Oh gosh, I'm already failing at blogging. It just seems like not a lot worth blogging about happens in my life. However, I had a wonderful day on Saturday and thought I would share its events with you.
I went home for the weekend and my family and I went to London together. My mum and I went shopping, then we had lunch, then my brother and dad joined us and we went to a play, then we had dinner, and then we went to a concert. Music, literature, food and clothes...ah, it was almost a perfect day.
I'll tell you about the play first. It was Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children at the National Theatre. I wasn't sure how much I would enjoy it, as almost all the plays I go to see are by Shakespeare, but I thought it was brilliant. Mother Courage is, to describe it very basically, a condemnation of war, which is portrayed as a never-ending cycle that produces nothing but death and misery. Courage, with her three children in tow, follows the army in a wagon in the hope to profit from the war by selling them provisions. She is determined to see the war through the eyes of a businesswoman and never to be caught up emotionally in its atrocities. Throughout the course of the play all of her children are lost to the war. Though of course any mother would be traumatised by this, Courage refuses to give up after each loss and continues to drag her wagon around Poland until all her children are gone. After she sings a lullaby to the corpse of Kattrin, her final child, her final words are, "I've got to get back into business."
Then she hauls her wagon around the stage all by herself, representing the endless and futile cycle of war.
Brecht makes a point of making his plays very self-referential - as in, making it obvious it's a play - which he calls the Verfremdungseffekt ("alienation effect"). In Mother Courage there isn't really a set, just big banners with the setting scrawled across them. There are no lighting effects, just cold, harsh white light; you can see the tech crew as they move around props to change the scene; the actors change costume in front of your eyes. This didn't really stop me from feeling involved in the events of the play, but I felt I was being invited to be an objective spectator, to evaluate whether I thought what Courage was doing was right or not. It's hard to consider war without being emotionally involved, which is why I think Brecht tries to alienate us.
The play is also frequently broken up by musical numbers. I didn't realise Brecht actually intended music to be a part of the play until afterwards - I thought the director had just randomly shoved it in to make it more entertaining. Anyway, the music was excellent. They got a guy named Duke Special to compose it; a funny little Irish guy with dreadlocks and eyeliner. He and his band would suddenly appear on stage and begin to sing. I'd never heard of him before, but he was actually very talented (he played loads of instruments), and I thought his voice was beautiful. At the end, after Courage had dragged the wagon offstage, all that remained was Duke Special banging a drum and singing. I can't remember what the song was called, but in it he sung about war. The final few lines really resonated with me. The exact words escape me but he sung something about how at least when we die we will finally be free from war.
And then he sung the final line: Unless the war goes on in hell. And then the lights went out. Amaaaaaaaazing.
***
So. In the evening we went to a piano concert at the Barbican: Ludovico Einaudi performing songs from his new album, Nightbook. I'd never been to a classical concert before so I didn't know what to expect, but it was amazing. Einaudi's music is contemporary and minimalist. He blends the piano with strings, percussion and also live electronics, and though he repeats the same motifs a lot, it just sounds amazing. When I sat in there and closed my eyes, it sounded like I was listening to a CD - then I opened my eyes and saw that there were actual people making these beautiful sounds, and more astonishingly, they weren't messing up. I can't even play two bars in front of my mum without hitting the wrong key, crying out in frustration/embarrassment and giving up. Oh, and there was this guy who had some serious skills on the tambourine. He was going mental. It was incredible.
I often use Einaudi as a backing track for my writing. I wish more people could appreciate classical music. It really annoys me how Cheryl Cole can whine 'we gotta fightFIGHTfightFIGHTfight for this love!' over a synthesized beat and everyone will buy it and it will get to number one, and yet incredibly talented people like Einaudi are stuck in this niche. People say they find classical music 'boring', which usually means they can't dance to it in a club. I understand that people connect music to memories, such as a good night in a club. But classical music is so atmospheric. Add a classical soundtrack to a film and it makes it ten times better...I mean, listen to the soundtracks for the Lord of the Rings films, for example. They are amazing. People don't even realise that when they enjoy these films they are appreciating classical music. They call it boring. Grr.
Anyway, check out this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB3wgiaOOvA. It's Nightbook, probably my favourite song from Einaudi's album so far, though I haven't fully listened to all the tracks yet. The song just conjures so many beautiful images in my mind. I don't need to connect it to a concrete event in my life because it inspires my imagination. That's what crap people like Cheryl Cole and Tinchey Strider and whoever else fail to do. They make songs that drunk people can dance to in clubs but that's about it. Sorry, bit of an angry, 'the young people are rotting their minds! Get off the grass!' diatribe there.
Hmm, okay. Time to do work now!
