I would like to know why, on facebook, I get a friend request every couple of days or so, but yesterday I had to confirm FOURTEEN new pals for JEFF AND JANET!
(J&J are my cats. If you need that explaining, you don't read classical music blogs enough. What's the first thing you think of when you hear The Rest is Noise? No, not a substantial new work on twentieth century music - Penelope and Maulina. The Standing Room? Feline Foto Friday. Jessica's Solti even has his own blog).
I've just spent the last ten days at masterclasses in the splendid surroundings of the Pałac Radziejowice near Warsaw. Sitting in palaces going on about harps is a fine thing, even in pidgin-Polish (I thought it was "pigeon Polish", but a clever friend at Oxford took the piss, so now I know).
Ooh, I love going on about harps. I've just been reading a 24-answer thread on a harp message board about the tricky pedal bit in the Debussy Danses. Here's some of it:
A: Jamet's solution omits two notes, and at full tempo, even knowning that you are listening to his version, you can't hear these omissions. Salzedo's version leaves out the entire left hand, and then divides the right hand 16th notes between the two hands and drastically alters the harmony!!!
B: But it works beautifully and is standard for many many harpists!!!!!
My version leaves all the notes intact.
A: You're unbelievable! You jump all over the Jamet version for leaving out two notes(really one, because it's the same one when the pattern repeats an octave lower), and then praise a version that is so far out in left field as to not bear the faintest resemblance to the original version. And why? Because it was written by Salzedo! When I complain about the cult-like mentality that I have observed so often over the years, THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!
B: No it is not.
- [afterthought] And if it were, so what? You can't do anything about it, so move on.
[there then follows an interlude where someone else reminisces about a Salzedo transcription of the Lord's Prayer]
B: The "leap" from Jamet to Salzedo was simply a reflection of my impatient mind. I am striving to play the original. If it is to be changed at all, then I would rather go all the way to Salzedo's brilliant solution which sounds clearly, moves well, and is playable in the tempo Debussy seemed to want. And we know he liked speed. One thing I do not agree with is changing any notes of the slide into the last page. It must be in theis it Lydian-mode to set up the chords to follow and get the harp ringing in the mode.
A: That is the most pathetic defense of Salzedo's indefensible solution to that passage that I have ever heard...
...Salzedo's version of the Danses, including the glissandos on the last page, are just another example a domineering narcissistic 'leader' playing fast and loose with the music.B: If one plays the last page of the Danses up to tempo, it sounds just like it is already "glissandi", and glissandi are far more effective in communicating what Debussy is trying to say, but couldn't be done on a chromatic harp.
Those who live in glass houses, as the saying goes, should not throw stones. What would Debussy would say about attempting to play the whole Children's Corner Suite as a harp solo. I know what I would.
Apparently human experience runs in seven-year cycles, something to do with your chakras. I think all that stuff is bollocks, but this much I do know: after 7 years exactly, I am suddenly able to play the Spohr Fantasie and the Hindemith Sonata again without wanting to jump out of the window.
TwTwTw is confident, having mixed up her verbs and asked the Polish harp repairer to 'do her' instead of 'call her back', that 'to do someone' has none of the same connotations in Polish.
Perhaps I should explain at this juncture that, it being the orchestral break, I went to Poland and have been practicing and learning Polish and having cultural experiences.
Ah, it's been worth it - I am entranced by a title I've found in a catalogue: Jak sie masz, drogi przyjacielu ('How are you, dear friend?'). I'm going to have a look for it in Warsaw next week.
"I loved her and I loved no one else and we had a lovely magic time when we were alone. I worked well and we made great trips, and I thought we were invulnerable again, and it wasn't until we were out of the mountains in late spring, and back in Paris that the other thing started again.
That was the end of the first part of Paris. Paris was never to be the same again although it was always Paris and you changed as it changed. We never went back to the Vorarlberg and neither did the rich.
There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy."
Ernest Hemmingway, A Moveable Feast
Adam Zagajewski
List od czytelnika
Za dużo o śmierci,
o cieniach.
Napisz o życiu,
o zwykłym dniu,
o pragnieniu ładu.
(...)
Zobacz,
narody stłoczone
na ciasnych stadionach
śpiewają hymny nienawiści.
Za dużo muzyki
za mało zgody, spokoju,
rozumu.
Napisz o chwilach,
kiedy kładki przyjaźni
zdają się trwalsze
niż rozpacz.
Napisz o miłości,
o długich wieczorach,
o poranku,
o drzewach,
o nieskończonej cierpliwości
światła.
A Letter to the Reader
Too much about death,
of shadows.
Write about life,
a normal day,
the longing for order.
(...)
Look,
the nations packed
tight in stadiums
sing hate-filled songs.
Too much music
Too little harmony, peace,
understanding.
Write of the times
when the bridges of friendship
are stronger
then despair.
Write about love,
of long evenings,
the morning,
the trees,
of the endless patience
of light.
The Tour de France is in crisis, beautiful girls are winning harp competitions and, powering alongside from the beach, TwTwTw has finished Hurra! Po Polsku 1.
Polish is complicated, which I'm told makes it very expressive. So far my expressiveness has been a bit symbolist, like saying "I have eaten my bike" instead of "I travelled by bike". But anyway, today I revised everything I am supposed to know before moving on to Hurra! Po Polsku 2.
One thing I had forgotten is that, while the accusative singular of masculine nouns is broadly straightforward, the following take their genitive endings instead:
- fruit
- veg
- cars
- games (grać w ping-ponga)
- money: dollars, zloty, etc
- dances, like a mazurka
and
- fags, e.g. gauloises.
But of course!
There are reasons why I am doing this, I keep telling myself.
Our recording of Berio's Folk Songs and Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire is out on Neos. Those of you who know me will be aware that one thing that keeps me from blogging is staying too long in pubs shouting about the lack of concept or argument in some parts of the music world, but fortunately that isn't the case here. Buy the CD for the whole thing, but here's a brief extract from Konstantia Gourzi's introduction:
"Both compositions on this CD have occupied my thoughts for many years. I think that without these pieces the literature of music would lack something essential. Luciano Berio's Folk Songs embodies for me a musical antithesis and counterbalance to Schoenberg's music. Between these two artists exists a highly vivid musical arc of tension: Pierrot Lunaire is the question and Folk Songs is the reply."
Other interesting parts of the concept include jazz interludes in Pierrot Lunaire (although there's no harp in that).
" 'I cannot distinguish tears from music.' -- Nietzsche. He who does not
comprehend this immediately, has never lived in the intimacy of music.
All true music arises from wailing, since it is born from the nostalgia
of paradise."
- Cioran
TwTwTw thinks, having rendered Swan Lake "wunderbar" on the first play-through, she could be let off the second day of rehearsals outside and up a mountain only accessible after jeep pick-up from the carpark somewhere nearer sea level. They have muddy field dates here too.
I performed a small rain dance behind the concrete toilet in the break.
