• Tag Archives Beethoven
  • The Sparrow

    Spring                                             A Near Full Awakening Moon

    Just saw La Vie En Rose, the story of Edith Piaf. Kate was familiar with the story, I was not.  Her life began in abandonment by both of her parents, one after the other, a childhood in a brothel, her grandmother’s, a life singing on the streets until her discovery at 20.  It went from there to a world career, on stage, in movies, while in her life disaster kept following on disaster.  The love of her life, a boxer, died on a plane flight she had begged to make, so he could be with her instead of his wife and children.  Her frailty, evident in childhood continued throughout her career with exhaustion, then drug dependency and an early death at 47.  Her music has a smoky, nightclub ambiance and strikes the heart fast, often from the first note.  I was glad to make her acquaintance.

    My conversation earlier today with Ian Boswell on music as a convergence of rationality and soulfulness has stayed on my mind.  I ordered Beethoven’s piano sonata’s and Chopin’s music, a complete set played by Garrick Olson.  I’m making a commitment to start listening to classical music and jazz here at home until Kate and I can break free, after her retirement and return to the Ordway to hear the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra again.  I miss the music.  The notion of a post-modern world, one where reason and spirit blend, where the critiques of the Enlightenment like Romanticism and environmentalism might converge, may be a world filled with thoughtful, soulful music.