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"Black, black is the colour of my true love's hair
His lips are something rosy fair
The sweetest smile and the kindest hands
I love the grass whereon he stands".
"I love my love and well he knows
I love the grass whereon he goes..."
Berio, Folksongs
I've been to London to work on Crowd with Harrison Birtwistle, as I'm going to record it next month. He cut his finger on the end of a bass wire and had to blot it on my music, which was the only paper to hand.
How about that - a score smeared with the blood of one of today's greatest composers...
Mark Williams, a college friend of mine, has a fantastic blog. It's not about music but is definitely my Blog of the Month for its brilliance, depth, range, wit and humanity. I had to lie down after this:
"it was a raw, elemental day. People were flying kites high up on the breasts of the hills. Birdsong shivered over the wild-blown grasses, tawny like the hide of of great crouched animal...like the flank of a horse. I raised my hands, palms up, to the sun and let the light flow into me and flood my mind.
I had brought a big pottery bowl of dried rosemary and sticks, which was lit as I held it, so that flames licked around me as I invoked Brighid, the Irish goddess of fire, the Celtic Vesta. (Who, as readers of this blog will know, is my patron goddess, and to whom the feast of Imbolc belongs.) Everyone had been given bundles of dried rosemary, bay, and lavender, which they placed in the fire in my hands, honouring the returning fire of growth, of Spring's beginning...
Then: PARP!! from the road. 'THERE'S A BULL IN THAT FIELD!' klaxoned a woman from the kerbside. 'Fuck', thought we, and quickly wound down the half-finished rite. ('Thanks! Bye!' was about the extent of my sacred invocation, there.) The woman advanced stolidly up the hill, announcing that we were trespassing on her grandparents' land. (To be fair to us, there had been no sign on the gate that led from the car park, and people had been walking from the Horse down past where we were all afternoon.) I hastily put out the fire, and hid the fire-bowl under my robe. Collectively, we were charming and the woman was mollified, but moved us on, 'for our own safety.' *sizzle*. I explained that we had come from Oxfor - *sizzle*,ow, fuck, *sizzle* -d, and that we didn't know the area, in my best 'we're very sorry, look how middle class and polite I am' tone. By this time, I was definitely smouldering beneath the robe, trying to have a pleasant non-confrontational conversation with this trainee termagant whilst concealing a foot-wide terracotta bowl that was full of burning embers. I wondered if I was emitting an odour of pork scratchings. The farmer's grand-daughter finally went off, and I could put the bowl before I got third-degree burns.
We finished the rite by the car-park."
Asking the conductor which country he hails from would have been a stupid enough question for the teabreak - given we're doing a klezmer programme - even if he hadn't been Ariel Zuckermann.
Reminds me of the time I played for Steven Gately's wedding and didn't realise who he was. I asked his husband why he thought the paparazzi were lining the street - was one of the Royals upstairs?
It is one of the great ironies of my life, given he didn't write much harp music (fortunately, neither did Brahms, but that's another story), that Beethoven is my favourite composer.
I love this, from Jeremy Denk:
"The first time this happens, I think it is unarguably weird, as if, again, the violinist were “stuck.” (So many times in a row!) But, it turns out, Beethoven repeats these two affecting notes exactly four times, making a kind of peculiar, but standard, four-bar phrase out of nearly nothing, out of pure iteration. And then this four-bar idea (nothing) becomes kind of the foundation of the development. (Castles in the air.) So: what was excessive, bizarre, transgression, becomes normative, becomes the rule. Beethoven founds a temporary grammar on exception and paradox. The composer’s magic of getting the listener to accept the bizarre or asymmetrical. And once the strange becomes “normal,” then departures from the strange themselves become strange, the Alice in Wonderland, upside-down, beautiful world is created.
Watching this winding in and out of normality through the development, as we play it each night, I do feel like what I imagine the children, say, in Chronicles of Narnia feel stepping through the wardrobe, and the faun in the forest says hello. A hush comes over me in each development, each performance. Tightrope act: you don’t want to make a false move, or the dream will vanish, but on the other hand, you must relax and let the dream take you where it wishes. And dramas in Narnia reverberate back and forth significantly to reality (the development, as meditation, back to the exposition, music into life, etc.) … my touring life against “real life,” the symbol against the event, the idea versus the thing … how much does my immersion in the development of Op. 96 affect the way I live my so-called normal life? The children of Narnia must leave the fantasyland behind in order to grow up."
