Thursday, July 30, 2009
Poem, by Sue Sinclair
Johannes Brahms - Intermezzo in E Flat Major Op. 117-1
with Julius Katchen
The poem wants to be an extra bone
in the body. Lonely,
it wants the day to come back for it:
a jacket left at the coat check,
the dance floor deserted.
There is no wisdom in the poem,
but it repeats its small life as many times
as we ask. The poem is everybody's
mother, remembering what can't be found,
remembering who you are, remembering
what hasn't even happened yet.
Mortal Arguments (Brick Books, 2003)
thank you vv for this post
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9 comments:
Manuela, for the time it took to read the poem, I thought the music fit brilliantly.
Poema muito interessante com música fantástica.
Obrigado Manuela por estes momentos no seu blog.
Prospero, I am glad to hear you liked the combination. Both were serendipitous finds, the poem and the music, the timing, their coming together. I must credit vv as well, she brought that amazing piece of music.
Adelino, thank you for the visit and comment, it is always really good to hear from you. I agree with you, I find both music and poem absolutely amazing. Be well.
for you, another poem of the poem:
If It All Went Up in Smoke
by George Oppen
that smoke
would remain
the forever
savage country poem's light borrowed
light of the landscape and one's footprints praise
from distance
in the close
crowd all
that is strange the sources
the wells the poem begins
neither in word
nor meaning but the small
selves haunting
us in the stones and is less
always than that help me I am
of that people the grass
blades touch
and touch in their small
distances the poem
begins
I found this text below just recently and realized the piece was a lullaby-of course and it felt like it the first time I heard it.. What a gift to stumble upon music such as this..so glad to share it.
VV
There are three intermezzi that make up Brahms' Op. 117. All have slow markings and divulge the growing tendency in the composer's late piano compositions toward serenity and meditative moods. This Intermezzo in E flat major encompasses much else of late Brahms, having that consoling and almost angelic manner in its outer sections and a quite serious and dark ponderousness in its middle section. This Intermezzo is a lullaby and carries slightly different markings for its three sections: Andante moderato, Piu adagio, and Un poco piu andante. Brahms prefaces the music with a quote from a favorite Scottish cradle song: "Balou, my boy, lye still and sleep, it grieves me sore to hear thee weep." The year he composed these intermezzi, Brahms lost his sister Elise and his longtime friend Elizabeth von Herzogenberg. Thus, the darker character of the work -- and the others in the set -- is easy to understand. The piece opens with a lovely theme, whose mellow character mixes consolation and dreaminess. The bridge passage leading to the middle section presents a darker variant of the theme. The music that follows is melancholy and troubled, though harnessed in by that typically Brahmsian philosophical manner, as if dignity must be maintained and emotions controlled in times of grieving. The main theme returns and the piece quietly ends. Typical performances of this Intermezzo last five minutes. ~ All Music Guide
roxana, i will say here again, thank you for that poem, which i really liked. there's a word that describes how i feel reading it, but the word escapes me - very frustrating, that :)
"Balou, my boy, lye still and sleep, it grieves me sore to hear thee weep."
and then to write something like this to soothe the boy... and oneself?...
thank you vv, i am glad to know this about the piece.
it's good to have you visit
and resonate :)
the brahms intermezzi belong to my favourites in music. i love them also by gould.
antonia, i'm glad you came to visit, and that you found some favorite music here. thanks for the reference, i didn't know much about the intermezzi before receiving this one, but i did go and look for more and of course, gould is wonderful.
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