Music
-
Two hundred and twenty-four years ago, Schubert
Today I continue to celebrate life in details but also in the joy that adds two men to the spirit of celebratory thankfulness — music. Besides the birthday of Philip Glass, there is plenty of reason for celebrating two hundred and twenty-four years today. Franz Peter Schubert, the young man who composed the “Winterreise” (Winter…
-
Celebration Day — seven
This is pure celebration, in part because the opera world has been an important source of joy in my life for the last four decades. Magnificent as realm of music composition and theater since the sixteenth century in Italy, it is a school on human condition, with its comedies, tragedies, and transcendental exercises, a school…
-
Existential Exercise I
Part one: In my teens I sat at the piano on a path of poplar trees, and felt confident in the assertion that no human, no swimming nor crawling nor flying creature dislikes music. As of that moment it was evident that whenever I compose sounds and words, it needs to be under the premise…
-
Today I am in Vienna!
Today I will be in the most magnificent city on this planet. The Metropolitan Opera in New York is playing operas I am not interested in, so I will not be here. Today, mind and ears will be in Vienna. To my wonderful friends in Vienna, do not try to meet me, for I will…
-
A Requiem on Arrival
What happens to a newborn when touched, impressed, moved by the depth of music but without the release of tears? Where does the intensity land?
-
“It is cruel that music should be so beautiful.”
It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) English Composer
