how to listen to music if you don’t know your Beethoven from your Bach, Vl

The Potato Eaters, 1885 - Vincent van Gogh

            “The Potato Eaters” (1885)

 

                   Vincent van Gogh

 

                        ___________

                        

where do you start with Chopin, he is

in our Western cultural bloodstream,

as identifiable in music as, say, van

Gogh is in painting, you don’t need 

to be interested in any kind of art to

have not been given even only a

whiff of these iconic artists

 

nearly anything I might present here

of Chopin you’ve probably already

heard somewhere before, if only in

bits

 

of van Gogh, well, he goes back in

the public imagination to at least

Vincent, 1971, the song, no one

doesn’t know about him, when I

heard it playing in Amsterdam at

the museum, with the first piece I

saw, The Potato Eaters, dominating

the first wall, insisting on van Gogh’s

vision, his prophecy, his profound

compassion, I cried, I understood

what art is, see above

 

Chopin exerts a different kind of,

however equally potent, magic

 

Mozart might sound like Haydn,

Beethoven might sound like

Schubert, all of the Impressionists

sound like all of the Impressionists,

be they Ravel, Debussy, Satie, or

Saint-Saëns, to the untrained ear

 

but no one sounds like Chopin,

he’s, culturally, a North Star

 

here’s one of his nocturnes, the

moonlit one, in E flat major  

 

here’s a polonaise, here’s an étude,  

in English, a study, a finger exercise,

an iconic, here, prestidigitation

                        

here’s an impromptu, his very,

indeed, Fantaisie-Impromptu, just

to get your categories going

 

consider its construction, having

some information already about

fantasias, a work of the imagination,

open to any experimentation within

the confines of one movement, with

an impromptu, something purported

to have been created on the spot,

also in one movement

                        

the answer requires you to sharpen

your aesthetic pencil, always a

delight – an impromptu, a

spontaneous invention, a fantaisie,

a work of the imagination, how do

they differ, which part is a fantaisie,

which an impromptu, how do they

nevertheless coalesce

 

this exercise is the first step in

listening

 

enjoy

 

 

R ! chard