Quote:
Originally posted by Orpheus
when you say weeping, do you really mean you cried?--or you didn't actually physically produce a tear? |
I daresay every great composer has been racked with sobs at some point -- even Stravinsky and Hindemith, though neither would ever admit it.
Mahler helps the novice to understand the emotional intensity of [his] Ninth Symphony by embedding it with musical reference and leitmotif that suggest nothing more than a fervent but failed attempt to accept his own death. I analyzed Mahler's use of references (or rather listed the references in exact sequence) on another thread on this site about classical music (can't remember which). But the music can have this effect even if you're not thinking of the references. It isn't a question of the possibility of crying when you hear the piece. It's a matter of learning *not* to cry when Mahler lingers continually on three descending notes that mean *liebewohl*.
Redshifter could relate something similar with regard to the program of Gorecki's Third Symphony, Second Movement. I once made a CD copy for the Polish cleaning lady in my office. The next time she saw me, she brought me vodka-filled chocolates and wept and told me the story of her missing son.
One is allowed to feel overwhelmed at the sound of intellectual beauty. Amid a lifetime of exposure to disease, cruelty and poverty, it is wrenching to glimpse utopia in sound -- wrenching and liberating. Bach is conveying his view of heaven, I think, hence his pure complexity -- as a friend of mine once said, "God is math." Bach's music is itself an argument in favor of the idea of Platonic forms. It argues for this and is at the same time the argument's paradigm.
One secret of being a composer and/or performer is learning how to pour out one's heart without tears. Bach represented tears endlessly in his music -- one example is the movement from Ich Hatte Viel Bekummernis in which Christ's tears are depicted as jagged descending musical lines. If you don't think Bach himself wept musically through this device (commonly called a *baroque affection*), then you've never read his poetry. Yes, Bach wrote verse after verse.
