“When we study something alive, the first thing we do is kill it!”

Johann Wolfgang Goethe“

“And craftsmanship

I set up as a pedestal for art…”

“I stifled sounds,

And then dissected music like a corpse,

Checked harmony by algebraic rules;”

Mozart and Salieri, A.S.Pushkin

Translation by A.F.B.Clark

Unlike Goethe and Pushkin’s Salieri, I have a different approach: I try to connect a musical theme with some clear and distinct concept in my Mind. Luck in this mission comes extremely rarely (for me personally, of course).

Here is one of the rarest successful cases.

Tchaikovsky’s Ballet The Sleeping Beauty

Another case is the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: The composer’s dialogue with, it would seem, his own Inspiration.

The composer offers Inspiration a theme for the finale, and it rejects them one by one.

And finally makes a CHOICE!

Hurray!

BUT THIS CHOICE OF Inspiration IS A FALSE ONE! For this was the composer’s dialogue NOT with Inspiration, as it seemed to Beethoven in the moments of creativity, but with an attack of Idiocy, when a person’s critical sense is locked tightly and cannot be heard or seen.

And therefore, the idiotic hint is taken as a kind of Sign from Above.

Beethoven later felt that the choice was unsuccessful, but either the terms of the contract were tight, or nothing better came to mind, and he decided to cheat by introducing mass choral singing, completely inappropriate, and building up the crescendo of the orchestra, hoping with the thunder of hundreds of voices, trumpets, timpani, drums and all the strings that are in the to drown out the mediocrity of the chosen theme (an unsuccessful repetition of his “Fantasy for Piano, Choir and Orchestra”, written nineteen years earlier and just THEN, very successful!!!)

Straight. Salieri’s first quote. the aforementioned one.

I like to repeat Hamlet’s words for such occasions:

“You wanted to take a sip!”

In Tchaikovsky’s ballet, I remember from a young age the music of the scene when the Lilac Fairy and Prince Desiree sail to the enchanted castle. A slightly vibrant and soft theme, but as if PROMISING SOMETHING:

Something WONDERFUL is about to happen!

64.5% of the time from the start of recording.

This melody is UNIVERSAL, in my opinion. Not related only to the ballet’s libretto!

It conveys the feeling of a soul that was painfully struggling to solve some incredibly difficult problem and suddenly FELT that DIVINE INSPIRATION HAD COME! And although the problem has not been solved yet, the feeling that you CAN SOLVE IT, the confidence in success has already come. And they won’t deceive you!

That’s the feeling I have.

Faciant meliora potentes.

24 XI 2024