Sunday afternoon, we are strangers in a small quaint town. Two strangers crying for comfort and joy. We are out of season, out of reason, out of fashion and out of passion.
When we are in the dumps, or in a dump, as we sometimes are, it takes more than we are capable of to rouse ourselves. We are shackled in circumstances. We would be suffering more rather than less except for the screen of this laptop and the music within it.
Beethoven String Quartets op. 127 in e-flat major, op. 131 in c-sharp minor.
All those minor chords. Beethoven attempting to blend his soul into those chords, at perfect pitch, a perfect pace. For this we are grateful. We are not in the mood for glib, I can tell you.
We were about to squabble about something tedious - when to have dinner - but our individual wills, so battle weary by the weekend, have merged. We are now in perfect pitch with Beethoven's marriage of intellect and heart. For just a few moments we remember that we are capable of reaching the heights; we remember harmony, possibly Oneness. We feel a bout of gaity coming on. We think we might be saved. We agree completely on dinner at eight.
Beethoven was often said to be in a low mood; one after the other. He had his challenges obviously. You can read all about it. Most of us go through periods of blank despair. Black despair, manic despair, slack wretched panic despair. I know you know what I mean.
As the bow scrapes across the strings of the violin, we feel as if our heart has been scraped clean for another week. We will renounce the varieties of Sunday despairing in spite of our lack of worldly success and our seedy surroundings - nothing like Beethoven would ever stay in - and that is the point now isn't it?
Beethoven could possess only the graceful, the sublime and the elegantly structured - Beethoven, naturally, invented these things.
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