What is the most beautiful national anthem?

Apart from the Philippines' "Lupang Hinirang," of course? (Hehe, fervent patriot here. OF COURSE I'm biased!)

I find Israel's and Hungary's sooooo beautiful! Listening to these songs brought tears to my eyes.

Israel's HATIKVA:

Here's the Hungarian anthem:

What other anthems strike your heart? :)

Joyeaux Noel : The Meaning of Christmas

   "Joyeaux Noel" is a movie inspired by true events during World War I. On Christmas Eve of 1914, soldiers from opposing sides met in No Man's Land met peacefully to celebrate the birth of Christ. 

   The first video shows the most powerful scene in the movie, while the second features the movie's theme song, "Hymne des Fraternises." Both are very beautiful and powerful, and I couldn't hold back tears when I watched them.

   Truly, they embody the meaning of Christmas. 

   Here is the blurb on the 'homepage' of the first video:

   "The "Christmas truce" is a term used to describe several brief unofficial cessations of hostilities that occurred on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day between German and British or French troops in World War I, particularly that between British and German troops stationed along the Western Front during Christmas 1914. In 1915 there was a similar Christmas truce between German and French troops, and during Easter 1916 a truce also existed on the Eastern Front.
The truce began on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1914, when German troops began decorating the area around their trenches in the region of Ypres, Belgium, for Christmas. They began by placing candles on trees, then continued the celebration by singing Christmas carols, most notably Stille Nacht (Silent Night). The Scottish troops in the trenches across from them responded by singing English carols.

The two sides continued by shouting Christmas greetings to each other. Soon thereafter, there were calls for visits across the "No Man's Land" where small gifts were exchanged — whisky, jam, cigars, chocolate, and the like. The soldiers exchanged gifts, sometimes addresses, and drank together. The artillery in the region fell silent that night. The truce also allowed a breathing spell where recently-fallen soldiers could be brought back behind their lines by burial parties. Proper burials took place as soldiers from both sides mourned the dead together and paid their respects. At one funeral in No Man's Land, soldiers from both sides gathered and read a passage from the 23rd Psalm: The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the path of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

The truce spread to other areas of the lines, and there are many stories of football matches between the opposing forces.

In many sectors, the truce lasted through Christmas night, but in some areas, it continued until New Year's Day.

The truce occurred in spite of opposition at higher levels of the military. Earlier in the autumn, a call by Pope Benedict XV for an official truce between the warring governments had been ignored.

British commanders Sir John French and Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien vowed that no such truce would be allowed again, although both had left command before Christmas 1915. In all of the following years of the war, artillery bombardments were ordered on Christmas Eve to ensure that there were no further lulls in the combat. Troops were also rotated through various sectors of the front to prevent them from becoming overly familiar with the enemy. Despite those measures, there were a few friendly encounters between enemy soldiers, but on a much smaller scale than in 1914."

I hear the mountain birds

The sound of rivers singing
A song I've often heard
It flows through me now
So clear and so loud
I stand where I am
And forever I'm dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I'm dreaming of home

It's carried in the air
The breeze of early morning
I see the land so fair
My heart opens wide
There's sadness inside
I stand where I am
And forever I'm dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I'm dreaming of home

This is no foreign sky
I see no foreign light
But far away am I
From some peaceful land
I'm longing to stand
A hand in my hand
...forever I'm dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I'm dreaming of home.

My latest musical discoveries

   There are so many reasons why I love Christmas break. One of the top reasons is that I have leisure time to indulge in my personal Music fests, utilizing YouTube for all its worth as I listen to old favorites and discover new ones.

   My latest musical find is the pianist Freddy Kempf. 

    His rendition of Beethoven's "Pathetique" touched me the most. And I'm now a fan!! :)

    Here are excerpts from an interesting interview of his that I came across.

   Interviewer: You seemed to feel entirely “at home” on stage during your concert in The Hague – is performing live the best thing about being a musician for you? 

Freddy: For me music is the stage. I find it so wonderful and so exciting. I know that there are many different types of great musicians. I would never neccessarily claim to be one of them! My aim is simply to touch someone in the audience and give them as intense as an emotional experience as I can. I feel that it is now only through music, because of the constraints and pressures of normal life, where we can experience these “fantastic” emotions – the feeling of love that Robert (Schumann) had for Clara: the feeling of desperation that Schubert must have felt towards the end of his life... These composers documented their feelings in their writing and for me it is a dream to try to communicate this emotion on the stage to the audience.

What’s your view on the classical music scene at present? Is there a crisis?

