Pure Sound

Lütfen Dikkat

So you speak the world's new lingua franca. Perhaps you are entirely, or essentially, monoglot. But that doesn't matter now, does it? Because everyone speaks some English, don't they? Or enough people around speak enough of it to get around anyway. Why do I need to learn these other troublesome, pesky small languages?
Well if you would just care to observe carefully---the next time you speak to someone whose doesn't have native-speaker proficiency in English---how different they sound out of their native language. They usually sound hesitant, timid, withdrawn and a little defensive, no matter how extroverted, lively or, bold they may be in person.   If the conversation was initiated by the other person, in another language, you may well be able to feel the brief, but palpably awkward, slightly disappointed silence after you reply in English: oh, we don't share a language.
Of course you don't actually have to care about all this. As long as I get my message across, what does it matter? But you know, it would only be nice to take notice, and to at least try to bridge the gap.

"Something unbelievably raw ..."

I wish I could quote Schumann or Chopin at will. Words are such clumsy substitutes.

War / Dance

Watched War / Dance with the parents last Monday, at Sinema@Old School.
The cinema was quite interesting. It was small: one theatre, with red couches for seats (three to a couch), seating up to perhaps ninety people. From the posters on display in the box office-cum-gift shop downstairs we gathered it showed mainly local films, and some foreign independent films. And it had been set up in an interesting locale: the Old School compound (formerly the Methodist Girls' School campus, now converted to "digs for new school thinkers") was full of artist's studios, with plenty of semi-colonial architecture and inviting open space in between. An artist's colony of sorts---a rare creature in this nation of merchants, though it did seem quite in its natural habitat on quaint, quirky Mount Sophia.

The film was even better. The visuals were striking, and the story was deeply gripping---especially since it was a real, not fictionalised, account.

There were two scenes that struck me in particular.
The first was of a convoy of UN container trucks rolling into the refugee camp---now town---of Patongo. 'Every month, the school closes for one day when the UN delivers food to Patongo,' a caption explained. It wasn't just the school, but the whole town which seemed to stop for the supplies. Huge crowds---seemingly the whole population of the camp---gathered in impatient, pushy lines to demand, collect and jealously guard their share. The camera cut to show a child picking up from the ground grains of cassava which had dropped out of a sack. Why, in today's rich, industrialised, modernised world of plenty, should whole villages and districts be reduced to this kind of rationing? Not that the people seemed malnourished, but compared to the commercial plenty in so many other parts of the world, even in the Ugandan capital, it seems such a primitive and disruptive method of distribution.
The second was of the children of Patongo performing their traditional dance in the finals of the National Competition. 'When I dance I feel good,' a voice-over from one of the performers pipes in, 'I am more than a child of war ... I am strong. I am Acholi.' It reflects how it is not, perhaps, the music and dance itself, but rather the bonding with others---with a larger, deeper culture and heritage created and shared by others---through the music which is more therapeutic and healing. The intricate structure and euphonious sounds may soothe and provide distraction, but in this case the social connotations, not denotations, of music probably matter more.
And a lingering mystery ... the Lord's Resistance Army, whose somewhat random but horrific acts of violence form the backdrop of the documentary. They appear to be an Acholi rebel group which originated in a general insurgency against a presidential coup by another tribe but ended up attacking their own tribe when support for their cause wavered. Their present motivations may be unclear, but the nature of their atrocities is unambigiously outrageous. They are now surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned, by the Ugandan military, yet their leader refuses to negotiate, and has allegedly killed a deputy who tried to do just that. They may as well be an organised bunch of crazed lunatics, haunting the northern Ugandan bush at random.

Barenboim's Orchestra for Peace

If Longfellow was right about music being humanity's universal language, the West-Eastern Divan is a very encouraging project.
Barenboim says he founded the extraordinary youth orchestra as a 'project against ignorance', 'a platform where the two sides [Israelis and Palestinians] can disagree and not resort to knives.' He believes, quite deeply, music can teach the two sides about compromise and working together.
A lot of the "music as a model for life" stuff may be waffly and too steeped in metaphor to have much meaningful impact in the hard real world of international conflict and geopolitics. But the opportunity afforded by the orchestra for the two sides to sit down and work together towards something peaceful, productive, and beautiful---that could help, slowly but surely, in building up relationships and trust between them. If only there were more such initiatives ...
On a separate note, isn't it supremely fitting for the orchestra to be based in Seville? The capital of Andalusia, once a bastion of tolerance for Muslims, Jews, Christians and all other peaceful comers.

Montero's Fantasie-Impromptu

'
"Improvisation on Goldberg Variations"?  I think Fantasie-Impromptu would have been a more appropriate title for an extempore burst of music of this length, coherence and sophistication. Besides it is stylistically so far away from Bach's original ...

Pianism

Is pianism merely the act of composing or arranging for the piano, or the art or technique of playing it? Should it not also encompass an exceptional mastery of that instrument: the ability to speak through its music as though it were one's own voice, and one's fingers the vocal chords?

Air and Simple Gifts

Forgetting the whole brouhaha about the performance being pre-recorded, the performance of John William's Air and Simple Gifts has plenty of aspects which speak of America's strengths.
The musical material was drawn by Williams from his compatriot Copland, and had originated from a Shaker hymn. What does this tell us? No doubt, that America, a young nation though it may be compared to Europe's grand old dames, has a considerable cultural heritage.
The performers, all world-class masters in their instruments, were all American by descent or choice, and represented four different ethnicities. Could the implication be any clearer? America has drawn, and continues to draw, the best talent from all over the world, and to produce its own talent too.

Concertgebouw

And, then, after 9 hours on a bike, there was Aldo Ciccolini's recital at the Concertgebouw.

