Wind Music

I believe that music is a force in itself. It is there and it needs an outlet, a medium.

Maynard Keenan
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Make no mistake about it. In spite of what others may claim, New York is the City of Wind. If it weren't people would suffocate. The straight streets and long avenues create wind tunnels that stretch form the Hudson River to the East River.

One year I had a radio station job on 45th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. On my way to work one day I walked down 6th Avenue to 45th Street and the wind was so strong I couldn't turn the corner. I grabbed the side of the building to pull myself around but still couldn't do it. I had to go back up to 46th Street where the wind wasn't so strong and walk around to 45th on 5th Avenue.

I had some friends visiting me from northern New England one winter. I told them to make sure to dress warmly because New York could get very cold because of the wind. They didn't quite believe me until we turned on to 5th Avenue at Central Park East. We had to lean over in order to walk. When we reached our destination one of them said he had never felt wind like that.

There is music everywhere in the universe and most of it can't be heard. Music is a thing in itself and is content to be silent to the human ear. We can hear some of nature's music: the crashing of the waves, the rustling of the leaves, the thunder in the sky and the song of birds. But to bring out the hidden sounds we need to become a channel for them.

Some people like to hang up wind chimes on the porch and listen to the tinkling of the various tones as the breeze flows through them.
Wind chimes can be made of glass, wood or metal, they each have their distinctive sound. If you were to hang such a wind chime almost anywhere in New York City the wind would probably blow it away.

But there was one place in the city where wind chimes actually worked, on a grand scale. Some one had built a collection of large metal tubes joined together into a cluster. The collection was stabilized to the ground The tubes were tuned to various tones and as the strong winds of New York blew through them they made the most wonderful music. Nature's pipe organ.

DB - The Vagabond
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WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?

dbdacoba@aol.com

Only 7 responses so far. Spring is coming.

I await your answer.
DB
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Kind Kappellmeister 7/29/09

When Bach and Beethoven and all those guys were doing their thing, it was an absolute pinnacle of our consciousness, and ever since then we've been re-exploring different avenues of it.

Maynard Keenan
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Tune your fiddle and have a seat.
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If you are reading this you are probably not a fan of classical music. Most people aren't. But whether you prefer jazz, rock, folk, new age, easy listening or whatever your choice, you should know that if your favorite musician had formal training in a music academy or college department he or she had to analyze Bach chorals as part of the training.

Johann Sebastian Bach was the organist and music director of his very large church. Bach was a Lutheran. He composed, rehearsed and conducted a cantata every week to commemorate what the Sunday service was about. These cantatas were written for orchestra, chorus and usually solo singers. In between he managed to write an enormous amount of music. It was calculated that if a modern day musician sat down with a ball point pen, in good lighting and worked a 40 hour week it would take him many decades just to copy out what Bach wrote. And Bach did it with a quill pen, an inkwell, by candle light in a house full of his children.

Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and many others were inspired composers. I have a different feeling about Bach. Bach wasn't inspired. Bach WAS music. Music flowed out of him like breath. It was a divine exhalation. And that's why every true musician needs to know it.

I used to know a folk singer who graduated with a Bachelors degree in music. For her honors thesis she did an analysis of the Bach B minor Mass, a formidable task for any music student. It's a personal thing I know, but I happen to believe that the B minor Mass is the greatest piece of music ever written.

Far from my intent is to proselytize and try to make a classical music lover out of you, if you don't want to be. But if you don't listen to anything else you should listen to the amazing opening chorus of the Bach Mass It lasts 10 to 12 minutes depending on the conductor. It starts with a few basic chords and then begins a slow stately fugue for orchestra and chorus. During it the chorus sings only two words, Kerie Eleison, the opening two words of the Mass. It is a work of pure genius.

It's true that ever since Bach composers and musicians have been trying to re-explore and recapture that genius, to reinvent that wheel, to regain that amazing level of consciousness that brought such music to the world. And some have succeeded. Bach is always there to show us the way.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
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Join me for a happy Wednesday.
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PS: Whenever I write on classical music people seem to find out about it ahead of time and all head for the hills. Hence, no readers, no comments.