Fellow blogger RR caused me to recall a beloved school master who taught us German and music.
Sadly he died before his time, many years ago, but THIS is to his memory
It brings chills to the spine and tears to the eyes. Well done Ludwig! (and Schiller, of course)
10 comments:
Heartlifting and inspiring .
Thankyou x
gz:
I hoped others would be similarly inspired. It sort of "made my day".
Wonderful, thanks.
Even better when one can put Schiller's sentiments ("Oh ye millions, be embraced; This kiss for the whole world...") to good use.
In the early nineties I was attending an international press conference held in a Swedish castle. At dinner, and in my churlish way, I disdained the British contingent and sat with the Belgians to discuss James Joyce. Not only churlish, you will mutter, but also pretentious. I accept both charges. But there is worse to come.
A man wearing a horned helmet and playing a guitar was providing entertainment which I was ignoring. Suddenly he was beside me. "You are Robbie," he said. I nodded. "I have asked journalists of different nationalities to form groups, each to sing a song. You did not join your countrymen." I said, "That's because I consider myself European." The horns nodded. "Your countrymen say you must therefore sing solo."
I had a streaming cold and I had tucked my table napkin into the neck of my shirt. At best I looked like an eccentric invalid. It didn't matter, I felt I had the force of ten. I stood by the fake Viking, told him what I intended. He said, "What key?". This was thirty years before singing lessons so I said randomly, "C-major."
I announced the reasons for my choice and sang from memory in German, stopping when I arrived at "Froh, froh, wie seine Sonne..." which is tenor territory. I was pleased to see the German journalists looked quite uneasy.
There was a coda provided by the Viking: "I asked Robbie, what key? He said C-major and... he sang it in C-major."
Since then life has been horridly downhill as you well know. Memory alone sustains me. NB: castles - or at least Swedish castles - have a fabulous acoustic.
RR:
What a magnificent story. Were you singing it now would you opt for C-major? What would your singing teacher, V, have chosen? I ask because I really want to know.
This is a more complicated - musically complicated - question than you imagine.
Soloists and a choir (plus of course the orchestra) combine in the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to perform a choral setting of Schiller's Ode to Joy. We as listeners hear the combined sounds, and and an approximation of those combined sounds were what I sang in Sweden. But that version isn't readily available to my knowledge as a score. Only the complete choral score exists, with separate lines for the soloists and for the different voices (tenor, soprano, etc) that constitute the choir. Try and sing one of those lines separately and it may well be unrecognisable from that combined sound we are all familiar with.
Needless to say I was terribly disappointed by the outcome of the last general election and have become progressively more depressed since. I'm assuming that Brexit fans are content with the way things are progressing. V my singing teacher shares my political views and I thought we might break off from Schubert for one lesson and cheer ourselves up by combining our voices (she is a very powerful soprano, I am a baritone) in an improvised version of the combined sound of Ode. I bought the score but my idea was a complete flop. Had we combined our soprano/baritone voices from the appropriate lines on the score our incomplete version would have been more or less unrecognisable. Worse than that, I would have had to learn the baritone line from scratch and we had better things to do.
Is all this clear?
C-major. At the time (in Sweden) I knew enough about music to say that C-major is what you might call the "basic" key. On a piano the scale can be played on white notes alone. Also, I was hardly likely to choose a minor key, which would have changed the style of the music and would have been beyond my competence. I had no knowledge (still haven't) about the fingering on a guitar and so I opted for what I hoped would be simplicity though this was something of a guess.
I have sung the "approximate" version of the Ode in C-major (ie, by ear) here in my study where I have a Yamaha keyboard. It is comfortably within my baritone range. I experimented by pitching it higher and found it was still do-able. To answer your question I suspect that C-major is my default key if I have no score to go by but that if V were in charge of proceedings she would ask me to sing it higher.
RR:
Thanks for that. I asked and you have answered comprehensively, adding to my sparse technical music knowledge. I am one who likes, musically, what I here, but when it comes to black and white notes on 5 lines it's like a foreign language.
I was put to piano lessons age 10, with a local lady who eked out her income by lessons at one shilling per hour. But discontinued, as baffled as ever, after 2 years. Played a guitar a little, by ear later in life and was similarly baffled with a trumpet.
But I do enjoy music, both classical and folk as an auditory and emotional experience.
Oh, that was LOVELY!
My German teacher was a bit rubbish. Several times in a row we did the same passage in our book (clearly she had no record of work), the culmination of which was the question, "Warum gehen sie nach Travemunde?" the answer to which was "Um frische Aale zu holen". I may have got the spelling wrong, but anyway, should I ever be in Travemunde, I reckon I could buy fresh eels.
Pam:
There! You see how well learning a foreign language has equipped you for all the essentials of social interaction throughout Germany!
'Chills to the spine and tears to the eyes" ... it certainly does! Thank you.
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