(Program)
RCA Recording . Printed in U.S.A. // Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) // Symphony No. 7
Philharmonic -Symphony Orchestra of New York, conducted by Arturo Toscanini
Symphony No. 7
- Poco Sostenuto; Vivace
- Allegretto
- Presto meno assai; Presto
- Allegro con brio
My sweet embraceable you
Embrace me
My irreplaceable you
Just to look at you
My heart grows tipsy in me
You and you alone
Bring out the gypsy in me
“” Embraceable You, Billie Holiday
part of the writing exercise that is resulted in this blog was to keep track of my evolving relationship with the works that i return to periodically on vinyl. one of the better examples of that so far is that of beethoven’s seventh symphony. at first listen, owing to the long shadow cast by the preceding Pastoral Symphony, i thought little of the seventh aside from the frenetic rush of its finale. then in january when the TSO performed it as part of an all-beethoven program, a few more features stood out, not the least being how entirely self-contained it is, completely distinct from the Pastoral landscape, fluent in its own unique and unprecedented language.
this time around, i might as well be hearing it for the first time. i take special notice, for example, of the prominent place given to principal flute in the second subject of the first movement, its hollow outpour made more viscous by the colours of the accompanying principal oboe (and how these roles reverse in the duo’s appearances in the second movement). then there’s the stern but yielding character of the second section of that same first movement, a kind of orchestral aviation entailed in the quickening of pace and ascending rhythmic pulses that don’t quite reach a climax till the very end. i still don’t find something remarkable in the slow movement, wedged in-between the length of the first and the trigger-happy bombast of third (an almighty brass section outfitted for cataclysmic effect). it could have ended there, considering the several apexes hitherto mounted and resolved, but the fourth movement is reserved for one more gear up: it’s a gyrating centrifugal fanfare, egged on by various phrases on high strings and woodwinds—the flute and oboe duo again making multiple spotlighted cameos—as the whirring charge forward is intermittently interrupted by sharp pivots by timpani and a declamatory brass section.
i’m less interested in the ‘timelessness’ of these works than in their inexhaustibility; in what i hear, and perhaps miss, the next time around that i come back to it.
(song of the week: ‘Embraceable You’ — Billie Holiday)
in memory, everything happens to music—ain't that the truth. ‘billie holiday’ has been for me one of those levitating names amongst the nebulous glamour of the jazz age, smoke-dimmed stages of america’s 20’s and thirties 30’s that by the 30’s and 40’s found straight-laced and mainstream audiences on both sides of the atlantic.
i’ve only so far taken a partial bite out of holiday’s discography, yet her recordings dot a field of memories that spread over the previous decade. the first time i heard her lilting blue voice was in a recording of the haunting and harrowing ‘Strange Fruit’, in the summer of 2011. the place i was living had enlisted the talents of a University of Toronto student completing his masters in comparative literature and apparently padding his extra-curricular resumé by teaching the history of rap music to a roundtable of disaffected youth in the local homeless shelter. his version of this history began with the jazz musicians that came after the aforementioned jazz age, and holiday’s discography was especially relevant.
my contribution to the session was a passing observation on how rap is to music what soccer was to sports: in regards to how little you need to make it happen. a fellow resident, a girl of about eighteen who never stepped out without dark sunglasses and black babushka done up high over her afro—and who quite obviously did not want to be there (monthly participation in such ‘Arts and Minds’ classes was necessary to keep your bed)—chimed in how much she loved the sound of holiday’s voice but couldn’t stand the faces she made as she sang of those ‘black bodies dangling from poplar trees’. aside from the babushka and spectacles combo, i don’t remember much of her face, though she did have the same complexion, eyebrows, and shapely and yet fluid mouth as holiday.
i find it inhumane to forget. of all the ways music makes us more human, that it makes it easier to remember, is i think the most significant.
then in 2015, in a playlist scrambled together to span the day-long marathon of painting my room (a cobalt blue i quickly realized was not quite what i had in mind, having envisioned something more like the official colour the year 2020: Pantone 19-4052), holiday’s ‘Tain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do’—with its problematic lyrics, at least by the metric of our modern sensibilities—bursted out of my less than speakers, a chainsaw of brass instruments revving to life to fill a blue room. thereafter i decided cobalt had to be the liveliest, most fertile blue possible.
july 4th, 2016: kevin durant of the Oklahoma City Thunders decided he would henceforth be kevin durant of the Golden State Warriors—thereby ruining all of basketball and possibly all of sports entertainment, until he recently decided he would take on less controversial identity as kevin durant of the Brooklyn Nets (loyalty in the NBA is as permanent as weather). that same day a bussing job opened up in the east end on queen street. almost having to yell my credentials at the interviewer as a construction crew worked at breakneck speed to put together what would soon be Barrio Cervecería’s eminently populated patio (the site, a year later, of several failed first dates). i was on my way back from said interview—still dazed by a procession of thoughts of excitement and disappointment that one of the world’s best players would lose a well contested playoff run to the world’s best basketball team, and then resolved that dilemma by joining them—when the percolating sultriness of holiday’s “I’ll Be Seeing You” came up on my headphones. one of those delightful coincidences afforded by a well stocked music library on shuffle. about ten seconds later i biked past I’ll Be Seeing You, a bar just west of Barrio. i’ve got it in mind to finally pay it a visit as soon as all this COVID-19 clears out and the embargo on socializing is lifted.
february 2019: soprano and conductor barbara hannigan, in command of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, delivered quite the memorable performance of excerpts from goerge gershwin’s Girl Crazy Suite: that was the first time i heard ‘Embraceable You’, one of the numbers from that suite. also the first time i heard an entire orchestra burst into song: unexpectedly, while hannigan was doffing and un-doffing her hats as singer and conductor, the orchestra joined in. their voices merging in union to raise every follicle of hair on every attendant body. having found my new favourite song, i only then had to find a voice full and hollow enough, warm and blue enough, levitating and heavy enough, for it.