Re: Dave Reviews (craps on) Movies (intermittently and with gusto)
Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 7:59 pm
Let me explain about "coming of age"
I made friends with a young pianist once upon a time; a purely musical friendship. At 17 and 18 he played magnificent classical music in the most bombastic style of youth. It was the heavy, serious and highly dramatic etudes and polonaises that exploded like cannons from the piano. He hammered the piano brilliantly.
Then he went to college for a year. When he returned, he played the most emotional and tenderest melodies of the piano repertoire; music beautiful enough to make you cry, music to make your heart feel the sorrows of the world, music that evoked beauty and love.
Thats when I knew that he had come of age. Thats when I knew what hed learned over that year in college - - not that the more tender the music, the more passionate the music, the greater the pleasure of hearing it, no, no That is music you learn not from scales, not from practice, not from studying major or minor keys. He learned the emotion that music carries with it by having his heart broken. I didnt need to know the details of his year at school. I heard the result. Thats when he became a true pianist.
And finally, a thought that might be obscure but sums up my thoughts right now: This is the reason that Gustave Mahler's Das Lied von Der Erde (The Song of the Earth) ends with a single whisper soft word -- "ewig" -- that is "forever."
I made friends with a young pianist once upon a time; a purely musical friendship. At 17 and 18 he played magnificent classical music in the most bombastic style of youth. It was the heavy, serious and highly dramatic etudes and polonaises that exploded like cannons from the piano. He hammered the piano brilliantly.
Then he went to college for a year. When he returned, he played the most emotional and tenderest melodies of the piano repertoire; music beautiful enough to make you cry, music to make your heart feel the sorrows of the world, music that evoked beauty and love.
Thats when I knew that he had come of age. Thats when I knew what hed learned over that year in college - - not that the more tender the music, the more passionate the music, the greater the pleasure of hearing it, no, no That is music you learn not from scales, not from practice, not from studying major or minor keys. He learned the emotion that music carries with it by having his heart broken. I didnt need to know the details of his year at school. I heard the result. Thats when he became a true pianist.
And finally, a thought that might be obscure but sums up my thoughts right now: This is the reason that Gustave Mahler's Das Lied von Der Erde (The Song of the Earth) ends with a single whisper soft word -- "ewig" -- that is "forever."