Yet Another Connection

It’s like when you buy a new car and you say to someone “I never saw a car like mine before I got this one. Now I see them all the time.” It’s all about awareness. I have become more aware of my love of music since I have started at The Friends.

I am proud to say I know a lot about music. Not as much about classical music but in general a lot about music. However my passion for classical music has skyrocketed since starting my work with The Friends, and I find my awareness of how much classical music means to me increasing as well.

For example, working here has awakened me with renewed interest to my love of Gregorian chant. This discovery has probably led to the annoyance of my fellow staffers as I blast Requiem masses and other chant works while I work. This renewed interest has continued expanding and also led me to rediscover my love of Beethoven.

Ole’ Ludwig and I go way back to when I first started to really get into music. In an earlier blog entry I had mentioned my first CD purchase to be that of Beethoven Sonatas played by Friend’s favorite Dubravka Tomisc, but recently I was connected yet again to this great master while at the same time being connected to someone very special.

I was visiting my aunt recently and was telling her about my new work at The Friends. She has always been a close relative engaged in my life and what I do. As I was telling her about my new work she mentioned that her late husband loved classical music and she had found some CDs of his that she wanted to share with me.

My late uncle was a really great person. Unfortunately, he passed away much too soon from ALS before he and I got to really know each other. I was in 4th grade and remember his great energy but we didn’t get to share a lot. As I looked through the CDs with my aunt that day I found something that gave me great joy to find.

When I was younger, after discovering Beethoven through Dubravka Tomsic I remember buying as many Beethoven CDs as my paper route would allow. One of those was his 6th Symphony by Academy of Saint Martin’s in the Fields. I played that CD out listening to the masterful composition so much that I had the tune memorized. My love of the Beethoven symphonies has never wavered and continues today.

As I looked through the CDs with my aunt I found one that I had to take. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 “Sinfonia Pastorale” by the Academy of Ancient Music. The Friends will present them this season and it was such a neat connection to know that my uncle was a big fan of their work and he has several of their recordings. That connection means a lot to me because yet again the power of music has been confirmed within me and I continue to realize how important my work at The Friends is. That concert this year is sure to be even more special to me as I get to work on presenting them to Kansas City.

My memories of my uncle will be at that concert and though we may not have had the chance to share much while he was alive we will be sharing the power of music that night.

'Just War' According to Dialogos

The staged musical production of ‘Judith’ by Katarina Livljanić and members of the ensemble Dialogos tells the biblical tale of the beautiful enchantress, Judith, who seduces and then beheads the Assyrian general Holofernes to liberate the Hebrews. The score also includes a medieval 5-string fiddle, a lirica (Croatian traditional stringed instrument, tuned in ‘archaic’ manner), and archaic flutes. The beauty and Croatian authenticity of Livljanić’s voice, the narrative and discursive power of the instrumental parts, the elegance of the staging and lighting, and the poetics of the carefully devised, historically informed Glagolitic text (and translation that is sympathetic to the needs of the audience, as opposed to Livljanić’s fellow scholars)—all of these combine to achieve a compelling artistic result, just as with ‘Vision of Tondal’ and other of Dialogos’s productions.

Character development in Livljanić’s version of ‘Judith’ is fuller than in the simplified accounts of the story that are familiar to us, and far more complex than in the synoptic artworks through which most of us are acquainted with it ... Klimt and Caravaggio and Reubens and so many others.

Holofernes, the general of the Babylonian King Nebuchadrezzar, whose decapitation by Judith is referenced in the Old Testament. Holofernes, the powerful general of King Nebuchadnezzar’s army. A number of provinces of the Second Jewish Commonwealth had withheld their assistance from Nebuchadnezzar and his government—had declined to join the coalition of the willing. So now comes Holofernes, the guy Nebuchadnezzar dispatches to give them an offer they couldn’t refuse.

The historical general did lay siege to Bethulia. The city was on the verge of surrendering but was saved by Judith, a beautiful Hebrew widow who preyed upon Holofernes’s huge vanity, deceived him, drank him under the table, sliced off his head in bed. Judith, she who then returned to Bethulia displaying the severed head, after which the Hebrews went on to beat Nebuchadnezzar’s now-generalless army. Morals: Be careful who you drink with, and be sure to drink responsibly. (more)