It came to him in a dream one late summer night in 1881. The master dreamt that a friend paid him a visit and whistling a tune told him, "This music will bring you great success."
Waking, he immediately wrote down what he had heard in his dream-- the opening musical theme of what was to become the his greatest popular success, Symphony No 7.
A dream within a dream. One of my facebook associates says he loves the way the 1st movement of the Bruckner's symphony unfolds right from the beginning. But, he says, the conductor has to handle it right to get the maximum effect.
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Only a few days before the performance, we had managed to get our favorite seats in the Disney Concert Hall (which remains my favorite piece of architecture in the entire city). And, just like last time, as soon as Adonis saw our seats up in the nose-bleed section, on the side directly facing the conductor and first violin, he smiled happily. And stripping down to his tank top, he demanded his conductor's baton. Before the Bruckner symphony, the Philharmonic played Mozart Symphony No 34. With the notable exception of Eine Kleine, the Kid is just not a Mozart man. He, therefore, not surprisingly, sat through it like me in Church-- inevitably underwhelmed.
After the intermission, we returned to our seats. He didn't immediately demand his baton, so I suppose he was still annoyed about Mozart (this being, no doubt, another bad habit he has picked up from his father).
By this time the stage was jam-packed with musicians. Bruckner's symphony No 7 is HUGE on so many levels, not least the sheer number of musicians.
Pointing to the the cymbal and triangle, I told Adonis: "Just one note, that's all they play"
He looked over at the two musicians seated in chairs in front of their instruments in disbelief and said, "What if they fall asleep and miss their only notes?"
It is such a long piece of music, and I was worried about how he would do. But, in fact, the music completely held his interest and attention. Adonis conducted in his seat from start to finish. As my dear associate said, so much depends on the conductor. And Escehnbach is a master. Watching Adonis watch Eschenbach, I was deeply impressed by the precision of the conducting-- the way Eschenbach so precisely managed the orchestra so as to draw out just the right sound-- the sound HE imagined-- like he was bringing to life his own personal dream of the music.
Large-scale, unending repetitions of a myriad variations of that first opening theme, the length and power is not unlike Beethoven; and yet Brucker's symphony unfolds so much less urgently, doesn't it? Indeed, parts of it evoke a feeling of timelessness almost reminsicent of a long performance of gamelan. And, yet, this is no eternal recurrance of the same-same, is it? As the music does categorically move teleologically forward through time, triumphantly, like Beethoven.
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And speaking of Beethoven, I am reading a very interesting article right now by Stanford Professor of Musicology, Stephen Hinton about Beethoven's Ode to Joy (pdf here).
O Freunde, nicht diese Toene!
Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen und freundenvollere!
O friends! Not these sounds!
But let us strike up more pleasant sounds and more joyful!
Debated and re-interpreted for generations, Stephen Hinton takes up the question as to what sounds Beethoven is referring. O friends! Not these sounds! Hinton asks, What sounds? Wagner opinion, I guess is the one most popularly-held; that Beethoven is negating the immediately proceeding crashing opening-- the infamous "horror fanfan"-- in order to make way for the pure beauty of the human voice of the choral part that follows.
Nietzsche, of course, saw things differently.
Hinton, however, steps back and asks this question: at that point in history-- that is to a late 18th century philosopher or aesthetician-- what was the opposite of being "pleasant"? Was the opposite of pleasant "unpleasant"?
We will never know what Beethoven wanted to say by "more pleasant sounds" and "more joy," but Hinton in his discussion brings out a very interesting hypothesis that during the late 18th century (for Kant, for example), the opposite of pleasant, rather than being unpleasant was the distinctly German concept of kultur. Hinton calls this "cultured," but what was even meant by that, I wonder. I will have to email our man in Vaud to see what he thinks, but for now, I seem to recall reading somewhere that the German concept kultur does not necessarily map on to the English word culture, but rather it is a closer match for being civilized or even a stand-in word for civilization itself; that is, the highest intellectual and artistic achievements of a particular culture or civilization.
This is probably something that is in the process of breaking down in our own time where cultural pursuits are becoming more and more like another form of amusement (see this on philistinism)-- but yes, it is fascinating that Beethoven would couch in the most elaborate and elegant "flower of civilization:" German Enlightenemnet music, this call to return to a more "pleasant" sound.
Hence, it is both a philosophical and religious vision that above and beyond the particular achievements of particular civilizations is the unadorned joy of universal brotherhood.
Joy, beautiful spark of gods
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter drunk with fire,
Heavenly one, your sanctuary!
Your magic binds again
What custom strictly divided.
All men become brothers,
Where your gentle wing rests
By this time, of course, in the music we have ascended into the starry sky above and are somewhere on the outskirts of Heaven.
Leonard Bernstein's dream of the Ode to Joy has-- for whatever-- reason always been one of my favorites. And, he once remarked that the music of the Ode to Joy is perhaps the closest that music has ever come to true universality. I guess it is easy to see why the EU would have chosen it as the European Anthem. To stress common humanity as above and beyond the achievements of particular cultures in a way that does not seek to undermine or homogenize would, I think, sum up the EU project. **
Anyway, I think the Readers of these Pages will be relieved to hear that our musicians did not miss their climactic notes. Really, in what is one of the world's great, loooong symphonies, the two musicians (cymbalist and triangle) sat there waiting and waiting and waiting.
Very still, with perfectly straight posture, I thought they were not unlike the way people sit in Tea Ceremony. And watching them I found them to be as arrestingly beautiful as the music. Indeed, I envied them their disciplined and focused, very calm way of attentatively waiting.
Waiting for the Moment
**
Leonard Berstein below, but first: two more tea ceremony videos, one by candlelight (something I never had the chance to participate in) and Sazae-san: Tarachan learns tea ceremony
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