January’s Musical Journey
Back in March, April and perhaps even during the summer of 2020, the year 2021 was very much a distant concept full of hope, a time that we hoped would be full of life, culture and real human interaction. Yet 2021 is soon to be among us and all over the world, cultural institutions remain closed to the public. This is, of course, another tragedy amongst an endless list of tragedies that COVID-19 has inflicted on us over the past year. Far from selfishly suggesting that we simply ignore the spectre of this virus and naively open up shop (to presumably disastrous consequences), I nevertheless strongly feel that culture needs to be engaged with on a deeper level.
It is a paradox of our modern era that we can have almost anyone and anything at the touch of a few buttons and yet, we often feel increasingly isolated, overwhelmed and confused by the relentless torrent of information and choice that we are bombarded with. The digital age is truly remarkable; never before have we been able to listen to practically any piece of music, by any artist both long gone and only just starting and yet, our oral palettes remain restricted, our attention spans assaulted by endless clips of no more than two minutes of THE MOST BEAUTIFUL Mozart, THE LOUDEST Mahler or THE MOST VIRTUOSIC Paganini Caprice.
The closure of concert halls doesn’t just deny us access to live music, it denies us access to a sacred space which is close to impossible to recreate outside of it. The experience of listening to live classical music is an intense, visceral moment in which you turn your phone off, the lights are dimmed and along with however many other hundreds of people, you experience the energy of up to one hundred musicians in the here and now. No pausing/rewinding, no going to the toilet, no phone ringing, no nothing. For the two hours you are sat there, you are transported in both body and mind to places that challenge the intellect, explore the depths of our emotions and push our boundaries, without the comfort of being able to turn it off.
Outside of the concert hall, music is too frequently being used to fill silence, to act as a superficial comfort blanket so that we do not have to face the silence that has been brought about by Covid. Not for one second do I wish everyone to sit at home and dwell on their misfortune, rather, I believe that a conscious engagement with art, being an active participant in a cultural exchange and giving yourself the space to listen to something and reflect is a far superior and more effective way to deal with the issues we face than to drown them with background music.
In this spirit, I would like to offer a series of recommended recordings for each day of the month of January 2021. These will be accompanied by texts of various length (depending on my knowledge of the music) that will hopefully enhance the experience of listening to the music. My idea is that those of you who share my feelings above will take 15 minutes out of your day to read the text, listen to the music with the same level of concentration you would in a concert hall, and then be inspired to react to it. My choice of music will range from the traditional to the extremes. I hope to encourage listeners to engage with the music they find difficult to listen to and figure out why. The comments section will be open for these discussions, reactions and my hope is that we can build a small community using our time to engage with each other over art. How enriched the concert hall will be if these conversations are elaborated on upon their re-opening.
The first recording I would like to suggest is Robert Schumann’s “Auf Einer Burg” from his song cycle Liederkreis, Op. 39.
For this song, Schumann creates a unique atmosphere of timelessness and antiquity. The music moves primarily in minims (half notes) as the poem’s melancholic images of an old knight, isolated and asleep in his watch tower whilst there is a storm outside, have poignant connotations with many of our own experiences this year. The simplicity of the writing is one of the music’s most remarkable features. The piano’s strict four-part, imitative counterpoint evokes a sense of longing for the old, added with the fact the harmony is littered with many modal inflections. The music is primarily in A minor, with traces of E aeolian and this instability, owing to the lack of a harmonic centre adds to the wandering, melancholic nature of the music. The music is also full of unresolved suspensions, the clashes of semitones interrupting an otherwise ethereal landscape.
There is an economy of expression in the song which shows a level of emotional restraint; the winds, the storm, the river, the birds and the musicians find no parallel in their musical depiction. It is as if Schumann wanted to have as few notes as possible in every bar and instead provides us with a meditation on what it means to be distant and impersonal. The song is one of a small handful that avoid the use of any protagonist, no “I” or “You” and certainly no dialogue. To listen to this song in tranquillity is to confront the feelings of isolation and indifference and find meaning in just being.
Click here for the text in both the original (German) and English languages.
