Back to poetry and music, to wit: a couple of things in an October mood:
First, an excerpt from Basho’s “The Records of a Travel-worn Satchel”–a travel book with haiku.
It was early in October when the sky was terribly uncertain that I decided to set out on a journey. I could not help feeling vague misgivings about the future of my journey, as I watched the fallen leaves of autumn being carried away by the wind.
From this day forth
I shall be called a wanderer,
Leaving on a journey
Thus among the early showers.
You will again sleep night after night
Nestled among the flowers of sasanqua.
And second, a reprise of a bit of Couperin that I’ve posted before, (not sure why this strikes me as autumnal, maybe because of its evocative melody?) “The Mysterious Barricades.” Here is a good performance and an explanation of the enigmatic title from Philippe Radault.
The nights are finally cool in Washington, and the leaves are turning.
For today, a bit of haunting music by François Couperin (1668 – 1733), “The Mysterious Barricades,” a keyboard piece from his vast output, four volumes of harpsichord music, each with many “orders” of individual works. He taught extensively, and used these pieces to demonstrate keyboard and compositional techniques. (It’s striking that so much extraordinary keyboard music over the centuries was pedagogical in origin: in addition to lots of French baroque examples like this, there Bach’s WTC I and II, the Chopin Études, the Four Opus 7, Études of Stravinsky, and sets for children by Tchaikovsky and Schumann. Easily a whole program’s worth of first rate material.)
That’s a stretcher, but, it does seem other worldly. Here’s the piano maniac Georges Cziffra playing it. (For some reason there is a two and a half minute tail on the video.)
And then there is Igor Kipnis playing it on the harpsichord,
Kipnis’ is the first recording I ever heard of the piece, on an LP 30 years ago, and I am still struck by how the structure of piece comes through in his playing. Using the lute stop on for contrast is so touching somehow, as is the elegance of his ornaments–a big deal, no the big deal of 17th & 18th century music, and much clearer on this instrument than the piano.
As for Couperin’s enigmatic title, for me it evokes passages as you move back and forth to the theme, as well as motion down a road. But what might it have meant to Magritte, who used the same title for this artwork?
The Margritte example was found via an engrossing site about the piece by a philosophy prof/composer who is evidently even more smitten with the piece than I. He has, among other things, many examples of visual art related to the piece, and the factoid that it shows up as background music for Brad Pitt in Tree of Life.
A Few Reasonable Words 