Listening in the Dark » Beethoven

In which the blogger attempts to break her own rule and talk, from a non-academic perspective, about a favorite piece of music.

     In my Junior year I, like every piano major, took the required “piano literature” course. A year long curriculum devoted to memorizing, contextualizing, and understanding the vast repertoire of the clavier instruments.

     I recall on a particular night, preparing for a listening exam, I scrolled my iPod to the beginning of the new downloaded list.

     At the close of another school day, the usual of classes, practice, and performance, came the nighttime activities of studying, grabbing the fastest thing to eat, and taping down my broken nails so the cuticles could mend while I slept.

     Next track: Sonata Op. 53 in C Major, dedicated to Count Ferdinand Erns Gabriel von Waldstein, the third movement. And I forgot my hunger, pausing in the act of wrapping a finger in medical tape.

     I had played it in high school, it wasn’t anything new to me. So I thought. I leaned across my desk and slapped the light switch, my bedroom very black at midnight.

     Listening to music in the dark must be an ancient practice. Some instinct that compels me to kill the lights when ready for serious listening, then again perhaps its only ingrained concert etiquette. But we must have learned from someone, long ago. Or are we remembering the time without artificial light was the same time of day we were still enough to listen to or make music...? So we dim the lights in concert halls, fade to black, rendering each audience member an individual alone in the dark with Beethoven.

     I should say there is nothing “silly” happening here, no mystical thoughts or poetic notions of the music becoming “suddenly a presence” (real artists don’t talk like that, just those wannabes you see traipsing around in theatrical scarves dropping adverbs at every opportunity). Quite the contrary, I become too aware of my slowed heartbeat and quiet breathing, the sore throb of each finger tip, the dryness in my tired eyes, the warmth of my feet in their socks. It’s me, I’m here…I just forgot for a moment is all, but I’m back now that you have my attention, Herr Beethoven.

     Since that night this music rises in my mind, unbidden, during life’s moments of preparation: that deep breath that catches up to the mind’s awareness of “here we go again.” When facing down a major exam, confronting sad times and situations, or that moment of accomplishment when all is well – the sweet determination of that piece rings through my thoughts; a persistent bell sounding the challenge, the clamor of victory, the gentle melody of consolation.

     The composition is persistent. Representative of Beethoven’s middle period, his Heroic Period, it was written from the perspective of his new found way of life; an existence to live out his purpose by doing his work. Extra musical information aside, you do not need the details of Beethoven’s life at the time of this composition to know what he’s saying: struggle, fight, fall down, get up. Do it again. Ever striving.

     All things must come to an end. The difficult things, the bad, and even the good. May I rush at it, joyful, laughing, as the coda of the Waldstein Sonata rushes to its end – in triumph.

 

Friedrich Gulda plays Beethoven - Waldstein Sonata Op. 53 - Mvt 3 - Rondo: Allegro Moderato