. Aristophanes – allegretto

 III. Eryximachus, the doctor – presto

 IV. Agathon – adagio

 V. Socrates: Alcibiades – molto tenuto and allegro molto vivace

 

in the Symposium, Eryximachus speaks

before Aristophanes, yes, the Aristophanes,

the playwright, cause the bard has the

hiccoughs, and the doctor, Eryximachus,

agrees to go first, if out of the agreed upon

order, an order that Bernstein chooses not

to follow, for reasons to do with tempo, I

suspect, otherwise the progression is as

in Plato

 

Eryximachus, interestingly, advises

Aristophanes to make himself sneeze,

a cure apparently for hiccoughs, in

order to be ready for his turn, which

he does, and indeed manages

 

Agathon was a poet, his adagio here

is accordingly gorgeous, melting,

completely appropriate for a writer

of verse, and entirely, incidentally,

worth the price of admission

 

Socrates‘ molto tenuto, even and

tempered, measured, is, likewise, 

totally apt for a philosopher 

 

enjoy

 

 

R ! chard