"Prelude to Life" -- Improv

[m1469]

From within the hour. 

m1469 

[goldentone]

Wow, the harmonies.
Your creativity seems endless.

                 
No other music like yours. 

[m1469]

Thank you, Goldentone .

[furtwaengler]

Goldentone might have said it all: "No other music like yours."

This is one of my favorites, and I am amazed that this was posted already a year ago, that this would have been the time I listened to it, and that the impression I have now is based on the memory of that first experience. I still remember the basics of the response I would have made but didn’t - and know that I should have responded just to draw attention to what should have received more attention. But then it’s entirely possible that it made great impact on others who like me did not post on that day.  You can only know by what you see, but with 28 downloads, and what I know your music produces in me, I’d say there are many more thoughts and appreciations then what you see.

I was working with a tenor on Benjamin Britten’s Winter Words op. 52, at the time you recorded and posted this, and so my mind was set on that last song, “Before Life and After.”

“A time there was--as one may guess
And as, indeed, earth's testimonies tell -
Before the birth of consciousness,
When all went well.

None suffered sickness, love, or loss,
None knew regret, starved hope, or heart-burnings;
None cared whatever crash or cross
Brought wrack to things.

If something ceased, no tongue bewailed,
If something winced and waned, no heart was wrung;
If brightness dimmed, and dark prevailed,
No sense was stung.

But the disease of feeling germed,
And primal rightness took the tinct of wrong;
Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed
How long, how long?”

Attached below is Britten’s setting (specifically this is from a recital with Peter Pears and Britten in Snape, Maltings 9/22/72). Now your improvisation is much more positive, but I see a kinship in both musics being born out of eternity. It is in Britten’s expression of Hardy’s poem, and it is in whatever you may be expressing. The amazing thing is that I had not even contemplated your title, “Prelude to Life” until now, but all my thoughts sprang directly out of the music you were creating.

There is also an ethereal wonder to this music that is comparable to that of Olivier Messiaen's, who also expressed eternity deeply in simple terms. I think he would have been impressed with this piece.

I hope I’m not off base by constantly bringing other composers and music into feedback and discussion of you’re profoundly unique music. I don’t find anything derivative about what you do. It is you, and it can only come from you (“no other music like yours”). I have a great relationship with a large range of classical music, and this music is a part of me to the extent that sometimes I feel I can only attempt to express what I think through it. This might be my short coming, but you can take some pride in your music having a relationship with music history, and that your expression can have a kinship with other music you may or may not have even experienced in your life. I guess it’s part of the human experience.

[m19834]

Dear Furtwaengler,

Thank you for your comments.  I don't mind if you talk about other pieces and composers.  Of course, I do not necessarily wish to just be echoing other composers in this case, but I don't think that is the spirit of your remarks.  Also, most of the time, I am not truly familiar with them, and so to have them pointed out is educational for me.

I will admit though that I am not satisfied with thinking that "my music" is simple, though I am not arguing that.  It is more a matter of wishing that I was capable of freely expressing more of what there is to be expressed, and I think that just depends on me having more listening experience, more writing/improvising experience ... more of everything.  Okay.  Although, I don't know that I could imagine this particular "piece" as much more complex.  Perhaps if I spent some time with it in more of a compositional kind of way, I would find more thoughts springing from it.

I feel grateful for the unique opportunity to have a community like this in the form of a forum, where I can post these kinds of musical thoughts and get feedback on them.

[G.W.K]

I enjoyed listening to that. A very unique piece, terrified the living daylights out of my at some points when you suddenly became very loud when I wasn't expecting it! LOL

Well done! 

G.W.K