Beethoven
Yet still this music has such feelings of triumph, such soaring heights, a perfect music to lift an adolescent skyward, to teach him to engage or even to distance himself from the world of work and education, convention, morays. Here I felt the leaven for the clean bread of my spirit, the yeast for the life of the soul.
The concerto begins with the measured beating of a drum, as if there is a martial, military backdrop to the world; as if the soaring, celebratory themes must coexist with very different kinds of reality.
Here this morning it evokes a short, generous, hard working woman whom I love for the way she protested this war. I feel in the music her courage and directness. Measured and unhurried but also urgent and determinded.
The concerto has a lovely 2nd movement, the plaintive theme entering quietly, serenely through the woodwinds, a lone oboe, quietly pleading for peace, for the quiet of the night, for the tranquility of some summer sky. Then finally the solo violin with an unearthly purity rises, taking up the theme, continuing sweetly, softly, with restraint, not an interlude of quiet, but the full conviction of quiet, as if there will never be a need to raise the volume, as if this acre of peace, this field of emptiness is all there can be.
And when the forte comes, deliciously, abundantly, playfully, there is no contradiction. As a jewel turns in the light, colors flood forth in a full rainbow, the prismatic amplification happens with a slight turn of the wrist, a small movement through the air.
The concerto begins with the measured beating of a drum, as if there is a martial, military backdrop to the world; as if the soaring, celebratory themes must coexist with very different kinds of reality.
Here this morning it evokes a short, generous, hard working woman whom I love for the way she protested this war. I feel in the music her courage and directness. Measured and unhurried but also urgent and determinded.
The concerto has a lovely 2nd movement, the plaintive theme entering quietly, serenely through the woodwinds, a lone oboe, quietly pleading for peace, for the quiet of the night, for the tranquility of some summer sky. Then finally the solo violin with an unearthly purity rises, taking up the theme, continuing sweetly, softly, with restraint, not an interlude of quiet, but the full conviction of quiet, as if there will never be a need to raise the volume, as if this acre of peace, this field of emptiness is all there can be.
And when the forte comes, deliciously, abundantly, playfully, there is no contradiction. As a jewel turns in the light, colors flood forth in a full rainbow, the prismatic amplification happens with a slight turn of the wrist, a small movement through the air.
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