Posts Tagged ‘piano’
The Chopin Stitch
November 27, 2017
In a recent New York Times interview, pianist Steven Osborne discussed the strange experience of playing Olivier Messiaen’s composition “Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus,” strange because the twenty movements are entirely different creatures changing shape when experienced with different senses. The first movement, “Regard du Père,” comprises simple chords that build harmonic complexity interspersed with Messaien’s…
Read MoreThe Dissonant Note
June 30, 2015
Faith wasn’t always without question. Faith wasn’t always so accepting, so joyful in its major key, its seven-note intervals. Once, doubt was desired, not just as a frame of mind but also as a bodily state. Prayer was an uncertain call to a God who might live anywhere, whose existence didn’t matter so much as the question that reverberated through flesh. Prayer was communication without resolution, felt only in the dropped notes flickering through the body.
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