pumpkinstrokemarrow

Been having a spate of musical fads over the last couple of weeks or so. Started off with Bach's orchestral suites - some of which I had clearly heard before - but on which I had never focussed. That lasted for a week or so. Then moved onto Chopin's nocturnes, particularly sides 1, 3 and 4 of the 4 available. Not quite got my head around side 2 yet.

Then a swift foray into the third movement of Beethoven's Op. 132 string quartet, featured in the closing chapters of 'Point Counter Point'. A thing of great beauty and intensity. But it suddenly dawned on me as I listened what (D. H.) Lawrence's puppet, Rampion, in the book was on about. It might be a thing of great beauty but it was also terribly private. One is one's own private heaven, shut off from the rest of the brave new world that has such people in it. One might as well be on some substance induced trip - which I am told is also, often, terribly private. Not including here alcohol induced trips. Alcohol can generate a lot of community spirit when consumed in the right circumstances, this presumably accounting for its use for such purposes for millennia.

I think Rampion's point was that being shut up inside a private and cerebral world is not the way forward. We ought be much more in tune with other parts of ourselves and others. Not sure that I agree with him, but I think I can see what he means. Not just ranting - which Rampion rather does in the book in question.

I suppose he would be happier with singing in a choir, an experience which I imagine to be both cerebral and collective. At least I would think so from my limited recent experience of singing at carol services and the like. An experience which can be heightened by taking place in the dimly lit interior of a good class church.

From there moved onto Schuberts D935 impromptus. And sufficiently moved, happening to pass a music shop in Kingston, to procure a Wiener Urtext Edition. Proper full size thing that one might play from, not like the miniature scores from Eulenburg. Which I was recently reminded of by getting a score of the Schubert Octet. Miniature is OK but all of the print is small and some of it not so clear. Not so easy on older eyes and brains. Full size thing much better. Quite impressed that the shop in Kingston had it, along with quite a lot of the standard chamber repertoire. Must be quite a lot of musicians knocking around Kingston. Once home, I find I can just about follow the score. To the extent of seeing that there is a lot more there than I am likely to hear unaided. Not that I can follow every note, rather I keep leaping from highlight to highlight, trying to avoid the odd elephant trap where my recording leaves out a repeat. All of which left me with the thought that writing music must be an odd business. Even supposing that you have thought it all out, it is going to take you a lot longer to set the notes down that it takes to play them. A few seconds playing time might be a lot of inches of stave. One is writing in a different time zone as it were. As the composer you are seeing the thing as a picture which you are copying down, rather than a one dimensional stream of noise entering the ear holes. Maybe one day I will meet someone who knows.