I think that in some countries the government, because of their own personal education, may not realize how important the Arts are. In that case they may not be putting enough stress in promoting the Arts. However in other countries the government has seen how important it is and are doing a big effort to make sure as many people as possible can enjoy it. I think classical music in many places is doing far better than it has done before. 

Do you feel that Crossover Projects are “part of the solution or part of the problem”? Or to put it differently: Should the worlds of Classical and Experimental Music remain seperated from each other or open up?

Again I think that there are too many sides to this to give a clear decisive answer. I feel that if someone is playing a classical instrument like the ‘cello or the flute they are only doing “crossover” stuff if they’re not playing the normal classical repertoire. I think one of the great helps to classical music is where people do play the core repertoire but manage to reach people that don’t normally listen to it. 

True or false: People need to be educated about classical music, before they can really appreciate it.

Can’t answer! Some people may be able to appreciate Mahler 5 on first listening, others won’t understand it at all. I think that like anything – wine, food, football, partners – we learn by experience. We can love something straight away but usually we appreciate more the more we learn.

~ ~ ~ ~ 

   For the entire interview, go to this page.

~ ~ ~  ~

   I was browsing in FULLY BOOKED the other day and came across two great "musical books:"

   Temperament by Stuart Isacoff: How Music Became A Battleground For the Great Minds of Western Civilization ---> 

   Clara by Janice Galloway --> It is a novel about Clara and Robert Schumann. I've scanned it and I love how she starts each chapter with a line from "Frauenliebe und Leben," the subject of a previous blog post. She also sprinkles it with musical excerpts, in some parts it reads like a Forms and Analysis paper! :) I'm very excited to read it!

   Reviews to follow! :)

On Massacre and Music

   I join the millions of Filipinos who mourn for the Ampatuan massacre victims. :( A lot has been said about it, but for me, the best-written piece was the one by Patricia Evangelista. She captured the horror of it better than other statistic-bearing columns.

   

   The horror. The living nightmare. Things will never be the same.

   I was in a semi-daze for several days following the tragedy. Oh, how to explain what I felt? It sort of felt like I had shrunk, like my soul had dried up. Like a candle lit within has died. Out of self-preservation, I acted. I shall tell what I did, although the full import of my actions hit me after I had already done them.

   Firstly, I was driven to wear a scent. You see, I normally spritz on some eau de toilette only during very special happenings like the rare dinner and night out. But somehow, I felt compelled to spray some all over, twice or thrice during the day! It's as if I was trying to banish the darkness by smelling good things, sweet and innocent things, like flowers and baby powder.

   I found my olfactory savior in Durance's eau de toilette (Rose). 

   

   Secondly, I attended a concert.

   How to explain the near-desparation I felt when I received an invitation to attend the Litany for the Coming Messiah: An Advent Concert for Organ & Oboe to be held at the Union Church of Manila? 

   I HAD to attend the concert!! I simply HAD to!!!!

   

    I stumbled across this quote from "The Little Book" by Selden Edwards the other day, and it makes me realize WHY I felt the overwhelming urge to watch the concert:

   "Music's principle function is to organize the details into harmonies that are intended to make us forget that there is randomness all around us. It wards off the chaos." (emphasis mine)

   And indeed, last night's concert brought both catharsis and healing to the wounded souls who attended.

   The programme was as follows:

   Prelude and Fugue in C minor, BWV 546 (J.S. Bach)

   Schmucke dich, o liebe Seele (J.S. Bach)

   Pastorale, Op. 19 (Cesar Franck)

   Toccata in B minor (Eugene Gigout)

   Praire (Alejandro Consolacion III)

   Litanies (Jehan Alain)

   Improvisation (Alejandro Consolacion III)

   3rd Romance for Oboe and Piano (Robert Schumann)

   Concerto for Oboe : 1st movement (W. A. Mozart)

   Suite Rural (Alejandro Consolacion III)

   The organist, Alejandro Consolacion III, was in superb form last night and thrilled the audience when he improvised on the wedding anniversary date of one of the couples present: March 27, 1982. He must have improvised for about twelve minutes, I've never witnessed anything like it!

   The oboist, Franz Miguel Ramirez (who shall forever remain my dear "Mikko"), was beautifully accompanied by Mary Anne Espina on the piano as he gave his flawless performances, interpreting the Mozart concerto with a slightly daring "Romantic" edge, but always with impeccable phrasing and with such musicality that his playing brought tears to my eyes more than once.

   Of course, the crowd favorite was the organist's own composition, the Suite Rural. He wrote the Prelude after the Visayan lullaby, Ili-Ili Tulog Anay. The Habanera was the Ilocano song, Osi-osi, while the Chanson was the Pangasinan love song, Malinac lay labi. He finished off with Pen-Pen de Sarapen written in Rondo form.

