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entranced You know, music amazes me. Just how it looks on manuscript paper, how it sounds and causes me to lose my right mental state. The scent of concert halls. The taste of satisfaction after a performance or practice time. How did someone think of how to record it, years and years ago, and how to organize it into this most ethereal sound that changes people's lives? If I had the chance to listen to music during all periods of the day, while sleeping, eating, conversing, walking, thinking...I would. There's nothing I love more than going to a symphony orchestra concert and soaking in the art the performers are emitting through their instruments and souls. How can these composers do what they do? What goes on in their minds while they're not writing, and while they are? In Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, which we all know and love from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and...
"...in the Bugs Bunny cartoon, 'Rhapsody Rabbit.' In one scene in the cartoon, a telephone (conveniently placed inside the piano) rang. When Bugs Bunny answered the phone, the person on the other end asked to speak to Franz Liszt. Bugs Bunny replied, 'Who? Franz Liszt? Never heard of him. Wrong number.'"
What was Liszt thinking while he wrote this incredibly fun and ecstatic piece? Where do composers get their inspiration? What is the story behind this music? We're listening to a story, but what is the story? Sure, we can go into a concert and listen with enjoyment, but do we know its meaning? The composer wrote for a reason. It has background, influence. We can hear the music, but can we listen for the story?
Rachmaninoff. How could he hear those rich, dark chords? Prelude in C# minor. One of the most gorgeous pieces ever written for piano. Think of it during a rainstorm, like in the movie Shine. Devestatingly minor and dismal. Had Rachmaninoff had his heart broken? Had someone close to him passed? He wrote it in 1938. Was it about the war? Listening to it, picturing the aftermath of World War II. Makes the scene so much heavier and somber.
Moving ahead to Eric Whitacre, whom nearly everyone I am acquainted with knows I adore. Does he know how what he writes down from what he plays on a piano will sound with a chorus? Or, even better, does he know what it will sound like before he plays it? His ideas of inspiration are more noticed by the titles of his pieces. The lyrics are usually poems by other writers, and Whitacre simply accompanies these words with music. Cloudburst is a storm. With Water Night...well, here's what he says about it.
"I can't really describe what happened. The music sounded in the air as I read the poem, as if it were a part of the poetry. I just started taking dictation as fast as I could, and the thing was basically finished in about 45 minutes. I have never experienced anything like it, before or since, and with my limited vocabulary I can only describe it as a pure and perfect and simple gift. I gave it to Bruce and that was that."
I can only hope that something profound shall happen to me within my lifetime which will inspire me to write something grand. Do I have the creativity to do so? I guess we'll see within the next few years if I'm really up to the challenge.
October 27 2005, 15:19:28 UTC 6 years ago
October 27 2005, 16:05:59 UTC 6 years ago
October 27 2005, 16:21:42 UTC 6 years ago