Friday, February 7, 2014

Ink-Stained Hands

Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass?
~Michael Torke


Excerpts from poems about composers today. Have I ever posted about Bach? Oh yes, that's right, I have. Mozart, too.

an excerpt from The Stillness of the World Before Bach
by Lars Gustafsson

There must have been a world before
the Trio Sonata in D, a world before the A minor partita,
but what kind of a world?
A Europe of vast empty spaces, unresounding,
everywhere unawakened instruments
where the Musical Offering, the Well-Tempered Clavier
never passed across the keys.
Isolated churches
where the soprano line of the Passion
never in helpless love twined round
the gentler movements of the flute...

read the rest here

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an excerpt from To J. S. Bach
by Michael Thwaites

Most holy art
Expressing heavenly love to human heart -
The agony and sweat, the cry, the peace
That passed all understanding, Bach, but yours.

Your joy was new forever.

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an excerpt from Mozart's Requiem
by Anne Marie Macari

... the music that has everything
even terror, how believing

when I hear it, almost too beautiful to be
human voices, knowing it

so well I can almost sing
all parts, and want to sing,

a kind of purification, a prayer, like the story of him

still composing when he died — as if without
agony — music all over

the bed, last contractions, timpani, cellos,

his ink-stained hands.

read the rest here

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* More music links, including posts on other composers (Beethoven, Brahms, Lang, Whitacre, etc.)

No Water River has the Poetry Friday round-up this week.

11 comments:

Author Amok said...

Amazing cross-pollination between words and music, Tabatha. I went to read the rest of "The Stillness of the World Before Bach" and was taken with the poem "If Bach Had Been A Beekeeper."

Linda B said...

Thank you for a lovely 'wake-up' post, Tabatha. To contemplate the 'what-if' of "and nowhere Bach nowhere Bach" is simply sad.

jama said...

Thank you for these excerpts and very cool cello video! Wow!
The Stillness of the World Before Bach is so moving, a point of view I'd never considered before. Your post makes me want to practice my Bach and Mozart on the piano again.

Unknown said...

Wow! So glad that we don't live in a world before (or without) the works of these brilliant composers. I also think that poetry is the perfect medium to share this idea. What our world be like without the music of poetry?

Diane Mayr said...

Another great post, Tabatha! Amadeus is one of my favorite movies! If I had to pick a favorite scene from any movie, it would have to be Mozart's burial. So cold.

Mary Lee said...

Love the "flash mob" train car full of cellos. Totally different take on the poem...without a single word.

Bridget Magee said...

Lovely, Tabatha. Thank you for sharing. =)

Violet N. said...

Well aren't these wonderful! Loved those cellos on the subway. Way back in my piano lesson days I learned a 2-part Bach Invention for a piano exam. My fingers fell in love with it--especially those on my left hand which got to star as the melody--for once!

Doraine said...

That first one is just stunning!

Michelle Heidenrich Barnes said...

Great post, Tabatha. The two video selections were just what I needed today too. Been having a tough couple weeks. This helped. :)

Keri said...

Goosebumps! Thanks for making me grateful for ears to hear and eyes to see. xoxo