Farzin and I were on our way to the gym and the music from the classical station had hypnotized me with its poignancy and power.  I looked at Farzin and asked him if he was listening.  We pulled into the parking space and  as Farzin began to turn the car off, I asked him to leave the music on and to just listen.  I love the violin and this piece had an exqisite soaring violin melody.  I would find out later that it was Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending.

Farzin admired the work but his favorites were of  Beethoven, particularly the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies.  The Ninth Symphony, which premiered in Vienna in 1824, was conducted by an almost totally deaf Beethoven, a feat beyond brilliance, suggestive of an inner musical world. There is no doubt Farzin had a keen appreciation of classical music and experienced a deep sense of, dare I say serenity, from many gorgeous compositions.

Music affects the brain and mood.  Brahm’s Violin Concerto can release the deepest pathos within me, even if those emotions are at the subconcious level.  Suddenly I am transposed, uplighted to a reality or understanding of the world.  It is an exquisitely melancholy world.  At concerts Farzin would sometimes appear transfixed as if he and the music became inseparable.  He wouldn’t move a muscle for the longest time.

I know the poweful soothing effect music can provide to a troubled soul, providing solace, releasing emotions, invoking memories and providing meaning.  Its potency is akin to a universal life source.

I attended a Renee Fleming concert recently with my beautiful niece, Alayna.  Richard Strauss took center stage with the beautiful diva.  Fleming sang two of the songs from Strauss’  so-called Last Four Songs, which was his swannsong to the world.  The songs are an awareness and even an acceptance of death, while fully appreciative even in awe of the season’s beauties that linger on their way to death.  The poem and song “September” is not melancholy in its imagery of the setting sun, longing “to close its great, wearied eyes”.

SEPTEMBER
– Hermann Hesse

The garden is in mourning:
the rain sinks coolly on the flowers. Summertime shudders
quietly to its close.

Leaf upon golden leaf is dropping
down from the tall acacia tree.
Summer smiles, amazed and exhausted, on the dying dream that was this garden.

Long by the roses still
it tarries, yearns for rest,
slowly closes its (great)
weary eyes.

The Final Song, At Sunset, is truly exquisite.  A couple, tired by life’s long road of joy and sorrow, sit together perhaps for the last time as the darkening sky encompasses them and the soaring two larks.  There is a tranquility and truthfulness that is so profound at this point in the evening at this time in their lives, they wonder, “…is this perchance death?”