I went home for the weekend and my family and I went to London together. My mum and I went shopping, then we had lunch, then my brother and dad joined us and we went to a play, then we had dinner, and then we went to a concert. Music, literature, food and clothes...ah, it was almost a perfect day.
I'll tell you about the play first. It was Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children at the National Theatre. I wasn't sure how much I would enjoy it, as almost all the plays I go to see are by Shakespeare, but I thought it was brilliant. Mother Courage is, to describe it very basically, a condemnation of war, which is portrayed as a never-ending cycle that produces nothing but death and misery. Courage, with her three children in tow, follows the army in a wagon in the hope to profit from the war by selling them provisions. She is determined to see the war through the eyes of a businesswoman and never to be caught up emotionally in its atrocities. Throughout the course of the play all of her children are lost to the war. Though of course any mother would be traumatised by this, Courage refuses to give up after each loss and continues to drag her wagon around Poland until all her children are gone. After she sings a lullaby to the corpse of Kattrin, her final child, her final words are, "I've got to get back into business."
Then she hauls her wagon around the stage all by herself, representing the endless and futile cycle of war.
Brecht makes a point of making his plays very self-referential - as in, making it obvious it's a play - which he calls the Verfremdungseffekt ("alienation effect"). In Mother Courage there isn't really a set, just big banners with the setting scrawled across them. There are no lighting effects, just cold, harsh white light; you can see the tech crew as they move around props to change the scene; the actors change costume in front of your eyes. This didn't really stop me from feeling involved in the events of the play, but I felt I was being invited to be an objective spectator, to evaluate whether I thought what Courage was doing was right or not. It's hard to consider war without being emotionally involved, which is why I think Brecht tries to alienate us.
The play is also frequently broken up by musical numbers. I didn't realise Brecht actually intended music to be a part of the play until afterwards - I thought the director had just randomly shoved it in to make it more entertaining. Anyway, the music was excellent. They got a guy named Duke Special to compose it; a funny little Irish guy with dreadlocks and eyeliner. He and his band would suddenly appear on stage and begin to sing. I'd never heard of him before, but he was actually very talented (he played loads of instruments), and I thought his voice was beautiful. At the end, after Courage had dragged the wagon offstage, all that remained was Duke Special banging a drum and singing. I can't remember what the song was called, but in it he sung about war. The final few lines really resonated with me. The exact words escape me but he sung something about how at least when we die we will finally be free from war.
And then he sung the final line: Unless the war goes on in hell. And then the lights went out. Amaaaaaaaazing.
***
So. In the evening we went to a piano concert at the Barbican: Ludovico Einaudi performing songs from his new album, Nightbook. I'd never been to a classical concert before so I didn't know what to expect, but it was amazing. Einaudi's music is contemporary and minimalist. He blends the piano with strings, percussion and also live electronics, and though he repeats the same motifs a lot, it just sounds amazing. When I sat in there and closed my eyes, it sounded like I was listening to a CD - then I opened my eyes and saw that there were actual people making these beautiful sounds, and more astonishingly, they weren't messing up. I can't even play two bars in front of my mum without hitting the wrong key, crying out in frustration/embarrassment and giving up. Oh, and there was this guy who had some serious skills on the tambourine. He was going mental. It was incredible.
I often use Einaudi as a backing track for my writing. I wish more people could appreciate classical music. It really annoys me how Cheryl Cole can whine 'we gotta fightFIGHTfightFIGHTfight for this love!' over a synthesized beat and everyone will buy it and it will get to number one, and yet incredibly talented people like Einaudi are stuck in this niche. People say they find classical music 'boring', which usually means they can't dance to it in a club. I understand that people connect music to memories, such as a good night in a club. But classical music is so atmospheric. Add a classical soundtrack to a film and it makes it ten times better...I mean, listen to the soundtracks for the Lord of the Rings films, for example. They are amazing. People don't even realise that when they enjoy these films they are appreciating classical music. They call it boring. Grr.
Anyway, check out this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB3wgiaOOvA. It's Nightbook, probably my favourite song from Einaudi's album so far, though I haven't fully listened to all the tracks yet. The song just conjures so many beautiful images in my mind. I don't need to connect it to a concrete event in my life because it inspires my imagination. That's what crap people like Cheryl Cole and Tinchey Strider and whoever else fail to do. They make songs that drunk people can dance to in clubs but that's about it. Sorry, bit of an angry, 'the young people are rotting their minds! Get off the grass!' diatribe there.
Hmm, okay. Time to do work now!
1 comment:
I'm listening to that song now, you're right about how beautiful it is!
That play sounds amazing. It definitely has a good point to it.
Post a Comment