Italy, quiet music and trees

Photo credit: Sachin Prakash

Travelling across Lake Como last weekend, the ferry stopped at the village of Torno. Between the houses ran narrow little paths with steps down to the lake's edge, where the water lapped patiently. I found myself thinking of one of my favourite songs from the other end of the country, the Neapolitan Scalinatella.

Neapolitan	English
Scalinatèlla, longa longa longa longa Strettulélla strettulélla, addó' sta chella 'nnammuratèlla? […] Scalinatèlla saglie ‘ncielo o scinne a mare cercammélla trovammélla, pòrtame a chella sciaguratèlla!	Little staircase, Long, Long, Long, Long, So narrow, So narrow, Where is this love-sick little lass? […] Little staircase Go up to the sky Or down to the sea Search for her, find her for me, Bring me to her, The little rogue.

I've said this before, but that song has something wonderfully haunting about it- a deeply Mediterranean spirit, and a wonderfully simple yet mysterious subject held up by fantastic lyrical detail (see my previous post linked above).

My mother took a stunning photo near the village jetty which a haiku master would probably have something to say about, but I'm not up to the task:

Photo credit: My mother

Seen on the roof of the church at Torno. Judging by the hints at carpentry, I take it to be the Holy Family. Photo credit: My mother

I was somewhat baffled to find that while ten years of studying French still left me stuttering when speaking to natives (I could barely muster the courage and grammar to ask for directions in Toulouse last year), I had no such qualms in Italy, when speaking a language I'd learnt for two years with virtually zero interaction. It was somewhat depressing to find out that the relative simplicity and intuitiveness of a language could outweigh a decade of hard work in another.

It annoys me how often the 'most replayed' moment of classical music YouTube videos is a loud, agitated climax- or at the very least busier or more ostentatious than the rest of the piece. Sometimes I'm in full agreement- yes, that bonkers crescendo in Schubert D960 is rather addictive. But other times it's just baffling. For example, in Chopin's Op 62 no 1, everyone's favourite part seems to be THOSE TRILLS, which are lovely, but surely the beating heart of the piece, the moment which takes your breath away, is this:

Credits:

-Pianist: Kate Liu

Text

-First line: Taken from Ravel's comments on Chopin's Barcarolle, as published in Le Courier Musical (1910). Source: Programme notes by Robert Andres (2005)

-The verses ('Vaguely it rises...')- from the poem Swift Beauty by FW Harvey

Paintings

Dusk by Jakub Schikaneder and La Pie by Monet.

La Pie, the snowscape in the video, is quite possibly one of the most magnificent celebrations of luminosity in paint that I have seen in a long time. There is a swelling mystery and tranquillity to the scene- just those three birds, so worthy of a haiku.

Another example is this accordion performance of the breathtaking Lithuanian folk song "Beauštanti aušrelė" ("The dawn is breaking") (the song's name is also beautiful enough to make one want to learn Lithuanian). Again, everyone replays the fast section towards the end, but surely, it's all about that long, primordial statement of the theme starting at 1:08, while the camera pans very appropriately over cloud-swathed Lithuanian mountains. That gorgeous haunting melody is one of the most criminally little-known in the history of Western music, and kudos to Levickis for realising how well the accordion brings out its sonority.

Speaking of primordially truthful music, I came across a poem by CH Sisson, The Media, this week, a verse of which I felt perfectly captured Ballade 4's spirit. I have written a lengthy poem myself in the vein before, but Sisson covers the ground more succinctly. Sisson rejects the hysterics of the media circus, asking us instead to

'[…] Go to the quiet wood To hear the beating heart: Leaf fall and breaking bud Will play their part. And so the truth is out Which only quiet tells, And as it does, its voice Sounds like a peal of bells.'

Note the quietly beautiful dotted beat of the pastorale section, the pealing bells (yet too gentle to be bells) of the introduction, and the overall profundity of the work, whose main theme has the same primordial nature of the Lithuanian folk song.

FL Lucas wrote:

'How many of us produce in our whole lifetime as much beauty as the tree we destroy in an hour and cannot replace in a generation?'

This reminds me of a wise poem by Howard Nemerov. Everyone knows If; they should know this too:

Trees

'To be a giant and keep quiet about it,

To stay in one's own place;

To stand for the constant presence of process

And always to seem the same;

To be steady as a rock and always trembling,

Having the hard appearance of death

With the soft, fluent nature of growth,

One's Being deceptively armored,

One's Becoming deceptively vulnerable;

To be so tough, and take the light so well,

Freely providing forbidden knowledge

Of so many things about heaven and earth

For which we should otherwise have no word --

Poems or people are rarely so lovely,

And even when they have great qualities

They tend to tell you rather than exemplify

What they believe themselves to be about,

While from the moving silence of trees,

Whether in storm or calm, in leaf and naked,

Night or day, we draw conclusions of our own,

Sustaining and unnoticed as our breath,

And perilous also -- though there has never been

A critical tree -- about the nature of things.'

I have spent an evening falling in love with Liszt's transcription of Schubert's Auf dem Wasser zu singen- a veritable babbling brook, bursting out of the seams to speak to us of the sheer joy of life. I have a soft spot for Liszt's Schubert transcriptions in general- the meeting of two such different musical minds, and one so admirably devoted to preserving the legacy of his peers. I have always struggled to love Lieder sung, but the timbre and capabilities of the piano suit them much better. I was quite startled listening around after hearing Alexander Ghindin's recording, which elevates the climax to Nyiregyhazi-like joyous thunder.

Earlier this week I was reading a perhaps mediocre, though well-intentioned poem, No Jewel, by Walter de la Mare, which ran thus:

'No jewel from the rock

Is lovely as the dew,

Flashing with flamelike red

With sea-like blue.

No web the merchant weaves

Can rival hers --

The silk the spider spins

Across the furze.'

The sole merit of that poem was to remind me of the same idea, much more beautifully expressed, by Bishop Henjō:

'The lotus, its flowers

Unstained by mud-

So pure in heart.

Why should it pass off

Its dewdrops as jewels?'

-Bishop Henjō (tr. Geoffrey Bownas, ‎Anthony Thwaite)

Less is so very often more.