I love the public radio program Performance Today, but I often complain to myself that Fred Child a) speaks too quickly after the end of a piece and b) repeats the snippets of cocktail party knowledge about a piece both before and after it, which seems to me to render the sparkling gems of context rather less titillating. If something is said once on the radio, it is the precious possession of those lucky enough to be tuned in. If it is repeated, the club of the informed grows unpleasantly larger.
Tonight I was the happy beneficiary of FC's repetition of the story behind Brahms' third symphony. He and his friends, when they were young, developed a slogan, which they snuck into their music, "free but lonely," to describe their single status. Brahms, a lifelong bachelor, wrote the symphony #3 when he was fifty, and in it re-configured the original slogan to be "free but happy." As FC points out, the symphony is not what my tenth graders would likely describe as "happy" music, but it certainly, to me, conveys the thoughtful contentedness that single life affords.
I am single, and 26. Perhaps I can save myself many years of unhappiness by adopting the Brahms-at-50 version of the slogan. Here's the episode (hour 1), which has the story at the beginning, and the symphony (and again the story!) at the end of the hour.
No sooner had the symphony ended than I read this book review of Helen Garner's new book, "Everywhere I Look". Imagine my surprise on reading this excerpt:
“This isn’t really a story. I’m just telling you what happened one summer when I was young. It was 1961, my first year away from home. I lived at Melbourne University, in a women’s college on a beautiful elm-lined boulevard. I was free and happy. Everyone was clever and so was I.”
How easy it is to be free and happy when young and clever. I wonder at what age free and happy became free and lonely for Brahms -- when it does for all those not entwined in matrimony.
Incidentally, Garner's first book "The First Stone," which is discussed in the article, is about young women who were assaulted by a professor when they were in college. The title seems to allude to the parable in which Jesus says, "Let the sinless among you cast the first stone," when a woman has been accused of adultery.
This parable ran through my head today when, in the tenth grade class, we discussed "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. Our first focus was narrative point of view, and I asked students to rewrite the climactic closing scene from the perspective of one of the characters present. (The entire story is told from a third person objective POV).
(Spoiler alert) In the scene, the woman whose named has been drawn in the annual "lottery" is stoned to death by her neighbors.
One of the boys in period 1 wrote, "Everyone was looking at me to begin, so I had to throw the first rock."
Another said, "As soon as I saw the first rock fly, I hurled mine at her as hard as I could."
Both responses reveal the weight of that first stone. The story seems to me a comment on how much easier it is to act inhumanely when one is part of a group. I was first introduced to this idea in my Capitalism and Socialism class at Utah, when we read Niebuhr's "Moral Man, Immoral Society."
Tenth graders speak wisdom.
I wonder how many of them would describe themselves as "free and happy". Or, for that matter, either "free" or "happy".
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| Brahms, when he was "free and lonely" |
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| Brahms, when he was "free and happy". |
I am single, and 26. Perhaps I can save myself many years of unhappiness by adopting the Brahms-at-50 version of the slogan. Here's the episode (hour 1), which has the story at the beginning, and the symphony (and again the story!) at the end of the hour.
No sooner had the symphony ended than I read this book review of Helen Garner's new book, "Everywhere I Look". Imagine my surprise on reading this excerpt:
“This isn’t really a story. I’m just telling you what happened one summer when I was young. It was 1961, my first year away from home. I lived at Melbourne University, in a women’s college on a beautiful elm-lined boulevard. I was free and happy. Everyone was clever and so was I.” How easy it is to be free and happy when young and clever. I wonder at what age free and happy became free and lonely for Brahms -- when it does for all those not entwined in matrimony.
Incidentally, Garner's first book "The First Stone," which is discussed in the article, is about young women who were assaulted by a professor when they were in college. The title seems to allude to the parable in which Jesus says, "Let the sinless among you cast the first stone," when a woman has been accused of adultery.
This parable ran through my head today when, in the tenth grade class, we discussed "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. Our first focus was narrative point of view, and I asked students to rewrite the climactic closing scene from the perspective of one of the characters present. (The entire story is told from a third person objective POV). (Spoiler alert) In the scene, the woman whose named has been drawn in the annual "lottery" is stoned to death by her neighbors.
One of the boys in period 1 wrote, "Everyone was looking at me to begin, so I had to throw the first rock."
Another said, "As soon as I saw the first rock fly, I hurled mine at her as hard as I could."
Both responses reveal the weight of that first stone. The story seems to me a comment on how much easier it is to act inhumanely when one is part of a group. I was first introduced to this idea in my Capitalism and Socialism class at Utah, when we read Niebuhr's "Moral Man, Immoral Society."
Tenth graders speak wisdom.
I wonder how many of them would describe themselves as "free and happy". Or, for that matter, either "free" or "happy".
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