   Truly, as Sir Eudy said in his pre-concert speech, musicians have a ministry of their own, and it is a mighty, powerful one. Last night's beautiful music DID ward off the chaos that threatened to overwhelm me, and for the first time in several nights, I slept peacefully.  :)

   How did you cope with the terrible news?

Dudley Moore: Beethoven Sonata Parody

Still from the 1960's show, "Beyond The Fringe." I found youtube videos of this exceedingly talented man doing parodies of Britten, Faure, and Schubert as well. :) I don't know which astounds me more... Moore's skill or the audience's being exceedingly well-versed in music, enough to "get" the humor. :)

In this video, Dudley Moore takes the theme of the whistle tune from THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI and transforms it into a piano parody in the compositional style of Beethoven.

Still : Hillsong (Ondoy)

This has been one of my favorite songs for the longest time, and it now takes on special meaning.

Hide me now
Under Your wings.
Cover me
Within Your mighty hand.
When the oceans rise and thunders roar,
I will soar with You above the storm.
Father you are King over the flood.
I will be still and know You are God.

Find rest my soul
In Christ alone.
Know His power
In quietness and trust.
When the oceans rise and thunders roar,
I will soar with You above the storm.
Father You are king over the flood.
I will be still and know You are God.

Plugging the 2009 College Week!

A Soprano and A Scribe

(From Wikipedia)

The Soprano: Kathleen Battle is an American soprano known for her agile and light voice and her silvery, pure tone.

The Scribe: Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded theNobel Prize for Literature in 1915.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

   I'm in the middle of Romain Rolland's "Essays on Music," and I'm in awe not only of the man's ability to write, but also of the breadth and depth of his knowledge on music and history. His life is a testament to his many passions.

   Here are some quotable quotes from the book:

   "Very often, thanks to its depth and spontaneity, music is the first indication of tendencies which later translate themselves into words, and afterwards into deeds. The Eroica Symphony anticipated by more than ten years the awakening of the German nation. The Meistersinger and Siegfried proclaimed ten years beforehand the imperial triumph of Germany. There are even cases where music is the only witness of a whole inner life which never reaches the surface."  (He later on makes the claim that Music and musicians started 'the ball rolling,' so to speak, of the liberation of the individual soul, which eventually affected all of Europe circa 18th century before expressing itself in action by the French Revolution!!)

   "... Thus music shows us the continuity of life in apparent death, the flowering of an eternal spirit amidst the ruin of the world."

   "... What a danger is here! For everything in art that is not subjected to the imitation or the control of nature, all that depends merely upon inspiration or inward exaltation, all in short that presupposes genius or passion, is essentially unstable... Such a flame is subject to momentary eclipses or to total disappearance; and if during these phases of spiritual slumber scrupulous and laborious talent, observation, and reason do not take the place of genius, the result is absolute nullity."

   "...It is curious that so many great musicians -- Schutz, Handel, Kuhnau, Telemann -- should have been obliged to begin by studying philosophy or law. However, this training does not seem to have done the composers any harm, and those of today whose culture is so indifferent would do well to consider these examples, which prove that a general education may well be reconciled with musical knowledge and may even enrich it."

   It is a delight to see how the man mixes dry facts with gorgeous prose, so right after an exposition on the difference of the "Italian overture" (vivamente -- lento -- vivamente) versus the "French overture" (lento -- vivamente -- lento), he intercedes thus:

   "...Music itself is something more than a question of technique. If we really love music, it is because it is the most intimate utterance of the soul and its expression of joy and pain. I do not know which I like the better -- Beethoven's finest sonata, or the tragic Heiligenstadt Testament. The one is equal to the other."

   "...It would be foolish for students of musical history to reject the opinion of everyone who did not follow music as a profession; it would mean confining music to a small circle and being dead to all that went on outside it. An art is only worthy of love and honor when it is a human art -- an art that will speak to all men and not only to a few pedants."   

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

   Yesterday was the 61st birthday of one of my favorite sopranos, Kathleen Battle. (I admire her strictly for her voice, not for her persona.) Some of you might know her as a soprano who epitomized what it is to be a "diva," in the negative sense of the word. She was fired from the Met because she was deemed too difficult to work with.

   There are a lot of horror stories about her, but one can't help but fall in love with her angelic singing. I really do not think any other lyric soprano can compare to "The Battle." Don't believe me? Go here and listen to her version of "Ombra mai fu" (which, incidentally, is from Handel's XERXES. Catch it live on August 26 at the CCP!).

