Better Living Through Literature
Words + Projects + Stuff I Like
Here’s a rough trailer for an upcoming documentary Alive Inside, about music and how it helps “awaken” people with memory loss. (Bonus Oliver Sacks!) Like my dog rescue video last week, this one starts off sad, but at least watch from about 3:00 – 4:00.
Incredible. If I ever decide I want to use my powers for good, maybe I should go into music therapy.
It’s Bach’s birthday today, in 1685. Here’s a happy little piece from the sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin: the Prelude from the E Major Partita.
I love the ending, starting about 2:40.
The E Major Partita has always sounded like spring to me, which is appropriate since yesterday was the equinox.
In late winter I always revisit Russian music, and lately it’s been Shostakovich. How about the finale to his Fifth Symphony to get your blood going this morning?
He wrote this after managing to get on Stalin’s bad side with an opera and after pulling his Fourth Symphony to not further anger the dictator. The party was pleased with the Fifth (which the composer subtitled “A Soviet Artist’s Practical Creative Reply to Just Criticism”), but, as Shostakovich later wrote:
I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat… It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, “Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,” and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, “Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.”…You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that.
More music history here. Happy Thursday, comrades!
Mahler was born in 1860 today. I haven’t listened to a lot of his music in the last year or so–it’s just too much sometimes, and I’m trying to preserve my calm emotionless life, thank you very much–but, thinking of what to share today, I listened to the final song of his Rückert-Lieder and realized that sometimes it’s ok to let oneself be destroyed. It’s catharsis, right?
No, really, it’s a pretty song. Take nine minutes and listen to it. 🙂
Oh yeah, that’s my boyfriend and his open shirt in the Met’s production of Il Trovatore, which I am seeing tonight. My mom and I have always wanted to see one of the live Met broadcasts to movie theaters, but the live date of this ended up being Skyler’s birthday and we both decided we’d be too distracted checking for updates. Fortunately, the Met re-broadcasts them.
I haven’t spent time with Dmitri since I re-watched Eugene Onegin at the end of March (which is both a good and a bad thing to do if you’re railing against fate), so I am excited to go from really dramatic Russian drama to really melodic Italian drama. And for the chance to see more of him in his tunic.
Today the composer I’d listen to if I couldn’t listen to anything else was born. Bach was also my favorite composer to play, back when I was playing (especially this). I’d always think of a Bradbury quote from The Martian Chronicles when I was practicing:
He built an architecture of Bach, stone by exquisite stone, raising a music cathedral so vast that its farthest chancels were in Ninevah, its farthest dome at St. Peter’s left hand. The music stayed and did not crash in ruin when it was over, but partook of a series of white clouds and was carried away among other lands.
After my weekend fling with opera I went through Monday and Tuesday wishing real life were like that, with passion and tenderness and great loves instead of house hunting and craft projects and work deadlines. I thought the cure was to listen to music that wasn’t opera–I pulled out The Song of the Earth, the Missa Solemnis, unaccompanied Bach–but instead of helping I think that gave me Stendhal Syndrome.
So it’s a good thing that going through the blog archives yesterday to find a picture of that jacket, I found this quote from An Equal Music:
Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music–not too much, or the soul could not sustain it–from time to time.
(Related, and probably adding to my music issues this week: Does anyone out there need a semi-professional grade violin? I have mine up for sale; it’s German, and does wonders with gut strings. Email me through my portfolio site in the right sidebar if you want more info.)
Over the weekend I had a fling with this guy:
He’s Dimitri Hvorotovsky and he was the lead in the Met production of Eugene Onegin (opposite Renee Fleming!) that I had on DVD for two glorious days.
Damn, he can wear a t-shirt. And sing.
Sorry, Mikhail, but you’ve been replaced. I miss hanging out with musicians anyway.
Check out my new boyfriend in action here (older, but with subtitles) or here (that special production we shared over the weekend).
I’ve been out of touch with the classical music world ever since I graduated college, and the only classical CD I’ve bought this year has been Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, but back in the day I loved to listen to chamber music on the Saint Paul Sunday Morning radio program.
As I was doing some sewing a few weeks ago, I thought, “Why not see when that program is broadcast so you can start listening again?” They’ve dropped “Morning”–it’s just Saint Paul Sunday now–and even better, you can stream all the programs online. Which is how I discovered that vocal group Anonymous 4, the experts on early music, had branched out into American shape-note, folk, and gospel songs. In 2004. Yes, out of touch.
But the happy news is that I now have a bunch of free music to catch up on, and whatever Anonymous 4 sings is magical. (Here’s that 2004 broadcast.) Every program gives you all kinds of good stuff to listen to, with enough background discussion with the host to jog your memory (if you, say, got a degree in all this) or teach you something new.
Also: Happy Veterans Day to all the veterans out there!
But it’s about Beethoven, so it’s OK:
“It was on this day in 1812 that Ludwig van Beethoven wrote two famous love letters to an unknown woman. Beethoven wrote the letters from the Czech resort town of Teplitz, which his physician had recommended for his health, and there he became friends with the poet Goethe. And over the course of two days, he wrote three letters to a mysterious woman who has come to be known as “the Immortal Beloved.”
Today’s Almanac post also includes the full text of all three letters, the last one of which is so sad:
Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life — Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men — At my age I need a steady, quiet life — can that be so in our connection? Be calm — love me — today — yesterday — what tearful longings for you — you — you — my life — my all — farewell. Oh continue to love me — never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.
ever thine
ever mine
ever ours
He was already mostly deaf at this point. Poor Beethoven.