On Friday, March 17, 2023 at 10:09:18 PM UTC-7, gggg gggg wrote:
On Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 5:41:31 AM UTC-7, William Sommerwerck wrote:
I'd been planning to post this for several weeks, but "What's in a Beethoven
Quartet?" encouraged me to post this.
My parents never exposed me to anything "good" -- good art, good music, good
literature, etc. If I hadn't been "that way" (not that, when it comes to appreciating "good stuff", there's anything wrong with being the other way),
it's not likely I ever would have discovered such things. When I was 12, I asked for a copy of "The Mikado" for my birthday, and my father got me the open-reel tape (not the LPs). As I sat there listening to it, he said "I never thought I'd have a son who liked Gilbert and Sullivan." Tough, dad. You got a son who didn't like sports, either, and you so badly wanted an athletic son to compensate for that high-school injury that kept you from playing football.
Opera, though, was always a bit of a problem, because I didn't care for the
sound of "trained" voices. But 35+ years ago, when I first heard "Lucky Luciano" -- whose speaking and singing voices were the same -- the prejudice
instantly ended, and I found opera listenable. (And, as I like to say, I even enjoy "Moses un Aron". Really.)
Lieder remained a sticking point. Here the problem was the seemingly "arbitrary" sound of the music. Lieder melodies seemed to comprise a semi-random sequence of notes.
Nevertheless, in writing my Great Unpublished Novel, I included Schumann's "Widmung" as a part of the story, even though it didn't seem to have much of
a "tune". (I knew I was in the minority, because this piece is one of, if not the most-, popular vocal works ever written.)
Rückert's poem, however, is a wonderful piece of simple, more-or-less unaffected sentiment that never fails to reduce me to tears. I decided I had
to find a way to trick a friend -- whom I'm hopelessly in love with -- recite it to him. Singing would be even better. (I don't have a great voice,
but I'm on-pitch.)
So I started listening to "Widmung" and trying to sing it. And guess what happened? Uh-huh...
Another watershed, another epiphany. Suddenly, I could "hear" the music. It
made sense. I hum it and sing it to myself a lot.
When I listened to the rest of "Myrten" ("Myrtles" -- "Widmung" is the first
of 26 pieces in this cycle), it was the same. I "heard" and enjoyed the music. I'm looking forward to going through the rest of Schumann's vocal music. And Schubert's. And Wolf's. Though I'm not sure about Toledo. (That's
a Stan Freberg joke.)
And to think I might have been enjoying this 50 years ago if my parents had
exposed me.
One of the problems with modern education is that teachers think they need to appeal to children's existing tastes and interests. It should be the other way around -- children should be exposed to anything and everything they aren't familiar with. This should be a major part of education. (The word has the same root as "educe" -- to draw out. (In this context it means
drawing out what is already present, though not yet realized.))
- The age in which we live, this non-stop distraction, is making it more impossible for the young generation to ever have the curiosity or
discipline because you need to be alone to find out anything.
Vivienne Westwood
- The more you pander to what is, presumably, the taste of young people, the more you corrupt.
Ruth Rendell
- The good displeases us when we have not yet grown up to it.
Nietzsche
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