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a legacy of fearless song
Nov. 21st, 2021 10:34 pmI had this stuff queued up but then I didn’t so much forget about the Four Seasons and William Grant Still as a I did forget that it was that day and not a week later. So, hey, so, yeah, enjoy some thoughts I had throughout October and November.
The sound I heard the night of the storm was not thunder at all but the sound of trees breaking. I thought I saw a flash of green and after, distant flashes of wispy light.
Virginia got fucked really hard by womenwontweesht / adult human females. If there’s one thing liberals are really good at, it’s falling for manufactured outrage. If there’s one thing they’re not good at, it’s manufacturing outrage. That’s why they have to get it from the conservatives and the terfs. Since I don't live in Virginia, the biggest thing is the triumph of Trumpism and the surrender of another year to coronafuckery.
Oh, I think I found that book that someone on Barbelith was talking about, the one about the expedition into a giant house by an eastern European writer. I’m not sure why they didn’t deign to mention what language they read it in, as it wasn’t translated into English until 2016. And it was only translated because someone who grew up in the Czech Republic and/or Czechoslovakia really loved that novel and wanted to share it with English-speakers.
It's called The House of a Thousand Floors by Jan Weiss.
I met a shiba inu named Scarlett at Broadway Station. Why, yes, they were doing busing again, as they have been doing on the Red Line for the past decade.
At their last concert, Deborah mentioned this one and pointed out that the observant among you would notice that this was a concert canceled in 2020. Surprisingly, it was still called a legacy of fearless song and they were still songs of defiance. We may yet hear A Thousand Tales Sung.
Ludwig van Beethoven - Cello Sonata no. 5
His last work for solo instrument and piano. He was the first to bring the cello of all things to the forefront. He breaks all the rules, you see.
Pavel Haas - String Quartet No. 3
He wrote this one while Czechoslovakia was being annexed by Nazi Germany, after divorcing her wife to keep her and their daughter out of Nazi hands. Alas, he was murdered at Auschwitz (among the last people to be taken there) along with fellow composers and fellow Jews Adolf Strauss, Viktor Ullmann, Gideon Klein, and Hans Krása. Karl Ančerl survived, he says, because Haas had a coughing fit and Mengele took him away instead. The Nazis promoted Theresienstadt, where they sent artists and intellectuals, as a separate but equal society, even set up fake shops and cafes. I’m going to be completely honest, I have no idea who they were deluding. The Red Cross, apparently.
The first movement was written during a period of relative happiness, the second is bleak and uncertain due to the Nazi annexation of Austria, the third is a fugue with hopes for a happy ending of sorts, which they got eventually, even if Haas wasn’t around to see it.
A woman near me was talking about her visit to Prague during the 1960s left-wing uprising. Well, she said Prague Spring, anyway. It’s possible and probable she meant the Velvet Revolution, which happened after the fall of the Soviet Union. One of the bits of incomprehensiblity of Nazi rule that stuck out to her is that they killed all (but <150) the children but saved all their drawings.
Haas, however, was from Brno. I had to look it up because I wasn’t sure if it was in the Czech Republic (no, Babiš and Zeman, I will not acknowledge your efforts to dismantle democracy) or Slovakia, but I assumed the former because he was murdered by Nazis and not local collaborators.
Chén Yìwén - Guó Shāng: Hymn to the Fallen
An elegy for dead soldiers written towards the end of the Warring States Period. For flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano
Guó 国 means state/nation/kingdom/polity and is probably one of the first words beginning Chinese language students learn. Shāng 殤 means to die prematurely, or one who dies prematurely. Combine the two and you get martyr.
礼魂 (Lǐ hún) means ritual of the soul. It's a brief conclucing recessional.
Arvo Pärt - Spiegel im Spiegel for clarinet and piano
He likes the idea of melding the ancient with the modern. The Soviet Union didn’t like the religiosity of it. Probably didn’t help that Estonians tend towards Lutheranism, and usually when the USSR had a de facto state religion, it was Russian Orthodox. Religion has mostly vanished nowadays but worry not, secularism is every bit as dogmatic and repressive. EKRE, an alt-right party, is kingmaker in Estonia. That's the thing. Religions like atheism and humanism are just that: another religion.
Spiegel im Spiegel (mirror within mirror) is designed to be played for piano and any other instrument you want. It revolves around the idea of tintinnabuli.
Dmitri Shostakovich - Piano Trio no. 2 in E minor.
Unfortunately for Shostakovich (which I have gotten better at spelling), Stalin didn’t really like his music. The Piano Trio was written in Leningrad during its siege by Germany and Finland, and finished when the Soviets had mostly expelled the Axis.
The first movement is a dissonant sonata and the second is a lively folkdance, the third is the violin and cello trading off largo passages and the pianist playing repeated chords. His reaction to Majdanek and Treblinka.
The last movement begins with a duel of string plucking, introduces a Jewish folksong, which builds up in intensity and dissonance and dies away.
It was dedicated to his friend Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinsky, who died a sudden death in Novosibirsk, not by having naught but sawdust bread to subsist on nor by falling backwards through a window onto a polonium-tipped bullet.
burning question: is it just my imagination or has the Christmas season arrived exceptionally early this year? I say exceptionally but when I was a teenager, I saw Christmas decorations on St. Ajora’s Day, in summer.