The Grote Zaal was an approximately square-shaped room not much bigger than Victoria Concert Hall, but they crammed it full of seats: seats along the walls at sides of the aisles, seats---permanent ones, too---on the stage behind the peformer. The pianist was surrounded by members of the audiences on all sides. The seating capacity resulting from squeezing the available space to such an extent couldn't have been far shy of that of the Esplanade's concert hall. Maybe it was to be expected, given that the place was built and founded by a group of businessmen.
Surrounding the hall was a veritable complex of cloakrooms, corridors and terraces. The audience crowded into the terraces before the concert and during intermission for drinks; it was as crowded there as the MRT during rush hour ... and it was quite an audience too. Almost full house, save for the right side of the stalls.
The decor was very 19th century ... and along the entablature of the columns inside were inscribed the names of various famous composers contemporary at the time of the hall's construction. There was Dvořák, and Schubert, and Beethoven, and many others, including some whose names are rather less well-known today.
Notwithstanding the age of the hall, the acoustics were excellent. The piano sounded, from my seat five rows back, just as it would to the pianist ... although my seat was on the stage, and that might have meant better acoustics. It didn't hurt one bit either that Ciccolini was a masterful pianist, and was fully in control of his fingers at all times ... never did spot the slightest slip throughout the concert, even during the two encore pieces. And it wasn't just technical mastery either: I had not imagined Clementi could be played so vividly, and his playing gave Ravel's Valses lucid shape and meaning. De Falla's Spanish pieces were rendered in their full fiery livelieness. It was really very, very good.

Overdose of Poetry

Somehow Thumboo's poetry doesn't seem to be very appealing ... it is just too particular. Supposedly the best literary works start from the particular and transcend to the universal. Chinese has a very apt expression for this: 浅入深出. But the particular in this case just seems to overwhelm everything, a huge surrounding sea of names and details that don't particularly connect ... Or maybe I just don't get enough of the references.
Also, Pushkin goes down more smoothly in the English translation than in the Chinese.

Slowly into Atonia

Haydn was excellent. Shostakovich was comprehensible. Schnittke was just ... strange. It had hints of atonalism, but just when they started to really show the old tonal system comes back ... with some minor distortions. The strings in a strange dissonance, trying to 'explore the difference between C-sharp and D-flat'. It can almost stand as its own idiom of sound, actually. Tonal and atonal and semi-tonal in quick succession, all at once ... polystylic, indeed.
Also, there seemed to be very few people in the audience with Singaporean accents. Quite sad, really.

Engmalchin

'A Malayan language will arise out of the contributions these communities will make to the linguistic meltingpot. The emerging language will then have to wait for a literary genius who will give it a voice and a soul, a service which Dante performed for the Italian language.'
But the supposedly disparate tongues whose agglutination Dante sparked to form the Italian vernacular were rather closely related in the first place -- no more, really, than dissimilar dialects. To hope for something similar with such a diverse group of languages, with different roots, different histories, different syntaxes, even different writing systems, is rather a stretch. Maybe, just maybe, it will happen one day. But not, I dare say, anytime in the foreseeable future.

A touch of magic

That one passage near the end of Chopin's "Konrad Wallenrod" Ballade didn't quite come through, but still yesterday's recital was very, very good. Haydn came through with a nice mix of reserve and emotion. Bach-Busoni's Chaconne was thoroughly engaging and powerful ... although rather more Busoni than Bach at some points. It reminded me a bit of Godowsky's Passacaglia actually. Similar in form, similar in spirit. Chopin's four Ballades were nicely executed ... with some minor slips, but then again they are difficult. The second left the most vivid impression ... the profoundly calm andantino and the calamitous storm of an interruption. And the three Chinese pieces, like crowning jewels, small episodes in comparison to the long narratives of the other pieces but sparkling in a clear and unique light.
And to think the pianist was only 22. Amazing.

Strange new landscapes

Oliver Messiaen's music is ... strange. It's like incoherent fragments of melody and lyricism floating atop a vast, unfamiliar atonal sea.

Let us all remain Zen.

Life will kill you. Suck it up.
(JT: Another thing I’ve found is that many children have a surprising thing happen while they’re sucking it up in that class that they hate. They actually come to enjoy it. Has that ever happened to you?
Students: Yeah. [with a glint of self-realization])
Glen Gould's interpretations of the pieces in Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier are becoming more and more compelling. They are starting to glow subtlely and to speak in their varied but always clear and calm voices. Sublime.

Sapir, Whorf, Chomsky and Bach

Messeiurs Sapir and Whorf gave us the thesis that language shapes our thinking. That thesis is often associated with, or forms the base for, the postulate that thinking is dependent on natural language, or that the brain actually does its thinking in English, or Chinese, or Arabic, and the scope of its thought is limited by the scope of the language.
Chomsky disagreed and posited that thought is not conducted in natural language, but in a sort of universal 'mentalese', an innate language of the brain. This would imply, inter alia, that thought is not restricted by language, but expands beyond it.
Now, listen to Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Don't you get the feeling that the music is speaking to you the listener, and clearly describing a state of mind or atmosphere, but that it is not quite possible, or at least very difficult, to nail down precisely what it is describing in words alone? As though it formed a description of the world that could communicate itself to the conscious mind without using language. It would seem to support Chomsky's opinion. Or maybe it's just me.

Isn't listening to music without lyrics rather sian?

No, because music is its own language, a language which should express things purer, more subtle and more sublime than what mere words alone can express. The most serene calm, the sweeping grandeur of another planet's endless plains, the warmth of solidarity, an urgent sense of anxiety. Cheesy lyrics would only spoil the music.