Richibi’s Weblog

     “Alice in Wonderland“

               Mary Blair

                  ______

since I brought up variations in my last instalment,

pieces of music that elaborate on a principal theme,

develop it, transform it, into a variety of moods

and melodic directions, for entertainment, but also,

from the pens of the most fervent composers, 

metaphysical edification, I returned, nearly 

instinctively, to two sets of variations that changed 

my life, became polestars of my moral universe, 

for their pursuit of beauty and, consequently, 

meaning 

I’ll bring one of them up here only, save the other 

for its own particular moment, Glenn Gould, a titan 

of the Twentieth Century Classical music scene, 

displays, in this instance, not merely an 

extraordinary performance, but a wizardry, the 

enchantment, of a poet, a very prophet, an 

“Alice in Wonderland“, going  through a 

looking-glass, you come out, with him, a 

different person

Beethoven’s “32 Variations in C minor“, 

listen

R ! chard