We sat down and were showered with gold. There's no other way of putting it: gold liquid drops of candlelight welled from the wax as though the candles had been moved to tears by the music. Then there was the honey-gold that spilled onto the singers' skin, reflected from the chalice-coloured archways of the church, where the saints shimmered like crumpled stars, hung above a portal into another world - one of music and unsayable longing.
Music and art often reach feelings that are deeper than words... The way that classical music could stir people has been lost to the class snobbery and academic bias of decades, centuries even. Now ordinary people avoid classical music and academics/ pseudo-intellectuals relish it - they can speak intelligently about a piece of music, and think that this is akin to understanding it, ergo enjoying it. This is false logic; one can enjoy something immensely, feel moved by it, without understanding it at all... kissing, for instance, is one such example. Music is another.
Sometimes speaking critically and academically about a piece of music enables you to find a deeper meaning in it. Sometimes it simply distracts you from the power and beauty of the thing itself.
The singer in this chapel was singing 'an die Einsamkeit' - 'on solitude'. Kind of ironic, I thought, that three people had joined together to perform a piece of music about being alone... Then I looked around at the golden light and the fragile blue of the chapel windows, like egg shell vibrating as the living, incredible thing hatched within, cracking our human shells with this beautiful sound...
Alright, I thought, well done, you've said something suitably clever. Full marks, you faux intellectual. Now shut up and concentrate on the music...
Charivari Agreable, the Oxford Baroque ensemble
Music and art often reach feelings that are deeper than words... The way that classical music could stir people has been lost to the class snobbery and academic bias of decades, centuries even. Now ordinary people avoid classical music and academics/ pseudo-intellectuals relish it - they can speak intelligently about a piece of music, and think that this is akin to understanding it, ergo enjoying it. This is false logic; one can enjoy something immensely, feel moved by it, without understanding it at all... kissing, for instance, is one such example. Music is another.
Sometimes speaking critically and academically about a piece of music enables you to find a deeper meaning in it. Sometimes it simply distracts you from the power and beauty of the thing itself.
The singer in this chapel was singing 'an die Einsamkeit' - 'on solitude'. Kind of ironic, I thought, that three people had joined together to perform a piece of music about being alone... Then I looked around at the golden light and the fragile blue of the chapel windows, like egg shell vibrating as the living, incredible thing hatched within, cracking our human shells with this beautiful sound...
Alright, I thought, well done, you've said something suitably clever. Full marks, you faux intellectual. Now shut up and concentrate on the music...
Charivari Agreable, the Oxford Baroque ensemble
1 comment:
Keep up the good work.
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