Surprises can make us smile: A twisting plot in a thriller. A “commercial” on Saturday Night Live. Watching a squirrel’s acrobatics as it tries to steal food from the bird feeder.
That lighthearted undercurrent is for me, the essential element in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. It begins with the timpani drum…a throb of music in four successive notes. A moment later the violins take up the same call. It reminds me of the strobing theme of Hitchcock’s shower scene in “Psycho”, a screaming heartbeat of sound. This pulse, this life-sound which echoes throughout the first movement, keeps the esoteric from becoming too other-worldly. It keeps it REAL. It keeps it light and funny. It says, yes there is beauty, but life is really effed up sometimes and don’t you forget it. Life is not always sublime. If you listen closely you’ll notice all the instruments get their turn at this funny, interrupting cadence. It is a reminder that there is more to beauty than virtuosity. You may think you’re in heaven, but step-step-step-step, you’re here on earth. Soft. Loud. Fast. Slow. Thump-thump-thump-thump, you are real. You are alive. Show off and be fancy all you want, but underneath it all is bump-bump-bump-bump and that allows everything to come together in one wrapped package called a life.
Today I’ve been walking through snow on our hillside, surrounded by white mountains of unsurpassable beauty. A sublime visual wonderland, all while I stomp-stomp-stomp-stomp, making a royal mess of the serene vista. That’s it isn’t it? The experience of being human, knowing you are both spiritual and animal, with a heartbeat and a cadence and all those animal things tangled up with self-awareness and occasionally transcendence. It is all very grown up and immature at the same time. And it reminds me of a poem that I loved so much as a girl, I memorized it. It is a poem that is mundane, funny and unfurls into the mystical realm, so very much like Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.
IN THE GARDEN
A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.
And then, he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.
He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,—
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head
Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home
Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim.
Here is a fabulous recording with that violin superstar, Itzhak Perlman, and conducted by our favorite Beethoven Maestro Daniel Barenboim with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. It is fun to watch how Perlman can’t contain his joy before he begins to play. And if you decide to watch the entire performance (more than 1 ½ million others have) you’ll see his amazing fiddling throw-down near the end. His three encores are well-earned.
That’s it for me today. The fire is roaring, a big moon will rise soon, and the cat has vomited in the bathroom. Until next time we meet, enjoy music, dive into poetry, and thanks for visiting thetonepoet.com.
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