Dear Wael, Did you ask me to comment on Mahler’s Adagietto...or about my feelings towards it?! Assessing the masterwork...The orchestration is near excellent, the construction is quite solid...the musical motif is a world shared by all civilized throbbing hearts! As to the emotions that this music provokes...taking the risk of sounding redundant... I will say... it is the emotional magnitude of each human being that determines the depth of its effect! It is like contemplating the sight of a divine sunset...no two people react in the same manner to its dazzling colours... rarely does anyone, like Nietzsche did; see in it the last breath and decline of civilization! I have rarely experienced the same mood when listening to the Adagietto...! Beauty...serenity...pain...hot tears...and surrender race each other like horses of the apocalypse...towards consciousness...they over ride the exposé... the first felt... determines the sequence of emotional tones that follows! Mahler was tragically in love with Alma, his somewhat fickle wife; he knew that their world will all have to crumble..! Realizing his present painful bonds... and anticipating his future sorrow...he wrote her this music...!! Who am I to intrude on his world, usurp his feelings, and pretend his tragedy could be mine! At times, I shrink from sharing Mahler’s elating delirium, avoiding its intensity...refusing to reach the “finale” of “Das Lead Von Der Erde”... as I did when I faltered before ending Kafka’s “The Trial”...declining to share the decent into his psyche’s Hades! Its lurid dark depths repulsed me! No offence intended...The trip to Jewish Pathos is more than I could sanely tolerate! Instead; I would steal the Adagietto’s reins, making it my own, and steer my winged white steeds towards the Olympus or the Walhalla... with a sure feeling that I am as divine their inhabitants! I usually found the shrines empty...and had to slip back to my placid world... with spleen! Standing, towards sunset, behind the towering prow of a medieval wooden ship...your senses dazed by its surrealist colours...you feel the first bars of the Adagietto brace your ship into an ocean of easeful surrender to oncoming death! Those who come out intact from such a voyage had better live their life to the Mediterranean rhythms of Verdi! P.S. Do people who claim Arab songs can constitute a musical heritage know anything about Mahler...or his Adagietto?!
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 17:54:11 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015