Concierto de Aranjuez<\/em><\/a>, which was composed in Paris in 1939, was inspired by the horrific 1937 Nazi bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. \u00a0According to what I\u2019ve read elsewhere, though, Rodrigo\u2019s wife says that part of the \u201cinspiration\u201d for the piece was the utter devastation that the composer felt when they lost their first baby by miscarriage.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Genius is scarcely exempt from trial and sadness.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThroughout his adult life,\u201d Robert Schumann, the composer of the third piece on the program, \u201cexperienced bouts of crippling depression. . . . \u00a0His illness was so severe that he periodically needed hospitalization.\u201d \u00a0His life was \u201ca dark struggle.\u201d \u00a0And he, too, died relatively young, at 46.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
He set out to be a virtuoso pianist, but an injury to his hand shut that door before him forever.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYet,\u201d comments Clive, \u201che managed to breathe the most positive elements of Romanticism into his music . . . he was a devoted husband, a productive composer, and a champion of up-and-coming composers.\u201d \u00a0\u201cIn his music we sense light.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
From piano performance, Schumann turned to piano composition, then to full orchestral music, and eventually to symphonic composition.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even so, Schumann\u2019s work on his Symphony No. 2 \u201cwas interrupted by bouts of depression, dementia, and tinnitus \u2014 a ringing in the ears that plunged his musical imagination into shadow, like an eclipse. \u00a0His joints ached, his head throbbed, but he persevered.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMusic history,\u201d Clive concludes, \u201cis full of what-if questions. \u00a0One of the most tantalizing is suggested by Schumann\u2019s illness, which afflicted him in both body and mind. \u00a0It would be treatable today. \u00a0What if it had been treatable during his lifetime?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
What if?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 On Saturday night (27 April 2019), although we\u2019re facing numerous deadlines and really didn\u2019t have the time to do it, my wife and I, after having shared a good dinner from Market Street Grill with her father, attended a Utah Symphony concert at Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake City. \u00a0 They played three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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