When I started this blot, I really had no idea where it would end up taking me, or whether I could actually come up with 365 pieces of music, let alone something interesting to say about each one. It started out as a way of forcing me to write every day, which is--I'm told--the one thing that successful writers have in common. At first, it was scary, but wonderful things have started happening to me.
First and foremost, this project has renewed my interest in classical music and made me see just how rich and limitless it is. For the most part, I have just written about the mood of the piece, but one could spend years comparing different performances, performers, and even the types of instruments (authentic versus modern) on which the music is played. This is to say nothing of the intellectual challenge of actually studying each piece from a musical perspective. So far, I've just touched on a handful of pieces by a small number of composers. Consider the all pieces that a composer might have written during his or her lifetime! (Vivaldi: 40 operas and 70 concertos, for example.) So much music, so little time!
Next, writing about the pieces has turned into as much autobiography as journalism. Writing about a piece makes me remember when and where I was on first hearing it and makes many of those memories come alive again for me. The French novelist, Marcel Proust, bit into a small French cake, called a madeleine, which reminded him of an event from his childhood. He spent the rest of his life reliving it in his multi-volume epic, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Obviously, I don't compare myself to him, but this has been a liberating exercise for me.
In addition, along with the memories of music come memories of so many people--friends & family; famous & obscure; helpful & and hurtful; friendly and unfriendly; good & bad; loving and nurturing. After I graduated from college, I left my hometown of Mishawaka, Indiana and set out to see the world, for the most part turning my back on all of them. Now, nearly twenty years later, I find myself regretting that, but also discover anew, just how forgiving people can be. My sister, who lives 2000 miles away, visited the site and shared some of her own remembrances and gave me encouragement.
Finally, there is the satisfaction of re-discovering each piece itself. I started out by sitting down with a tablet of paper and just brainstorming names of composers. Then I listed their works that readily sprang to mind. After a few minutes I had about 75 pieces. Over the next few days, pieces just began popping into my head. Now the list has grown to 200 works. When I sit down to write the first draft of each day's entry, I just look at the name of the piece, and I hear some part of it in my mind. That starts the associations and the piece almost writes itself. On weekends, I try to listen to the pieces again, and I often realize I've forgotten some other part of the work and it's wonderful to hear it again. It's almost like hearing it for the first time again.
Chopin wrote this sonata while staying at the summer residence at Nohant, with his lover, the female French writer, George Sand. The version I have--on London performed by Wilhelm Kempff--gives it the subtitle, "The Funeral March," because he had written the third movement two years before the rest of the sonata for a funeral. You will know the tune if you have ever seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon in which a character pretends to be dead or thinks he is dead. It is dark and brooding, and I used to listen to it a lot back in a depressive period while a college student.
Why would one of the most successful composers of the day (first half of the 19th century) write such a glum piece? Chopin was only 29 at the time, but since he suffered from consumption (which most artists around this time seemed die from) death obviously was always looking over his shoulder. In fact, he died from the disease at 39, but he left a large number of works for piano--27 etudes, 52 mazurkas, 19 nocturnes, and 13 polonaises, 25 preludes as well as three sonatasand two concertos.
I had put off listening to this piece until today. Proabably fearing the depressive tone of the third movement. It surprised me then hearing that the first, second, and fourth movements are quite different in style--one romantic, the second fast, and the last kind of like someone being chased by the devil. Well, we all are, and thank god for those who've managed to capture that uniquely human awareness and channel it into divine works of art.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
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