mozartiana

So the latest new-old-music by a dead-white-(de)composer to make it to my fandom-music-playlist is Mozart's Sonata for Piano and Violin in E minor, K304. Listening to this, one feels like an eavesdropper on an intimate conversation between two lovers who are continuously completing each other's sentences. i had no idea before this that Mozart could sound so plaintive, so desolate, in a good way, if plaintiveness and desolation can be seen in a positive sense.

i used to hate Mozart, way back when. The objection was that his music was too happy. i still find it difficult to appreciate his happy music - hence the positive plaintiveness - but i'm starting to see why people would like that almost-ridiculous happiness (not joy - no, Mozart doesn't do joy) in his music. It's a wistful longing, isn't it, for something beyond most of our everyday experience, an unadulterated, innocent happiness - love that is untainted by knowledge. It's the longing for Eden.

Even sadness in Mozart seems pure.

This yearning for simplicity - for the coolness of white cotton sheets, the goodness of plain white bread - for what the human heart cannot give. People are just too bloody complicated. Much as all that bloody complication makes for all that is interesting in life, once in a while one can't help but just want life to be purged of all that. One wants purity: of thought, motive and emotion, cold clear mountain springs speaking their quiet truth at the point of their making. And the illusion that this purity can be found, so easily, in the music of a fellow human being, can be too tempting to resist.
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MLK: so let it be

Sleep, sleep tonight,
And may your dreams be realised.
If the thundercloud passes rain,
So let it rain, rain down on him.

So let it be.
So let it be.

Sleep, sleep tonight,
And may your dreams be realised.
If the thundercloud passes rain,
So let it rain, let it rain,
Rain on him.


Not exactly great poetry, but a gorgeous song nonetheless. This tribute to civil rights leader Martin Luther King can be found, in an a cappella cover version, on The King's Singers' album Good Vibrations (the same album with the cover version of Billy Joel's 'And So It Goes'). I first heard it during a choral concert way back in JC - it was sung, if my memory serves me rightly, by a few of our alumni. i remember being held spellbound by the sense of peace, the long resonant bass notes rumbling in the lowest registers like the sound of distant thunder, and the rest of the voices floating effortlessly over the bass, floating, yet absolutely rooted and anchored in time.

As a side-note, listening to this song again has reminded me of why i fell in love with U2 all those years ago. They used to possess a wonderful balance between ethical and artistic integrity. Somewhere along the way, they lost both of these (at different times - the sense of ethical purpose was the first to go, and later, when they tried to recover it, the artistic integrity got thrown out of the window).

Still, it's never too late for a tribute, so here's a tribute, sortof, to what used to be one of the greatest bands in the world.

MLK (original by U2, cover version by The King's Singers, this version sung by UWRedefined)


Edit: 14 Jan 08

Those bass notes that make the King's Singers' version so beautiful - they remind me of the sounds produced by Tibetan throat-singers. If you've ever been lucky enough to hear these people live, you'll know what i mean - you'd never imagine that it's possible to sing so low and yet sound so resonant.
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