twang twang twang - MUNICH

A letter to the Reader

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.

here is the news

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.

Schoenberg and Berio

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

make it rain!

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. 

keep it real

Perhaps I was getting above my station, playing opera all the time and reading books called things like Musik im Abendland:  Prozesse und Stationen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart and Who Needs Classical Music:  Cultural Choice and Musical Value.

Last week I went to London to perform a new work in a harp festival.  I was practicing when in came a colleague and said "Helen, I know you aren't working tonight, because you don't live in England any more, and anyway you said already that you were going down the pub.  There's a really desparate choral society in Blackheath.  You can go to my house and take my harp and my black clothes and go and do it."

So off I went to the gig.  It was raining.  It was a terrible nineteenth-century Oratorio.  And I'd had a sordid romantic encounter with the first horn when I was 16, and he'd obviously remembered.

But I were grateful for it;  £150 fufilled my basic human needs all week (3 bottles of chardonnay, 65 skinny almond cupuccinos and what felt like 5000 years on the limping, juddering nightmare otherwise known as "Transport for London"). 

I'm a professional

I haven't blogged for so long, I've started getting emails from patient readers telling me to get on with it.  Because I no longer spend 75% of my life  being ignored in expensive hotels, I don't have so many amusing anecdotes - like the time I had to conceal my womanly impurity and play behind a screen for the King of [a Muslim country]. (After an hour the screen grumpily announced: "I'm going on a break, it says in my contract break + sandwiches with posh crisps every hour, King or - [flunky produces crackling envelope with $1000 tip] - I mean to say, it would be an honour to play for His Majesty for as long as the evening affords").

Today we all had to do a turn at the harp backgrounding a party.  TwTwTw had to do two because, suprise suprise, I have played a lot of background music.  I haven't actually done any for a while, but it's like riding a bike, you never forget how to play La Source, doing a few dodgy repeats so it lasts longer.  It did strike me though how some students have got to the age of 23 or 24 and still hardly ever have to play background music.  I played it for at least 12 hours a week throughout my studies in London. 

The work's all right, considering you get paid about £100 an hour to wear a nice dress, drink champagne and play an instrument covered in gold, when below stairs people from ethnic minorities on 14 hour shifts are scrubbing toilets for under a fiver an hour.  I didn't mind it.  I still don't mind it.  Quite often the people are very nice, and I'm sociable, I like nice people.  It's extra- jolly doing background music in Munich because you can park, the traffic's OK and the Germans like music so you get made quite a big fuss of.

I don't feel superior because I can play "Are you ready for love?" (actually, I can't play AYRFL very well, it's a bit awkward on the harp.  I never risked it without Hunky G as flutin' cover).  I don't feel inferior either;  I don't really feel anything about it at all.   I'm just wondering.  What do my co-students do on those three or four days each week when I was schlepping harps into Piccadilly,  playing shit music and going home? 

Do they play good music?  Are they at concerts?  Watching an interesting film?  Are they a little less tired?

I'm listening to This Is Hardcore.

I'm only trying to give you what you've come to expect
Just another song...
But it's a living, can't you see / I'm a professional...

What's the point in making it over-emotional? / You can do it the hard way Or you can be a professional / Oh, oh / La na na na
Oh, oh / I'm a professional / Oh, oh / La na na na
Oh, oh / Sleep on my darling / Sleep on my love / Sleep on my darling
Sleep on my love / Sleep on my darling / Sleep on my love
Sleep on my darling / Sleep on my love