Work Text:
If only Ben where more open minded when it comes to appreciation of the arts. Especially music. He is under the allusion that there is no worth in modern music, by which he means anything written this century. He insists that only Baroque is any good – organised, properly laid out, in time, with proper tunes that are pleasing to the ear. He refuses to admit that there is any merit in what he calls the wild rambling cacophony of modern romantic composers such as Beethoven. Especially Beethoven. How, he asks, can it take someone six symphonies to comprise a decent melody and even then it’s only eight bars long. And then you have to wait another three symphonies before he comes up with another. And then you have to wait an hour before he gets round to it! As far as he is concerned, a proper piece of music has the strings playing the tune, then the woodwind playing the tune and then the brass playing the tune at full volume and that’s a movement for the symphony, the hole thing taking no more than 5 minutes before you move on to the next bit. If you don’t like it at least you don’t have to sit their for ages.
It makes me feel unphased, as of course I always want to be at the fourfront of artistic endeavour, not a rehash of the conventional. Its a nesessary matter of principal to widen his horizons and introduce him to something new. At times we’ve come close to Having Words on the subject. I mean. How can someone’s favourite piece of music be Handels the Harmonious Blacksmith played so fast that you suspect the performer is desparate for the toilet?
I finally found something that peaked his interest. A new composition – Variation’s on a theme by Haydn. At least thier’ll be a bit of baroque for him I thought. But Ben didn’t like the idea of ‘variations’, were he says they play a perfectly acceptable tune and then they spend ten minutes playing everything except the tune and you have to fill it in yourself. But I persisted, for his own good of course, and in the end he excepted my invitation to come to the concert. More because I wanted him too, rather than because he wanted to go. And it would have been a shame to waste the complementary tickets they sent us.
We were given good seats in the new Asephyr Concert Hall – a wonderful building in the latest modern style. Ben disapproves, but he had to admit that the acoustics were tremendous. We settled into our seats, and held hands discretely once the lights were lowered and the concert was about to begin. As the orchestra tuned up, Ben sarcastically asked me if this was the modern music we had come to here.
Finally, the concert began – with the theme by Haydn, a rather trite and unimaginative little tune that I’m sure Ben liked. After that it went through a series of much more interesting variations, some fast, some slow, but each still retaining the musical structure of the original. Finally, the peace ended with a full orchestral climatic rendition of the original tune.
I looked across to Ben to see what affect the music had had on him. Too my horror he was balling his eyes out. Tears were streaming down his face. He mopped his face with his hankercheif to hide his embarrassment, hoping it was’nt notiseable.
“Whatever is the matter?” I asked him.
“Its the tune,” he replied. “It was lost, like a stray dog. Frightened and bewildered in a strange place. Wandering alone in a hostile alien world. But then it found it’s way home, and now its safe and happy again.”
And not a word of sense could I get out of him for the rest of the evening.
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