   This weekend, I will check the 1st quarter exam papers of my students while listening to Kathleen serenading me through my mp3 player's earphones. :) Here's hoping that I still have some time to finish my Romain Rolland book. Have a great weekend, everyone!!

Plugging our college's 93rd anniversary concert

L'important C'est La Rose

This beautiful song is dedicated to all the "singles" out there... once in a blue moon, we get hit by a wave of melancholia and start to wonder about The One who is out there... somewhere... and whom God in His infinite wisdom hasn't seen fit to introduce us to, just yet.

When you find you're all alone

And the doubts of love have found you

Though the clouds are all around you

There's a rose

Love will come and love will go

Do not waste another hour

There is beauty in a flower

Like the rose

L'important c'est la rose...

Every one must play our part

In this world that keeps on spinning

And the time will come for winning

If we wait

There's a petal and a thorn

There is beauty in each flower

And we all must stay together

Like the rose

For as sure as there's the sky

And the Sun so high above us

There is one who's meant to love us 

In this world

There is rhythm to our lives

There is rhyme and there is reason

And we all must bide our season

Like the rose

* Note: Am unsure of my transcription of the italicized verse

A Contemplation on Music: A Repost

The welcome address to parents of the incoming freshman class at Boston Conservatory, given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of the music division at Boston Conservatory.

**
One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician.

I still remember my mother's remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school-she said, "You're WASTING your SAT scores." On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren't really clear about its function.

So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and entertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture; why would anyone bother with music? And yet, from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art. It wasn't just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art.

Why?

Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."

On September 12, 2001, I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn't this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day. At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang We Shall Overcome. Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.*

From these experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of "arts and entertainment," as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass- time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heart-wrenchingly beautiful piece, Adagio for Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn't know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what's really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings – people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there's some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding, cry a couple of moments after the music starts.
Why?

The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can't talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you, if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I'll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier-even in his 70's, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn't the first time I've heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn't understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle.

How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?"

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationship> between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:

"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appen..omies, you'd take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at 2:00 AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you're going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8:00 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

"You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I'm not an entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

"Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives."

~ ~ ~

Thanks to Zuri Valbuena for posting this on facebook!

Music and trauma in Polanski’s "The Pianist" by Alexander Stein

http://www.mindandmusic.org/Stein%20-%20Music_Trauma_IJPA_52-3.pdf
Purportedly a scholarly article written for a pschoanalysis journal, this article is so much more than that. It offers insights on the nature of music, time and memory, as well as some psychological characteristics of musicians. It is also a movie review :) A must read for lovers of the film, musicians and those who are puzzled by artistic "types." :)

Part 1 of my favorite musical animated film of all time... "THE NUTCRACKER!!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thrdX2yuVt0
I remember seeing this as a young kid... even before FANTASIA. I badly wanted to take ballet lessons after seeing this, haha! I fell in love with classical music in general because of this cartoon.

Vivaldi's FOUR SEASONS: A Sand Animation Film by Ferenc Cakó

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Animation

I come across the most interesting things on youtube while surfing for videos to show my high school students for their Music class. :) I thought this was a worthy successor to Disney's FANTASIA. Galing galing!

Thoughts on Adorno and Schoenberg

      I've had a lot less free time to blog as a result of committing to two jobs and my M.A. But I'm learning so much from interacting with my students, as well as my graduate classes that force me to read books and journals that I otherwise would have left alone. And I felt that I had to share my newest philosophical "find"... the Frankfurt School/ Critical Theory philosophers that include Theodor Adorno.
 
     I've always believed that Art is good in itself, but that it is so much better if it is "useful" in some way. Now I've finally found a  philosopher who formed some of my disconnected fragmentary ideas into an entire philosophy of art.

(Incidentally, Meewa/Mika, he also advised Thomas Mann as the latter wrote Doktor Faustus)

This is a short summary:

Theodor Adorno's Concept of Art as Lighthearted and Liberatory
by Emanuel L. Paparella

As is well known, Theodore Adorno (1903-1969) was a member of the famous Frankfurt School, a group of Marxist philosophers which included Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse. All three were concerned with the concept of liberation from oppressive social forces. Echoing Marx, they believed that capitalism is not a mere economic system largely based on the exploitation of the workers, but also a social and cultural system that usurps human freedom. Nowhere did Adorno elaborate this view more vehemently than in his wide ranging and subtle philosophy of art.

