So, like, heres an example. The Blair Quartet is playing Beethovens late quartet, opus 130, tomorrow night, with its GREAT FUGUE (Grosse Fuge) intact, right where it belongs, as the original Finale of the piece. Its a fitting farewell for my wonderful friend Chris Teal, retiring first violinist in the Blair Quartet (boo hoo). The Grosse Fuge: the most difficult music ever composed. By anyone. Stupendously hard to play and to listen to. Beethovens Grosse Fuge makes Elliott Carters quartets sound like the Sherman Bros. (Lets Go Fly a Kite). So how does anyone GET the Grosse Fuge? In a single hearing in Ingram Hall tomorrow night? Uh-uh. In several hearings over the course of a lifetime? Not feasible. The piece must be FRIENDED, against all odds, even though it surely cannot be LIKED. Its too awfully ugly. Its too tremendously beautiful. My heroic students and I have been analytically woodshedding the Grosse Fuge in Chromatic Harmony class for the past week or two, mostly shaking our heads over it in spiritually distressed bafflement. THIS is what the Blair School does best: a measure of time and space to be properly freaked out by Beethoven. Such essential work cannot be done publicly; but its the sweetest kind of birthday cake. Grosse Fuge. It almost sounds obscene. There we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. My favorite line of Shakespeare. Its what we musicians spend our lives doing.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 13:27:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015