DOESN'T EVERYBODY NEED AN I'M-WORRIED-BUT-IT'S-GONNABE-OK PIECE OF MUSIC? MINE IS SCHUBERT'S DOUBLE CELLO STRING QUINTET--specifically the slow second movement, followed by the third.

-

the beginning of the second movement of Schubert's D. 956 string quintet in C major
The opening measures of the second movement of Schubert's string quintet (from IMSLP)

Right now on this December day when I would ordinarily be panicked about the many details of my imminent departure, I'm sitting out under the pergola peeling apples to the accompaniment of this soothing piece.

I am reminded that I wrote about the Schubert piece earlier in the year in response to a wonderful article I had stumbled upon in "Aeon," a publication I had never heard of:
"MUSIC AND RITUAL
Why we love repetition in music"
by Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis


http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/why-we-love-repetition-in-music/

The subtitle was irresistible:

"One more time
Why do we listen to our favourite music over and over again? Because repeated sounds work magic in our brains"

One reader offered a thoughtful comment:

This is a fascinating topic that goes beyond music...I know one psychologist described years ago children's fascination with nursery rhymes and bedtime stories. "Tell me the one about . . . " is a familiar refrain most parents have heard countless times. Yet, it's not just children. How many grown men like to read accounts of sporting events when they already know what happened? Repetition doesn't spoil the prayer.

Comfort food is often praised as "something my grandmother would make when I was growing up." Why is it that I never get tired of seeing a sunset? Same sunset, different day. Repeat as needed.

I WAS MOVED TO POST MY OWN COMMENT ABOUT MY SCHUBERT PIECE:

As a lifelong musician (piano, flute, and in recent decades, viola), I really enjoyed this article, which I read serendipitously (?) while listening to the sublime Schubert String Quintet in C Major Opus 163, D.956, also known as the Double Cello Quintet.

I have worked on this piece and listened to it obsessively;yet, as familiar as I am with it, I never fail to find the introspective second and third movements heartbreakingly beautiful. Despite their sense of longing, I turn to them whenever I need a soothing stress buster. 

While it's true that the repetition is probably an important element of the work's allure, I also like the way I can change my listening experience depending on whether I focus on the line of my own viola part, or on that of the whole, or whether I just have the piece on in the background, which allows the freedom to zero in and out of it at particularly poignant moments. That's what I'm doing right now. Try the Cleveland Quartet version with Yo-Yo Ma. That's what I like to imagine that my amateur chamber group sounds like!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IF YOU MUST HAVE A SMALL MISADVENTURE, MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE IT IN ITALY?

-
Image
We try to steer clear of the mal'occhio (the "evil eye" that causes bad things to happen). But the same week of our little bumper mishap, a close friend told us about his own "contretemps." That's a fancy French word for problems that can arise when one is entering a parking lot at the same time when someone is exiting, but when one of you has the sun in his eyes.  One might say to oneself, as he did, "All I can really see right now is "niente," but what are the chances that anyone would approach during the second it will take me to cross this threshold? Well, because our local Lidl grocery store is very popular at that hour, a quasi-invisible someone could indeed be close enough for anyone entering the lot to scrape two of her car doors.  There was a witless eye-witness to this event. To clarify--the door-scraper's wife who had been following behind in another car and also had the sun in her eyes did not yet realize tha...
Read more

HOW HITTING YOUR BUMPER WHILE BACKING UP INTO JUST ONE IVY-COVERED STONE WALL CAN PUT A DAMPER ON YOUR DAY

-
Image
OOPS! Ivy-covered walls in the Italian countryside are picturesque, but not always as innocent as they look. We thought it would be a good idea to hop into our 1999 Renault to take it for a spin. After all, the poor thing had been sitting there for far too long exercising its primary function as a fruit dryer. If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that the windshield of this proud French vehicle is the linchpin of our efforts to manage all the fruit we produce. The method goes like this: put the fruit of the moment in a foil-covered IKEA roasting pan on a sunny Umbrian day, and you're good to go. Or rather, you will be going nowhere for a while, while that fruit caramelizes nicely.  The red-lit "STOP OR THIS VEHICLE WILL EXPLODE!" did not deter my optimistic husband in the least. "This car is so old that it often says alarming stuff like that, but doesn't really mean it." But I was not convinc...
Read more

ON BEING A PRINCIPESSA (OR IMAGINING THAT YOU ARE)

-
Image
Looks like paradise and a great place to have to oneself for a few weeks, no? Well, it pretty much is. But only by day. The other night I went down to turn off the light in the kitchen only to find that it had been taken over by flying and crawling aliens. They were everywhere, and I had to jump out of my delicious torpor and into a killing frenzy. Last year’s invasion of the flying ants had resumed! They had made an initial appearance the other day, but I had taken what I thought were definitive extreme measures to reclaim my turf. (Just goes to show that the Ancient Greeks did not have a monopoly on hubris.) I had removed all temptations from the counter and ferreted them out of the most unexpected places. I think the other members of the family might be surprised to know that they are not the only ones in the house to love coffee. The biggest swarm of them was on top of and under the machine. But there were some tea-totalers, too, who had decided to set up residence in the...
Read more