Meta-level

 

Dear friends of piano music,

"Meta-level" is one of the amazing words I learned during my teacher training. When practicing the piano, there is always at least one Meta level, it reminds me a little of the giant Argos from the Greek myth, whose one hundred eyes could always observe several things at the same time, and this without a break, as they alternately rested closed in order to sleep in a kind of shift work. There is the level of consciousness that controls whether the wrist octaves are finally running, the shoulders are not hunched or any other part of the body is doing mischief. Then there is the control instance for wrong tones or dynamics, furthermore for inappropriate timbres etc. There is the imagination that suddenly realizes that a piece is reminiscent of snowstorms or something similar, or that believes to find a certain feeling or memory in a piece. And if this happens more or less in parallel, there is sometimes also a kind of thought flow that becomes independent and philosophizes about God and the world. Sometimes you have to keep it in check so that it doesn't interfere with the others, after all you want to practice the piano ...... Well, I digress and obviously try to get past the topic. It is All Saints Day today and in addition we are in the second wave of the pandemic that could potentially spiral out of control, it will be seen what the lockdown starting tomorrow will bring. I am not very good at math, but exponential growth with a mortality rate of at least three percent - how many deaths that would result in unchecked spread until Christmas, here in Germany alone ... At the moment the number of sick people is doubling every week.

Today is the day on which Catholic Christians remember their dead, mostly in the cemetery. So far, I've only lost my grandparents, and even before the pandemic. When my grandpa felt his end coming, he said at my grandma's grave that he would soon come to her. My grandparents never went to church very often, even at Christmas they no longer went to church towards the end of their lives because the cold temperatures in the church did not suit them well for health reasons. Still, they were both believers, I'm pretty sure of that. They trusted in a benevolent God and a life beyond. Such a natural trust in God cannot be worked for, it is a gift, just as love is a gift. It is also a kind of "meta-level" that can help us get through this pandemic, except for caution, the only thing that really helps.

 

Kind regards from Heidelberg

 

Kerstin

 

Edvard Grieg | "Ballad" Op. 65 No. 5 from "Lyric pieces" (by Kerstin Sieben-Kaiser)

https://youtu.be/N2H96o-XvAU