VIVALDI’S FOUR SEASONS IN 1974

01 Jan 2021 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s not like I’ve seen it all before
When I was 20, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was all the rage and it was 1974
That was when I first discovered it and bought a vinyl album
I was discovering it all and everything was new to me
I was carrying it out of my suitcase, which would have warped it
In the Detroit Greyhound Station and was talking with a girl, a music student
On her way to Oberlin College in Ohio and a young black man came up,
He sang some notes, and asked, “Is that how The Four Seasons goes?”
Everything was all new to me, like how different Toledo, Ohio is from
Livonia, Michigan, I thought, gazing absently around in the cavernous
Toledo Amtrak Station, the winter wind moaning though cracks in the doors
As I waited to ride the train’s sway and rhythmic clacks across America
East to Boston, also different from Livonia and the family I grew up in,
Discovering the big city.  I’ve heard The Four Seasons in three movies.
In my mid-40’s, I discovered the Heiliger Dankgesang an die Gottheit
In Beethoven’s A-Minor String Quartet, which I also heard in a movie.
Way back I’d asked Jimmy, a jazz sax player, about Beethoven’s string quartets
When I didn’t know much about things, and was hungry to discover it all
And was figuring things out.  Jimmy and I disagreed about Mozart;
He said Mozart was a real entertainer, but to me Mozart was all tights,
Powdered wigs, silk slippers, gilt palaces and effeminate, effete nobles
I’ve since discovered Mozart’s startling harmonies and I’m with Jimmy, now
And bought a Compact Disk Recording box set of Mozart’s “Hayden Quartets”
And heard the orchestra play the Hayden Quartets at the exec’s party in Die Hard
Or was it The Four Seasons, or both—I haven’t seen Die Hard again for a while
In Thor, the orchestra played The Four Seasons at that Embassy ball Loki crashed
I wonder why no one else has noticed that John Williams’ Superman music sounds
Exactly like Strauss’ Tod und Verklärung or Bernstein’s “There’s a Time for Us”
In West Side Story is the Adagio movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 5
Which they both studied either in conservatories or in later professional life
My eyes welled up with tears which I blinked away in the public concert hall
That evening I heard the whole Messiah for the first time and I didn’t know why
Everybody stood up when the choir sang The Halleluiah Chorus to conclude
Part II of the whole Oratorio, not just the soundtrack to so many commercials
It’s not like I’ve seen it all before.  I poke around in Auden and Stevens, authors
I don’t know, and play The Rolling Stones on my keyboard and learn about rock,
Entertain myself with Thomas Wolfe and even Shakespeare, sometimes, and
Not really watch TV.  It isn’t that I keep learning, nor like I’ve seen it all before. 
More a matter of why it doesn’t feel like everything is new to me

In the Presence of Greatness

24 Apr 2018 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , ,

The ancient Greeks thought that certain men were divine, such as Pythagoras, Apollonius of Tyana, Alexander the Great, and in Homer, the great warrior Diomedes was called divine.  Other than Jesus, I am not one to deify human beings.  But I think I know what the Greeks were getting at.  A few times in my life, I’ve been in the presence of humans who affected me with such power that it was almost divine.

I just returned home from a concert by the Tallis Scholars.  They sang late Renaissance/early Baroque music a capella.  I listened breathlessly as the counterpoint melded into harmonies and phrases were tossed from bass to soprano, intricate cadences and all perfectly in tune and with perfect rhythm.  It wasn’t only the music, it was also the performance.  I have Renaissance music on my iPod,–in fact, I have recordings of the Tallis Scholars themselves.  But listening to these recordings don’t do what that concert did.  I was in the presence of greatness–in the compositions they sung and the way they sung them.

I’ve been in the presence of greatness before, without getting the impact this concert gave me.  I’ve seen Bob Dylan in concert, an awful concert at that, Santana, a good concert, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer three times, and others.  I saw Steve Martin walking around in a New York art gallery.  But I wasn’t transported like I was at the Tallis Scholars concert.

The first time I heard Handel’s Messiah in the city I now live in was one of those experiences.  I alternated between heartfelt smile and tears of joy.  I went a second time a year later and the performance didn’t make such an impression on me.  This is going to sound funny, but another time I felt that power was at a bicycle race.  I stood near the finish line.  So I saw the cyclists in the last quarter mile.  That’s when they opened up.  In the home stretch, the cyclists gave it all.  Seeing those men giving 100% almost brought me to tears.  Another time I was at a Latin music festival and onstage there were four dancers giving it.  Watching them, too, made an impression on me.

I drove home from the Tallis Scholars wondering why I worried about things like money, traffic, material possessions, the worldly preoccupations I’m driven to pursue.  Seeing such a perfect dedication to art took me into another space, a special place, a holy place.

Worship and the Limits of Reason

06 Oct 2016 1 Comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I have had few instances when music has really affected me in a worshipful way, and taken over my consciousness.   I don’t mean the times when I listen to Beethoven’s 9th, and I am moved to tears.  Or when I respectfully listen to Bach’s B-minor Mass, and am moved.  No.  Recently I have experienced Handel’s Messiah and choked back the tears through the whole concert, when I wasn’t smiling with happiness.  And just a few nights ago, I attended part of a worship service at a Sikh Gudwara and found the experience overwhelming.

By virtue of my membership in an interfaith organization, I am able to travel to different places of worship and learn about their religion and experience, sometimes, their rituals (and eat their food).  Upon entering the worship space of the Gudwara, we went to the front and did obeisance.  That meant I knelt down and bowed my forehead to the ground.  The power of that gesture was astounding.  I got right back up, but afterward felt I wanted to have remained bowed down longer.  Then I sat down on the floor, and listened to the trio playing Indian ragas.  We were invited to pray to whatever God we worshipped.  I started off with my customary thinking, but very shortly was overwhelmed by a feeling of forgiveness and religious ecstasy.  I drank in the repeated musical motifs of the ragas as if I were chanting.  And my mind emptied as my soul allowed the worshipful experience to happen in it.  I even had an inner vision of Christ on the cross, although my tradition celebrates the risen Christ.

My own faith is about as rationalistic as faith can get.  But my experience of the Gudwara and also other places like a Ukrainian Orthodox Church have suggested to me that rationalism can only go so far.  The power of good ritual can last even after the ritual is over.  I can still mentally go back to the Gudwara experience as its sublime remains in my consciousness, soul, and heart.  And I can remember my startled feelings when I stepped out of the Ukrainian Church, with all its icons, into the ordinary world.  How drab and lifeless everything looked.  My Protestant faith taught me that religion resides in the mind; and it taught me to be suspicious of external rituals.  But I don’t think it got it all right in that.  There is immense power in ritual.  And there are limits to reason.