MUSIC
and meaning.
Just returned from Don Giovanni. Mozart was truly a genius to combine such harmonies, melodies and musical elaborations within the structure of such a coy libretto.
(There is a woman in the states who thinks she's the reincarnation of Wolfie himself. Dresses like him. Has a 'Stanze' girlfriend. It was an embarrasing doc(moc)umentary to watch.)
Music.
Has always been in my life. Has saved my life. Is drama. Is meaning. Is salvation.
I remember strolling around school music rooms, picking up this instrument and that; at once wanting to play them all. I settled on violin in junior high school, clarinet after that, and a brief love affair with the glockenspeil and the snare drum, in that order. It was suggested I would be a match for the French horn, which I immediately snubbed on account of it being forced upon me. I wanted the music maker to call out to me. As it should. Still have a love affair with the violin and clarinet. Haunting, them sounds. Piano was also a love, but never got the lessons. Have to start young, I think. Still enjoy tinkering. Learned this once, painstakingly. Slowly. Bach destroys me. But who has time for these things when you're studying ancient languages. I miss it. I truly do. The theatre, the music, the opera singing. I need another lifetime.
See Don Giovanni.
Last October I was priveleged to be in New York and visited museums such as the Pierpont Morgan Library where they had a collection of Mozart's original notation. I poured over it for long pauses of scintillating imaginary glimpses into handwriting analyses, wishing I'd known his rumoured flirtatious ways, was able to inspire a few notes, a few glances. Surely this is fantasy. Incredible seeing his works so close. I should still be there.
posted by MissWanda at 10:43 p.m.
2 Comments:
i saw don giovanni a few years ago and truly hated it - mozart is mostly over rated and opera as an art form is very difficult for me to take - but i have solved the problem by listen to opera instead of watching opera - today it's siegfried (ya wagner) i doubt i will be going back to listen to much more mozart but one never knows
It's also the experience of opera that I find enrapturous. But I simultaneously feel like I'm wallowing in a sort of pool of needless tradegy. But I crave it.
Mozart has a special magic. Certainly it could be that he incorporates tiny hat tricks, I'm none too wise with notation to pick them out, but my ear suggests the possibility.
Could be you saw a poor depiction of D.G.
Personally, I can't get enough opera. Been like that since I was 12 or so. I remember very clearly playing it in my bedroom. Maybe that's what destroyed any hope of my relationship with my mother ever succeeding.
I'd rather have had the opera, I suppose. Oh, the tragedy.
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