Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony | Richibi's Weblog

________

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, 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

Evgeny Kissin – a bouquet of composers‏

midway in my considerations about music I

came to myself in a dark wood for the straight

way was lost, if I may paraphrase Dante for my

own purposes, I’d digressed to Elizabeth Barrett

Browning, Audrey Hepburn, and others, and

forgot what I had been talking about with

respect to the development of music, but have

been wonderfully, and perhaps even karmically,

put back on track by this correspondingly

wonderful, even magical, performance

Evgeny Kissin had provided a resplendent

Chopin First on my last related text, that I

haven’t yet finished enjoying often, but

found among his other Internet offerings

this utter gem

at first I wondered about the Schubert/Liszt

connection in the written introduction to the

program, they’d been united by a forward

slash, implying that there’d been some kind

of cooperation, but I hadn’t ever heard of

those two ever meeting

upon very little investigation however I found

out that Liszt had merely transcribed of course

some of the Schubert lieder, something which

Liszt was wont to do, Liszt transcribed

everybody and everything, most famously all

of Beethoven’s symphonies, writing them

up for piano only, so that more remote areas

could also enjoy them, in often even there

aristocratic salon settings

lieder are songs in German, a lied, a song,

works Schubert produced in astonishingly

great number

Liszt was paraphrasing Schubert for his own

Lisztian purposes of course, artists do that,

which is to say he was giving them much

more Lisztian fanfare and, not unwelcome,

I might add, extravagance, Schubert could

be pretty dry, I think, in his lieder,

uncharacteristically, even his fun ones,

despite their being ever so eminently

executed

“Auf dem Wasser zu singen” then, “Der Müller

und der Bach“ from “Die schöne Müllerin“, one

of his song cycles,“Ständchen” from

“Schwanengesang“, another cycle, “Gretchen

am Spinnrade“, and “Erlkönig” are all poems

of celebrated German poets Schubert set for

accompanied voice, and that Lizst, and Kissin,

transform into something pretty special

next on the program Schubert takes independent

flight with his wondrous “Wanderer” Fantasy,

opus 15, D760

a fantasy is not a sonata for having only one

movement, but note this fantasy goes through

all the motions of a sonata, fast, slow, fast, each

with its own structural contrasts, but without

any of the intervening pauses

so is a fantasy just a sonata without breaks, or is

a sonata just a fantasy with hiatuses, had the

sonata become a fantasy, had the fantasy

become a sonata, definitions were being

upended, then again that’s what revolutions

are about

before Beethoven this had been unheard of,

when music hadn’t yet learned to actually talk,

mean something, Schubert, like Beethoven,

not only talks, not only narrates, as in for

instance Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, his

“Pastoral“, nor either describes, as in

Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”,

but actually speculates, ponders, moves

metaphysically forward, in thrall to his

vagabond spirit much more than to his

wayward heart

hence, incidentally, the more abstract, less

geographical, “Wanderer”, to compare with

for instance Liszt’s more panoramic

“Années de pèlerinage“

see also Caspar David Friedrich here for

a close contemporary counterpart of his

in art

music has become no longer merely narration

then but philosophy, it is finding its way like

the rest of us, and for the rest of us, to the

stars

Bach then intervenes here with a Siciliana, a

Baroque composer in Kissin’s Romantic

clothing, but the shoe entirely fits, and

hauntingly, you’ll remember Bach was

composing for the harpsichord, which

had none of the piano’s resonance

Brahms then returns us to a more abstruse

Romanticism, “7 Fantasies”, his opus 17,

pushes the limits of melodic continuity, you

can’t sing Brahms, you’re not even drawn to

seven fantasies in one opus, incidentally,

suggests a sonata with seven movements,

with all of the permutations that have been

suggested already for the fantasy I talked

about, it’s open season on sonatas, in

other words, and by extension their less

segmented fantasies

it is the history of art

the final piece is totally transcendent, some

incidental music from Glück, from his sublime

“Orfeo ed Euridice“, one of my very favourite

operas, Orpheus approaches the Underworld

in order to retrieve his beloved bride, we are

about to enter the Elysian Fields, the actual,

original Champs Élysées, or Elysium, with

him, the moment is unforgettable

others have led us into the Underworld, most

notably Homer in the “Odyssey“, Virgil in the

“Aeneid“, and of couse, somewhat more

recently but just, Dante in his “Divine Comedy“,

even Bosch in his “Garden of Earthly Delights”

Glück is the one whose hereafter you won’t

not remember

Richard

Dmitri Shostakovich – String Quartet no 15, opus 144

several years ago when an angel I knew passed away
I read at his commemoration something I had written
for him, adagios, I said, always remind me of John

only a few days later, after I’d spoken, an adagio in
the distance was weaving its magic spell as I
abstractedly washed perennial dishes, a pivotal
spot, it would appear, for me, in my mystic
wanderings, my spiritual peregrinations

gradually I recognized the presence I’d apparently
inadvertently evoked with my unsuspecting but
thoughtful and caring script, opening a key, like
Ali Baba, it would transpire, to the very undiluted
infinite, something I’d wished for from my dad,
who’d died just a few months earlier, promising
me he’d speak to me if he could, though by then
I hadn’t yet heard from him

later when I was browsing for music to get into
to while away my pensive hours I happened upon
some Shostakovich in a nearby record store, I’d
recently been exploring his stuff, having reached
forward from the Romantics and even the
Impressionists, and looked to a relatively more
recent touch, the early Twentieth Century

which is to say the atonalists, Schoenberg, Berg,
Stravinsky and so forth, of which Shostakovich,
I would argue, has proven to be the most
significant voice, his music being that of a
desperate, nearly broken people enduring
the atrocities under Stalin

he is the most important composer of the
Twentieth Century, I think, along with Olivier
Messiaen, who survived a German prisoner of
war camp, two tough, even heroic, spirits

and here were not one, not two, not even three,
but six adagios in his 15th String Quartet, when
anything faster was too much for me to bear,
otherwise it would have to have been silence,
I was elated

I was not let down, Shostakovich’s 15th String
Quartet, opus 144, is a masterpiece, and helped
me through my rigorous Calvary with compassion,
grace, and ultimately golden hope, to health and
resignation

it is not an easy piece, you might find it
overwhelming, but it is the last word in adagios,
and for me it means the world, I couldn’t leave
it out

I found the distribution awkward however, I
haven’t found the quartet complete anywhere
on the Internet, you’ll have to access the movements
separately, pee breaks are therefore allowed, there
are six movements, not usual but we’ve seen
Beethoven do five already for his Sixth Symphony,
so not entirely unexpected

the first movement, Elegy (Adagio), is played by the
Rubio Quartet, but with only an image of war torn
Leningrad to inspire visually

the second, Serenade (Adagio), by the Borodin String
Quartet, perhaps Shostakovich’s best interpreters, are
also presented visuals inert

the third, fourth, and fifth – Intermezzo (Adagio),
Nocturne (Adagio), and Funeral March (Adagio molto) –
in that order, are played live by the Shostakovich
Quartet, named of course in the composer’s honour

and the sixth, Epilogue (Adagio), again by the Borodin

may you be granted the poise and profound grace
of the adagio