War

Dear friends of piano music,

actually I wanted to write something completely different, it was practically finished in my head: This unbelievable fact that a small and for my taste rather ugly man decides to go to war in Europe and invades one country after the other - Beethoven , my beloved Beethoven, was initially an ardent supporter of Napoleon, since he stood up for the ideals of the French Revolution, freedom, equality, fraternity - until he crowned himself Emperor. Hegel described Julius Caesar as the "manager of the world spirit", he immensely enlarged the Roman Empire through his wars and thus brought the Roman language, Roman law, culture and civilization to the conquered peoples. Is a war justified if there seems to be some kind of idealistic mission behind it? One may have doubts here, but if nothing but the will to power and the desire to expand are the motives for military aggression - nothing but the deepest human abyss. A war is not a football match, in a war there are only losers. There was so much I wanted to write on this topic, but then very unexpectedly, from one second to the next, there was a death in my family and I am faced with another issue - how to give comfort. When you are very close, you hug each other and cry together. But with spatial distance, which is unfortunately the case with me, one has to rely on words, and this is where it gets difficult. In the face of great suffering - and here I am with my actually planned topic, the war - it is almost impossible to offer consolation in words. You can't downplay the painful loss, everything suddenly seems too clichéd, too superficial to do justice to the great pain - and even more so to the desire to alleviate it a little. To share this helplessness and powerlessness against the terrible, irreversible.

How easy it is with children - a bruised elbow, their favorite teddy fallen in a puddle - great suffering and many tears for the little ones, but a colorful patch, a hug, some chocolate - problem solved. I once had to comfort a colleague who got an unexpectedly bad grade in a final exam, and I spoke to her with angelic tongues until she asked me to hug her. I think that in hindsight she was terribly embarrassed - so even in this relatively harmless case I didn't really succeed in consoling her. The only thing that can help and actually helps me is belief in God, in life after death. But if someone who previously couldn't believe suddenly starts doing it in a serious emergency situation, for example because I advise them to do so - well, it's worth a try, but I have doubts I will succeed with it.

Better than words, however, music seems to me to give comfort, to be a support in what is called „Trauerarbeit“ in German. Music can express what is so difficult for us to do with words. I am considering recording some piano pieces for this purpose. If you can think of pieces that could be particularly suitable for this - write me. I know it doesn't solve any problems, but we could all use a little comfort these days.

Kerstin