There must be a term for the sort of music that builds and crescendos, but I don’t know it. I know only that I have a fondness for it, for pieces such as Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major and Marin Marais’s Sonnerie de Sainte Geneviève. Even – though you may gasp – Mason Williams’s Classical Gas is fun. Such compositions are, to me, a quiet sunset, just a faint pink in the sky, which fades gently: refined, self-contained.
But I do not like Bolero. Ravel’s composition continues enjoying popularity, apparently, and it is often performed; but the first few notes play, and I shrink. It sounds cheap and obvious, a strutting ego, dressed in red, talking too loudly. Like hearing someone I hardly know share “too much information,” I feel a little embarrassed and wait uneasily for the moment to pass.
Characteristically generous, PBS gave us a wonderful broadcast on New Year’s Eve, great music to say goodbye – and right away hello – as the years passed in a revolving door of supposed ending and beginning anew. Yo Yo Ma, the featured musician, would join the New York Philharmonic, so I hadn’t bothered to read the program; I watched because of Yo Yo Ma. They began with something by Ravel, and a Piazzola, which were good. The stunning performance was of Osvaldo Golijov’s Azul, a composer and piece unknown to me, featuring the cello. It wasn’t quite my sort of music, but Ma’s complete immersion in his playing of it was enthralling. He appeared transported, almost ecstatic! I listened on because of him and was greatly rewarded, so moved. And then came Bolero.
I take care of an Aged Relative who has both brain damage and dementia. Recent events disappear from her memory quickly, but old memories can be vivid. Childhood memories are keenest of all, and she had a happy youth, leading to conversations that give her great pleasure. Anything that prompts a pleasant memory is a valuable key, to keep track of and use again. Luckily for me, she enjoys classical music and the arts, and I often include programs about them in our evenings. The music of her youth puts her in the happiest mood. She sings along and even dances to Big Band stuff, things I never witnessed her doing before. When really inspired, she sometimes asks me to dance with her. Neither of our younger selves would ever have imagined this, but we hold hands and swing, carefully, for a few moments, until she needs to sit again and just listen.
So the orchestra struck up Bolero, and my shrinking away from it had just begun, when I heard the Aged R. exclaim, “Oh! Bolero!” I looked over at her, and her face was glowing. “You like Bolero?” “Oh, yes!” she gasped, gazing at the screen, rapt in anticipation, as the music began its strut. Of course, I couldn’t turn it off or leave the room. I was caught.
Susan Scheid quoted recently from John Ashbery’s “The Skaters”: “The balloons/Drift thoughtfully over the land, not exactly commenting on it.” (http://prufrocksdilemma.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/skating-above-the-ice/). It has been a goal of mine to drift through life this way, thoughtfully – possibly commenting – but without making pronouncements. I try to keep in mind Henry James in “The Art of Fiction”: “We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, what the French call his donnée; our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it.” One of the reasons why many refer to James as “The Master” is that a statement like this one, made by him in reference to writing fiction, is so applicable to the art of living, as well. So, while I may not like Bolero, I cannot fault the taste of the Aged R. With her, more than with anyone else, I accept her preferences as part of her world, as she sees it or wishes it to be; my role is supporting, encouraging her in holding on to as much of it as she can. The performance ended as the evening did, exuberantly. The Aged R. had been given another chance to enjoy Bolero, perhaps with glimpses into previous times from long ago, perhaps simply with the sense of happiness that they had left in her. In that evening of our life, it was what James might call her subject; exuberance was what she made of it. My subject was providing the support for her enjoyment of Bolero. I can only hope that she never asks me to dance to it.
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