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SongTrellis |
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Mourning I've been mourning the thousands of deaths at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon along with the rest of the world. It took away my taste for music and my enthusiasm for working on SongTrellis for a few days. We've had a great decrease in traffic to SongTrellis since those events occured. I'd guess that many felt as I did: what's the use in doing music when innocent lives are snuffed en masse in an eye blink by evil doers? Eventually, I've realized again that music is a healing force among human-kind. Its one of the main ways we can get in touch with our own emotional lives and those of others. When music is done in the right spirit it makes us realize what we share with all of humanity and reminds us that we are all brothers and sisters before the almighty. When you heal a bit more, please come back. Learning to be a musician (or a better one) will enrich you personally and will help humanity in the future. England's Tony Blair said it best: "Their utter barbarism will stand as their shame for all eternity". Ives' Second Orchetral Set The third movement from this has helped me this week. Ives titled it "From Hanover Square North At The End Of A Tragic Day (1915), The Voice Of The People Again Arose". In this composition, Ives tries to express the feelings of the people of New York City on the day they heard that the "Lusitania" had sunk. Ives said "I remember the people on the streets and on the train had something in their faces that was not the usual something. That it meant war is what the faces said, if the tongues didn't". He took the train from Hanover Square Station that evening, "As I came onto the platform, there was quite a crowd waiting for the trains, and whilst waiting there, a hand organ or hurdy gurdy was playing in the street below. Some workmen sitting on the side of the tracks began to whistle the tune, and others began to sing or hum the refrain. And finally it seemed to me that everybody was singing this tune, as a natural outlet for what their feelings had been going through all day long, and the chorus sounded out as though every man in New York must be joining in.". The piece begins with a chorus intoning a biblical text as they submerge into a watery grave with ship bells klanging and the strings emulating the wash of waves. A mournful horn solo carries the message to American ears, and then tiny fragments of "In The Sweet Bye And Bye", the hymn the train station crowd sang, starts to assert itself. The clangour of the shipwreck is recreated amidst the puffing of steam engines with strains of the hymn soaring above it all. Near the climax of the tumult the last half of "My Country Tis Of Thee" floats in and then with unanimity you hear the entire refrain of the hymn sung by the entire orchestra. At the end all dissolves into calm watery ripples and then a final whispered chord. Our catastrophe this week announces immense future trouble just as the "Lusitania" catastrophe brought World War I home to Americans in 1915. Ives gives a feeling for how our forefathers dealt with it then. Can music still help? Leopold Stokowski recorded a version in a concert with the London Symphony Orchestra that I like tremendously. The other work on that program was Messiaen's "L'Ascension", another source of spiritual solace. It doesn't matter much but the last additions to The Changes were chord sequences for
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Last update: Sunday, September 16, 2001 at 1:44 AM. |
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