Elegy on a School Morning

[quantum]

The schoolgoers prepare to return.  The morning calls.  They ready themselves ... alla marcia invites.

[ted]

"March to School" in retrospect ? Miss Flaybum's Academy revisited ? My journeys to school were always recalcitrant dawdles, never marches. There were marches home but they were joyous and triumphant. A week after I started school I decided I didn't like it, knocked the teacher down and spent the rest of the day standing in the rubbish bin. Where did they get those hideous dragons of women from in the post-war education system ? And did the buildings have to be so cold, draughty and smelly ? Thank goodness some things have changed for the better.

I listened to this and the March to School again in conjunction and it is interesting how you have expressed the same underlying sentiment through different vocabulary. This one, while less explicit, is on a deeper meditative level, once removed so to speak. I found the frequently embedded augmented harmonies particularly effective, reminding me of Frank Bridge or late Liszt. Also the rhythm comprises not the old, regular beat but a repeated, imprecise but insistent cell.

This will join my little collection of your playing, which I listen to every now and then.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

I definitely heard some late Lisztish allusions! Amazing how emotive some of those highly tonally ambiguous harmonies can be. (I think the late Liszt settings for piano plus cello are remarkable.) Very interesting improvisation.

[kalospiano]

damn, those students really aren't happy at all to go back to school! There is some little glimpse of hope in the middle but then it's back to the initial sadness
Don't know why but while listening to this piece I got a totally different image: in my mind I was picturing the deported slowly marching to concentration camps during WWII. Anyways, very well done improv!

[quantum]

"March to School" in retrospect ? Miss Flaybum's Academy revisited ? My journeys to school were always recalcitrant dawdles, never marches. There were marches home but they were joyous and triumphant. A week after I started school I decided I didn't like it, knocked the teacher down and spent the rest of the day standing in the rubbish bin. Where did they get those hideous dragons of women from in the post-war education system ? And did the buildings have to be so cold, draughty and smelly ? Thank goodness some things have changed for the better.

I listened to this and the March to School again in conjunction and it is interesting how you have expressed the same underlying sentiment through different vocabulary. This one, while less explicit, is on a deeper meditative level, once removed so to speak. I found the frequently embedded augmented harmonies particularly effective, reminding me of Frank Bridge or late Liszt. Also the rhythm comprises not the old, regular beat but a repeated, imprecise but insistent cell.

This will join my little collection of your playing, which I listen to every now and then.

Thanks for listening, Ted!

Yes, this is related to the March to School.  I see it as fitting into a set of improvisations on the theme. 

I don't recall my first week at school being as eventful as yours, though such happenings, I would think, are rather fruitful for musical creation.  The time I first entered the school system was before I started to take piano lessons, perhaps I had little way of artistically expressing the experience back then. 

[quantum]

I definitely heard some late Lisztish allusions! Amazing how emotive some of those highly tonally ambiguous harmonies can be. (I think the late Liszt settings for piano plus cello are remarkable.) Very interesting improvisation.

Thanks for listening, ronde!

I just had a listen to those late Liszt pieces for piano and cello to refresh my memory, such beautiful music.  Maybe this music worked its way subconsciously into this improvisation. 

[quantum]

damn, those students really aren't happy at all to go back to school! There is some little glimpse of hope in the middle but then it's back to the initial sadness
Don't know why but while listening to this piece I got a totally different image: in my mind I was picturing the deported slowly marching to concentration camps during WWII. Anyways, very well done improv!

Thanks for listing, kalospiano!

I think that those personal ideas that pop into mind when listening to music are so valuable.  Music does not have to mean the same thing to all.  I feel that it is a manner of engaging with the mind at another level.

[gipsypiano]

hello,
i do sometimes free music playing flute or other for the school kids in the morning when they go to school to give them some good vibrations for the day- they love it and come to me to say how they feel great about somebody doing this with some full good morning great aurora energy to survive the inferno, closed in hell of school where professional vampires suck them out their young life and cfreative energy by immobilizing them, staring at them and telling them lies and forcing them to breath the sick smells of their sinful body in the same room as them.
(I dont mean the rare cases of good and lovely, beautiful people working sometimes in this organized child abuse inferno called school)

boom

[quantum]

Thank you for listening.