Gade and Mussorsky

 

Dear friends of piano music,

"From behind through the chest into the eye", this was one of the favorite sayings of my first piano teacher, a very clever but unfortunately very unhappy woman, and - in spite of "de mortuis nihil nisi bene", on the whole this expression unfortunately also describes their teaching methods. This principle has evidently become so much in my flesh and blood that I start my Sunday text on an elegy by Niels Gade with whom? Of course, with Modest Mussorgsky. I'm always terrified when I see pictures of him - a human wreck destroyed by self-doubt and alcohol. What wonderful ideas he had, but often, when I try to play his piano pieces prima vista, I have the impression that he must have clearly been convinced that he has three hands. Mozart is said to have pulled his nose in such situations, but unfortunately this is not a viable option for people who wear glasses like me. Mussorsky suffered all his life from not being a studied academic composer, although the so-called “mighty bunch”, better described in my opinion as the “group of five”, was proud of it, not academically educated and hindered by unnecessary intellectual ballast to be able to write music in the “pure folk tone”. Mussorsky also suffered from being a "minor official", and this is a point I cannot understand. What could be better for a composer than a job with a manageable workload that secures him financially and gives him enough freedom, freedom and independence for his artistic work? It is not much different with pianists either, because considerably more of them are trained than the job market can accommodate, and that does not mean the big concerts, but rather the "music" in the car dealership so as not to even start the pandemic. One of my piano professors had very pragmatic suggestions for solving this dilemma:

Kerstin, now you're learning to play the piano properly, you can always go to the garbage disposal later. Yes, actually not a bad idea that I would have even implemented if I weren't so terribly sensitive to smells. Fashion boutique or real estate agent might still be practicable, but unfortunately my sales talent is disproportionately pronounced, actually not really available. I could have imagined a postman, I walk well, I like being in the fresh air, I would have relative freedom of thought during work, but since I'm terrified of big dogs, this livelihood to finance my artistic work unfortunately didn't work out either . One of my lecturers at the Mannheim University of Music, a gifted pianist and passionate companion of silent film productions, kept telling the following joke: “How do you get a million as a musician? You start with two! ”There was something about coping with trauma, the frequency with which he told this joke… No, I made it up to me not to write about the pandemic, because everyone knows what is happening with free musicians at the moment is, the "collateral damage" of the lockdowns is immense and its extent is not yet foreseeable, but the pandemic is a situation of triage not only in the intensive care units - between plague and cholera. Now, of course, how could it be otherwise, I have mentioned this horrific topic again, which takes our breath away (this metaphor is perhaps a little too aptly chosen in connection with Corona ... cheerfully out of extreme seriousness).

Now what does Gade's elegy, which it should be about, have to do with it? Nothing at all, except that it is able to comfort us a little with her androgynous beauty, from a time when men also cried sometimes - "with my hot tears", as Schubert says. Never give up - at least beauty is immortal.

Many greetings from Heidelberg

Kerstin