/lit/ - Literature

1. Brahms 2nd piano concerto, 3rd movement. Opens with a solo cello playing one of the warmest, most comforting melodies, before giving way to the piano playing a far more troubled, pensive theme. The majority of the movement remains troubled and searching, building in intensity until the cello finally comes back in with the original melody to play in duet with the piano until the close of the movement. For whatever reason, I’ve become largely incapable of crying (in reaction to real life or to art), but the moment the cello comes back in does make me tear up.
2. Der Abschied (the farewell) from Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. Really I’d recommend the whole piece, but this final movement is by far the most moving. Of all six movements, only this final one contains two distinctly opposed ideas or potentialities, which, though necessarily incompletely described by language, can be roughly characterized as "despairing," and "joyful," respectively. The music develops under a familiar though distinctly-Mahlerian logic of tension and resolution, though constantly wavering between being dominated by either of these ideas. Neither ultimately succeeds, and the ending fades into an extremely tranquil calmness, which feels (I imagine) quite like dying, but you’re at peace with it (that’s the only way I know to describe it).
3. Largo from Shostakovich 5. Big covert fuck you to Stalin, written during the height of the purges. The public openly wept during this movement during the premiere, despite the huge political risk incurred by doing so. If you do any research on this piece, be warned that Simon Volkov is extremely retarded and that music is a language unto itself. Stalin was BTFO by this piece, but not because of Shosty’s self-quotation or association with Pushkin or whatever. Just because of how the music sounded.