This philosophy of art proclaims that art is one of the few domains where the human being is able to attain “something like freedom in the midst of unfreedom.”  In other words, art can bring to consciousness the aspiration for freedom even in those societies which systematically deny it. It takes place in the midst of totalitarian regimes, of both the right and the left, governed by an inflexible political ideology, in its very jails and chambers of torture. What Adorno emphasizes is art’s presentation of the contradiction between the possibility of reconciliation, that is to say, transcendence of conflict, and the society in which such reconciliation is not only absent but unattainable. He gives as an example (in section three of his brilliant essay “Is Art Lighthearted?”) the music of Mozart. When we listen to Mozart’s music we are not simply aware of its sublime harmonies or, as Adorno would put it, of its presentation of reconciliation, but we also compare this awareness with the social cacophonous blasphemous world in which we live, a world in which the bully rules by rhetorical or even physical intimidation and arrogance, wherein there isn’t even an attempt at the common good and the meeting of the needs of all. What art does is to let us see both what is possible and how far that possibility is at present.

For the whole article, click here.

While reading up on Adorno and his colleagues for a paper, I couldn't help but think of some people who accuse artists/musicians of being "impractical" and "useless" in today's world. The irony is, most of these people are associated with the left, and here is "justification" for Music in the works of Marxist philosophers. :p

From what I've understood of Adorno's analysis of society, we are living in an increasingly dehumanized world where people are reduced to objects, where social relationships are commodified and where success is the only measure of right and wrong. Our social institutions implant us with false needs, and rob us of our ability to think critically, and therefore kill our individuality. We are born free but are everywhere in chains, thinking the same thoughts, possessing identical consumerist mindsets, and losing everything that sets us apart as human beings.

In such a world, Adorno saw Art as a beacon of hope. Art, by its "impracticality," is revolutionary by its mere existence. In his philosophy, Art = critical thinking, and can therefore provide a stimulus for change.

I wish I could wax poetic but I am pressed for time. Just felt that something this interesting was too good to keep to myself. :)

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At present, the "little things I'm busy with" include rehearsing for a Schoenberg opera, Von heute auf Morgen, which will be premiered in the UP College of Music on April 2. It was quite difficult to learn, but I'm not complaining. It's a beautiful learning experience. You see, my ears have been conditioned to find beauty in Bach and Beethoven, as well as The Corrs and Westlife. I must confess, when I was first introduced to atonality as an undergrad, I was repulsed by all the dissonances. But now I've realize that it's just a matter of conditioning and lack of exposure.

While I do not claim to have a deep appreciation of Schoenberg in the same level as the composition majors, I can now understand his music better. I hope that, in the near future, I find the beauty that is inherent in every "true" art form, in every work of art that was produced with sweat and blood, with philosophical thought and the utmost care to produce a work that is as "beautiful" as its author could make it. Schoenberg's music, though not as "easy to swallow" to ears used to tonal music, definitely fits the "truth" criteria.

P.S. Adorno had a footnote on Schoenberg. He pointed out that Schoenberg's message lost some of its effectiveness due to the difficulty of comprehending the atonal medium of composition. Compo majors, what are your thoughts on the matter? :)

The First Couple of Weeks (2nd sem, A.Y. '07-'08)

Ate, you are a blessing to me and to so many others

I haven't had the chance to upload these pics until now.

Below are pics of:

1) Ate Glenda's Birthday Party Pic (thank you so much, Bechie Babies, for inviting me!!!)
2) CMu People
3) My mom, Tita Mary Anne and myself having lunch at Tiendesitas
4) Rehearsing for NOLI ME TANGERE, Kuya Armin's Grad Recital

Rediscovering a Wonderful Song

I was fixing my music files over the weekend and found the score to one of my favorite songs of all time, Jose Mari Chan's IT IS THE LORD. It has new meaning for me now... maybe the fact that I can now accompany myself while singing the piece helped. Or maybe it's because of the recent renewal of that most precious of relationships... that of Creator and Handmaiden.

 

IT IS THE LORD

Words by Ma. Cristina Ansaldo Estrada

 

Slowly, the light unfolding,

Softly the dawn approaching.

Anxious frightened souls

Seeking hope, seeking hope.

 

Stumbling through the sad desolation.

Wond'ring with frightened confusion

Towards a dark gaping tomb,

a buried hope.

 

Gently, an awareness of a loving presence,

His words: "Do not be afraid."

His message: "Peace be with you."

"Rabbi!" Remember,

it is the Lord!

 

At the tempest and the storm,

in the kindnesses that keep us warm.

Even through the pains and betrayals

of life's crucifixions.

 

Rejoice, dear souls,

for peace, it is the Lord!

Soothe, it is the Lord!

It is the Lord, now and forever.

Amen.

 

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How to describe the feeling that came over me after singing/playing this beautiful song?? There are no words...

"Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." -- Ephesians 5:19-20