I Beg to Differ
In today's Composer's Datebook:
Even though Stravinsky is on record stating that "music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all," in his Symphony of Psalms . . .
I think music is eminently powerful and eloquently expresses emotion, whether in the Symphony of Psalms or in anything else. I think it's the rare piece of music that doesn't evoke a memory of previous hearings or previous performances. Tears well up in my eyes when I hear and/or sing the National Anthem. I have to fight choking up when I sing "libera cas de ore leonis, ne absorbeat eas tartarus, ne cadant in obscurum" in the Mozart Requiem. (If you're not up on your Latin, it translates to:
[Lord Jesus Christ, King of glory,
deliver the souls of all the faithful
departed from the pains of hell and from the bottomless pit.]
Deliver them from the lion's mouth.
Neither let them fall into darkness
nor the black abyss swallow them up.
I could just sob every time I sing that. And the In Paradisum from the Fauré Requiem sends me to paradise.
I think Stravinsky got it wrong on this one.
3 comments:
I take great solace in Psalms 91. I read it over and over in times of peril, torment and anquish.
Traveler
Oh, Lee, I'm not saying I'm crying from sadness or despair. I'm saying I'm crying from the sheer joy and absolute beauty of the music.
I'm there with you. While not a big classical buff like you and my brother, I was left slack-jawed by the introduction of the strings in Suzanne Vega's "Song of Sand." I want Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Little Wing" played at my funeral. (Hendrix's lyrics are a little too much for me.)
My other two favorite blues pieces, if you're curious, are Clapton's Unplugged "Old Love" and Marcia Ball's "St. Gabriel." And of course "St. James Infirmary," in just about all its iterations.
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