Dear friends and readers,
quite predictably I am here to wish you all a very happy and merry Christmas and also all the best for the new year 2012 - whereever you are in the world, may it be peaceful and quietly happy.
This year 2011 has been full of new challenges and changes for me personally - more are coming up for the next year, as moving house, sending a child of to university ( well, let's hope so?), trying for getting a better job,with some more perspectives on the long run, perhaps and hopefully some nice week-end travelling ( Stockholm? Wien? Lisboa? Paris? Cannes?), hopefully a new musical project, some coming back to charity work, etc. etc. I give up consciously on loosing weight and stopping to smoke. Life is hard enough!
My wish for this new year is to see more of the people who are dear to me and have time to spend with my friends and children. To be more patient and optimistic. To hear more to my inner voice. To laugh more. To have more courage and endeavour - but where to buy if not to steal?
This Handbag business here has up to now been an adventure. Unfortunately I have right now so little time, that the source is quite dry. But I hope that circumstances will make it well up again and new posts and horrendous opinions will be thrown at you at a more accelerated pace.
And, last but not least, I thank you all for looking into this blog with an amazing steadfast regularity. I am thrilled to find you in all parts of the world - in South and Northamerica there is a growing number as well as regular visits from China and Australia, the Philippines, South Africa, Oman and India!! The very constant crowd though is in Europe - Belgium, France, Germany Portugal and Austria are regular visitors. The other day I went to my favourite hairdresser and he told me, that somebody had turned up at his place without knowing me personally, but had read my blog. Is this not great fun?
I am very humbled by this regular crowd who comes and has a look at my ramblings. There are in average 350 clicks every month, sometimes well more, sometimes a little less.
You can imagine, that I like it...
Thank you very much and all the best for the new year,
Jola
Thursday 22 December 2011
Saturday 17 December 2011
Hearing Music LIVE
It is "Christmas Time" again and concerts are showering upon us - the choice is dazzling and even my choir is having its share: one concert yesterday and another tomorrow here in Brussels. We sing the "Messe en Si" or in german, as it should be, the "H-Moll Messe" by Johann Sebastian Bach. Great fun - and so dependent in its success on our public! Yesterday went well, the church was outsold and some people had no places to sit - I think we did pretty well. Doing a concert is always also question of nerves and the state of mind of the moment. Let us see, what will come out tomorrow!
In my older post about music I mused about the choice hearing music in the best available quality of interpretation and musicians out of the box or hear it, perhaps in lesser quality, live, with your ears, eyes and body.
With so many lovely concerts available I thought once again about this and come to the same conclusion every time. It is simply always a treat and a complete adventure to hear music "live", more adventurous then, to do it oneself. Sometime not for the fainthearted! Once we sang a concert, also in the Minimes, and for at 20 mesures we simply did not sing - but all the 30 people together kept silent, as if directed by a magic force. And we started all together at the most appropriate moment again, which very fitting was the exclamation "My God"! Apparently nobody noticed!! Afterwards great many laughters and also wonder about the fact, that we all did keep silent and nobody made a quack. These are the adventures of having music "done" in the moment....
If you go to a concert it is indeed a multitasking experience. Not only are you going to hear music in a condition, where it is not remixed and worked upon, but comes out and is consumed the moment it is produced. As it is human and made in the moment, it might well be that there is the odd hobble or a wrong tempo or even a false note sneeking in.
Fact is: you have many other people around you, some of them coughing, others talking and shuffling around. There might be a portable shouting out loud or somebody reading a newspaper. Sometimes smelling strongly of perfume or, worse, an used shirt.
Then you have to watch - or you can watch - the musicians or the single person alone there on the stage. Everybody who has had the experience of being obliged to see a bored orchestra knows what I am talking about.You might even watch one of the soloists taking a little nap during the aria of her collegues ( I am not kidding!).
Last but not least: You cannot go out, if it not pleases you - bad disadvantage of you do like Beethoven, but have to sit through some Stockhausen first.
Actually, I think it is a good education in our impatient and fast world to sometimes sit through music you do think to find awful. Just give it a chance and be open to new stuff....?
But back to the roots: the advantages are so much bigger: the feeling of communion with your other co- listeners, the immediate reaction of your body to great moments and the loosing of oneself in the music is an experience you cannot buy or produce alone at home on your sofa. The utter fascination seeing such a star like Cecilia Bartoli wooing and playing the public or the animalic iciness of Philippe Jarousky singing on the top of his voice, or even being lost in tears with John Eliot Gardiner and the Brahms Requiem: Seeing and watching and feeling all together in this magic, immediately lost moments "makes" music. And this is so much more.
In my older post about music I mused about the choice hearing music in the best available quality of interpretation and musicians out of the box or hear it, perhaps in lesser quality, live, with your ears, eyes and body.
With so many lovely concerts available I thought once again about this and come to the same conclusion every time. It is simply always a treat and a complete adventure to hear music "live", more adventurous then, to do it oneself. Sometime not for the fainthearted! Once we sang a concert, also in the Minimes, and for at 20 mesures we simply did not sing - but all the 30 people together kept silent, as if directed by a magic force. And we started all together at the most appropriate moment again, which very fitting was the exclamation "My God"! Apparently nobody noticed!! Afterwards great many laughters and also wonder about the fact, that we all did keep silent and nobody made a quack. These are the adventures of having music "done" in the moment....
If you go to a concert it is indeed a multitasking experience. Not only are you going to hear music in a condition, where it is not remixed and worked upon, but comes out and is consumed the moment it is produced. As it is human and made in the moment, it might well be that there is the odd hobble or a wrong tempo or even a false note sneeking in.
Fact is: you have many other people around you, some of them coughing, others talking and shuffling around. There might be a portable shouting out loud or somebody reading a newspaper. Sometimes smelling strongly of perfume or, worse, an used shirt.
Then you have to watch - or you can watch - the musicians or the single person alone there on the stage. Everybody who has had the experience of being obliged to see a bored orchestra knows what I am talking about.You might even watch one of the soloists taking a little nap during the aria of her collegues ( I am not kidding!).
Last but not least: You cannot go out, if it not pleases you - bad disadvantage of you do like Beethoven, but have to sit through some Stockhausen first.
Actually, I think it is a good education in our impatient and fast world to sometimes sit through music you do think to find awful. Just give it a chance and be open to new stuff....?
But back to the roots: the advantages are so much bigger: the feeling of communion with your other co- listeners, the immediate reaction of your body to great moments and the loosing of oneself in the music is an experience you cannot buy or produce alone at home on your sofa. The utter fascination seeing such a star like Cecilia Bartoli wooing and playing the public or the animalic iciness of Philippe Jarousky singing on the top of his voice, or even being lost in tears with John Eliot Gardiner and the Brahms Requiem: Seeing and watching and feeling all together in this magic, immediately lost moments "makes" music. And this is so much more.
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