In January 4
th I had a fascinating dream. Mesmerized
by a classical music conducted by a young conductor with blue framed eye glasses,
I was the only one on a bed, on the stage, listening, and the audiences were sitting
on their seats,
on a dim light, enchanted. A few
days later one of my students in my Fiction Writing class wrote a story,
showing how his narrator was completely in a divine zone listening to a certain
music.
In association with my dream and
my student’s short story, I remembered a captivating scene of
“Time Regained” a
film based on Marcel Proust’s novel where Proust is completely dissolved into
the tender moments of music, memories, time and space. Then one night in last
week, before going to bed I listened to
"Ständchen"a piece by Franz Schubert. And I couldn’t turn off the CD player. I listened to
it repeatedly until 1:20 AM. I was enormously connected to him. Connected completely!
Yesterday was Schubert’s birthday. I
celebrated his birthday by watching several films based on his life. As if I
was with someone so familiar, intimately close and remote at the same time.
Franz Peter Schubert (31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) was an
Austrian composer.
Schubert died at 31 but was extremely prolific during his lifetime.
"Krenek pointed to the piano sonatas as giving "ample
evidence that [Schubert] was much more than an easy-going tune-smith who did
not know, and did not care, about the craft of composition." Each sonata
then in print, according to Krenek, exhibited "a great wealth of technical
finesse" and revealed Schubert as "far from satisfied with pouring
his charming ideas into conventional molds; on the contrary he was a thinking
artist with a keen appetite for experimentation."
The New York Times music critic,
Anthony
Tommasini, who ranked Schubert as the fourth greatest composer, wrote of
him:
You have to love the guy, who died at 31, ill, impoverished and neglected
except by a circle of friends who were in awe of his genius. For his hundreds
of songs alone – including the haunting cycle “
Winterreise”,
which will never release its tenacious hold on singers and audiences – Schubert
is central to our concert life.... Schubert's first few symphonies may be works
in progress. But the
Unfinished and especially the
Great C major
Symphony are astonishing. The latter one paves the way for
Bruckner
and prefigures
Mahler."
The Wanderer :A film about Schubertwith András Schiff
And
"
Udo Samel plays Franz Schubert in this film biography that
is a grim look at the darker side of the legendary composer. Schubert is
released from a hospital-asylum after being treated for a sexually transmitted
disease. After visiting his strict father, he goes to live with his wealthy
friend Schober (Daniel Olbrychski). Franz is followed by Kajetan (Wojtek
Psoniak), the crippled beggar he befriended during his hospital stay. ~ Dan
Pavlides, Rovi"