The sound I heard the night of the storm was not thunder at all but the sound of trees breaking. I thought I saw a flash of green and after, distant flashes of wispy light.
Virginia got fucked really hard by womenwontweesht / adult human females. If there’s one thing liberals are really good at, it’s falling for manufactured outrage. If there’s one thing they’re not good at, it’s manufacturing outrage. That’s why they have to get it from the conservatives and the terfs. Since I don't live in Virginia, the biggest thing is the triumph of Trumpism and the surrender of another year to coronafuckery.
Oh, I think I found that book that someone on Barbelith was talking about, the one about the expedition into a giant house by an eastern European writer. I’m not sure why they didn’t deign to mention what language they read it in, as it wasn’t translated into English until 2016. And it was only translated because someone who grew up in the Czech Republic and/or Czechoslovakia really loved that novel and wanted to share it with English-speakers.
It's called The House of a Thousand Floors by Jan Weiss.
I met a shiba inu named Scarlett at Broadway Station. Why, yes, they were doing busing again, as they have been doing on the Red Line for the past decade.
At their last concert, Deborah mentioned this one and pointed out that the observant among you would notice that this was a concert canceled in 2020. Surprisingly, it was still called a legacy of fearless song and they were still songs of defiance. We may yet hear A Thousand Tales Sung.
Ludwig van Beethoven - Cello Sonata no. 5
His last work for solo instrument and piano. He was the first to bring the cello of all things to the forefront. He breaks all the rules, you see.
Pavel Haas - String Quartet No. 3
He wrote this one while Czechoslovakia was being annexed by Nazi Germany, after divorcing her wife to keep her and their daughter out of Nazi hands. Alas, he was murdered at Auschwitz (among the last people to be taken there) along with fellow composers and fellow Jews Adolf Strauss, Viktor Ullmann, Gideon Klein, and Hans Krása. Karl Ančerl survived, he says, because Haas had a coughing fit and Mengele took him away instead. The Nazis promoted Theresienstadt, where they sent artists and intellectuals, as a separate but equal society, even set up fake shops and cafes. I’m going to be completely honest, I have no idea who they were deluding. The Red Cross, apparently.
The first movement was written during a period of relative happiness, the second is bleak and uncertain due to the Nazi annexation of Austria, the third is a fugue with hopes for a happy ending of sorts, which they got eventually, even if Haas wasn’t around to see it.
A woman near me was talking about her visit to Prague during the 1960s left-wing uprising. Well, she said Prague Spring, anyway. It’s possible and probable she meant the Velvet Revolution, which happened after the fall of the Soviet Union. One of the bits of incomprehensiblity of Nazi rule that stuck out to her is that they killed all (but <150) the children but saved all their drawings.
Haas, however, was from Brno. I had to look it up because I wasn’t sure if it was in the Czech Republic (no, Babiš and Zeman, I will not acknowledge your efforts to dismantle democracy) or Slovakia, but I assumed the former because he was murdered by Nazis and not local collaborators.
Chén Yìwén - Guó Shāng: Hymn to the Fallen
An elegy for dead soldiers written towards the end of the Warring States Period. For flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano
Guó 国 means state/nation/kingdom/polity and is probably one of the first words beginning Chinese language students learn. Shāng 殤 means to die prematurely, or one who dies prematurely. Combine the two and you get martyr.
礼魂 (Lǐ hún) means ritual of the soul. It's a brief conclucing recessional.
Arvo Pärt - Spiegel im Spiegel for clarinet and piano
He likes the idea of melding the ancient with the modern. The Soviet Union didn’t like the religiosity of it. Probably didn’t help that Estonians tend towards Lutheranism, and usually when the USSR had a de facto state religion, it was Russian Orthodox. Religion has mostly vanished nowadays but worry not, secularism is every bit as dogmatic and repressive. EKRE, an alt-right party, is kingmaker in Estonia. That's the thing. Religions like atheism and humanism are just that: another religion.
Spiegel im Spiegel (mirror within mirror) is designed to be played for piano and any other instrument you want. It revolves around the idea of tintinnabuli.
Dmitri Shostakovich - Piano Trio no. 2 in E minor.
Unfortunately for Shostakovich (which I have gotten better at spelling), Stalin didn’t really like his music. The Piano Trio was written in Leningrad during its siege by Germany and Finland, and finished when the Soviets had mostly expelled the Axis.
The first movement is a dissonant sonata and the second is a lively folkdance, the third is the violin and cello trading off largo passages and the pianist playing repeated chords. His reaction to Majdanek and Treblinka.
The last movement begins with a duel of string plucking, introduces a Jewish folksong, which builds up in intensity and dissonance and dies away.
It was dedicated to his friend Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinsky, who died a sudden death in Novosibirsk, not by having naught but sawdust bread to subsist on nor by falling backwards through a window onto a polonium-tipped bullet.
burning question: is it just my imagination or has the Christmas season arrived exceptionally early this year? I say exceptionally but when I was a teenager, I saw Christmas decorations on St. Ajora’s Day, in summer.
