Music....

Here is a positive rant.


Music.... oh... my... goodness.

I went to a recital tonight and was struck suddenly by the power of beautiful music. It can move me to tears in a moment (not an easy thing to do). I still remember doing my Alice paper on Isolde's Liebestod. I sat in the big kids library at Olaf, tearing up every single time I tried to analyze the piece while listening. It was nearly impossible to step out of the emotions and move to the technical aspects. That, is good music.

Tonight, he sang "Silent Noon" by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Janis wouldn't let me sing this in undergrad since EVERYONE did it.. but I've decided I'm gunna learn it just for myself now. Everything about it is amazingly beautiful. Here is the text:

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,-
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace.
The pasture gleams and glooms
'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
Are golden kingcup fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:-
So this winged hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! Clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.
-Dante Gabriel Rossetti

wow.

ok.. I'm a geek. I was listening to Isolde's Liebestod while I typed that poem and definitely teared up again...

Its amazing how music can create so much emotion. One key change, chord, build up, climax, or particularly powerful moment can draw me in. Sometimes, when I'm singing, I get so sucked into a piece, that I forget where I am, how much time has passed, and what technique I was suppose to think about. It even happens when I play certain piano pieces. I have to tell you... I cannot play the piano well at all.. but some music.. it doesn't matter how slowly I play it... it still can get me lost in the music. the chords are the same chords whether they are played slowly or in time.

If you've been my friend for a time, you have no doubt been witness to a music rant. These are the good ones! Where I get so excited about a piece, that I force you to sit and listen to it without other distractions. Here is a piece that I know I've made people listen to. Its from Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane called "Ich Ging Zu Ihm".... Watch this, read the words, and be amazed.