06.24.09
Theater of the mind…
Here at Innsbrook once a year we hold a classical music festival where some of the most wonderful artists working today gather for 10 days of phenomenal music.
We mostly focus on string and piano chamber music with some woodwinds and brass thrown in for good measure.
But there is something strange in hearing the first notes of cello or violin as the festival starts. Certainly there’s a great feeling of anticipation and happiness that this beautiful music has returned to our community. But the strange part is that deep down I always experience an uncanny sense of familiarity.
Like a lot of those deep-down emotions, I really don’t know where that feeling comes from — it’s not like I have a violinists following me along Innsbrook’s nature trails, or a pianist on board as I paddle around Lake Innsbrook and I swear there is no cellist in sight as I sit on my deck and watch the trees sway.
And yet, as I listened to Chris Shmitt perform a Chopin barcarolle for the first time I feel a familiarity, listening to David Requiro preform Cassado’s Danse du diable vert, I’m overwhelmed with a sense that something that I always new deep down to be true was being demonstrated before me for the world to see. It was an odd mix of vindication and jubilation Click here to hear.
But why — why the familiarity? Why the feeling of confirmation? Why do I want to yell “See! See! I told you so!” in a hushed concert hall while a world-class musician performs?
Usually when my mind plays little tricks on me like that I tend to take the “ignore it and it will go away” strategy. But this feeling was not so obliging. In fact when I heard our Innsbrook Orchestra play Barbar’s Adagio for Strings, ignoring the wash of familiarity would be like ignoring an ocean wave as it rolls you “gently” through the surf.
Barber’s Adagio is familiar — not because it evokes sense of American soldiers being fired upon in the movie Platoon — it is familiar because in spite of that unfortunate connection, Barber’s masterpiece traces the landscape of our lives.
It follows the pattern of our striving, our celebration…yes even glory and then it gently sets us down again. The first part of the part of the adagio introduces a hero and then follows that hero as he ascends toward a discovery of his ultimate potential. About three quarters through the music absolutely soars, like the sound of a chorus of stars — it’s a perfect crystallization of light and music. I know that’s corny, but I have never been able to think of a better analogy.
Authur Sullivan wrote a poem called “The Lost Chord” as his brother lay dying. he likened a chord that he stumbled upon to “a harmonious echo from our discordant life”. Sullivan went on to say that the music “layed on his fevered spirit with a touch of infinite calm”.
After the revelation of the chords, the adagio gently drifts back to earth, almost reminiscent of a leaf drifting gently down. That’s probably why Barber’s adagio is so often used in memorial services. It was even performed as a tribute to the 9-11 victims in 2001 with Leonard Slatkin conducting.
But to be used as only as a memorial is somewhat of an injustice to the adagio. It is much more about living than about dying. It is a “harmonious echo to our discordant lives” as Sullivan so aptly said — as is the other music that we enjoy at Innsbrook every June.
Living day to day can be like sitting in a orchestra playing our parts. As we are surrounded by the musicians in our section and then the rest of the orchestra, it can get pretty discordant at times. In fact, there are times that we’re not sure that what we do makes sense at all. But when we hear it come back as an echo mixed with the rest of the orchestra — that is the world around us, it all makes sense. There is harmony in the music we hear!
And when those echos show up in the music we are blessed with every June at Innsbrook, the sounds that left us in caucophany come back blended with the rest of the universe in perfect harmony, we want to stand up and yell, “See! See! I knew it made sense! I told you so!”